Biohazard

11. The Institute of Ultra-Pure Biopreparations

Nikolai Frolov is on the line," my secretary dashed in to tell me early one Monday morning toward the end of October 1989. "He says you have to talk to him at once!"

I pushed the papers on my desk away and felt more than anything like putting my head down and going to sleep. Since Ustinov's death and the testing of Variant U, we had not been given a moment's rest.

A special conference of institute managers and senior staff was to begin the next day in Protvino, a small town just outside of Moscow. More than one hundred people were due to attend— nearly all of my senior staff. I wasn't looking forward to it. We were behind in almost every project, and I knew none of the managers would enjoy the stern lecture I had prepared for them.

Urgent coded messages had been sent to each director with details of the meeting time and place. I had been deluged with questions all morning. I braced myself for yet another complaint. Frolov was deputy director of the Leningrad Institute of Ultra Pure Biopreparations, one of our most important research facilities. His boss, Vladimir Pasechnik, was one of our top scientists. I picked up the phone.

"We've got a problem," Frolov said. He sounded strained.

"What problem could there be?" I said, trying hard to put warmth in my voice.

"Pasechnik hasn't come."

"Hasn't come? You mean he's not yet in Protvino? Don't worry, it's okay if he's a little late."

"No, no!" Frolov nearly yelled into the phone. "I mean, he hasn't come back from France."

"France? What is he doing in France?" I almost laughed, thinking this was a strange practical joke.

"But you sent him there. You gave him permission to go."

All at once, I remembered. Six months earlier, during one of my official visits to Leningrad, Pasechnik told me that he had been invited by a French manufacturer of pharmaceutical equipment to visit its facilities in Paris. Their new line of fermenters might be worth our while to investigate, he intimated. I agreed.

"Why not go?" I told him. "It will be nice for you to visit Paris. You've been working hard."

A few months later he phoned to remind me of the trip. I was surprised. I thought he'd already gone.

"I was too busy," he explained quickly. "I just wanted to make sure it was still all right with you for me to go."

It was now October, and I'd heard nothing since. I'd assumed that Pasechnik's vacillating travel plans had finally taken him to Paris and that he had long since returned to Leningrad.

"Can you explain to me what is going on?" I asked Frolov as calmly as I could.

The story emerged in a torrent of excited words. At times, Frolov sounded as if he couldn't quite believe what he was telling me.

Pasechnik had flown to France the week before with a colleague from the Leningrad institute. Their meetings had gone well, and the occasional telephone conversation with the home office suggested that they were enjoying themselves. My cryptogram informing senior staff of the general meeting had arrived in Leningrad a few days earlier, and Frolov had telephoned the details to Pasechnik in Paris. "The two of them were staying in a nice hotel just outside the city," Frolov said. "They were booked to come back Saturday. But after your message, Pasechnik told his assistant to book an earlier flight Friday because he wanted to prepare for the meeting. He said the assistant was welcome to stay on for the extra day, as they had originally planned.

"So early Friday morning, the guy walked into Pasechnik's room and found him in bed, fully dressed. He looked like he hadn't slept all night. There were cigarette butts all over the floor — and Pasechnik doesn't smoke. The guy was shocked. He said, 'Director, you'd better get ready, you're going to miss your flight,' and Pasechnik got up slowly and mumbled, 'Thank you.' He was like a man in a daze.

"He walked over to his assistant and hugged him and said 'proshchai' [farewell], which was a little surprising instead of the usual do svidaniya [good-bye]. The next day, the assistant took the flight back to Moscow that they'd planned to take together. He found Pasechnik's wife waiting at the airport.

" 'What are you doing here?' he said, and she told him she was waiting for Vladimir. They waited together for the next flight from Paris on Sunday, but Pasechnik wasn't on that one either. That's when I decided I'd better call you."

I listened to the entire story with a knot tightening in my stomach. There were only two possibilities. Pasechnik had been in an accident, or he was alive and not coming back.

I thought back to our last meeting in Leningrad. We had spent a long, tiring day going over various projects. Pasechnik seemed sad and a bit depressed as he drove me to the railway station, where I planned to catch the overnight train back to Moscow. I asked him if anything was wrong. Posing such a personal question to a man like Pasechnik was risky. He was one of our senior scientists, twelve years older than me, and had always been somewhat aloof. I worried he might take offense.

"Kanatjan," he had answered, looking at me sadly, "can I be honest with you?"

"Of course."

"It's like this, I'm fifty-one years old, and I'm going through a strange time in my life. I don't know if I've accomplished what I want to. And they're going to make me retire soon."

It was true: the mandatory age for retirement in all weapons programs was fifty-five. But I clapped him heartily on the shoulder.

"I don't know what you're worrying about," I laughed. "Four years is a long time, and they could be your best years!"

He smiled thinly, we shook hands, and I boarded my train.

I might have picked up the distress signals from that conversation or from his wavering Paris plans if I had not been so preoccupied with work. But at Biopreparat we didn't spend time thinking about staff problems. Nor did we concern ourselves with the insecurities of our top managers. Now I was faced with a crisis that would affect not just the morale of personnel but the entire direction of our scientific program.

The Institute of Ultra-Pure Biopreparations had been one of the crucial links in our network since its establishment in the early 1970s. Under Pasechnik's leadership, it had provided many of our breakthroughs in weapons production. One of its most notable contributions was a milling machine that used a powerful blast of air to turn bacterial and viral mixtures into a fine powder. Nothing like this "jet-stream" machine had ever been built before, at least so far as we knew. It was intended to replace the heavy ball-bearing mills used for decades by the Ministry of Defense and to become a standard fixture at all of our production plants.

Work was also done on new approaches to drying and micro-encapsulation — the process of covering agents in polymer capsules to preserve and protect them from ultraviolet light. Highly pathogenic agents were forbidden inside the city limits, so the focus of the institute was on developing new processes and equipment.

One of Pasechnik's most important projects was the modification of cruise missiles for the delivery of biological agents. The Leningrad scientists were asked to analyze the efficiency of aerosol clouds sprayed from a "fast-flying, low-altitude moving object" containing one or more twenty-liter canisters of liquid or dry agent. They designed a moving platform to release canisters as the missile passed over successive targets. The canisters would break apart on impact with the air.

Cruise missiles have revolutionized warfare. With onboard electronic guidance and mapping systems that enable them to fly close to the ground and thus avoid most radar defenses, they can be launched from the air, land, or sea at great distances from their targets. Harnessing them for our use would dramatically improve the strategic effectiveness of biological warfare. Cruise missiles would require far smaller quantities of biological agents than intercontinental missiles and would do just as much damage. And they would increase our capacity for surprise. Multiwarhead intercontinental missiles can be detected by electronic surveillance minutes after they are launched. Planes can be detected by ground observers, giving civil defense and medical teams time to ascertain that an attack has occurred, determine what kind of agent was used, and mobilize for treatment. A cruise missile would offer little advance warning.

This research continued through my final years at Biopreparat. I do not know what came of it.

If Pasechnik's midlife crisis had driven him to defect, Biopreparat had lost a genuine scientific pioneer — and some of our most delicate secrets were in danger of being exposed to the outside world. In the fifteen years of its existence, not one scientist or technician had ever defected from the agency.

I told Frolov not to say a thing and dialed the extension number for Savva Yermoshin, our KGB chief.

"Savva," I said, "we've got a problem."

"You always have problems," he laughed.

"I think Pasechnik has defected."

There was a dead silence on the other end of the line. Then one word. "Shit."

"We'd better see Kalinin at once," he added, after another long pause.

"That's why I called you. I want you to help me break the news."

Kalinin was talking with Valery Bykov, the minister of medical industry, when we walked in.

I don't remember whether Yermoshin or I spoke first, but I remember the look that passed between Kalinin and Bykov. It was as it they'd just heard about the death of a close relative.

I told them quickly what Frolov had told me. Kalinin spoke first. "Who gave him permission to go?" "I did," I said. "But I told you about it." Shortly after Pasechnik's initial request, I had informed Kalinin of the invitation from the French company. I had full authority to grant permission for such trips, but Kalinin had told me to keep him abreast of staff movements.

"I don't remember that," Kalinin shot back, glancing at Bykov. "You didn't tell me a thing!"

I felt an involuntary shudder. Kalinin was making it perfectly clear that I was on my own. He looked uncomfortable nonetheless. Bykov seemed suddenly to enjoy the awkward position in which his rival had been placed. A veteran of Kremlin power struggles, he knew how to take advantage of such situations.

"Who prepared the cryptogram asking Pasechnik to come back to Moscow?" he asked in his deep official voice, as if beginning an investigation.

"I did," I said. "But we sent the same message to all the directors for today's meeting." "Who signed it?"

"Smirnov," I said, naming one of Kalinin's assistants. I had given him the job of sending the notices out to directors as I'd been too busy.

This was a small mark in my favor. If I had actually signed the advisory, it would have added fuel to the conspiracy theory that seemed to be developing: Alibekov gives Pasechnik permission to go to Paris; then Alibekov signs a telegram telling him to return early. What else could this be but a cleverly coded warning to Pasechnik to stay away? Needless to say, logic wasn't the theory's strong point. But the Soviet mind computed evidence in odd ways. Bykov was relentless. He asked me to repeat the story again. Then he asked Yermoshin to give his own version, which of course was the same as mine. I held back from describing my impressions of Pasechnik's mood in our previous encounter, since it would have made things look worse. I would then have to explain why I didn't inform anyone earlier of the director's erratic behavior. Finally, Bykov sat down. "Mikhail Sergeyevich is going to learn about this," he said, referring to Gorbachev. "I can't keep it from his people in the Kremlin. He'll probably know in a couple of days. You will have to be prepared."

"For what?" I asked.

"Somebody will have to be the scapegoat," Bykov said calmly. "If Gorbachev says we have to punish whoever was responsible, you'll be the one. Of course, if he takes it well, you can live out the rest of your days in happiness."

I nodded dumbly. There was nothing to say.

When I came back from the Protvino conference a few days later, Yermoshin was waiting in my office.

"Have you heard from Pasechnik?" he asked abruptly.

"No, why?"

Yermoshin looked down at his fingernails.

"Well, we think we know where he is."

"How did you find him?"

"We used a psychic," Yermoshin explained. "We showed him a photo of Pasechnik, and he stared at it for a long time until he told us that your man was on some sort of island, a big island, very close to the sea."

"An island?" I said, puzzled.

"Yes of course," Yermoshin went on. "And he said there was a large old building, with two or three men working with him."

I started to smile. I had never dreamed the KGB was interested in extrasensory perception.

"Come on, Savva," I said. "You've got to be kidding. Do we really need this kind of spiritual activity in an organization like ours?"

"Look," he said, suddenly irritated. "This is very serious. The man has done extremely successful work for us in the past."

I dropped the matter because Yermoshin seemed so sensitive, but the curious thing was that the psychic was right.

Pasechnik had gone to England.

In January 1995, long after I had defected, I was invited by the British government to discuss biodefense issues. During a break, several British officers came up to me and we began to talk through an interpreter about Pasechnik, whom I had not seen since 1989. The mood was light, and I casually told them the story of the KGB and its psychic. They didn't laugh.

"But that's exactly where we had him," one of the officers said. "We wanted to keep him secure, so we brought him to an old house on the coast."

The KGB psychic was either remarkably talented or he had remarkably good contacts. Even at the time, I suspected that Yermoshin had been ordered to let me in on the psychic's "secret" to check my reaction. Bykov or Kalinin must have been determined to catch me up. If I had not shown surprise at the news about the island, it would have been proof of guilt. I was angry with Yermoshin for agreeing to be part of such a clumsy trick.

At the end of the week, Kalinin called to say I was "safe." Gorbachev had ordered us to take whatever measures necessary to protect Biopreparat from further damage, but he had not ordered any disciplinary measures against our staff.

A few weeks later, a damage control team met in Kalinin's office. There were two senior KGB officers and several people from our agency, including Yermoshin and Vladimir Davydov, a military engineer in charge of "organizational matters" in all our facilities. Davydov was not one of my favorite people: he was cruel to his subordinates and seemed to me too eager to do what was asked of him.

A consensus was reached quickly. Everything relating to secret defense work at Pasechnik's facility would have to be destroyed. The Institute of Ultra-Pure Biopreparations would become civilian in fact as well as in name. This would leave a major hole in our program, but there was no alternative.

The talk turned to Pasechnik himself, and the atmosphere heated up. He was labeled a traitor, a turncoat, a weakling.

"We have to do something about him," Davydov declared.

We looked at him expectantly.

"There's only one thing to do. He has to be killed."

There was a communal intake of breath, and several people began to fidget in their seats. Even Yermoshin seemed uncomfortable. Kalinin stared out the window.

I was dismayed. "We can't do that," I said.

I was angry at Pasechnik for having put me in such a difficult situation, but I couldn't tolerate the idea of assassinating him.

One of the KGB colonels spoke up.

"I'd like to stop this discussion," he said softly. "Nobody is going to say anything about killing here."

A chill came over the room. I think we all got the message: if an assassination was required, the KGB needed no advice from amateurs.

I don't know if any attempt was ever made on Pasechnik's life, but he remains very much alive today in the United Kingdom.

Pasechnik's defection foiled our strategy to head off mounting suspicion about our program. We were told that Americans had begun to demand entry to our labs as early as 1986, charging that we were violating the Biological Weapons Convention. Their requests unsettled Moscow. It was difficult to deny access, even though the treaty contained no explicit requirement for visits. And once knowledgeable foreign scientists set foot in one of our installations, our secret would be out. Or so we thought.

In 1988, a year before congressional hearings into biological warfare began in Washington, Gorbachev signed a decree, prepared by the Military-Industrial Commission, ordering the development of mobile production equipment to keep our weapons assembly lines one step ahead of inspectors.

When I became first deputy director in 1988 I was put in charge of inspection preparations, an assignment that soon crowded out my other duties. One of my responsibilities was to act as the agency's representative on a special commission at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The so-called Inter-Agency Commission was established to "advise" the foreign minister on arms control, but it was primarily concerned with responding to American complaints about weapons-treaty violations. Every state organization connected to the biological warfare program had a representative on the commission, including the army's Fifteenth Directorate, the Military-Industrial Commission, the Ministry of Defense, and the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

By 1989, so many charges were flying between Washington and Moscow that the commission was forced to meet almost every month.

