Biohazard

I thought I was completely alone.

Back in my office, I quickly wrote out a letter of resignation from the Communist Party. I walked down the corridor to the office of Biopreparat's Communist Party organization. Kalinin had allowed it to remain, despite Yeltsin's decree.

The Party man was delighted to see me.

"Don't worry, Kanatjan," he said. "You've got nothing to worry about. You're all paid up."

I stopped in confusion.

"What?"

"Since early this morning, everybody has been coming in here to pay their back dues to the Party," he said, with a touch of sarcasm. "They shirk their obligations for months, and now they see the error of their ways. I've checked your records, and you're one of the few in good standing."

I handed him my letter. His face fell. "Resign? Are you out of your mind?" he said.

Later that night, as Lena and I were preparing for bed, we heard a noise in the distance, of metal scrunching over pavement. It was the sound of tanks coming from the army base just north of Moscow.

The next morning, Slava looked grim.

"Did you hear the tanks?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"There's a line of them coming up from the south as well," he went on woodenly. "They're heading for the White House."

We didn't know at the time that the first tank battalion to reach the Russian parliament that morning had already swiveled its gun barrels in the direction of the Kremlin. The commanders had decided to defend the White House, not attack it.

When I arrived at Biomash, everyone was talking about the televised press conference at which the coup leaders had made their first appearance. They insisted everything was perfectly normal and promised that troops would maintain order in the capital. Despite the censorship clamped on the media, we watched Russian reporters stand up to accuse the self-appointed saviors of our nation of mounting an illegal coup. The cameras focused on Yanayev, whose trembling hands gave away the fact that he had spent most of the day drinking. Our "acting president" seemed to personify the bumbling of his fellow plotters. Through incompetence or oversight, they had failed to arrest Boris Yeltsin and other leading opposition figures, who had now taken sanctuary at the White House.

Yet the comic-opera character of the affair was not comforting. These men were capable of desperate measures. Rumor had it that an attack would be mounted on the parliament buildings that night.

In my office, I wrote out two more letters of resignation. The first was a note resigning from the army. In the second I announced my intention to quit Biopreparat. I put them in separate envelopes and asked Slava to deliver them to Samokatnaya Street.

I had made my decision soon after I heard the tanks in our neighborhood. Lena didn't try to change my mind, but when I told her I wanted to go to the White House she lost her temper. She told me to think of my children. Then she began to cry.

I was sipping my morning cup of tea, trying to figure out what to do, when a delegation from various departments walked into my office.

"We want to know what you heard from headquarters," one said. I told them, briefly, about my session with Kalinin. I also told them about the proclamation issued by the Obolensk institute.

"We should issue our own proclamation," said the chief of one of our research labs, a man in his fifties. "We need to support democracy."

I looked around the office and saw heads nodding in agreement.

"If it's to be written in the name of our institute," I said, "we should first discuss it in a meeting of the entire staff. Everyone should have a chance to speak his mind."

At three o'clock that afternoon, more than four hundred people jammed into the room where we held our scientific conferences. There weren't enough seats, so some sat on the floor. Others perched on tabletops, fanning themselves with manila folders in the heat. Scanning their anxious faces, I wondered if similar scenes were taking place at that moment in government offices across Moscow.

I stood up, and the buzz of conversation died away.

"I am not here to influence anyone," I began. "I can't speak to you in my capacity as the director of the institute, only as a citizen of the Soviet Union.

"And as a citizen of the Soviet Union, I am calling what's happened a putsch."

Cheers exploded before I could go any further. Some people stood on tables and raised clenched fists.

I told them that with their approval, I would issue on the institute's behalf a proclamation of support for Gorbachev and Yeltsin and send it to the White House. I then read the letter I'd drafted with the department heads and asked them to register their opinion with a show of hands.

"Who agrees?" I said. Hands shot up across the room.

"Who does not?" Two people raised their hands. Their neighbors started to jeer.

"Let them explain why!" I shouted above the din.

One of the dissenters was a scientist for whom I had a great deal of respect. He waited patiently until the booing stopped and then stood up to address his colleagues.