Biohazard

I had been sitting for hours in the Obolensk auditorium when the young scientist stood up to speak. I was too tired to listen with more than passing interest at first as he began to report on his team's latest attempts to transfer toxin genes into various strains of bacteria.

My attention perked when the scientist announced that a suitable bacterial host had been found for myelin toxin. It was Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, closely related to Yersinia pestis. Lab results had been excellent, and a series of animal experiments had been conducted in secret.

Inside a glass-walled laboratory, half a dozen rabbits were strapped to wooden boards to keep them from squirming free. Each rabbit was fitted with a mask-like mechanical device connected to a ventilation system. This was one of several standard methods of testing aerosols on small animals.

Watching from the other side of the glass, a technician pressed a button, delivering small bursts of the genetically altered pathogen to each animal. When the experiment was over, the animals were returned to their cages for observation. The rabbits all developed high temperatures and symptoms commonly associated with pseudotuberculosis. In one test, several rabbits also displayed signs of another illness. They twitched and then lay still. Their hindquarters had been paralyzed — evidence of myelin toxin.

The test was a success. A single genetically engineered agent had produced symptoms of two different diseases, one of which could not be traced.

The room was absolutely silent. We all recognized the implications of what the scientist had achieved.

A new class of weapons had been found. For the first time, we would be capable of producing weapons based on chemical substances produced naturally by the human body. They could damage the nervous system, alter moods, trigger psychological changes, and even kill. Our heart is regulated by peptides. If present in unusually high doses, these peptides will lead to heart palpitations and, in rare cases, death.

The mood-altering possibilities of regulatory peptides were of particular interest to the KGB — this and the fact that they could not be traced by pathologists. Victims would appear to have died of natural causes. What intelligence service would not be interested in a product capable of killing without a trace?

It was a short step from inserting a gene of myelin toxin into Yersinia pseudotuberculosis to inserting it into Yersinia pestis, or plague. In the process, we would have a new version of one of mankind's oldest biological weapons.

Traditionally spread by fleas and rodents, Yersinia pestis has been responsible for some of the most lethal pandemics in history. For centuries, plague's relentless spread through cities and across countries inspired an awe and horror matched only by influenza and smallpox. One quarter of the population of Europe died of plague in the fourteenth century in an outbreak known as the Black Death. At the height of the Great Plague of 1665 in London, seven thousand people were dying every week. The last major pandemic began in mainland China in 1894 and lasted over a decade, spreading from Hong Kong to port cities around the world. If ravaged Bombay and San Francisco and other cities along the Pacific coast of the United States. More than twenty-six million people were infected. Twelve million died.

The most invasive and virulent disease known to man, plague is one of three infectious diseases subject to quarantine and international regulation. Every case must be reported to the World Health Organization. A single bite from an infected flea can disgorge as many as twenty-four thousand plague cells into the blood or lymphatic system. After a period of incubation lasting between one and eight days, victims will begin to suffer chills and fever while the body rallies its forces to defeat the invaders. The attempt is usually futile. If it is not treated quickly — and diagnosed accurately — the plague bacteria will ravage the body's internal organs, resulting in shock, delirium, organ failure, and death.

Six to eight hours after the first symptoms appear, painful lumps called buboes begin to form under the surface of the skin, increasing in size and darkening as tissues fall prey to infection. Glands swell, causing so much pain, particularly in the neck, groin, and armpits, that even comatose patients have been known to writhe in agony.