The meetings at Smolenskaya, the foreign ministry headquarters in the capital, were chaired by Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Petrovsky. Neither he nor anyone else at the foreign ministry was officially told of the existence of our program. Even Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, a full member of the Politburo and a confidant of Gorbachev's, was kept out of the loop. Although we invariably presented ourselves as "experts in biological defense questions," many of the senior bureaucrats at the foreign ministry seemed to guess what we were up to.

Nikita Smidovich, a sharp young foreign ministry department chief, sometimes sat in for Petrovsky as acting chairman. During one meeting, he brought up the latest American diplomatic dispatch.

"They claim we have a biological warfare facility in the Kirov region, at Omutninsk," he said.

General Valentin Yevstigneyev, commander of the Fifteenth Directorate, looked shocked.

"Absolute nonsense," he said. "The only facilities we have in Kirov are for developing vaccines."

They looked in my direction.

"Well," I said, "we make biopesticides in Omutninsk."

Smidovich grinned at me.

"Come on," he said. "I'm not stupid. You can at least tell us the truth."

"I don't know what you're getting at, Nikita," I insisted. "I am telling the truth."

He shook his head.

"You guys really shouldn't bullshit me," he said.

We all pretended not to understand what he meant. It was obvious that Soviet diplomats couldn't be told that they were being used to stage an elaborate coverup.

A special task force to coordinate our various deception plans was set up at the Moscow Institute of Applied Biochemistry. The institute had no connection with biochemistry: its function was to design and manufacture equipment for our labs.

The task force was given the equivalent of $400,000 to create a cover identity for our operations and to demonstrate our "civilian" character. It drew up blueprints for a fictional biodefense plant, complete with government orders mandating the highest biosafety protection. We wanted to be able to explain why Soviet installations contained ten of thousands of square meters allocated as Zone Three areas, when pharmaceutical operations in other countries rarely operated under such stringent conditions. The United States has only two facilities designed for work at Biosafety Level Four, the equivalent of our Zone Three.

If an observer happened to visit one of our civilian labs that actually produced vaccines and noticed that their protection levels were not as high as our blueprints called for, we planned to tell them that these labs had been built decades ago and that the Soviet Union had increased its safety standards to provide the best possible level of protection for workers. Who could argue with that?

To support this fiction, we created another special unit to "supervise" the construction of these phantom high-safety facilities and had blueprints prepared. We even hired dozens of civilians to serve as engineers.

We were as clever and resourceful as Iraq would be nearly a decade later when confronted with similar international suspicions.

Russia has had long practice in the art of deceiving outsiders, not to mention its own people. The story of the Potemkin village — in which an obsequious prince erected a string of gleaming settlements to prevent Empress Catherine from noticing the poverty of her subjects — is part of Russian folklore. And there is the legend of the hidden city of Kitezh, protected from foreigners by a cloak of invisibility.

Nevertheless, some of us worried that foreign inspectors would sec through our schemes. A report sent to me by Colonel Viktor Popov, director of the Institute of Applied Biochemistry, warned that only the most gullible visitor would accept our claim that the giant fermcnters and testing chambers in our facilities were used to make pesticides. I rejected his report. "You haven't been given all this money to tell us what can't be done," I told him. Stung by my criticism, he went back to work. It was true, however, that the most suspicious looking equipment would have to be moved to hidden storage facilities.

By 1988, a full year before Pasechnik's defection, we had produced an instruction manual for Biopreparat employees on how to answer queries posed by inspectors. Every conceivable question— What is this room for? Why is this equipment here? — was followed by a prepared reply, which workers were expected to memorize.

I was most concerned about our smallpox project. If foreign inspectors brought the right equipment to the Vector compound in Siberia, they would immediately pick up evidence of smallpox. This constituted a violation of the World Health Organization's resolution, which restricted our stocks of the virus to Moscow's Ivanovsky Institute. We considered transferring those Moscow strains to Vector to establish a plausible reason for keeping smallpox in Siberia, but the Ministry of Health, which controlled the repository, turned us down.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry's Inter-Agency Commission was kept busy responding to an avalanche of American inquiries. Each response, written with the guidance of our "biological defense specialists," was precise, professional, and unequivocal — and each was a lie from top to bottom. The strain of so many lies wore some people down.

At one meeting toward the beginning of 1990, Petrovsky had a broad smile on his face. He told us that he had an important announcement to make. I thought perhaps the threat of American inspections had finally been lifted.

"Our next meeting," he said, "will be conducted by our new deputy minister, Viktor Karpov."

Petrovsky was wearing a bandage on his finger. He picked at it with the absorbed concentration of a small child. For a man who had apparently just been been fired, he seemed unduly pleased with life.

Realizing that we were staring at him in confusion, he looked up with an amused expression.

"I'm free of all this now," he said. "Thank God." Toward the end of 1989, the American and British ambassadors in Moscow presented a diplomatic demarche to Anatoly Chernyayev, foreign policy adviser to Mikhail Gorbachev. The demarche said the two governments were in possession of "new information" that suggested that the Soviet Union was violating the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. This could only be Pasechnik.

Ambassadors Jack Matlock of the United States and Roderic Braithwaite of Great Britain were treated to an opaque reply by Gorbachev's adviser.

"There are three possibilities one could assume about the information you are giving me," Chernyayev calmly told the diplomats. "One is that the information is wrong; a second is that Gorbachev knows of this but hasn't told me; and a third is that neither he nor I know."

He promised to "look into the matter."

From that moment, events moved at breakneck speed. Kalinin called me into his office to report that a complaint had been received from Washington and London about our program. I had never seen him so upset.

"We're going to have headaches from now on," he said.

"Shevardnadze is furious. When he found out about this note, they say he went straight to Gorbachev and demanded to know what was going on. Apparently he doesn't like to learn from foreigners about what's going on in his government."

Kalinin shared the army's contempt for the foreign minister, who was then beginning negotiations that would result in the withdrawal of our forces from Eastern Europe. I could imagine Shevardnadze's outrage. A new argument with the West would undercut the steps he and Gorbachev were taking to remake the image of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev had traveled that fall to the Vatican, where he became the first Communist leader to meet the pope. He had offered scant sympathy to the besieged Communist regimes of Eastern Europe in their losing struggles against the forces of democracy.

Kalinin knew, as I did, that Shevardnadze was not part of the small Kremlin circle that had been briefed about our biological weapons program. Only four members of the senior leadership — Gorbachev, KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, and Lev Zaikov (the Politburo member responsible for military industries) — were fully aware of our secret. But it was hard to believe that Shevardnadze didn't harbor the same suspicions about our program as the senior bureaucrats in his ministry. We took comfort in the fact that there were many things Pasechnik didn't know. He had not been personally involved in weapons production, and much of what he could tell Western intelligence agencies was likely to be hearsay at best, thanks to our internal security regime. Nevertheless, Pasechnik's interrogators would have learned the secret that had been kept hidden for so long: the real function of Biopreparat.

Pasechnik's defection shook the highest levels of the Soviet government. Igor Belousov, deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers and the head of the Military-Industrial Commission, was ordered to prepare a response to the U.S.-British demarche. By February 1990, a draft was ready for the signatures of leading ministers.

Biopreparat wrote the bulk of the document. While declaring that the Soviet Union fully complied with every clause of the Biological Weapons Convention, we conceded that observers might consider some of our activities suspicious. Nevertheless we insisted that all our research into biological warfare agents was conducted for the sole purpose of defending ourselves against potential aggressors. The treaty's ambiguous definition of biodefense work had given us an important loophole.

We also agreed to negotiate a schedule of visits to biological facilities on both sides of the cold war divide. These would not be formal inspections — the treaty didn't require them. But our willingness to open our installations to outsiders would show our sincerity and good faith. None of us really believed that the U.S. government would take this last suggestion seriously. It would force Americans to allow us inside their own bioweapons installations.

The key Soviet leaders, including KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Gosplan chairman Yury Maslyukov, Military-Industrial Commission head Igor Belousov, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, and Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, were asked to review and sign the document before it was passed on to Gorbachev for final approval. A formal diplomatic reply would then be sent to the American and British governments.

Kalinin was given the job of obtaining the signatures. He managed to secure everyone's approval, except Shevardnadze's. Inexplicably, the foreign minister dug his heels in. Kalinin was beside himself with anxiety.

One day he came to see me, looking suspiciously relieved.

"They've decided all we need is the signature of Karpov, the deputy minister, since he's head of the disarmament department," he announced. "You can bring the document to him."

I headed through the midday Moscow traffic to Smolenskaya, one of the capital's seven wedding-cake skyscrapers built by Stalin's architects in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I didn't need an armed guard, since there were no state secrets in my briefcase— just a portfolio of lies.

Karpov was absorbed with his papers. He looked up as if surprised to see me, though I knew he had been expecting me.

"What have you brought me, Kanatjan?" he said.

I handed him the paper and waited for him to finish reading.

"You know, young man, I see a troubled future ahead of you," he said at last.

I was taken aback. "What do you mean?" I asked. "Look at all the others who have signed this document. I'm just the courier."

"Kanatjan," he said with a weary shake of his head, "I know who you are and I know what you do. And I know that none of what's written here is true."

"I don't understand what you mean," I said earnestly.

Karpov did not have Nikita Smidovich's sense of irony. He raised his hand to stop me.

"Forget it," he said.

He signed the document and handed it back to me. I hurried back to Samokatnaya Street.

Within a few days a formal diplomatic reply to the Western demarche was delivered to the U.S. and British embassies in Moscow. It was written on Soviet Foreign Ministry stationery and signed by Eduard Shevardnadze.

We were told at Biopreparat that the Americans and British had agreed to keep the Pasechnik affair quiet in return for a "full" Russian response to the diplomatic demarche. Our response was anything but full, but they kept their side of the bargain. Pasechnik's defection became public only after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Why did our rivals cooperate in guarding our secret? Disclosure of the information Pasechnik gave them would have caused us more harm than a dozen Sverdlovsks. After I settled in the United States, a senior official who had served in President Bush's administration told me American and British leaders believed that a public quarrel would endanger progress in other areas of arms control and perhaps weaken Gorbachev. They were also convinced that their covert pressure would force us out of the biological warfare business.

The West's diplomatic tact may have seemed sensible at the time, but it gave us unexpected breathing space. We continued to research and develop new weapons for two more years.

12. Bonfire

In a forest clearing on the southern outskirts of Moscow stands a heavily guarded building. Part of a research complex operated by Biopreparat at Obolensk, an abandoned village transformed into a closed city, it housed our "Museum of Cultures." The hundreds of bacterial strains stored there in small glass flasks provided the raw material for many of the Soviet Union's groundbreaking experiments with genetically altered biological weapons in the late 1980s.

Building One, a giant glass biocontainment facility with Zone Two and Three labs, towered above all the other structures at Obolensk. Five of its eight stories were divided according to pathogens. The second floor was for work on plague. The third was for tularemia. Higher levels were earmarked for anthrax, glanders, and melioidosis. Other floors were devoted to work on new industrial techniques.

In November 1989, a month after Pasechnik's defection, I joined more than fifty of Biopreparat's senior scientists and military officials in the large and windowless auditorium of Building One for our annual review of the facility's work. We were not allowed to bring briefcases or bags inside the room. We could take notes, but they were gathered up by security guards after each meeting. We had to get special permission to see them again.

The second-to-last speaker was a young scientist from Obolensk. He approached the lectern to deliver a report on the status of a project known as Bonfire. Few paid attention at first. Work on Bonfire had dragged on for some fifteen years, and most of us had given up hope of ever obtaining results. The project was ambitious. It had been overseen by a brilliant and cantankerous molecular biologist named Igor Domaradsky, who would eventually denounce the entire Soviet biological weapons program. Its goal was to create a new kind of toxin weapon.

Scientists have spent decades trying to manufacture killing agents from the venom of snakes and spiders and the poisonous secretions of plants, fungi, and bacteria. Most nations with biological weapons programs, including the Soviet Union, eventually gave up on harnessing the toxins produced by living organisms. They were considered too difficult to manufacture in the quantities required for modern warfare. In the early 1970s the Soviet government was persuaded to try again, following a remarkable discovery by a group of molecular biologists and immunologists at the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

The scientists had been studying peptides, strings of amino acids which perform various functions in our bodies, from regulating hormones and facilitating digestion to directing our immune system. One important group of peptides, called regulatory peptides, is activated during times of stress or heightened emotion— anger, love, fear — or to fight disease. Some regulatory peptides affect the central nervous system. When present in large quantities, they can alter mood and trigger psychological changes. Some can contribute to more serious adverse reactions such as heart attacks, strokes, or paralysis when overproduced. In a series of trailblazing experiments, the scientists found a way to duplicate in the lab the genes for a handful of regulatory peptides with known toxic properties. One of these was found capable, when present in large quantities, of damaging the myelin sheaths protecting thousands of nerve fibers that transmit electric signals from the brain and spinal cord to the rest of the body. Unknown in the West, we called it myelin toxin.

As with all peptides, it was hard to obtain enough for useful experimentation. Genetic engineering solved this problem: scientists could synthesize the genes that code for the production of myelin toxin, reproduce them artificially in the lab, and insert them into bacterial cells. If a bacterial strain compatible with myelin toxin could be found, the transplanted genes would multiply along with the bacteria. The project was full of possibility, but the stigma placed on genetic research since the days of Stalin and Lysenko made government support unlikely.

The biologists enlisted the help of Yury Ovchinnikov, who was just then beginning the political crusade that would lead to the founding of Biopreparat. Ovchinnikov immediately recognized the weapons potential of this research. With his colleagues, he drafted a paper calling for the revival of toxin weapons development and sent it to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party.

The paper noted that recent genetic engineering techniques developed in the West made it possible to produce cloned genes as efficiently as bacterial cultures. The apparatchiks couldn't have understood the science, but they were impressed by the caliber of the men who had drafted the proposal. Rem Petrov, a leading immunologist and regulatory peptide expert, now vice president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was one of its principal authors. The scientists' final argument was irresistible: weapons based on compounds produced in the human body were not prohibited by the Biological Weapons Convention. Funding for Bonfire was quickly approved. Myelin toxin genes created at the Soviet Academy were sent to Obolensk, where research began.

If all went as planned, the Soviet Union would soon have a new weapon, and Russian scientists would at last be able to participate openly in the biotechnological revolution that was sweeping the world.

Genetic engineering arose partly in response to one of the most disheartening developments in modern medicine. Less than twenty years after the discovery of powerful antibiotics, an alarming miniber of bacteria had discovered a way to outwit them. In an example of nature's own talent for genetic engineering, countless disease-causing microorganisms had spontaneously formed a resistance to the wonder drugs of the 1930s and 1940s.

