Vector

Chapter 5

Monday, October 18

3:45 p.m.

Yuri looked up into the face of the smug businessman as he carefully counted out single greenbacks into Yuri’s waiting palm. Yuri had brought the individual all the way from La Guardia Airport to a posh East Side manse. During the entire trip, Yuri had had to endure yet another long lecture on America’s virtues and its inevitable Cold War victory. This time the emphasis was on Ronald Reagan, and how he had singlehandedly vanquished the “Evil Empire.” The man had correctly guessed Yuri’s ethnic origins from a glance at Yuri’s name on his taxi license. This had provoked his monologue on U.S. superiority on all fronts: moral, economic, political.

Yuri had not said a word throughout the interminable harangue although he’d been sorely tempted at several junctures. Some of the fare’s statements had made his blood boil, particularly when he condescendingly voiced pity for the Russian people whom he thought were burdened with feelings of insecurity from having to endure continual inept leadership.

“And here’s a couple of extra dollars for your trouble,” the man said. with a wink as he added to the pile in Yuri’s hand. Yuri was holding twenty-nine ragged, single dollar bills. The fare on the meter plus the Triboro Bridge toll was twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents.

“Is that supposed to be the tip?” Yuri asked with obvious disdain.

“Is something the matter with it?” the man asked. He straightened up. His eyebrows arched indignantly. He slipped his briefcase out from under his arm and held it as if he might be tempted to use it defensively.

Yuri took his right hand off the steering wheel and lifted the final two bills from the pile. He then let them go so that they wafted in short, intersecting arcs toward the pavement.

The man’s expression changed from one of indignation to one of anger. His cheeks empurpled.

“That’s a donation to the American economy,” Yuri said. He then pressed on the accelerator and sped away. In his rearview mirror he saw the businessman bending down and retrieving the money from the gutter. The image gave Yuri a modicum of satisfaction. It was heartening to see the man stoop for such a paltry sum. He couldn’t believe how cheap some Americans were despite their ostentatious wealth.

Yuri’s day had improved dramatically following the vain attempt to see Curt Rogers and Steve Henderson at the firehouse on Duane Street. As a treat and mini-celebration of his imminent return to rodina, he’d gone to a small Russian restaurant for a sit-down lunch with hot borscht and a glass of vodka. A conversation in Russian with the owner added to the experience even though speaking in his native tongue also made him feel a touch melancholy.

After lunch the fares had been okay and steady. They’d generally kept to themselves except for the last guy on the run in from La Guardia Airport.

Yuri stopped at a light on Park Avenue. He was intending to head over to Fifth in hopes of getting some of the upscale hotel work. Instead, an older woman in a babushka stepped between parked cars and raised her hand. When the light changed Yuri pulled alongside and the woman climbed in.

“Where to?” Yuri asked while eyeing his new fare in the rearview mirror. Her clothes were functional and, although not threadbare, at least well worn. She looked like someone who should have been using the subway.

“One-oh-seven West Tenth Street,” the woman said with an accent heavier than Yuri’s. He recognized it immediately. It was Estonian, which brought mixed memories.

They drove in silence for a while. For the first time all day Yuri was the one tempted to speak. He glanced frequently at his passenger. There was something about her that was familiar. She had settled herself comfortably with her large hands folded in her lap. Her relaxed, peasantlike features coupled with tiny, twinkling eyes and faintly smiling lips radiated an inner tranquillity.

“Are you Estonian?” Yuri finally asked.

“I am,” the woman said. “Are you Russian?”

Yuri nodded and watched the woman’s reaction. After years of occupation, there was a strong anti-Russian sentiment in Estonia. Yuri’s feelings about Estonia weren’t as negative as he feared this woman’s might be about Russia. Although he’d had difficulties there during his odyssey to America, he’d also met some friendly, generous, and helpful people.

“How long have you been here?” the woman asked. Her voice was devoid of malice.

“Since 1994,” Yuri said.

