Biohazard

That day, we discussed Ustinov's death in Siberia. Sergeyev ponderously and meticulously analyzed the health ministry's involvement in the incident. He went over the reasons for the shortage of Marburg antiserum and the problems involved in shipping it to Vector, even though his own directorate had played almost no role.

As Kalinin and I waited outside for our driver, I vented my frustrations.

"Yury Tikhonovich, why do we always waste our time at this place?" I said. "We are responsible for biosafety at our installations. There's no reason for Sergeyev to get involved, so far as I can see." Kalinin glanced at his watch. He hated to be kept waiting, especially when it forced him into idle conversations.

"You're half right, Kanatjan," he replied testily. "We don't really need their help on safety, but they are occupied with other things that make it worthwhile for us to keep our association with them."

"What things?" I asked.

He hesitated. He loved to dramatize moments like these.

"If I tell you, you can never mention it to anyone else," he said solemnly.

"Of course," I said.

"This directorate is responsible for a program called Flute," he said, using the Russian word fleyta. "Many institutes come under its control."

"Flute?"

He nodded portentously. It was a code name I'd never heard before.

I pressed him further. "Which institutes?"

He mentioned a few. One was the Severin Institute, which he said was located inside an asylum for the mentally ill in Moscow. Another was a pharmacology institute whose full name he wouldn't divulge. It sounded like Butuzov's old institute.

"What is this program for?" I asked.

Kalinin made a slicing motion across his neck.

"Sometimes people disappear," he said.

"What are you trying to tell me, Yury Tikhonovich?"

He looked disgusted with my stupidity.

"I've said enough," he said.

At that moment our car appeared, ending our conversation. I knew it would be dangerous to ask questions in the office, but I began to watch for clues dropped in conversations and paid close attention in subsequent meetings with the Third Directorate. I was curious about Flute.

The Severin Institute, I eventually discovered, developed psychotropic agents to induce altered mood and behavior in humans. Scientists worked with a number of biochemical substances including regulatory peptides, establishing a shadowy link with our Bonfire program. Another institute controlled by the Third Directorate, Medstatistika, gathered statistics related to biological research around the world. The pharmacology institute specialized in developing toxins to induce paralysis or death. All were connected in some manner to the Flute program, whose principal aim was to develop psychotropic and neurotropic biological agents for use by the KGB in special operations — including the "wet work" of political assassinations.

Perhaps Kalinin was right. There were things I was better off not knowing.

Biopreparat had no formal connection with Flute — our mission was to produce weapons for war — yet we couldn't completely escape it. The techniques we developed for cultivating, isolating, and cloning the agents in our labs were useful to many other government programs. It became clear to me that Biopreparat, vast as it was, was part of a larger zone of clandestine scientific research.

If Butuzov no longer worked at the pharmacology institute, what was he doing at the Yasenovo laboratory?

His office was on the second floor, a few doors down from mine. Our friendship grew steadily stronger. I can say without embarrassment that I grew to like him immensely.

As we shared more secrets, Butuzov and I became inseparable. We went fishing on the Ucha River near Moscow, and our families spent weekends together at my state dacha outside the city. He was a wonderful cook and a great handyman. He repaired my Zhiguli two months after I had proudly accepted its delivery from the state car plant.

"We can't even make cars right anymore," he would say with a laugh. "I think they leave parts out just to test us."

I visited the modest Moscow apartment he shared with his wife, daughter, and elderly mother. I could not reconcile the open-hearted man I knew with the work he did. Over the course of many conversations outside the office, he told me more about his work.

Butuzov had been transferred from the pharmacology institute to the Yasenovo lab many years before he came to Biopreparat. Known as Laboratory 12, it was established in the 1920s by Genrikh Yagoda, a pharmacist who went on to become one of the crulelest of Stalin's secret police chiefs. Laboratory 12 specialized in substances that could kill quickly, quietly, and efficiently.