Antibiotics do not always kill bacteria; sometimes they simply inhibit their growth, allowing the body's disease protection system to overwhelm them. One of the principal differences between our cells and those of bacteria is the presence of a rigid cell wall that protects the bacteria from hostile environments. Most antibacterial agents attack or infiltrate this membrane. Bacitracin, for instance, inhibits the movement of proteins from the cytoplasm to the cell wall, blocking its regeneration. Penicillin and cephalosporins prevent the cell wall from forming, killing the bacteria by leaving it exposed to osmosis. Aminoglycosides, including streptomycin and gentimicin, kill bacteria by binding to their ribosomes and blocking protein synthesis. Erythromycin and tetracyline act in much the same way.

Some antibiotics block or interfere with the bacteria's formation of compounds necessary for growth and reproduction. In the 1930s scientists found that when certain chemical dyes containing sulphur were added to bacterial cultures, the bacteria reproduced at dramatically slower rates. Sulfonamides or sulfa drugs virtually eliminated the threat of pneumonia in Britain after 1935. Subsequent researchers discovered how to inhibit bacterial growth with fungi or molds that could be bred in the laboratory. One of the most effective of these molds was penicillium.

By the 1940s dozens of antibacterial agents were available to physicians for the treatment of diseases ranging from diphtheria to plague, typhus, and tuberculosis. Yet within a few years, some of them began to lose their efficacy as resistant strains of old diseases emerged.

In 1946 the American biologists Joshua Lederberg and Edward Tatum identified one cause of antibiotic resistance and, in the process, created the foundation for the modern science of genetic engineering. Microbes appeared to "learn" resistance to new threats by borrowing genes from one another. When the scientists mixed strains of two microorganisms together, a spontaneous transfer of genetic material occurred. Tatum, Lederberg, and George Beadle won the Nobel Prize in 1958 for demonstrating that biochemical reactions in microbes were controlled by genes.

Techniques were soon found to manipulate these exchanges. The new processes that were developed changed not only medicine but pharmacology, agriculture, and dozens of other fields. Insulin, for example, a hormone crucial to the treatment of diabetes but produced only in small quantities by the body, could be grown in the laboratory by transferring its genes to bacteria. Human insulin became widely affordable to diabetics for the first time. The genes of corn, rice, and other crops were similarly manipulated to improve the plants' resistance to disease.

News of these developments aroused excitement in the Soviet Union, and envy. Why couldn't our scientists perform just as well? Brezhnev's decision in 1973 to allow genetic experiments under the umbrella of Biopreparat came as an unexpected gift to many Soviet scientists, who had until then been forced to watch the unfolding genetic revolution from the sidelines. The hunger to be on the newest frontier of biology was so powerful that scientists who answered the call to participate in the new program were willing to overlook its connection with weapons-making.

In the winter of 1972, Igor Domaradsky, a molecular biologist and geneticist, was relaxing at a hotel near Moscow when he received an urgent message from the Ministry of Health. He was told that a government car would arrive shortly to take him to an important meeting. Within the hour, Domaradsky found himself in the Kremlin, talking to one of the chiefs of the Military-Industrial Commission.

Domaradsky was offered a job in a mysterious new organization which, he was told, would be devoted to investigating antibiotic-resistant strains of plague and tularemia. As a young scientist, he had made valuable contributions to research on plague. During the 1950s he served as a director of anti-plague institutes in Siberia and southern Russia, where he improved existing vaccines against plague, cholera, and diphtheria. Domaradsky was under no illusion as to the nature of the work he was being asked to do, but he was convinced he could continue his own research under the mantle of the weapons program.

"Our work was directed towards the solution of strictly scientific problems," Domaradsky wrote in a memoir published privately in Moscow in 1995. "It was only later that doubts of a moral nature arose."

Domaradsky, who became deputy director of the scientific advisory council to Biopreparat and represented the organization on the Inter-Agency Scientific and Technical Council, consoled himself at first with the thought that geneticists and biochemists who wanted to remain at the top of their field had no other place to go. "Few of the people who escaped the temptations offered by the government achieved anything in life," he wrote in his memoirs, "or got a chance to work."

The Inter-Agency Council was responsible for coordinating the flow of information between the various branches of government and the state scientific organizations implicated in the Soviet biological weapons program — the Ministries of Health and Agriculture, the Ministry of Defense and of Chemical Industry, the Fifteenth Directorate, and the Soviet Academy of Sciences. It met once every two to three months to discuss the main direction of research and weapons development. The link with the Academy was one of the most important. Four of its institutes were directly involved in biological warfare. Although they didn't develop weapons, they provided Biopreparat in particular with advice based on their fundamental research into pathogenic microorganisms and on their investigation of genetic engineering.

Several of the country's most prominent Academicians were on the Interagency Council — Rem Petrov, an expert in regulatory pep-tides; Academician Scriabin, an expert on the physiology of microorganisms and an institute director; Academician Mirzabekov, a younger scientist who distinguished himself early for work in molecular biology; and Professor Boronin, who succeeded Scriabin as head of the Institute of Biochemistry and the Physiology of Microorganisms near Moscow.

When I met Domaradsky nearly a decade later, he was a bitter man. An irascible and brilliant theorist with a slight limp due to a childhood bout with polio, he was contemptuous of the organization's military leaders. He had been in the program for so long he could remember when people like Kalinin and Klyucherov, who had briefly served as his deputy, were brash young men. He was convinced they were conspiring to prevent him from pursuing his research.

Few people measured up to Domaradsky's standards, and I was no exception. He sat on the board that reviewed my doctoral thesis and was the only member to criticize my research. But many of us saw more in him to pity than to dislike. He embodied the losing struggle for self-respect waged by many of our most talented scientists locked inside our biological war machine.

Shortly after he joined the Biopreparat advisory council, Domaradsky became involved in plans to establish the genetic institute at Obolensk. He became deputy director of Obolensk in 1973, joining a small group of researchers in the newly built laboratory complex.

An atmosphere of improvisation charged their work. Originally a cluster of red and white brick buildings crisscrossed by dirt roads, Obolensk expanded each month as laboratory equipment was assembled from scientific institutes around Russia. The area around the compound was so sparsely settled that in wintertime elk wandering out of the woods would surprise scientists as they trudged from one snow-covered laboratory to another. The clandestine atmosphere surrounding the project gave it a certain appeal. The scientists saw themselves as pioneers.

Neighbors were told that the Institute of Applied Microbiology was involved in research into infectious diseases, but the high wire fence and heavy gates manned around the clock by troops from the Ministry of Internal Affairs ensured that there would be no casual visitors. Like other institutes, it was identified by a post office box number. Everyone knew that V-8724 meant Obolensk.

Domaradsky recruited a team of scientists from around the country to help him refine the techniques that would be used in Bonfire and Metol, a parallel project centered on the genetic alteration of bacteria to produce antibiotic-resistant strains. He never mentioned Bonfire or Metol in his memoirs, possibly fearing repercussions — both projects are still considered state secrets in Russia — but Obolensk was soon involved in genetic research into the diseases that had been Domaradsky's lifelong preoccupations. Foremost among them was plague.

There are two principal challenges in altering the genetic makeup of disease-producing bacteria. The first is to find the right mechanism for transporting genes into the DNA of another microorganism. The second is to achieve the transfer without reducing the bacteria's virulence.

Domaradsky turned to plasmids to meet the first challenge. Plasmids are strands of genetic material found in bacteria that carry the codes for such things as virulence and antibiotic resistance. They are used in genetic engineering because they can replicate without harming the organisms they come from and can be transferred intact to a new cell.

Domaradsky's scientists found a plasmid with the genes for resistance to tetracycline, one of the most potent and widely effective of all antibiotics. The plasmid was located in a strain of bacteria called Bacillus thuringiensis, used to produce biopesticides.

In a petri dish they mixed small quantities of B. thuringiensis with anthrax, cultivated the two strains together, and then placed them in a test tube with tetracycline, to see if the anthrax bacteria would survive. The process required endless repetition. It can take months, even years, using such procedures to isolate a strain with the hoped-for resistance. The antibiotic killed most of the anthrax bacilli, but a few cells survived. Most of these had incorporated the antibiotic-resistant genes from Bacillus thuringiensis into their own genetic structure. These new cloned cells could now be used to create tetracycline-resistant strains of anthrax and plague.

The second challenge, that of maintaining the virulence of genetically altered material, was more problematic. Despite his talents, Domaradsky couldn't give the Ministry of Defense what it really wanted. The Soviet army wasn't satisfied with weapons resistant to one type of antibiotic. The treatments available for bacterial diseases offered doctors a broad range of choices. The only worthwhile genetically altered weapon, for military strategists, was one that could resist all possible treatments. In 1976, Domaradsky proposed a "triple-resistant" strain of tularemia. He struggled for nearly a decade at Obolensk but couldn't come up with a strain effective across the entire spectrum of antibiotics while retaining its degree of infectiousness.

The program's military chiefs didn't hide their disappointment. Domaradsky offered no apologies for his failure, arguing that science could not be run according to Five-Year Plans. He was reminded that he had first made the grandiose promise to develop a fully antibiotic resistant strain. This elicited his rejoinder that soldiers had no idea how to run a laboratory.

For scientists like Domaradsky, the biological weapons program was both a blessing and a curse. While it provided the money and laboratory space for advanced research, security restrictions ensured that only a small circle of people would ever know the results of their work. Domaradsky patented ten different plasmid transferral techniques and claimed to be the first in the world to isolate the plasmid responsible for the virulence of plague. But his patents and discoveries were locked in classified government archives, where they remain today.

In his memoirs, Domaradsky described the toll Biopreparat's security restrictions took on scientists even in its earliest days. The soft classical music playing from loudspeakers in the labs did little to ease the pressure of constant surveillance. Scientists were forbidden from talking to their families about their work. Their lives were so constricted that they had to spend their vacations together at the same state holiday camp. A lab chief at the Kirov military facility once ordered the windows of his country cottage boarded up so that he wouldn't have to see his colleagues' faces.

The level of paranoia was so high that Biopreparat employees were often barred from attending scientific conferences abroad. Domaradsky found this embarrassing. "I had to think up reasons for rejecting tempting invitations from foreign colleagues," he recalled. "I would have to say I'd broken my leg, or caught something, or had family problems."

On one occasion, he had to get permission to work on a special culture of plague directly from Yury Andropov, then the chairman of the KGB. When he had successfully completed the work, he was asked to bring the results to the Kremlin. Accompanied by an armed guard, he carried a dish with a culture of genetically altered plague through the gates of the ancient fortress like a rare jewel. He solemnly presented the dish to military and Party apparatchiks. It isn't clear what they had hoped to see.

Such absurdities drove him to despair, but his most bitter struggle began in 1982, when Kalinin appointed a new military commander of Obolensk.

Nikolai Nikolayevich Urakov, an autocratic general from the Fifteenth Directorate, had been deputy director of the Kirov facility. He was fond of giving orders in obscure military jargon and had little patience for civilians, especially those he considered malingerers.

Urakov was himself an accomplished scientist. He had received a state award for developing a Q fever weapon and, for as long as I knew him, he never stopped talking about "his" weapon in tender terms. "I wish we could go back to Q fever," he would say nostalgically. "That was a real weapon, but nobody takes it seriously anymore."

Urakov made Domaradsky's life miserable, pressing him constantly about missed deadlines and undermining his authority by bringing young officers in to take over lab work. He even tried to recruit me when I was in Stepnogorsk.

"We could make a great team," he said.

The proximity to Moscow and the chance to work with some of our most creative scientists made this a tempting offer, but I refused. I knew Kalinin wouldn't want me to move away from the weapons production lines.

Meanwhile the tug-of-war inside Obolensk moved to Biopreparat headquarters. I was at Samokatnaya Street one day when the scientist and the general squared off inside Kalinin's office for an argument that could be heard over the entire floor. As I listened outside Kalinin's door, the two men seemed to be on the verge of violence. Domaradsky accused Urakov of "sergeant major" tactics; the general responded in kind. Exasperated, Kalinin finally begged Domaradsky to keep his emotions in check.

"Is this any way for a scientist to behave?"

It was a question that could properly have been addressed to any one of us.

Kalinin eventually chose to back the interests of the military over the prerogatives of science. Domaradsky was no longer at Obolensk when I came to headquarters in 1987. He had been demoted to the position of a lab chief at an institute in Moscow.

It is clear from Domaradsky's memoirs that he believes the military retain control of biological research today. He notes that both Kalinin and Urakov have remained the heads of major scientific institutes and complains that his hopes of pursuing experiments with plasmids have dried up for lack of funds.

Summing up his government career, Domaradsky declares that the genetics program he worked on for so long "justified neither the hopes nor the colossal amount of material investment."

"Essentially nothing remarkable was ever produced," he concludes.

Domaradsky, unfortunately, was wrong. What Domaradsky began, Urakov would finish. He was able to develop multiantibiotic-resistant strains of plague with a far larger spectrum of resistance, sufficient to overcome practically all antibiotic treatments. And another program that Domaradsky had overseen, Project Bonfire, took a surprising turn.

I had been sitting for hours in the Obolensk auditorium when the young scientist stood up to speak. I was too tired to listen with more than passing interest at first as he began to report on his team's latest attempts to transfer toxin genes into various strains of bacteria.

My attention perked when the scientist announced that a suitable bacterial host had been found for myelin toxin. It was Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, closely related to Yersinia pestis. Lab results had been excellent, and a series of animal experiments had been conducted in secret.

Inside a glass-walled laboratory, half a dozen rabbits were strapped to wooden boards to keep them from squirming free. Each rabbit was fitted with a mask-like mechanical device connected to a ventilation system. This was one of several standard methods of testing aerosols on small animals.

Watching from the other side of the glass, a technician pressed a button, delivering small bursts of the genetically altered pathogen to each animal. When the experiment was over, the animals were returned to their cages for observation. The rabbits all developed high temperatures and symptoms commonly associated with pseudotuberculosis. In one test, several rabbits also displayed signs of another illness. They twitched and then lay still. Their hindquarters had been paralyzed — evidence of myelin toxin.

The test was a success. A single genetically engineered agent had produced symptoms of two different diseases, one of which could not be traced.

The room was absolutely silent. We all recognized the implications of what the scientist had achieved.

A new class of weapons had been found. For the first time, we would be capable of producing weapons based on chemical substances produced naturally by the human body. They could damage the nervous system, alter moods, trigger psychological changes, and even kill. Our heart is regulated by peptides. If present in unusually high doses, these peptides will lead to heart palpitations and, in rare cases, death.