“Did you leave your motherland with your whole family?”

“No,” Yuri managed. His throat had gone dry. “I came by myself.”

“That must have been very difficult,” the woman said empathetically. “And very lonely.”

The woman’s simple question and her reaction to Yuri’s answer unleashed a flood of emotion in Yuri, including a strong sense of shame at having abandoned his family, although there’d been very little to leave behind. The toska he’d struggled with earlier returned with a vengeance. At the same time he realized why the woman looked familiar. She reminded Yuri of his own mother, even though their features were not at all similar. It was less the woman’s appearance than her bearing, particularly her powerful serenity, that made Yuri think of his mother.

Yuri did not think often about her. It was much too painful. Nadya Davydov had loved Yuri and his younger brother Yegor and, to the best of her abilities, had protected her sons from the brutal beatings their father, Anatoly, gave them at the slightest provocation. Yuri still had scars on the back of his legs from a beating he got when he was eleven. He was in the fourth grade at the time and had been recently inducted into the Young Pioneers. Part of the uniform was a red scoutlike tie worn with a red flag pin containing a tiny portrait of Lenin. Somehow Yuri had lost the pin on the way home from school, and when Anatoly found out about it that night, he went berserk. In a drunken stupor induced by his consumption of nearly a liter of vodka, he’d beaten Yuri until Yuri’s pants were clotted with blood.

For the most part Nadya had been able to divert Anatoly’s nightly drunken bursts of violence onto herself. The usual scenario was for Nadya stoically to withstand a few blows along with Anatoly’s barbed ranting. Then she would stand defiantly between her husband and her children, sometimes with blood streaming down her face. Anatoly would continue to swear at her and threaten more blows. When she wouldn’t move or even speak, he’d shake his fists at his kids and shout that if they ever committed the same transgression that had stimulated his outburst, he’d kill them. He’d then stagger off to pass out on the only couch in the apartment. It was a scene that repeated itself almost nightly until Yuri had reached the eighth grade.

In 1970, on the eve of May 1st, the major Soviet holiday, Anatoly drank more than double his usual quota of vodka. In a particularly foul mood, he chased the rest of his family from the apartment, locked the door, and then passed out. During the night, while Nadya, Yuri, and Yegor slept as best as they could on the benches in the communal kitchen, Anatoly aspirated his own vomit. In the morning he was found cold and stiff with rigor mortis.

It was difficult for the family after Anatoly’s death. They were forced to move from their two-room second-floor apartment to a single room on the top floor of their tenement that was freezing cold in the winter and boiling hot in the summer. More problematic was the loss of Anatoly’s income, although that difficulty was partially offset by significantly less expense for vodka.

Luckily, the following year Nadya received a promotion at the ceramics factory there she’d been employed since her graduation from vocational school. That meant that Yuri could stay in school through the tenth grade.

Unfortunately, Yuri developed into a withdrawn and belligerent teenager who got into frequent fights in response to teasing by fellow classmates. As a consequence, his studies suffered. His final grades and test scores were not sufficient for the university where his mother had hoped he’d go. Instead, he enrolled in the local vocational college and studied to become a microbiological technician. He’d been advised there was a burgeoning demand for the field, especially in Sverdlovsk. Conveniently for Yuri, the government had built a large pharmaceutical factory to produce vaccines for human and animal use.

“Have you been home to Russia since coming to America?” the Estonian woman asked after they’d ridden for several blocks in silence.

“Not yet,” Yuri said. He perked up at the thought of his imminent return. In fact he already had an open ticket to Moscow via Frankfurt and departing from Newark Airport. He’d chosen Newark since it was located to the west and south of Manhattan. He was planning on leaving the moment he finished the laydown of the bioweapon in Central Park, and he didn’t want to risk going east to JFK Airport. The wind invariably blew west to east. The last thing he wanted was to be victimized by his own terrorism.

