Biohazard

I kept silent. No one had any new idea to offer, and Kryuchkov's memo wasn't mentioned. The meeting was coming to an ineffectual end when Arzhakov leaned over and asked me to stay behind. I was concerned, but his expression was friendly.

"There are a couple of people here I want you to meet," he whispered, nodding toward two men in the back of the room.

Belousov gave me a meaningful glance as he walked out the door.

The two men pulled up to the table and started taking papers out of identical black portfolios. Their gray suits and demeanor identified them immediately as intelligence officers.

Arzhakov began the session.

"You've heard what we've been discussing," he told them. "We have a serious problem with the United States related to our biological program, and we haven't been able to respond properly.

"I've invited Colonel Kanatjan Alibekov to tell you what he needs from your agencies."

Both men were generals. One was a high-ranking official in the KGB's First Directorate; the other was one of the deputy directors of the GRU, the Red Army's intelligence wing. I was impressed. It was the first time I'd seen representatives of our two principal spy agencies together in the same room.

I had come a long way from the days when my career was at the mercy of our security organs, and I no longer had anything to fear from such men. This thought gave me a curious feeling of satisfaction.

"What we need should be simple enough to get," I said. "The only way we can deal effectively with the United States is by knowing everything it is possible to know about their biological weapons program. The trouble is, there are a lot of gaps in our knowledge."

"Well, there's Fort Derrick," one of them volunteered, referring to the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Maryland, where the United States began its weapons research program in 1943.

I cut him off briskly.

"Everyone who pretends to know something about the American program mentions Fort Detrick. That's old news. Do you have anything better?"

The GRU man looked annoyed. "Why don't you tell us what you need?"

"Fine," I said.

I'd begun to suspect that America presented less of a biological warfare threat than our internal propaganda suggested. While I didn't believe they had ended their program, as they announced in 1969,1 wondered why they were so determined to get access to our facilities. Surely they knew we would demand the same from them in return. This prospect didn't seem to bother them, which suggested that their program must be smaller than ours. To my mind, this presented another argument for cutting back.

As I spoke, the generals wrote furiously in their notepads.

"First we need the locations and names of all new facilities created in the past twenty years," I said. "We'll need the names of the commanders and their leadership structure. You'll have to find out which biological agents they are working with and what types of delivery systems they've developed. And we need a record of all of their testing."

I wondered if they would tell me that my demands were naive. Their faces were grave and gave away nothing.

"Give us a couple of weeks," one said.

A few weeks later I was called back to the Kremlin. This time, Arzhakov and the others were absent. It was just the three of us, sitting at the same huge table. The KGB man spoke first, with evident pride.

"Have you ever heard of Plum Island?" he asked.

My spirits fell. "Of course," I said.

Certain U.S. installations had figured in our intelligence reports for years. As deputy chief, 1 had seen many of those reports. Plum Island, in New York's Long Island Sound, was used during the war to test biological agents. It had subsequently been turned into a U.S. Department of Agriculture quarantine center for imported animals and food products.

"We also found something in Illinois," said the GRU man.

"I know about that one as well," I said before he could go any further. "It was abandoned as a weapons production site in the 1950s because they couldn't build suitable biosafety conditions. It's being used by a large pharmaceutical company."

The intelligence officers looked dismayed.

"Don't you have anything else?" I said.

They started to mention a few other places, all of which had been discounted as inactive. In exasperation, I cut them off.

"It's obvious you've just gone through your old records," I said. "Plenty of information about these facilities is available in open literature. I don't need intelligence experts to tell me about them."

I excused myself and went downstairs for a cigarette. I paced back and forth in the cold by the Kremlin wall. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if the generals had been ordered to keep material from me. But the KGB chairman himself wanted to shut down our program. His agency would be as determined as I was to find evidence of American activity.