The mood-altering possibilities of regulatory peptides were of particular interest to the KGB — this and the fact that they could not be traced by pathologists. Victims would appear to have died of natural causes. What intelligence service would not be interested in a product capable of killing without a trace?

It was a short step from inserting a gene of myelin toxin into Yersinia pseudotuberculosis to inserting it into Yersinia pestis, or plague. In the process, we would have a new version of one of mankind's oldest biological weapons.

Traditionally spread by fleas and rodents, Yersinia pestis has been responsible for some of the most lethal pandemics in history. For centuries, plague's relentless spread through cities and across countries inspired an awe and horror matched only by influenza and smallpox. One quarter of the population of Europe died of plague in the fourteenth century in an outbreak known as the Black Death. At the height of the Great Plague of 1665 in London, seven thousand people were dying every week. The last major pandemic began in mainland China in 1894 and lasted over a decade, spreading from Hong Kong to port cities around the world. If ravaged Bombay and San Francisco and other cities along the Pacific coast of the United States. More than twenty-six million people were infected. Twelve million died.

The most invasive and virulent disease known to man, plague is one of three infectious diseases subject to quarantine and international regulation. Every case must be reported to the World Health Organization. A single bite from an infected flea can disgorge as many as twenty-four thousand plague cells into the blood or lymphatic system. After a period of incubation lasting between one and eight days, victims will begin to suffer chills and fever while the body rallies its forces to defeat the invaders. The attempt is usually futile. If it is not treated quickly — and diagnosed accurately — the plague bacteria will ravage the body's internal organs, resulting in shock, delirium, organ failure, and death.

Six to eight hours after the first symptoms appear, painful lumps called buboes begin to form under the surface of the skin, increasing in size and darkening as tissues fall prey to infection. Glands swell, causing so much pain, particularly in the neck, groin, and armpits, that even comatose patients have been known to writhe in agony.

The most severe form of the disease is pneumonic plague. Passed from one person to another by as little as a sneeze or cough, the bacteria invade the bronchial system and produce a fatal attack of pneumonia as fluid fills up the lungs, cutting off the supply of oxygen to distant organs. The incubation period for pneumonic plague is short — rarely more than a few days. The symptoms are sudden and often difficult to distinguish from other infectious diseases. An incorrect or late diagnosis can be fatal.

As the plague bacteria are attacked by the body's immune protection system, they release a potent toxin that leads to further collapse of the circulatory system. Death is invariably painful. Victims of pneumonic plague will succumb within eighteen hours of the toxin's release, sometimes going into convulsions and delirium and usually lapsing into a coma toward the end.

In the twentieth century, improvements in urban sanitation and developments in medicine have made outbreaks of plague rare— fewer than two thousand cases are reported on average every year. hut the disease continues to surface in rural areas of the western United States — Texas, California, and the Sierra Nevada, where prairie dogs and chipmunks carry the disease. Recent outbreaks have been reported in human populations in India, Africa, South Asia, and southeastern Europe. The disease even struck down U.S. troops in Vietnam.

Since 1948 the most effective treatment against plague has been streptomycin, an antibiotic administered orally or intravenously. Tetracycline, gentamicin, and doxycycline have also been used successfully. The first plague vaccine was developed by a Russian physician, Waldemar M. W. Haffkine, in 1897, during the Hong Kong pandemic. Several improved vaccines have been developed since then, but they are effective only against bubonic plague. Boosters must be taken every six months. Degrees of immunization vary from person to person, and adverse reactions increase with the frequency of vaccinations.

The earliest recorded use of Y. pestis in war was in the fourteenth century, when a Tatar army conquered Kaffa, in present-day Crimea, by catapulting the bodies of plague victims over the walls of the town. During World War II, leaders of the Japanese bacteriological warfare program turned to plague because an attack could be concealed as a natural outbreak. But there were drawbacks: when they tried to drop bombs filled with plague from aircraft, the explosion killed the bacteria. The commanders finally settled on a more effective method of delivery: they blanketed the target area with billions of plague-infected fleas.

Americans tried to develop a plague weapon but found that its virulence deteriorated quickly. The bacteria lost virulence so rapidly — sometimes in less than thirty minutes — that aerosols were useless. U.S. bioweaponeers eventually lost interest, but we persevered. Plague can be grown easily in a wide range of temperatures and media, and we eventually developed a plague weapon capable of surviving in an aerosol while maintaining its killing capacity. In the city of Kirov, we maintained a quota of twenty tons of plague in our arsenals every year.

The success of the Bonfire project raised our plague work to a new level. Within the next few months, scientists at Obolensk successfully transferred the gene for myelin toxin to Yersinia pestis. A toxin-plague weapon was never produced before the Soviet Union collapsed, but the success of this experiment set the stage for further research on bacteria-toxin combinations. Soon, scientists were studying the feasibility of inserting the genes for botulinum, the most lethal naturally occurring toxin, into bacteria.

In other circumstances, the discovery by Russian scientists that human regulatory peptides could be reproduced in the lab might have been shared widely, even welcomed as a contribution to our understanding of neurological disease. Instead, it was classified top secret and concealed from the world.

The final speaker at the conference was Urakov. As he approached the microphone to deliver his closing remarks, he could barely contain his pride.

"We have overachieved, as usual," he said.

No one could argue with him. Obolensk by then covered so much ground that workers had to take a bus from one section to another. At the time of the conference, it housed about four thousand scientists and technicians. The facility's annual budget of nearly $10 million paid for the purchase of expensive Western equipment — electron microscopes, chromatography devices, high-grade centrifuges, laser analysis machines.

The myelin toxin report was the last in a series of successes reported that day. Another team had developed a genetically altered strain of anthrax resistant to five antibiotics. And there was a new drug-resistant strain of glanders.

Yet Urakov still wasn't satisfied.

"We haven't been looking hard enough at new drugs being developed in the U.S., Great Britain, and Germany," he said. "Remember, our work for the Motherland is never finished."

13. The First Main Directorate

Samokatnaya Street felt at times like a cloister. Our secrets cut us off from political life in the capital, and we could not take the risk of making close friends outside the program. In our isolation, we forged relationships among ourselves. We visited one another's homes, gossiped about office politics, exchanged stories about our wives and children, and complained about Kalinin.

One man never joined our circle. His name was Valery Butuzov. A tall, gangly fellow in his early forties with a short military haircut, Butuzov gave no one any reason to dislike him. He always had a cheerful greeting ready when you met him in the hallway and smiled easily. Yet he seemed to retreat from closer contact. Butuzov held a Ph.D. in pharmacology. In our organizational charts he was listed as an engineer, but no one understood what he did. Sometimes he disappeared for days at a time.

General Anatoly Vorobyov, Kalinin's deputy in 1987, complained about him all the time.

"The guy doesn't do anything," Vorobyov once grumbled. "I've never seen anyone so lazy."

I was reviewing with him a list of assignments for new personnel, which required approval from the Central Committee.

"Why don't you fire him?" I asked. "We've got plenty of people to fill his place."

The general was silent for a few moments.

"I can't," he said.

"Why not?"

Vorobyov began to shuffle papers on his desk. He looked annoyed.

"That's really no business of yours, Kanatjan," he said. "Don't you have work to do?"

I took the hint and didn't raise the subject again. But I wondered why Vorobyov, the second most powerful manager in our organization, couldn't fire this man.

When I replaced Vorobyov as first deputy chief, I discovered who Valery Butuzov was. He was not an engineer but a colonel in the First Main Directorate, the foreign intelligence unit of the KGB. His Biopreparat position was a cover for activities too secret even for senior management to know. Yermoshin, our KGB head, knew Butuzov's real identity, but he couldn't tell me his function.

"I have no authority over those guys from the First Directorate," he shrugged. "I'm not even supposed to know he's here. You figure it out — the guy's a pharmacological genius."

Butuzov wasn't much older than I was. I started to engage him in conversation whenever we met. At first he tolerated my attentions — he couldn't exactly be impolite to Kalinin's new deputy— but over time, we discovered we had interests in common. We could discuss the latest books and movies and that great ice-breaking subject for men: sports.

He skillfully deflected questions about his work. Still, he was more open about his background with me than he had ever been with Vorobyov. He once told me he had worked as a younger man in the Ministry of Health, within a facility he called the Institute of Pharmacology, in some sort of intelligence capacity.

After one of his prolonged absences, I asked him where he'd been. He looked drawn, as if he hadn't slept for days.

"They wanted me at the lab at Yasenovo again," he said, shaking his head. "Those guys are idiots sometimes."

My interest was piqued. Yasenovo was the KGB's ostentatious modern spy palace, built in a forested enclave on the outskirts of Moscow to house the First Directorate. Yermoshin spoke of it with envy. The rest of the KGB apparatus, including his own Second Directorate (for counterintelligence and internal security), was confined to the gray-walled Lubyanka building in central Moscow. Yasenovo, which some said was modeled on CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, had been the private kingdom of Vladimir Kryuchkov, who spent fourteen years there as foreign intelligence chief before becoming KGB chairman in 1988. Its cafeteria served black caviar and smoked salmon, and senior officers could forget the daily strains of running the world's largest espionage agency in an elaborate sports complex and swimming pool. A monument to the "unknown intelligence officer" stood in its central courtyard. But I had never heard of a pharmacological lab at Yasenovo.

In 1989, Kalinin and I went together to a meeting at a covert division of the Soviet Ministry of Health. This division, known as the Third Directorate, was located far from the ministry's downtown headquarters in a pink office building on Leningradsky Prospekt, in northern Moscow. Its director, a scientist named Sergeyev, held the rank of deputy health minister but seemed to have no contact with his superiors at the ministry. We met with him frequently, but I could never understand why. Most questions relating to vaccines and immunization were dealt with by other departments.

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.

Butuzov was guarded about the lab's work, but he mentioned a few of its "achievements." In the late 1940s, a powdered version of plague was manufactured for use in a tiny toiletry container, like talcum powder. An assassin could approach a target from behind, spray the lethal powder, and vanish before his victim knew there had been an attack. The assassin would of course have to be vaccinated against plague beforehand to protect him from stray particles.

This device was to be used against Marshal Tito, the Communist partisan who became head of postwar Yugoslavia.

Tito provoked Stalin's anger in 1948 with his plan for a Balkan federation that would dramatically reduce Moscow's control over the region. At the last moment, Stalin decided against assassination. Tito lived to take Yugoslavia down the road of nonalignment and died an old man in 1980.

"Why did Stalin change his mind?" I asked.

Butuzov laughed.

"The only person who knows that is Stalin," he said.

Laboratory 12 was kept busy during the 1970s. In September 1978, Georgy Markov, a Bulgarian dissident, was taken to a hospital in London suffering from a mysterious ailment. Before he died, he casually mentioned that a stranger had grazed him with the tip of an umbrella while walking across Waterloo Bridge. Puzzled doctors were unable to trace the cause of death until a Bulgarian emigre in Paris reported falling sick after a similar scrape with an umbrella. When a second autopsy was performed on Markov, the coroner found the remains of a tiny pellet with traces of ricin, a toxin made from castor beans.

The ricin came from Laboratory 12.

Nearly eight months earlier, the Soviet Union had been asked by the Bulgarian government of Todor Zhivkov to help assassinate Markov. Bulgaria's intelligence service passed the request to its Russian counterpart, but the KGB chairman, Yury Andropov, balked at sending his own hit men to do the job. Instead, he authorized a special consignment of ricin to be sent from Laboratory 12 to Sofia. KGB technicians were sent along to train Bulgarian agents. There were several unlucky rehearsals: at least two failed attempts on Bulgarian exiles, including the one in Paris, were made around the same period.

Butuzov eventually told me why he was based at Biopreparat.

"The pharmacology institute worked exclusively with chemicals," he said, "but we decided the biological area was more promising. So they sent me to your shop."

I don't know what Butuzov really thought about his job, but I noticed that as perestroika and "new thinking" came to penetrate more of our political life, he seemed less busy. He looked more relaxed than usual, but I think he was also bored.

In the spring of 1990, Butuzov walked into my office and sank into the big armchair across from my desk. He stared for a while at the portraits of scientists hanging on the wall.

"I need your advice on something, Kan," he said casually.

"Sure," I said. "Professional or personal?"

"Professional."

I waited until he spoke again.

"I'm looking for something that will work with a gadget I've designed. It's a small battery, the kind you use for watches, connected to a vibrating plate and an electric element."

"Go on," I said. He spoke in the same casual tone in which we discussed a soccer match. I was fascinated.

"Well, when you charge this element up, the plate will start vibrating at a high frequency, right?"

"Right."

"So, if you had a speck of dried powder on that plate, it will start to form an aerosol when it vibrates."

He looked at me for encouragement, and I motioned for him to

continue.

"Let's say we put this assembly into a tiny box, maybe an empty pack of Marlboro cigarettes, and then find a way to put the pack under someone's desk, or in his trash basket. If we were then to set it in motion, the aerosol would do the job right away, wouldn't it?"

"It depends on the agent," I said. "Well, that's what I wanted to ask you about. What's the best agent to use in such a situation if the objective is death?"

I'm not sure why I went along with him, but I did.

"You could use minimal amounts of tularemia," I said, "but it wouldn't necessarily kill."

"I know," said Butuzov. "We were thinking of something like Ebola."

"That would work. But you'd have a high probability of killing not just this person, but everyone around him."

"That wouldn't matter."

"Valera," I said. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"Is this a theoretical discussion, or do you have someone in mind?"

A grin crossed his face.

"No one in particular," he said. "Well, maybe there is one person — Gamsakhurdia, for example."

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.

Yermoshin appeared in my office one day with the stunning news that KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov had sent a memo to Gorbachev recommending the liquidation of our biological weapons production lines.

According to Yermoshin, the memo argued that the Pasechnik affair had put the Soviet Union in an embarrassing and vulnerable position. The biological warfare program was no longer a secret. In our diplomatic reply to the U.S. and British governments, we had been forced to accept the idea of opening up our facilities. Kryuchkov insisted that there was nothing to do but cut our losses. Such a move might even restore our strategic advantage, since it would force the Americans to open up their biological warfare facilities.

This was the kind of shrewd tactic Kryuchkov excelled at. I was also certain no one in the army or the leadership of Biopreparat would go along with it.

"Not everyone in the KGB supports it either," Yermoshin said. "Bobkov for instance." He was referring to the KGB's first deputy director.