Obtaining the airline ticket had not been without difficulty. Yuri had never been able to obtain a Russian international passport, and although he had an American green card from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, he still didn’t have an American passport. At least not an authentic one. Yuri had had to pay to have a fake passport made. But it didn’t have to be a particularly good one, since all he intended to use it for was to buy the airline ticket. As a patriot, he was confident he’d have no trouble getting into Russia without proper documents, and he certainly didn’t intend to return to the United States.

“My husband and I went back to Estonia last year,” the woman said. “It was wonderful. Good things are happening in the Baltics. We might even eventually return to live in our hometown.”

“America is not the heaven it wants the world to believe it is,” Yuri said.

“People must work very hard here,” the woman concurred. “And you must be careful. There are many thieves who want to take your money, like investment people and people wanting to sell you swampland in Florida.”

Yuri nodded in agreement, although to him the real thief was what Curt Rogers called the Zionist Occupied Government. It wasn’t only in a metaphorical sense relating to the American Dream hoax; it was also quite literal. Government agents always had their hands out to steal most of every dollar Yuri made. If it wasn’t the criminals in Washington, it was the thieves in the state government in Albany or the bandits in the city government in Manhattan. According to Curt all this taxation was unconstitutional and therefore blatantly illegal.

“I hope you send some money home to your family,” the woman continued, unaware of the effect her conversation was having on her driver. “My husband and I do as often as we can.”

“I don’t have any family in the old country,” Yuri said, a bit too quickly. “I’m very much alone.” He knew he wasn’t being entirely honest. He had a maternal grandmother, a few aunts and uncles, and a collection of cousins in Ekaterinburg, as Sverdlovsk was now called. He also had an overweight wife in Brighton Beach.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said. Her face clouded in sympathy. “I cannot imagine having no family. Perhaps over the holidays you’d like to come to us.”

“Thank you,” Yuri said. “It’s very kind but I’m okay...” He intended to elaborate but found himself surprisingly choked up. Reluctantly his mind pulled him back to 1979, the fateful year he lost both his mother and his brother. In particular, he thought about April 2nd.

The day started like every other workday with the raucous alarm pulling Yuri from the depths of sleep. At five A.M. it was as black as midnight, since Sverdlovsk was at about the same latitude as Sitka, Alaska. Winter had loosened its grip on the city, but spring had yet to arrive. The apartment wasn’t below freezing as it had been on February mornings and even into March, but it was cold just the same. Yuri dressed in the darkness without waking Nadya or Yegor, both of whom did not need to get up until seven. Nadya still worked at the ceramics factory. Yegor was in his last year of school and scheduled to finish that June.

After a quick, cold breakfast of stale bread and cheese in the deserted communal kitchen, Yuri set off in the darkness for the pharmaceutical plant. He’d been working there for only two years following the completion of his college training. Yet it had been a long enough period for him to know that the factory was not what it seemed. Yuri was not doing microbiological cultures for vaccine production as he’d been hired to do. Although some vaccines were being produced in the outer ring of the factory, Yuri worked in the larger, inner part. The vaccine work was a KGB cover for the real mission. The Sverdlovsk pharmaceutical facility was actually part of Biopreparat, the massive Soviet bioweapons program. Yuri was a single cog in a work force of fifty-five thousand spread among institutions throughout the Soviet Union.

The factory was benignly called Compound 19. At the gate Yuri had to stop and present his identification card. Yuri knew the man in the gatehouse was KGB. Yuri stamped his feet against the predawn cold as he waited. There were no words. None were needed. The man nodded, handed back the card, and Yuri entered.

Yuri was one of the first members of the day shift to arrive. The facility ran twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It fell to Yuri, a junior employee, and a few of his equivalent-level colleagues to do the required menial cleaning of the inner biocontainment core. The regular janitorial staff were not allowed into the area.

In the changing room Yuri nodded to his lockermate, Alexis. It was too early for conversation, especially since no one had had their morning tea or coffee. Silently they and two other peers donned their red biocontainment suits and switched on their ventilators. They didn’t even bother to look at each other through their clear plastic face masks as they checked themselves.

