Biohazard

Ustinov was not the last victim. A pathologist from the Ministry of Health on the team conducting Ustinov's autopsy fell sick after pricking himself with the syringe he had used to extract bone marrow. The pathologist, identified in our archives as "V," went through the same agonies as Ustinov, though it was reported that he had received a much smaller dose of Marburg. After a month and a half in the Vector isolating hospital, his condition improved. When he suddenly took a turn for the worse, he was transported to Moscow. Biopreparat was never informed of his fate, but I learned through unofficial channels that he died soon afterward.

A virus grown in laboratory conditions is liable to become more virulent when it passes through the live incubator of a human or an animal body. Few were surprised, therefore, when samples of Marburg taken from Ustinov's organs after his autopsy differed slightly from the original strain. Further testing showed that the new variation was much more powerful and stable.

No one needed to debate the next step. Orders went out immediately to replace the old strain with the new, which was called, in a move that the wry Ustinov might have appreciated, "Variant U."

At the end of 1989, a cryptogram from Sandakchiev arrived in my office with the terse announcement that Marburg Variant U had been successfully weaponized. He was asking for permission to test it.

Construction at Vector was running far behind the schedule set out in Gorbachev's last decree, and test chambers were still not ready. There were only three other spots where Marburg could be tested: Omutninsk, Stepnogorsk, and a special bacteriological facility at Obolensk, in the Moscow region. Obolensk had to be ruled out because it was too close to the capital, and Omutninsk was just embarking on tests for a new plague weapon. That left Stepnogorsk.

The facility had never been used to test viral agents before. Colonel Gennady Lepyoshkin, who had replaced me as the director of Stepnogorsk, reminded me of that heatedly when I ordered him to prepare the facilities for a Marburg test run.

"It's just too dangerous," he insisted.

The man who had once joked about Nikolai Chernyshov as the "guy who killed a lot of people" in Sverdlovsk was now a sober-minded manager. I respected his views, but orders were orders.

"Don't argue with me," I said. "It has to be done, so do it."

A brace of bomblets filled with Marburg and secured in metal containers was sent on the long journey by train and truck from Siberia to Kazakhstan, accompanied by scientists and armed guards. It took nearly twenty-seven hours for the shipment to reach Stepnogorsk. Another caravan with twelve monkeys followed shortly afterward.

I went to Stepnogorsk twice to supervise the test preparations. It was less than two years since I'd left there for Moscow, but the facility had expanded so much that it was almost unrecognizable.

After testing the weapon in explosive chambers, we applied it to the monkeys. Every one of the twelve monkeys contracted the virus. They were all dead within three weeks.

In early 1990, Marburg Variant U was ready for approval by the Ministry of Defense.

Our scientist had found it more difficult to cultivate Ebola than Marburg — they were not able to reach the necessary concentration — but by the end of 1990, the long-term problem of cultivation had been solved and we were close to developing a new Ebola weapon. Meanwhile, at Zagorsk (Sergiyev Posad) military scientists were putting the finishing touches on new Lassa fever and monkey pox biological weapons.

SECRETS AND LIES

The Institute of Ultra-Pure Biopreparations

Leningrad, 1989

Nikolai Frolov is on the line," my secretary dashed in to tell me early one Monday morning toward the end of October 1989. "He says you have to talk to him at once!"

I pushed the papers on my desk away and felt more than anything like putting my head down and going to sleep. Since Ustinov's death and the testing of Variant U, we had not been given a moment's rest.

A special conference of institute managers and senior staff was to begin the next day in Protvino, a small town just outside of Moscow. More than one hundred people were due to attend— nearly all of my senior staff. I wasn't looking forward to it. We were behind in almost every project, and I knew none of the managers would enjoy the stern lecture I had prepared for them.

Urgent coded messages had been sent to each director with details of the meeting time and place. I had been deluged with questions all morning. I braced myself for yet another complaint. Frolov was deputy director of the Leningrad Institute of Ultra Pure Biopreparations, one of our most important research facilities. His boss, Vladimir Pasechnik, was one of our top scientists. I picked up the phone.

"We've got a problem," Frolov said. He sounded strained.

"What problem could there be?" I said, trying hard to put warmth in my voice.