"But you don't know Kryuchkov. Gorbachev trusts him completely."

The odd thing was that I found myself agreeing with the KGB chairman.

Like everyone else, I was furious with Pasechnik and believed he had put our security at risk. But where others desperately wanted to preserve the status quo, I saw no choice but to change course. If the Americans and British came to Russia and observed the size of our production lines, we would be forced to abandon them and to dismantle our entire program. Pasechnik knew a lot, but not everything. He was familiar with our research work but knew very little about our production techniques. Why not try to hedge our bets? If we were to dismantle a significant portion of our production facilities, maybe we could preserve our research programs. If circumstances required, we could always recover our strength. So long as we had the strains in our vaults, we were only three to four months away from full capacity.

Yermoshin told me he had been authorized to discuss the KGB memo with officials at Biopreparat and in the military. Kryuchkov was politically savvy enough to realize he needed military support.

Yermoshin wasn't surprised when I told him I thought Kalinin would oppose the plan at all costs.

"That's why I didn't go to Kalinin to begin with," he said. "You're second in command. I thought we could go together to see Bykov."

This was dangerous. Kalinin would regard any attempt to go behind his back as insubordination. To approach his worst rival would be treachery. But I saw no alternative.

A few days later, Yermoshin and I went to Bykov's office at the Ministry of Medical Industry in central Moscow. We didn't call ahead for an appointment.

Bykov didn't seem particularly fazed by our unexpected visit. He was more intent, as he sauntered into the reception area, on smoothing the wrinkles from his dark blue suit.

"What brings you here," he said, without an ounce of curiosity.

"Valery Alekseyevich, something important has come up that we need to discuss with you," said Yermoshin.

He sighed, glanced at his watch, and waved us into his office.

We remained standing in front of his desk. He did not invite us to sit down.

"Well, get to the point!"

"The point," Yermoshin said, squaring his shoulders, "is that the KGB believes our biological production lines must be cut. I've been authorized by my superiors to seek your support."

Bykov turned to me.

"What do you think?"

"I agree," I replied at once. "The program wouldn't suffer. We can always—"

Bykov cut me off with a wave of his hand.

"It will never happen," he said brusquely, turning back to his desk.

"You can go now." He didn't look up as we left.

14. Inside the Kremlin

The headquarters of the Military-Industrial Commission, one of the Soviet Union's most powerful institutions, is a nondescript gray and yellow building backed, as if for protection, against the south wall of the Kremlin. I had been going there as much as four times a month since 1988. By March 1990, when I was summoned to a special meeting, it was almost as familiar to me as my office.

Alexei Arzhakov, the slender deputy chairman of the commission, nodded when he saw me walk in. His boss, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Belousov, was sitting at the head of a large oak conference table. As chief of the agency that supervised the nation's military production, Belousov effectively controlled more than two thirds of our industrial enterprises. In the Soviet system, the manufacture of arms and defense-related products was closely integrated with civilian work.

Inside the conference room were some of the most important members of our warfare establishment, including General Valentin Yevstigneyev, the new commander of the Fifteenth Directorate, and Oleg Ignatiev, head of the commission's biological weapons directorate.

The meeting began on a now-familiar note: in the aftermath of Pasechnik's defection, how should we respond to the American and British accusations?

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.

When I returned to the room, the officers had closed their files. We agreed that there was nothing more to say, and I coolly thanked them for their trouble. Inside, I was shaken.

It was impossible to believe that our most important military rival wasn't pursuing an active biological warfare program.

As part of my duties at Biopreparat I reviewed our budget regularly with Gosplan, the state economic planning agency. Every time I visited the block-long building on Gorky Street, the resources available to us seemed to increase. General Roman Volkov, the balding, scholarly official in charge of funding Ministry of Defense programs, practically begged me to look for ways to spend money. "I've got three hundred million rubles for you in this year's budget," he told me in 1990. "You still haven't supplied me with programs on which to spend them."

When I suggested civilian medical projects, he brushed me off irritably.

"If you give me more suggestions like that, you'll never get any money," he said.

This made little sense to me. Our health-care system was getting worse every day, and conditions in our hospitals were abysmal. The previous year, Biopreparat had shipped boxes of disposable plastic syringes to medical facilities around the country in response to an AIDS scandal in Elista, a small city on the northern steppes of the Caspian Sea. Two hundred and fifty children at the city's main pediatric hospital had been diagnosed with HIV after having been infected by contaminated syringes. Nurses complained that shortages of equipment and staff prevented them from employing adequate sterilization methods. Stories like these were rife throughout the country.

In February 1990, Valery Ganzenko, the head of the medical directorate, came to my office with a bagful of dirty vaccine vials.

"These are being produced at our facility in Georgia," he complained. "Hospitals in the area are sending them back to us because they're not sterile. When I ask the Georgians what's going on they can't explain it, but we just sent them a big grant to upgrade their equipment."

I was responsible for the civilian institutes operating within Biopreparat as well as for our military research program. The supervision of vaccine production and antibiotic development for our state health system occupied almost 50 percent of our official functions. Kalinin paid almost no attention to this part of our agency, and neither did others in the senior staff. We gave civilian managers free rein, and inevitably much of our equipment ended up on the black market. No one seemed to care. But I found myself increasingly drawn to our medical programs and allocated time to them whenever I could.

"Maybe we should take a special trip down to Tbilisi," I suggested to Ganzenko.

He was pleasantly surprised.

"I didn't think anyone around here wanted to spend time on this kind of thing," he said. We were met at the Tbilisi airport by the director of the facility, who drove up in a black Volga. A pompous man with a thick Georgian mustache, he was determined to treat Ganzenko and me as VIPs. Before I could protest, he had swept us off on a grand tour of the capital, a city of steep streets and elegant wrought-iron balconies.

"Why don't we go to your lab?" I said.

"Later," he said. "You must first enjoy Georgian hospitality." On our first night he took us to a restaurant where he'd reserved a private room. The table was laden with meat, cheese, fish, and bottles of wine — all in short supply at ordinary food stores in Moscow.

The poverty of the lab we visited the following morning seemed grimmer by comparison. Some of the equipment was over forty years old. Workers used tiny ovens to culture vaccines. Our host was unapologetic, insisting that Biopreparat's funds were being spent on wages and operating costs.

I knew he was lying as soon as I began talking to the staff. Most of the three hundred employees were women. They told me they were earning such pitiful salaries that they couldn't even afford lunch.

At a general meeting later that day, I announced that the lab would have to be closed.

"The medicine you produce is not acceptable," I said. "It cannot be used to treat people. We have made plans to reassign your production quotas to our laboratories in Ufa and Leningrad."

Everyone began to shout at once. Some of the women sobbed. In broken Russian they complained there was no other place to find work: their husbands were gone, they had hungry children. I was stunned by their despair. I had not witnessed this level of destitution since leaving Kazakhstan.

"I'll give you another chance," I finally conceded. "We'll keep the lab open to see if things improve, but one thing will have to change now."

I pulled out a sheet of paper and began writing.

"With this paper," I said, "I'm firing your director and replacing him with his deputy."

All of the director's charm rapidly vanished. He accused me of stealing his people's patrimony and vowed he would appeal to the government of Georgia, which had declared sovereignty the previous year.

"This laboratory is the property of the Soviet government," I said. "As its representative, I've made my decision."

We had to find a taxi to get us to the airport for our return flight to Moscow, but I didn't mind.

My trip to Tbilisi exposed me to a more complex problem than graft or medical incompetence. Nationalism in the different Soviet republics was beginning to tear the country apart, and it was tugging at me.

We never studied Kazakh history in school, where even our language was mocked, and over the years I had learned how to integrate myself in the system, how to become a Soviet man. I was now one of the highest-ranking Kazakhs in the Russian army, if not the Soviet government. I knew of only one other senior Kazakh in Moscow, a well-respected general. Kalinin sometimes appeared to be blind to my ethnic features. He would make disparaging comments about Central Asians or people from the Caucasus in my presence as if I were as Russian as he. But when I stepped out of my official car in Moscow, I was often taunted with racial jibes. Nationalist sentiments were rising in Kazakhstan as well as the other Central Asian republics. As more republics declared sovereignty or independence, I began to wonder where my allegiances should lie.

When Lithuania declared independence on March 11, 1990, General Volkov of Gosplan called senior representatives from the Ministry of Health and other organizations linked with our program to his office for an urgent meeting.

"We need to know what projects your agencies are supporting in Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia," he said.

We would be required to suspend them as part of the economic pressure the Kremlin was applying on the Baltic countries.

Biopreparat had several civilian-run facilities in Lithuania. One was the most modern laboratory in the Soviet Union, thanks to my predecessor, General Anatoly Vorobyov, who so much enjoyed traveling to the Baltics that he funneled over $10 million in hard currency to purchase sophisticated Western equipment.

The lab in Vilnius was the only facility in the country that used genetic engineering techniques to produce interferon, part of the body's natural immune system and used for treatment of hepatitis B and several types of cancer. If it closed down, our top Party officials would lose some of the high-quality medical care they expected.

The order to cut off funding was given and then reversed. Even our political leaders seemed unable to stick to their decisions.

Doubt and uncertainty were creeping into every level of national life. New publications, new revelations, new movies, new books challenged our assumptions every month.

One book in particular created a powerful sensation at Samokatnaya Street — a fictionalized account of the Lysenko genetics controversy that had sent so many scientists to prison in the 1940s and 1950s. It was called Belye Odezhdy (White Robes). No one had dared to discuss the subject in print before. The book, written by popular historical novelist Vladimir Dudintsev, appeared in 1988, but copies were hard to get. When I finally obtained one from a friend at the office, I stayed up all night to read it and then read it seven or eight times more. Soon all of us were discussing its provocative theme: the role played by the Soviet state and the Communist Party in stifling science.

In April 1990, the government announced that it was planning another reorganization. This time, the Ministry of Medical Industry would be broken up into separate state enterprises. Soon after this announcement, a friend came to me with a job offer from General Yevstigneyev, who had replaced the ailing Lebedinsky as head of the Fifteenth Directorate earlier that year. Yevstigneyev invited me to become his deputy, a position that would mean automatic promotion to the rank of major general.

"Nobody thinks Biopreparat is going to last," my friend warned. "This is probably a safe bet."

I spent the weekend thinking about it. Finally, I turned it down. I had decided to move in a different direction. Kalinin called me into his office one afternoon to discuss the proposed reorganization.

"This could be a way to preserve Biopreparat," he mused. "If we could convince Gorbachev's people to turn us into a separate program again, we could protect ourselves."

"I can't believe Gorbachev will have much time to think about the structure of Biopreparat," I said. "He's got a lot of other things on his mind."

Kalinin looked at me curiously. By now, he knew me well.

"Are you trying to say you have another idea?"

"I do," I said.

"Well, don't sit there dreaming about it."

I drew a deep breath. The announcement of the restructuring plan had given me an opportunity to revive an idea I'd been thinking about ever since Kryuchkov's memo.

"Pasechnik's defection has weakened us and left us vulnerable to American pressure," I said. "We need to find a way to redefine ourselves."

"What are you talking about?"

"If we ask Gorbachev to stop all offensive biological research and production, we'll be in a stronger position to do the pharmaceutical and biodefense work that may become available. Gorbachev won't read a memo about taking Biopreparat out of the ministry, but he might read one that suggests we stop what we're doing. That would be a matter of state policy."

I could see anger rising in Kalinin's face.

"Kryuchkov's memo," he snapped. "I know all about that, and about your little dance with Bykov."

I refused to be cowed.

"If we don't do this," I said, "we won't survive as an agency."

Kalinin said nothing and looked out the window. When he finally spoke, his answer surprised me.

"Go ahead and prepare the kind of memo you're talking about," he said. "If I like what I see, we'll send it up to them."

I went back to my office with a sense of elation. I called in Colonel Pryadkin, who was in charge of long-range planning for Biopreparat, and dialed General Yevstigneyev at the Fifteenth Directorate.

"I can't believe you, or Kalinin for that matter, would do such a stupid thing," he said. "But if you're going to do it, leave me out of it."

From that point on, Yevstigneyev turned against me. When I met him a few days later at a meeting, he refused to shake my hand.

"Here comes our peacemaker," he said to the officer he was talking to, and turned away.

Only in the Soviet Union could that be an insult.

Pryadkin and I finally managed to draft a decree for Gorbachev to sign. There were just four paragraphs. The first announced that Biopreparat would cease to function as an offensive warfare agency. The final paragraph declared that the agency would be separated from the Ministry of Medical Industry.

Kalinin questioned every word as if in a courtroom.

"All right," he finally said. "Leave it with me. I'll get this to the Kremlin."

For the next several weeks we waited in suspense. Kalinin called Gorbachev's office every day and spoke to one of his assistants whom he knew well, a man named Galkin.

"I don't know why they're taking so long," Kalinin complained. "Galkin keeps telling me there are dozens of papers arriving every day now, and he doesn't know how he can get Gorbachev to see it."

On May 5,1990, I was called into Kalinin's office. He was smiling and holding up a sheet of paper. Davydov was with him, smiling too.

"We've got it," Kalinin said.

I went over to his desk to read the decree.

Then I went numb. Every paragraph I had drafted was there, but an additional one had been tacked on at the end. It instructed Biopreparat "to organize the necessary work to keep all of its facilities prepared for further manufacture and development."

The first part of the document had ended Biopreparat's function as a biological warfare organization. The last part resurrected it.

I turned furiously to Davydov.

"Volodya, did you do this?" I said.

He didn't answer.

"How can we stop offensive biological research if we have to keep our facilities ready for production?" I demanded.

Kalinin made a dismissive flutter with his hand.

"Look, Kanatjan, you're taking this much too seriously," he said. "With this paper, everyone gets to do what he wants to do."

I wasn't sure whether Kalinin was serious, but I decided to take him at his word. Using the first part of the decree as my authority, I sent a cryptogram to Stepnogorsk and ordered the destruction of the explosive chamber I had devoted so much time and energy to erecting.

Gennady Lepyoshkin, the director of Stepnogorsk, called me as soon as he received the message.

"Have you been drinking, Kanatjan?" he said. "What's gone wrong with your mind?"

"Just do what you are asked to do," I said.

I waited several days, but there was still no word that efforts to dismantle the chamber were under way. I fired off another cryptogram.

"If you don't follow the order," the message said, "you will be fired."

Work started the following week.

Sandakchiev, at Vector, took the news much better. We discussed ways of converting some of the largest buildings to civilian facilities. Thinking of Lithuania, I said I would try to get money so that they could produce interferon.