Fully encapsulated the group waited outside the pressure door until it automatically opened. No one tried to communicate as the pressure dropped in the entrance chamber. When the inner door opened, they went silently to their assigned stations. They moved slowly in the cumbersome suits, walking rather stiff-legged and appearing more like futuristic robots than people.

The monotonous commencement of shifts was a carefully choreographed routine that did not change from week to week or month to month. And that particular morning of April 2, 1979, seemed like any other morning. But it wasn’t. A potential problem existed unknown to the four young men trudging off to their work stations. No one had the slightest premonition of the disaster that was about to occur.

The Sverdlovsk facility dealt primarily with two types of microbes: Bacillus anthracis and Clostridium botulinum. The weaponized forms of these bacteria were spores of the former and crystallized toxin from the latter. The mission of the factory was to produce as much of both as possible.

When Yuri had first started working at Compound 19, he’d been rotated through various work stations to familiarize him with the operation of the entire plant. After the first month’s rotation he’d been assigned to the anthrax department. For the two years he’d worked at the factory, he’d been in the processing section of the plant. It was here that the liquid cultures coming from the giant fermenters were dried into cakes, and the cakes were then ground into a powder that was almost pure anthrax spores. Yuri’s specific job was monitoring the pulverizers.

The pulverizers were rotating steel drums containing steel balls. Careful testing with live animals in another part of the facility had determined that the deadliest and most efficacious size of the powder’s particles was five microns. To achieve this size the pulverizers were rotated at a specific speed with specific-sized steel balls and for a predetermined period of time.

Normal operating procedure had the pulverizers inactivated during the night for routine maintenance. The shutdown was done by the supervisor of the evening shift. There was no equivalent shutdown of the dryers, which continued to function in order to produce a large supply of the light tan-colored cakes for the day shift to process. It took longer to dry the cakes than to grind them.

As he always did, Yuri began the day by hosing down the area around the pulverizers with high-pressure, heavily chlorinated water. Although the crushers were sealed units, tiny bits of the powder invariably escaped, especially if the unit had been opened for maintenance. Since a microscopic amount could kill a man, daily cleaning was mandatory even though no one approached the machinery without biocontainment suits.

Initially, Yuri had been terrified at the concept of working in an environment of such a deadly agent. But over the months he’d gradually adapted. On that particular morning of April 2nd it didn’t even occur to him to be concerned. Yuri was like Ivan Denisovich in Solzhenitsyn’s novel, demonstrating once again that humans have an inordinate ability to adapt.

After his cleaning duties were complete, Yuri turned a large hand crank to pull in the hose. The effort brought beads of perspiration to his forehead. Any degree of exertion turned the impervious biocontainment suit into a mobile sauna bath.

Once the cleaning apparatus was stored, Yuri went into the control room and closed the door. Insulated glass separated the control room from the pulverizer. When the unit went on line, the noise was deafening, jarring, and generally annoying.

Yuri sat in front of the main control panel, and scanned the settings and the dials. All was in order for the start-up. He then turned to the logbook while his mind began eagerly to anticipate the nine A.M. morning break. It was one of Yuri’s favorite times of day, even though it was only a half hour. He could almost taste the fresh coffee and bread.

With his gloved finger Yuri traced across the columns of figures to make sure that the pulverizers had worked smoothly during the last shift they’d operated. All seemed to be in order until he came to the column containing the readings for the negative air pressure inside the unit. As his eye traced across the page he noticed that the pressure had slowly risen as the shift progressed. He wasn’t concerned, because the rise was small and the readings had stayed within acceptable limits.

Yuri glanced down to the bottom of the page where the shift supervisor summarized the shift’s events. The slight rise in pressure was duly noted with the notation that maintenance had been informed. Below that entry was another by maintenance. The time was listed as two A.M. It said simply that the unit had been checked and the cause of the slight rise in pressure had been discovered and had been rectified.

