Biohazard

It was going to be difficult to interpret what we saw. We had agreed to carry no special monitoring or testing equipment. I remembered with amusement the tussle over Chris Davis's flashlight.

Yet something Kalinin had said on the eve of our departure planted the seeds of doubt in my mind.

"Whatever you see there," he told Shcherbakov, who reported the comment to me, "come back with evidence that the Americans arc making weapons."

We landed in Washington on Wednesday evening, December 11, 1991. When we unpacked our bags at the Soviet embassy quarters, we learned that our country had disappeared.

American television reported that an agreement reached several days earlier by the leaders of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine to form the Commonwealth of Independent States had been ratified by the parliaments of each republic — effectively dismembering the Soviet Union.

"This is awful," said Grigory Berdennikov, our escort from the Foreign Ministry (who would later become deputy foreign minister of the new Russia).

"It is," I agreed. "There's no hope for Gorbachev now."

Berdennikov shook his head.

"You don't understand," he said. "We're carrying passports from an extinct country. The Americans will probably tell us to go home."

Our hosts were either too polite or too guarded to mention the subject the next morning.

We were driven in a large bus through the mist-shrouded farm country of Maryland. All I could see through the windows were indecipherable highway signs and large cars whizzing past at breakneck speeds. When we reached Fort Detrick, I relaxed. The place was reassuringly familiar.

Dozens of brick and concrete buildings were spread across a two-hundred-acre site that had once housed a National Guard airfield and training camp. There were large pipes running beside some of the buildings and a tower that could have been a heating station. The configuration reminded me of a pharmaceutical production plant. We turned off a busy highway lined with gas stations and fast-food establishments to enter the main gate, where a guard waved us through. An animal hospital faced the complex on the other side of the road.

Colonel Ron Williams, commander of Fort Detrick, gave a welcoming speech and then turned the proceedings over to Charles Bailey.

As deputy commander of USAMRIID, Bailey was my American counterpart. He was an easygoing man with sandy hair and a soft Oklahoma drawl. He considered himself a scientist more than a military officer. We had a lot in common, though neither of us knew it when we faced off for the first time across a table at Fort Detrick. Within a few years, we would be colleagues at a biotechnology firm in Virginia. My first reaction was of acute discomfort: he wouldn't stop smiling at me.

Much later, Bailey told me he had interpreted the scowls I kept darting his way as evidence that I was a spy. I thought he was being disrespectful. The more they smiled, the more we were on our guard.

The Americans gave us a map of the compound and asked us to choose which buildings we wanted to visit. We held a quick caucus. The first building we chose was a large laboratory. Technicians in white coats explained that they were developing antidotes to toxins produced by certain animals and shellfish. They were friendly and open — overly so, for my tastes — answering our questions with such ease that I despaired of ever penetrating beneath the surface. I told our delegation afterward that we would have to use more aggressive tactics.

Back on the bus, Colonel Vasiliev pulled out the map and motioned one of our escorts over to his seat.

"What's this building?" he said, pointing to a circular shape located at one corner of the compound. It was the building identified as a test chamber in our briefing back in Moscow.

The American looked confused. He went over to the other members of his team, holding the map.

"There's nothing there," one said.

I smiled to myself. What fools did these people take us for?

We insisted on being driven to the "nonexistent" building. After twenty minutes, the bus pulled up in front of a tall structure shaped like an upside-down ice cream cone. A pair of bay doors stood open. Through them, we could see a pile of grayish powder.

We told our interpreter to ask Bailey what it was. When he re-turned, he was smiling.

"He says it's salt."

"Salt?"

"Yes, it's what they use to cover roads in the winter."

Vasiliev was dubious. He went to the pile, stuck his finger in, and then put it to his mouth.

"So?"

He looked embarrassed.

"It's salt," he said.

We visited another lab which, we were told, was dedicated to developing vaccines against biological agents such as anthrax. The small size of the operation made it clear that weapons production was out of the question there. The Americans had just two specialists in anthrax. We had two thousand.