I went to Siberia several times to oversee the conversion, which was completed by the end of 1990.

Sandakchiev knew how to play politics as well as anyone in our organization. While he was willing to divest some of his biological warfare work, he knew that if he ended it completely he would lose funding from the army. He had also learned — from Kalinin or Davydov, I imagined — of the extra paragraph in the decree admonishing us to maintain a state of readiness. Sandakchiev owed his loyalties, and his job, to Kalinin. I found out later that the construction of a new building for the cultivation of pathogenic viruses went ahead as planned.

Similar double games were being played around The System. While I closed production lines down, Davydov was authorizing new railcars for the mobile deployment of biological production plants. He could only have done this with Kalinin's encouragement.

The memo was never sent to institute directors. They knew of its existence but were not in a position to act on it without receiving an order from headquarters.

In July 1990, Communist Party organizations in all government agencies were ordered to hold elections for senior management personnel. The election of cadres policy was part of a new campaign to democratize The System. A year earlier, the first elected political assembly in Russia since 1918 gathered to form the Congress of People's Deputies. In February, the Party gave up its seventy-year monopoly on political power.

Mikhail Ladygin, a loyal Party worker in charge of the Communist organization at Samokatnaya Street, asked for my help in setting up the elections.

"You should go to Kalinin," I said.

"I already have. He wants nothing to do with it."

Kalinin believed there was no place for democracy in Biopreparat. It was a military unit, and military discipline had to prevail. Nevertheless, he was too good a politician to stay for long on the wrong side of a Party decision.

We came up with a compromise. Instead of an election, we would hold a "poll" rating candidates on the basis of scientific knowledge and leadership abilities. The poll wouldn't be binding, but Kalinin fully expected to win. To protect himself against surprises, he ordered the list of candidates to be limited to three people: himself, Colonel Davydov, and me.

Ladygin wasn't happy, but he went along. On the appointed day every employee at headquarters dutifully filled out a questionnaire grading each of us on a scale of one hundred points. The highest score would win.

When the results came in, Kalinin was not pleased.

I won with an average score of eighty-five points. Kalinin was narrowly behind with eighty-three points, and Davydov got thirty.

The results didn't thrill me. Even if I had wanted to replace Kalinin, an "election" was not going to get me the job. It would take more than superficial reforms to change the way the network of military and Party insiders anointed and destroyed its leaders.

When Ladygin presented the poll results to a small group in Kalinin's office and asked when he could make them public, the general scowled. The blow couldn't have come at a worse time: he had not yet told Bykov about the May 5 decree freeing Biopreparat from the medical ministry. Bykov might well use the poll results to relieve him of his post.

"We don't need to publish the results," I said. "Why not let people know informally? We can address this again after vacation."

Kalinin eagerly assented. I thought I had removed what might have been a new source of tension between us, but I was wrong.

Several days later we met with senior management staff for our last major project review before Kalinin's departure for the summer holidays. Kalinin and I were sitting next to each other in our usual places at the head of the conference table. When someone suggested that we review an issue discussed the previous week, I said, "We don't think that's really necessary."

Kalinin glared at me.

"Are you thinking of yourself in the plural now?" he snapped.

Everyone in the room watched us carefully.

"Of course not," I said. "This was our common decision."

We had reached a breaking point. It was time for me to leave Samokatnaya Street.

15. Visitors

In the fall of 1990, I told Kalinin I wanted a new job. He was less upset than he might have been.

One of the largest Biopreparat facilities in Moscow was a scientific conglomerate known as Biomash. Based at the Institute of Applied Biochemistry, with branches in four other cities, it designed and produced most of the basic technical equipment for our weapons plants, ranging from fermenters to concentration and testing equipment.

For several months Kalinin had been trying to get rid of the Biomash director, but he was unable to find a satisfactory replacement.

"Give the post to me," I said in a meeting with him after we had all returned from summer holidays.

"It's a boring job."

"Not to me."

Kalinin had made his career by eliminating threatening adversaries, and now his newest rival was giving up without a fight. Still, the timing of my departure was inconvenient. He had had no time to think of anyone to take my place.

"I need you here," he said.

We worked out a compromise. I agreed to retain my position as first deputy director of Biopreparat and to spend every morning at Samokatnaya Street on administrative and supervisory duties in return for a concurrent appointment to Biomash. This had never been done before, but times were changing. It was a perfect solution for both of us. Kalinin could keep a potential rival safely out of his orbit while continuing to tap the scientific expertise he needed to keep his research program alive. And I could begin to separate myself from a program I no longer considered viable.

Biomash was only fifteen minutes' drive from my apartment in northern Moscow. I would get home early enough to spend evenings with my family for the first time in years. Some of the senior managers were military officers, but the department heads were civilian scientists who took a refreshingly relaxed view of their duties. What made Biomash attractive to me was the fact that 40 percent of its output went to hospitals and civilian medical labs. I intended to increase that percentage. Kalinin and I agreed that my new job would start on December 30, 1990.

It wasn't going to be as clean a separation as we had hoped.

A month after this conversation, in October 1990, we were informed that a "trilateral agreement" had been reached between the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain to organize a series of reciprocal visits to suspected biological warfare facilities. The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention had no provisions for inspections, a limitation that continues to frustrate the international arms control community to this day. Visits were to depend on the trust and goodwill of all sides.

That trust, to the extent it had ever existed, was now considerably frayed. We were told that the diplomatic negotiations had been tense and protracted. The mood filtered down through The System. Anxious debates raged inside the Military-Industrial Commission and the Ministry of Defense.

The memo from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs notifying us of the agreement had left it to us to decide which facilities to open. The defense ministry quickly signaled it wanted no part in this charade. "You can show whatever you want in Biopreparat," General Yevstigneyev snapped when I asked for his suggestions. "But no foreigner is getting into our military sites."

Kalinin, sensing a political opportunity, volunteered that Biopreparat act as the host. He ordered me to decide which of our installations could be "sacrificed" in the interests of East-West relations.

The choices were grim. Though some of our explosive test chambers had been dismantled since Gorbachev's decree, large industrial fermenters at Stepnogorsk and Omutninsk furnished unmistakable evidence of our activities.

At the time, Biopreparat controlled about forty facilities in fifteen cities across the Soviet Union. About a dozen were used exclusively for offensive work, but many others mixed civilian and military functions. Judicious exposure of the Western delegation to these dual-function facilities would protect us while demonstrating our good faith.

We decided to open Obolensk, Vector, Lyubychany (a tiny research institute close to Moscow), and Pasechnik's Leningrad institute. The last was the easiest choice: it was the place Western inspectors were most likely to demand to see, and we had already eliminated all evidence of biowarfare research there.

I never believed that we would be able to pull it off. Anyone with basic knowledge of biological weapons would recognize the signs of our activity. After notifying the labs and preparing instructions for the staff at each institute, I headed over to Biomash with relief. Now it was their problem.

On Friday, January 11, 1991, Kalinin called me into his office for a special meeting. Colonel Vladimir Davydov was there when I arrived. He'd taken the most comfortable chair opposite Kalinin's desk, which I took as a sign of favor. Davydov evidently assumed he would soon step into my shoes as first deputy director. I sat on a sofa facing them both.

The general was in his most agreeable mood.

"Kanatjan, I want to ask you a favor," he began. "The American and British delegation is arriving on Monday. I'm too busy to host them and unfortunately so is Vladimir."

He glanced at Davydov, who refused to meet my eyes.

"I know you don't really want to be involved," Kalinin continued, "but you're the only other senior manager who can do the job. Would you mind acting as host?"

"Yes, I would mind," I said stiffly. "I've only just begun my duties at Biomash, and I don't want to be involved in any of this. I don't see how we can prevent them from learning what we've got."

Kalinin was implacable.

"I thought you might say that. Why don't we come up with a compromise? If you can escort our visitors to the first two facilities, Lyubychany and Obolensk, Vladimir should be free by then and he can take the other two. Kanatjan, we need your help."

As my commanding officer, Kalinin could have ordered me to do as he pleased. But he knew that by appealing to my sense of loyalty, he would lower my resistance. Grudgingly, I accepted.

"Good. There will be a bus outside Smolenskaya at seven o'clock on Monday morning. The delegation will be waiting for you there."

The curious thing is that I began to enjoy the prospect of escorting this delegation. I had never met an American or British scientist before, and this would be the first opportunity to meet people in the enemy camp who knew something of our trade. Not that I intended to exchange notes. As a staunch patriot, I would do everything in my power to prevent the foreigners from drawing the logical conclusions.

The fifteen people waiting outside the Soviet Foreign Ministry on Monday, January 15, looked sleepy and cold. It was still dark, and they were shivering despite their comfortable down parkas and fur-lined boots. The fact that I didn't know a single word of English made that first encounter awkward for me, but it didn't seem to bother Savva Yermoshin. He led the KGB contingent that had been surreptitiously added to our welcoming party.

Yermoshin introduced himself eagerly in broken English to each member of the delegation. He whispered to me later that he'd figured out which ones were spies.

Disconcertingly, they knew a lot about us. One asked through a translator why "Biopreparat chief Kalinin" hadn't come to greet them.

"Unfortunately, Mister Kalinin is extremely busy at the moment," I said. "He wishes he could be here with you and asked me to give you his regards."

That was our first lie, but I enjoyed telling it. Kalinin had made a special point of instructing me never to mention his name.

Everyone on the Soviet side wore suits and ties except for me. I wore an old brown sweater, which had served for the past several months as my silent protest against official protocol. Apparently they found this disconcerting.

"That sweater worried us," one of the visitors laughingly admitted to me during a "reunion" in much happier circumstances at my house in Virginia in 1998. "We thought you wore it to conceal some sort of secret equipment."

We piled into the large bus waiting at the curb. Our first stop was the Institute of Immunology at Lyubychany, about ninety minutes' drive south of Moscow. Yermoshin and his security group crowded into a black minivan and followed closely behind as we set off through Moscow's morning rush-hour traffic.

The bus driver had been advised not to hurry. The strategy, carefully worked out over the previous weeks, was to waste as much time as possible during the nonessential parts of the tour, to reduce the "official" segments in which our visitors could exercise their curiosity. We had also notified our institute directors in advance to stock up on supplies of vodka and cognac, in the hope of befuddling them with Russian hospitality.

The driver obeyed his instructions so punctiliously I was convinced we were lost.

Lyubychany was an easy stop. Since its activities were largely confined to theoretical analysis and defense work, there were no suspicious pathogens on hand.

Nevertheless, we refused to give our visitors the benefit of the doubt. The institute director, a scientist named Zavyalov, spent most of the morning talking about his research projects. Then he provided a sumptuous lunch. By the time he was finished, only a few hours remained for the inspection.

We had reserved two days for each visit. On the second day at Lyubychany, I began to challenge behavior that could be construed as threatening. I stopped Chris Davis, the leader of the British group, when he pulled out a tiny tape recorder.

"Not permitted," I said.

He looked puzzled.

"But we were only told we couldn't videotape," he protested.

After wasting some time in negotiations, I magnanimously conceded the point.

When I returned to Samokatnaya Street later that day I described our feints and evasions to a delighted Kalinin. I decided not to bring up the fact that they had asked after him.

"Wonderful," he said. "Keep it up."

Obolensk, our next destination, was more difficult. It would require finesse to explain the heavily insulated buildings and labs, the animal cages in our bacteriological genetic engineering program, and other elements of a biowarfare infrastructure. It would be hard, I thought, to conceal our projects to develop antibiotic-resistant strains of tularemia, plague, brucellosis, glanders, melioidosis, and anthrax and to pass our work off as biodefense.

General Urakov surpassed my expectations. The crusty director of Obolensk became the soul of conviviality and tact. Attendants paraded in and out of the conference room with platters of sandwiches and drinks.

By now, the delegation had figured out our tricks. They refused to touch anything.

"Could we finally get to work?" Davis said as Urakov paused for breath during an extended welcoming speech.

The general was undaunted. He told the foreigners that they were free to see whatever they wanted in his compound.

"However, I must warn you that biodefense work involves very hazardous organisms as I'm sure you know," he said. "If you elect to go into some of our labs, we may have to ask you to stay in quarantine for a couple of weeks. Those are our regulations."

This was partly true. We did have regulations requiring visitors to stay under observation, but they were totally unnecessary in this case: I had given orders that weekend for Obolensk and Vector to be totally disinfected. The delegation could have walked through any one of the labs in shirtsleeves.

Our visitors, naturally, were unaware of this. They hesitated.

"So," said Urakov brightly. "What would you like to see?"

They asked for a complete tour of the complex. We got our first rude surprise when Davis pulled out a map and pointed to a large building.

"Take us there," he said, pointing to the structure that contained Obolensk's newest, and biggest, explosive chamber.

Ah, I said to myself, here it comes. I assumed the map was based on satellite reconnaissance photos. Pasechnik couldn't have known about this.

I went back to the main building on the compound while the delegation divided into groups and set off on their tour. It didn't take long for feathers to fly.

The group led by Davis was taken into the first building he had asked to see. His guide was a senior scientist named Petukhov, who told me the story later.

The visitors were allowed to wander in the corridors until they came to a closed door.

"What's in here?" Davis asked.

No one answered.

"Could you please open it?"

"We lost the key," Petukhov mumbled. "I'll see if I can find a copy."

While the visitors waited impatiently, Petukhov took his time finding a "new" key. He eventually opened the door, but the room was dark.

"Can you turn the light on?" Davis asked in irritation.

"Not possible," Petukhov said. "The bulb is out."

Undeterred, Davis walked right past him and pulled out a flashlight. At that moment, the facade of international cooperation ended.

Petukhov lunged for the flashlight. Davis shouted. The two men tussled back and forth until someone suggested that they take the dispute back to the conference room, where I was awaiting their return.

"What's wrong?" I asked through my interpreter as they stormed in.

"Nothing," raged Davis, "except that when I tried to use a flashlight to look at a room, this KGB guy tried to grab it from me."

"Really!" I said, quite offended. "That man is a very respected scientist. He is not a member of the KGB."

But I conceded that flashlights were not forbidden.

When Davis finally went back and turned the flashlight on, he saw that the walls near the door were dented and pitted — the telltale marks left by fragments of explosives.

"You have been using explosives here," he declared.

"No, no," Petukhov insisted. "Those marks come from the hammers we had to use to make the door fit when we were constructing the building. It was poorly made by our factory, you see."

