Biohazard

Most people in Moscow knew by then the name of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the newly elected president of Georgia. Like most of the Soviet republics, Georgia was moving inexorably toward independence. The flamboyantly mustachioed Gamsakhurdia had been a thorn in Moscow's side for years. The son of a prominent writer, he led the republic's human rights movement and publicly accused Moscow of plotting his assassination. Gamsakhurdia was particularly despised in military circles for the campaign he'd led against the Soviet army after a demonstration in Tbilisi, Georgia's capital, that left nineteen people dead in 1989.

Once in power, his humanitarian impulses were eclipsed by his extreme nationalism. Many felt he had become mentally unstable.

He was unpopular in Russia and I didn't like him. I said nothing more, and we moved on to other topics.

Things were busy for several months after that, and I saw Butuzov infrequently. Then, one Sunday, I invited him and his family over to my dacha for a barbecue. While the shashlik was grilling and the children were playing, I whispered a question.

"Valera, what happened to that idea of yours, you know, the one about the watch battery and Gamsakhurdia?"

He smiled.

"Oh, that," he said. "Well, to tell you the truth, it never really got anywhere. We had a plan prepared but the bosses finally turned it down. They said it wasn't the right time."

In early 1992 Gamsakhurdia was ousted from office by his former allies, and former foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze became the president of independent Georgia. A year later, on December 31, 1993, the fiery ex-dissident died in mysterious circumstances in the course of a violent attempt to return to power. His death was reported as a suicide, but some claimed that he had been murdered by Moscow agents, or by one of his political rivals in Georgia.

One of the principal advantages of biological agents is that they are almost impossible to detect, which complicates the task of tracing the author of a biological attack. This makes them as suitable for terrorism and crime as for strategic warfare.

Many former KGB intelligence agents have been hired by the Russian mafiya. Some run their own criminal organizations. They would have ready access to their former colleagues and to the techniques and substances we developed in the Soviet era. The "achievements" of the Flute program would command a good price on Russia's private market.

On August 3, 1995, Ivan Kivelidi, chairman of the Russian Business Roundtable, was rushed to a Moscow hospital from his office, where he was suddenly taken ill. His secretary, Zara Ismailova, was brought to the emergency room a few hours later with a similar unexplained illness. The secretary died that night, and Kivelidi the next day.

Kivelidi was an outspoken critic of several high-ranking officials in the Yeltsin government, whom he accused of corrupt dealings. The Business Roundtable was composed of leading bankers and entrepreneurs who had banded together to put an end to mafiya control of the burgeoning private sector. Of the original nine members, only Kivelidi was left. The others had all been murdered in mob-style shootings, joining a list of more than five hundred victims of contract killings in 1995.

Kivelidi had taken extra precautions at his office and at home. Earlier that summer, he announced his intention to start a new political party dedicated to cleaning up Russian capitalism.

Detectives at the murder scene reported that they had discovered an unknown substance on Kivelidi's office telephone. They identified it as cadmium. The deaths of the businessman and his secretary were then reported as "radiation poisoning," but when I read news reports of the incident, they reminded me of a conversation I'd had several years earlier with Butuzov about the killing efficiency of various aerosols.

"We've come up with an interesting new approach," he told me with some excitement. "Let's say we spray something on the steering wheel of a car."

"What would you spray?" I asked.

"That's not important for the moment," he replied. "The point is, the driver would either pick the agent up by inhaling or through his skin. It couldn't fail."

"It would have to be very stable to keep its virulence," I said. "You don't know how much time would pass between the moment you sprayed the agent and the victim's actual exposure."

"We've got it all figured out," he said confidently. "It would look like a heart attack."

I expressed admiration.

"Oh," he waved his hand casually. "We've developed lots of better stuff."

Assassination, thankfully, was not part of Biopreparat's mandate, but Butuzov's presence showed that the KGB continued its close association with biological weapons research. I was doubly surprised to discover it had decided to play the role of a dove in the internal debate over our future following Pasechnik's defection.