Biohazard

Lukin's transfer was one of the best decisions Biopreparat ever made. Lukin was able to create a production line to manufacture smallpox on an industrial scale, and over the next year I watched with growing satisfaction as Vector blossomed under Sandakchiev's management into a formidable weapons development complex.

In December 1990, we tested a new smallpox weapon in aerosol form inside Vector's explosive chambers. It performed well. We calculated that the production line in the newly constructed Building 15 at Koltsovo was capable of manufacturing between eighty and one hundred tons of smallpox a year. Parallel to this, a group of arrogant young scientists at Vector were developing genetically altered strains of smallpox, which we soon hoped to include in this production process.

Vector

Koltsovo, Siberia, 1988

The windows in the administrative offices at Vector were covered with thick sheets of ice. It was midway through the Siberian winter, and the temperature outside had plunged to minus forty degrees Celsius. The scientists crowding into the tiny room were bundled in sweaters and thick jackets. They grumbled about the cold and the peculiarities of the Soviet food-supply system.

"I don't remember the last time I saw a fresh tomato, or an orange," one called out.

"We're going to have to start stealing from our animal cages," said another, to a burst of laughter.

I smiled good-naturally. It was February 1988, and I was on one of my frequent commuting trips to the Vector institute. By then I knew the scientists well enough to enjoy their bleak sense of humor.

The man whose joke provoked so much laughter was a hardy example of our Siberian species of scientists. His name was Nikolai Ustinov. A gregarious, well-built man with an easy smile and a sharp wit, Ustinov led a research team working on Marburg, a hemorrhagic fever virus we had obtained in the 1970s. Marburg was set to become one of the most effective weapons in our biological arsenal. The project had become as important as our work with smallpox.

Ustinov loved his job. He had been at Vector for many years and was one of the most well liked members of the community. He enjoyed socializing after hours with his colleagues almost as much as spending time in the lab. His wife, Yevgenia, worked as a lab scientist in another part of the institute, and the couple had two teenage sons. He was forty-four when I met him.

Before we settled down to discuss the serious business of the morning, I made a mental note to ask Ustinov if there was anything I could do to improve the food situation. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask him.

Two months later, in mid-April, I was sitting in my Moscow office one morning when a call came in from Lev Sandakchiev, Ustinov's boss and the head of Vector.

"Something terrible has happened," he said.

"An accident?"

"Yes. It's Ustinov. He injected Marburg into his thumb." Sadness and frustration were palpable in his voice.

"Right into his thumb," he repeated. "He was in the lab working with guinea pigs when it happened."

"Wait," I interrupted him. "You know the regulations. Send me a cryptogram. Don't say any more."

I felt heartless ordering Sandakchiev to stop talking, but the mere mention of Marburg was too sensitive for an open line.

Marburg was the most dangerous virus we were working with at that time — dangerous because we knew so little about it as well as because of its terrible impact on humans.

The first recorded outbreak of the virus occurred in 1967 at the Behring pharmaceutical works in Marburg, an old university town seventy miles north of Frankfurt. An animal keeper died two weeks after he contracted a mysterious illness from green monkeys sent to the Behring lab from central Africa. The lab was culturing vaccines in kidney cells extracted from the monkeys. Other workers soon fell sick, and similar cases were reported at laboratories in Frankfurt and Belgrade, both of which had received shiploads of green monkeys from central Africa at the same time.

Twenty-four lab technicians came down with the unknown disease, along with six of the nurses caring for them. Of the thirty-one people infected, seven died. This kind of undiagnosed outbreak would be alarming enough, but it was the horror of their deaths that caught the attention of biologists and tropical disease specialists around the world.

The mysterious virus appeared to liquefy body organs. One of the survivors went mad after the organism chewed away his brain cells. Before the victims died, every inch of their bodies was wet with blood.

Following tradition, the virus was named after the place where it was first identified. It would alter forever the image of a city that has been a center of European philosophy, science, and religion for centuries.