It was quick thinking, but the wrong answer. We had prepared everyone with a better explanation. They were to say that it was true, explosives were used, but only to test aerosols for defense work. How could we protect our soldiers unless we knew how biological aerosols behaved?

It probably didn't matter that Petukhov forgot his script. They would have drawn the right conclusion regardless, but it was a matter of pride for us to find answers that sounded at least reasonably intelligent.

That evening, we dined at the Obolensk executive dining room. Bottles of cognac were placed at each table, but the plan to get our visitors drunk fell flat.

"I have to tell you we don't believe a word any of you are saying," Davis remarked candidly to me over dinner, speaking through an interpreter. "We know everything."

"I don't know what you mean," I said with as much surprise as I could manufacture. "But you are free to believe what you want."

After the two days at Obolensk, Urakov telephoned Kalinin.

"Kanatjan and I were a great team," he bragged. "We didn't give anything away."

The visit to Obolensk was supposed to conclude my duties as host. But I wasn't surprised when Kalinin told me that Davydov still had "important work" to do. "I know you don't believe me," Davydov insisted when we met in Kalinin's office. "But I have to go to Irkutsk to check on the new facility for single-cell protein."

"I know that project," I said. "And I know that there's nothing urgent about it."

Kalinin intervened.

"There's no point in arguing," he said evenly. "You've done such a good job, our guests will wonder why you're not staying with them."

I could read what was on Kalinin's mind as clearly as if he'd said it aloud. If the visit continued with no real problems, Biopreparat would look good. But if something went wrong, they could always blame me. Kalinin and Davydov knew how much I now opposed continuing the program. I was clearly dispensable.

I shrugged and went home to pack for Siberia.

We asked Gosplan for special funds to charter a plane to Koltsovo, where Sandakchiev was preparing to welcome us to the Vector base. The charter was worth the extra expense. We wanted to keep our tiny group under scrutiny as we headed into the secret military regions of Siberia.

We left Moscow in the late afternoon and encountered rough weather just as we crossed the Urals, forcing us to make an emergency stop in Sverdlovsk.

Such delays were normal during the Siberian winter, when passengers on scheduled flights sometimes found themselves stranded for days at a time. Having our own plane gave us an edge, but our guests didn't see it that way. They decided this was another example of Soviet duplicity. I would have liked to explain to them that Russian weather respected neither Communists nor capitalists, but I held my tongue.

As soon as they were told where we'd landed, they grew nervous about being trapped in the place where the 1979 anthrax accident had first aroused Western suspicions.

"We won't be here long," I insisted. "We've got clearance to lake off first as soon as Novosibirsk opens up."

A few of them ventured our of the VIP-lounge, where we'd parked for the night, into the main terminal, only to withdraw in horror when they saw the hordes of stranded travelers slumped over luggage and sleeping on the floor. This helped convince them that our delay was not staged. When the pilot came in at 4:00 a.m. to announce that we were ready to leave, they followed him outside with relief.

We crossed the icy tarmac and waited for the pilot to kick open the door of the aircraft (it had frozen shut during our layover) before following him inside. Our security forces had not been idle during the stopover. As we left the VIP lounge, one woman in the group complained that her purse was missing.

"It must have been an airport employee," I said, although I doubted any airport worker would have dared to trifle with a group so clearly under KGB protection.

At Koltsovo, a member of the delegation discovered his luggage had been tampered with. When I confronted Yermoshin, he drew back in mock affront, full of protests.

Sandakchiev was waiting for us in the predawn darkness at Novosibirsk with a fleet of Volgas and minivans. He proved an even better host than Urakov. He was genuinely excited by the opportunity to share scientific research with his Western peers.

They didn't share his enthusiasm. As soon as the effusive Armenian launched into a lecture about the latest advances in Soviet immunology, he was cut off.

"Please," one of the visitors said edgily, "we would really like to see your labs."

Sandakchiev looked disappointed. Our guests were treated to another warning about quarantine and then escorted into the facility.

I could see their eyes widen with astonishment as we took them past enormous steel fermenters, larger than what any Western pharmaceutical firm would ever use for the mass-production of vaccines. We had taken them to one of Vector's principal research labs — but we made sure to keep them on the ground floor.

In the upper levels were floors dedicated to work on smallpox, Ebola, Machupo, Marburg, Junin, and other hemorrhagic fevers, as well as V 1*1'., Russian spring and summer encephalitis, and a number of other deadly viruses. Fortunately, the fuzzy protocol of the visit had left them uncertain as to how hard to press us.

They asked whether they could take air samples and smears from some of the lab areas.

"We haven't tried to hide the fact that we work with dangerous strains — for defensive purposes," I replied. "But I don't have any instructions about allowing you to take samples outside the country. We don't want to be responsible for a terrible accident."

Neither did they.

"I can always ask for permission," I added helpfully. "It might take time and you'd have to wait here for an answer, but I'm sure you'll be well treated."

They didn't press further.

Sandakchiev and I noted with relief that they had not brought special equipment. We had feared for months that the visitors would be carrying advanced monitors capable of detecting viral DNA. Such monitors would have picked up irrefutable evidence of smallpox, and we would have a lot of explaining to do.

The only member of our team who truly seemed to be enjoying himself was Yermoshin. He was convinced he'd identified the lead American intelligence officer and spent the rest of our excursion cordially attempting to trip him up.

"He speaks Russian, and he clearly knows as little about biology as I do," Savva whispered to me with delight. "All he cares about is asking everyone political questions."

By the time we got to Leningrad, I had begun to relax. The worst was behind us. Nothing at Pasechnik's old institute would pose a threat. Or so I thought.

During the tour, one of the visitors stopped before an imposing machine.

"What's this?"

I groaned inwardly. I had forgotten about Pasechnik's jet-stream milling equipment. It had been too heavy to move. No one had informed me that the machine was still active, and I silently raged against Pasechnik.

The institute's deputy director, a man named Vinogradov, came up with a quick-witted response.

"For salt," he said. "That's where we mill salt."

I think by then our guests had had enough. They didn't even bother to smile.

On the last night of their stay we gave them a banquet at their hotel. I stood up to offer a toast.

"I know you think we weren't very open," I said. "But please remember this was a first for all of us, after so many years of mistrust between our countries."

I went on, pausing meaningfully, to say, "We all have our secrets… in biodefense, but after all, this won't be your last visit, and we look forward to being your guests soon. Once relations improve, things can only get better."

I was rather proud of the speech. I thought I had struck just the right note of candor and diplomatic evasiveness. The day before, coalition forces led by the Americans had launched Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait. I decided to sweeten the moment with an expression of solidarity.

"I would like you to know that a lot of Soviet people support your actions in Iraq," I said. "I truly hope you win."

Strangely, no one reacted. I wondered if our translator had been doing his job.

"Kanatjan," Yermoshin advised me quietly after dinner, "I think you should stay away from politics."

Two weeks after the delegation left, Biopreparat prepared a report for the Military-Industrial Commission. We claimed a kind of victory. Although the delegation had seen enough to make them suspicious, they could prove nothing, and we had given nothing away.

Kalinin was almost as happy with me as he'd been when I developed the tularemia weapon at Omutninsk.

I returned to my office at Biomash, thinking I had earned the right to proceed with my plan to convert at least one corner of the vast Biopreparat empire into an outpost of useful activity.

Throughout that spring and summer the Soviet Union sank into further political disarray. The scientists under my command seemed delighted to be doing peaceful work. One team took the job of converting the mobile production assembly lines used to fill bomblets with biological agents into automated lines for vaccines.

I spent less and less time at Samokatnaya Street. I would occasionally stop in to say hello to old friends, but I kept as far as possible from my second-floor office.

From time to time, I would receive a call from an irritated Kalinin.

"I tried to find you the other day to get you to a meeting at the Central Committee," he said, "but you're always unavailable. Don't imagine you're fooling me. I know what you're up to."

By now, I really didn't care. Eventually he stopped inviting me to the "urgent" meetings that had once been such an important part of my life.

One reason why Kalinin could do little more than complain about the changes I was making at Biomash was that it was now official state policy to convert military plants, whenever possible, to civilian purposes. Often the transformation was ludicrous. Workers at a plant that formerly manufactured jet fighters in the center of Moscow were suddenly producing washing machines and food mixers. Their products were of such poor quality that it was hard to imagine how they would attract even the most hard-pressed Soviet consumer.

All the same, our militarized economy was undeniably changing. A few other civilian managers at Biopreparat headquarters had left the organization completely.

I learned that Kalinin was having trouble keeping some of his large offensive research projects afloat. He reduced my institute's portion of budget allocations, insisting that all managers had to tighten their belts.

The lack of money forced me to look outside for help. Valery Popov, a friend from Biopreparat who had left to become president of the newly formed Russian Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Association, offered to help arrange the financing of some of my projects.

In the summer, Popov introduced me to an American businessman named Joel Taylor, a retired arms-company executive from Austin, Texas, who ran a company called Cornucopia. Taylor had developed a plan to ship used American hospital equipment to Russia, but he couldn't find anyone to supply transportation.

I called friends at the Ministry of Defense who said they would happily supply a cargo plane if someone paid the $30,000 in estimated fuel costs. Popov and I managed to obtain part of the money from private sources in Moscow. After weeks of lobbying, we got a tentative expression of interest in paying the rest of the bill from the Ministry of Health.

"I've arranged for the minister to meet Joel Taylor," Popov announced with excitement one day. "Can you join us?"

I gladly agreed. The meeting was scheduled for August 19.

16. Three Days

On the morning of the day the Soviet Union began its final passage into history, I had an appointment with my doctor. I was dressed and preparing to leave home when the telephone rang. It was seven o'clock. Joel Taylor's secretary apologized for calling so early.

"Are you still planning to go to the health ministry for your meeting?" she said.

"Of course," I answered testily. "Why shouldn't I be?"

"Don't you know what's going on?"

"No."

"Turn on your television," she said. "I'll call you back in a few minutes."

I turned on the TV. A ballerina was pirouetting in Swan Lake. The same grainy version of Tchaikovsky's ballet was on every channel. I wondered why no one had bothered to obtain a better print of the movie: they had shown the same version when Brezhnev had died, the unmistakable signal that a major state event had taken place.

An announcer came on the air, speaking in an arch Soviet verbiage that had been absent from our newscasts for months. A Committee for the State of Emergency had just been formed, she said. Soviet citizens were asked to remember their duties to the Motherland and stay calm. The ballet resumed. Taylor's secretary called back. "What's going on?" I asked.

The bulletins had started at six o'clock that morning. Gorbachev had fallen sick at his state dacha in Crimea, where he was on his annual holiday. He had handed over power "temporarily" to the GKChP, she said, using the Russian initials for the emergency committee.

"I'll still be there," I said, and hung up.

I sat back on my bed, too angry to speak. I'd been following the political events with interest during that surreal summer. In late July, President Bush had come to Moscow for another summit with Gorbachev. On August 2, Gorbachev announced his intention to sign a treaty granting the Soviet republics startling new powers, including the right to collect taxes — the most radical change in the federal structure of the Soviet Union in decades. He left on August 4 with his family for Crimea. The official signing ceremony for the treaty was to be held on August 20, the day he planned to return from holiday. This was the nineteenth, and Gorbachev would not be coming back tomorrow — if ever.

Lena was propped up in bed next to me, watching the TV with a fixed gaze. Another announcer was reading "Order Number One" of the GKChP. We were informed that all government institutions had been placed under the authority of the emergency committee. Political parties, strikes, and demonstrations were banned. The names of the committee members stunned me at first, and then they seemed infuriatingly logical.

Gennady Yanayev, the pasty-faced bureaucrat whom Gorbachev had appointed vice president earlier that year, was the acting president. He was joined by Defense Minister Marshal Dmitri Yazov, a beefy general whom Gorbachev had plucked from the ranks to shake up the armed forces in 1987, and KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, who had recommended the closure of our biological warfare program. The other conspirators were Anatoly Lukyanov, chairman of the Supreme Soviet and one of Gorbachev's oldest friends; Oleg Baklanov, chief of military industries at the Central Committee; Boris Pugo, minister of internal affairs; Valentin Pavlov, the prime minister; Alexander Tizyakov, president of the Association of State Enterprise; and Vasily Starodubtsev, head of the Union of Collective Farm Chairmen.

It was a collection of nonentities from a Soviet Union that had seemed to be on its way out: men of the type I had dealt with throughout my career. Baklanov was closely connected with the inner circle that managed Biopreparat. I had no doubt in my mind that they represented a collective disaster.

"Do you think Gorbachev is really sick?" Lena asked me.

"About as sick as I am," I said.

Slava was waiting outside in the Volga. He took me to the Army General Staff Hospital, but we said little.

Later that morning, at Biomash, hardly anyone spoke. People walked past me with their heads down. Our institute's Communist Party chief was pacing in front of my office. He gave me a meaningful smile.

Only the previous month, I had ordered him to move his papers and staff out of the building, in line with a decree from Russian president Boris Yeltsin banning Party cells from government agencies in Russia.

"What do you want?" I said.

"Well, you've heard the news, haven't you?" he said. "We've won!"

"Who is 'we'?"

"The Party… normal government," he said with enthusiasm. "We're ready to move back into the building whenever you are."

"No you won't," I said.

The smile died on his face. "What?"

"You will never come back. This is what Yeltsin ordered, and he is the president of Russia."

"You're going to regret this," he said menacingly.

"Get out," I said. "Go to hell."

As soon as he left, most of my senior staff crowded in. One or two who had heard the argument shook my hand, but our conversations were hesitant and stilted. We discussed the morning's events as if they had happened somewhere else. There was a wariness in the room; people were silently choosing sides.

I met Joel Taylor at 1:00 P.M., but the minister never showed. After half an hour of shared pleasantries, I told our translator to advise the American to go home.

"Tell him nobody knows what's going to happen here now," I said.

As I headed back to the car, someone mentioned that crowds were gathering at the White House, the seat of the Russian government.

Kalinin called later that afternoon and asked me to come to Samokatnaya Street. I asked Slava to take an indirect route along the Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment, leading past the White House.

For the first time that day, Slava smiled.

As we approached the Russian parliament building, the crowds grew so large that our car was forced to stop. I got out and began to walk. A few curses flew toward me from people who had seen me emerge from the official limousine, but I plodded on. At the side streets leading up to the parliament entrances, the crowd had piled bags stuffed with garbage to serve as a makeshift barricade. The towering white building was engulfed by a human sea. Throngs of people filled the space between it and the Moscow River, and even more were pouring into the square behind. Some had brought blankets and bags of food.

I wandered among them for a half hour or so and then threaded my way back. Slava was hovering protectively near the car.

"They say Yeltsin has asked everybody in Moscow to come to the White House," he told me. "Some of these people plan to stay here all night."

Later estimates suggested that there were twenty-five thousand government supporters at the White House that afternoon. The number would soon swell to more than three times that size. Kalinin's office was filled with senior managers, including Yermoshin, Davydov, and a few chiefs of the directorates. They were huddled in conversation.

Davydov, who was closest to the door, grabbed my arm as I walked in. His face glistened with perspiration.

"Kanatjan!" he said giddily. "Isn't this wonderful!"

"Isn't what wonderful?"

"They've finally arrested that idiot Gorbachev! The man who was destroying our country! He should be hung!"

I was still wrapped in the glow of what I had seen at the White House. As I scanned the room, I was struck by the fact that no one seemed particularly surprised by the coup. Davydov's word—"finally" — had an ominous ring.

Kalinin never hid his sympathies for critics of Gorbachev. In his circle of senior bureaucrats and military chiefs, spiteful comments had been circulating for months. Bykov, our minister, used to say "pluralism" — one of the watchwords of the Gorbachev era — as if he were spitting. Muttered threats about "throwing that bastard out" had become so common that I no longer paid attention. Kalinin would have been warned by his friends of an impending action: we were a military organization, and Biopreparat would have been placed on alert.

I was no longer trusted, but Davydov had always been reliable. His beaming face suddenly seemed abominable to me. For the first time in my career, I lost my temper. The room went still.

"I can't wait to hear what you say when Gorbachev comes back!" I shouted at Davydov, who stepped back as if I'd struck him.

Kalinin stood up.

"Kanatjan, calm yourself," he ordered. "There's no reason to get upset. Gorbachev is very sick. You can believe me."

"Tell that to the people at the White House," I said. "Maybe you can convince them to take down their barricades."

"What barricades?" someone asked.

I described the scene on the embankment. Kalinin shook his head. Everyone else looked fixedly at me.

"If only people would understand," he said. "The country is in very good hands. There is nothing to be alarmed about."

"I think there is a lot to be alarmed about!" I was getting worked up again.

Kalinin sighed and looked at his watch.

"Maybe it's time for all of us to go home," he said. "We'll meet here tomorrow and discuss this once more."

As we walked out I asked Yermoshin what they had been talking about.

"We were trying to decide whether to draft a letter of support to the GKChP," Yermoshin said. "Kalinin said it was our duty." Then he added, in a whisper, "Are there really barricades?"

"Go see them," I snapped. Yermoshin was unfazed.

"I know how angry you are," he said. "But I'll tell you something that will make you angrier. Kalinin called Urakov first thing this morning at Obolensk and told him to organize a proclamation of support for the emergency committee. Urakov whipped his officers into line, and he had the proclamation ready by noon. I'm surprised he didn't ask you to do the same thing."

Yermoshin didn't appear at the office for the next two days. He had decided to call in sick, he told me later, to avoid getting "stupid orders."

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.

"It's clear to me, at least, that we now have a normal government in this country," he said, his voice breaking with emotion. "If we had let things go any further, we could have broken up into little pieces. My father died in the war to ensure that didn't happen."

When he finished, a few people were nodding their heads in agreement.

"Send the letter!" someone called out.

"Send the letter!" the crowd echoed.

Drivers were sent to deliver copies of our note to the White House, Gorbachev's residence, Biopreparat headquarters, and Obshchaya Gazeta (Common Newspaper), a new journal edited by reporters who were defying the GKChP censorship.

When I returned to my office, I found a message waiting from Kalinin's secretary. I called her immediately.

"Will you be in your office for the rest of the day?" she asked.

"Yes, why?"

"The director intends to pay you a visit," she said, and hung up.

Kalinin arrived at 5:00 P.M. He was carrying my letters of resignation and a copy of the Biomash proclamation of support. There were dark circles under his eyes and his hair was uncombed. In all the years I had known the general, I had never seen him look so frayed.

"You know" — he smiled weakly, breaking the silence between us—"I really think I would like some tea."

He took the chair across from me and placed my letters and the proclamation down on the desk. When an attendant finally walked in with the tea, he gulped it down greedily.

"Ait you feeling all right?" I asked.

"I've had better days," he said in a low voice.

We sat in silence until I grew uncomfortable.

"Why did you come?"

Instead of answering, he put his teacup down and placed both hands on the desk. He seemed to be trying to steady himself.

"Kanatjan," he began at last, "I want to admit something. I have a lot of respect for Gorbachev — you must know that. When all this happened, I didn't know what to do. Last night, I couldn't sleep at all."

He waited for an answer, but when none came he continued.

"The trouble is," he said, "these leaders — Yazov, Pugo, Baklanov — are good people. I know them well. They are decent citizens and they love their country. What is a person supposed to think?"

"I can't tell you what to think," I said. "But who are these leaders? Who elected them?"

"That's not the point!" Kalinin replied with some of his old sharpness, and then he slumped into his chair.

"I'm only trying to tell you that they love their country," he said. "They are patriots like you and me, like all of us."

"General, I've made my decision. You will have to decide too."

Kalinin covered his eyes with his hand. Amazingly, he looked as if he was about to cry.

"You don't understand, Kanatjan, you really don't… how difficult…" He stopped, unable to continue.

I looked away. I thought I knew Kalinin well enough to know he would never forgive me for witnessing his moment of weakness.

Yet for the next extraordinary hour, we talked as we had never talked before. He told me about the problems he faced, the hurdles he was made to jump by bureaucrats at the Central Committee who wanted his job, by the Military-Industrial Commission, by all of his enemies. This man, whom I had never seen lose his bearings, spoke to me not as a subordinate, but as a confessor.

Then, as abruptly as he had begun, he stopped.

"The thing is, you see… these are our people," he said stiffly, trying to regain his composure.

"They are not my people," I answered. "I support our president. Maybe he wasn't elected democratically, but—" Kalinin cut me short with a wave of his hand.

"I don't want to argue with you, Kanatjan," he said, sighing. "All I want is to suggest a compromise."

He pointed to the two papers left on my desk.

"These… are premature," he said. "There's going to be a meeting of the Supreme Soviet on August twenty-sixth; Lukyanov has already announced he will take up the matter with them. Why don't we wait to see what happens before you make any rash moves?"

My sympathy for Kalinin evaporated. The motive of his visit now seemed perfectly clear: he understood the meaning of the barricades at the White House as well as I had. He was shrewd enough to understand that the success of the coup was no longer as certain as it had appeared on the first day. Men like Davydov saw the world in primary colors, but the general was too intelligent to believe in his own rhetoric. Our proclamation of support provided him with a political life raft if Gorbachev returned to power, and he needed me around to make it legitimate.

Still, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the man. He had probably poured out more than he had intended in his confession to me.

"I believe our country needs to be strong," he continued. "I know how you feel about our program, but we can't afford to lose anyone now."

He looked at me and tried to smile.

"I beg you. I beg you. Stay."

I had to think quickly. Whether I resigned now or later would make no difference to anyone but me. If I left now as I had intended, my staff might feel betrayed.

"Okay," I said. "I'll leave both letters of resignation with you. You don't have to act on them if you choose not to. If the Supreme Soviet decides that this so-called emergency committee is the legitimate government of the country, I will expect you to put my resignations into action and I will leave this insane country and go to Kazakhstan. If they agree that this is a putsch and we return to the status quo, I'll stay at Biopreparat."

Kalinin looked relieved. I watched as he pulled himself together and stood up, facing me.

"I would advise you, for your own good, to keep your head down," he said stiffly. "Don't do anything foolish until the Supreme Soviet meeting."

"That's my own business."

Neither of us could have known that, even as we spoke, Lukyanov was reporting to his fellow conspirators his failure to secure a quorum of deputies for the August 26 meeting.

After the coup failed, Kalinin destroyed the letter from Urakov's institute and showed the proclamation from Biomash to everyone he met in the ensuing weeks, boasting that "we" at Biopreparat had always known where our true loyalties lay.

If the emergency committee had somehow managed to preserve power, Kalinin would have been the first to propose that the new government abandon Gorbachev's decree halting our biological weapons production lines. And he probably would have been supported by the new leaders, even Kryuchkov.

Vladimir Lebedinsky died soon after the crisis. The old general who had commanded the Fifteenth Directorate for so many years had been ailing for months. He suffered a stroke during an operation to amputate one of his legs.

I was astonished to see how few people showed up at the funeral. Old army comrades like Kalinin and Urakov stayed away, afraid to be seen at a time when sentiment was turning against hard-liners in the military. Nothing deepened my contempt for Kalinin more than his absence that day.

One officer who did show up was Lebedinsky's successor, General Valentin Yevstigneyev. He stood with his head bowed for a long time over the coffin. However insulting he had been during our quarrel over the program's future, I recognized in him a man who was willing to stand up for what he believed in. There were few such people around in the upper levels of the Soviet bureaucracy during those three days in August.

All other Biopreparat facilities remained silent throughout the coup. My institute and Urakov's were the only ones to take a stand. Sandakchiev called me from Siberia when he heard about our proclamation.

"Fine work, Kanatjan," he said. "I'm glad you stood up to the bastards."

"Why don't you get your people at Vector to do the same?" I asked him.

"Moscow is so far away!" he laughed. "It's all politics. It's got nothing to do with us, nothing at all."

Early on the third day of the crisis, August 21,1 was awakened by a call from a man who introduced himself as the duty officer of the Moscow Military District.

"Are you Colonel Kanatjan Alibekov?" he asked.

"Yes."

He cleared his throat.

"I am calling to advise you that you are subject to arrest," he said.

Lena was still sleeping soundly.

"Why?" I asked.

"The colonel general of the Moscow District has announced that all officers who fail to fulfill their duties are subject to a thirty-day preventative arrest," he said, as if reading from a report.

There had been many military officers in the crowd at the institute the day before. Someone had no doubt felt it his duty to inform the authorities of my speech — undoubtedly the informer had raised his hand with the others in favor of our proclamation.

Forty years ago, or even twenty, there would have been no such phone call — just a sharp knock on my door at 3:00 A.M. Times had changed.

"Thank you for telling me," I said.

"You're welcome," he said cordially.

I didn't believe I was really in danger. The night had passed without the attack on the White House that everyone had feared. Yeltsin's parliament, surrounded by tanks from regiments who had announced their support for the Russian government, had survived.

"Who was that?" Lena said.

I told her, and she sat bolt upright in bed.

"Please be careful," she said. "We have three children."

A gray drizzle was falling as I walked outside. I didn't bother to go to Biomash. Slava, who had insisted on keeping me company and acting as my unofficial bodyguard, drove me to the White House.

The crowd was large and restless. Despite the official news blackout, everyone had bits of information to share. Three young men had been killed the previous night in an encounter with a tank on one of the city's boulevards. It was an accident: the tank crew, who were no older than those they killed, had panicked when they were surrounded by a mob of shouting demonstrators. Radios in the crowd were tuned to the Voice of America, and to Ekho Moskvy, a pirate radio station in Moscow that was broadcasting the endless, defiant speeches of parliamentary deputies and Yeltsin supporters inside the building.

Tanks were parked on a bridge within sight of the White House. Hundreds of people had camped in front of them. Soldiers, mostly young conscripts, had unstrapped their helmets and were flirting with girls in the crowd.

The coup was crumbling before our eyes. In the afternoon, Yeltsin announced that members of the emergency committee were on their way to Vnukovo Airport in southern Moscow.

The crowd roared its delight.

"Let's arrest them now!" someone in the throng shouted.

The plotters were in fact rushing to Crimea, where Gorbachev and his family had been held incommunicado for three days. They were bent on explaining their motives to the man they had betrayed. Another jet containing Yeltsin's designated emissary, Vice President Alexander Rutskoi, took off moments later for the same destination to bring the president home.

The two missions arrived at the same time. Gorbachev refused to meet the men from the Kremlin and returned with Rutskoi. Kryuchkov was a captive at the rear of their plane.

Later that night, the shaken president of the Soviet Union stepped on the tarmac at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport, followed by his wife Raisa. Gorbachev raised his hand in a weak salute and then entered an official car to return to the Kremlin. It was over. Like thousands of other Muscovites, I went home and slept soundly for the first time in three days.

That night, Boris Pugo blew his brains out with his service pistol just as police stepped up to his door.

I went to see Kalinin the following morning. He stood up and offered me his hand. I took it.

"We can all relax now," he said.

My reply was to ask him curtly what he was going to do about Urakov. Kalinin looked uncomfortable when I told him I knew about the proclamation of support for the emergency committee issued from Obolensk. His eyes grew large when I added that Urakov could only atone for his disgraceful behavior by committing suicide.

Kalinin almost laughed.

"Kanatjan," he said in his most condescending voice. "Don't you think that is a bit drastic?"

"Well," I said, "the least you can do is demand his resignation."

"I'll think about it," Kalinin said, and turned away.

Two days later, Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, the former chief of staff of the Soviet army and a vocal supporter of the putsch, hanged himself in his office.

Within days of the collapse of the coup, it was clear that Gorbachev was too weak to resume his former authority. Having refused in the first hours of his return from Crimea to denounce the Communist Party, he was forced by Yeltsin into a humiliating public rejection of the ideology that had nurtured his career. On August 25, he resigned his position as general secretary.

Soon afterward, I got an urgent call from Kalinin.

"Kanatjan, you must go to the Central Committee offices immediately," he said. "They want us to help them examine documents."

"Why me?" I asked.

Kalinin was defensive.

"There are things there that could embarrass a lot of people," he said. "You know what they are."

I refused. In the end, Kalinin was forced to go himself.

Over the next week, thousands of Party documents were shredded and burned at Central Committee headquarters. Panicked bureaucrats would have burned them all but for the fact that the smoke might have further incensed the mob of demonstrators surrounding the building. The mob had already pulled down the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police, from his perch in front of the KGB's Lubyanka headquarters.

I learned later that among the documents destroyed were countless papers linking the Central Committee and the KGB to our most secret biological programs, such as Bonfire and Flute.

This was an inspiration, of sorts.

At Biomash, I asked my department chiefs to open our safes and destroy all the instructions and formulas we kept for the making of biological weapons. They did as they were told. I thought there were at least parts of the program that would be impossible to reconstruct.

I was wrong. Copies of every document we burned were held at Samokatnaya Street, where they remain, so far as I know, to this day.