Yuri shook his head. The maintenance entry was strange because there was no explanation of what the cause had been. Yet it didn’t seem to matter. The readings had never been abnormal. Yuri shrugged. He didn’t think maintenance’s incomplete entry was his concern, especially since the problem, whatever it was, had been rectified.

When Yuri felt all was in order, he picked up the telephone that connected him to the day shift supervisor, Vladimir Gergiyev. He looked at his watch. It was just before seven A.M. and soon his mother and brother would be getting up.

“The pulverizers are standby, Comrade Gergiyev,” Yuri said.

“Commence operation,” Vladimir said tersely before ringing off.

Yuri had intended to mention the strange log entry, but his supervisor’s abruptness prevented it. Yuri hung up the phone and for a brief moment debated calling back. Unfortunately, Vladimir’s truculent personality did not encourage such spontaneity. Yuri decided to let it go.

Without the slightest idea of the horrific consequences, Yuri depressed the start button on the pulverizers. Almost instantaneously the jarring sound of the machinery penetrated the insulated control room. The day’s production of deadly weaponized anthrax had begun.

The system was automatic. The cakes of dried spores were carried on an internal conveyer and dropped into the rotating steel pulverizer drums. After being ground by the cascading steel balls, the finely ground powder dropped out the base of the drums and was packed into sealed containers. The outsides of the containers were then disinfected. The completed containers could then be loaded into ordnance or into missile warheads.

Yuri’s eyes went immediately to the interior pressure dial. The pressure dropped instantly with the commencement of the unit. Even the slight misgiving he felt due to the strange log entry evaporated when the pressure continued to fall past the slightly elevated level it had been when the unit had been shut down. It was obvious that maintenance had indeed rectified the problem as had been suggested.

Yuri scanned the other dials and readout devices. All were safely in their respective green zones. Picking up a pen he laboriously began the entry for the April 2nd day shift, copying each reading into its appropriate column. When he came to the interior pressure gauge he noted something surprising. It had continued to fall and now was as low as Yuri had ever seen it. In fact it was pegged at the lower edge of the scale.

Reaching over Yuri gave the dial a knock with the knuckle of his right index finger. He wanted to make sure the old-fashioned needle gauge was not stuck. It didn’t move. Yuri didn’t know what to do, if anything. There was no lower limit to the green zone on the interior pressure, only an upper. The idea was to keep the powder inside with a constant flow of air from the room into the machine at any point there was a communication. Therefore it didn’t make any difference if the pressure was lower than usual. In fact, it meant the system would function more efficiently.

Yuri eyed the phone again and thought about calling his shift supervisor, but again he decided against it. Yuri had been harangued by Vladimir for what the supervisor thought were stupid concerns, and Yuri didn’t want to suffer a dressing-down again. Vladimir did not like to be bothered by insignificant details. He was far too busy.

At eight o’clock Yuri thought about his mother making her way to the ceramics factory. The factory was located just south and east from Compound 19. Nadya frequently told Yuri she thought about him as she passed. Yuri had never told her exactly what kind of work he was doing. It would have been dangerous for both if he had.

Time dragged. Yuri yearned for the nine o’clock break. When there was only fifteen minutes to go, he recommenced recording in the log. When his eyes got to the dial for the internal pressure, he again hesitated. The needle had not moved from its position at the very lower end of the scale.

As Yuri stared at the dial he felt a sinking feeling in his chest. All at once a horrific thought had occurred to him.

“Please! Don’t let it be so!” Yuri prayed. By reflex he reached out and hit the red stop button. The cacophony of the steel balls in the steel cylinders that had been penetrating the control room stopped. In its wake Yuri had a ringing in his ears.

Trembling with fear at what he would find, Yuri opened the door of the control room. Behind him he heard the phone ring. Instead of answering it, he walked over to the very end of the pulverizer. He was breathing hard enough to cause his plastic face shield to fog. He slowed as he approached a series of vertical doors in the system’s cowling. Each was eight inches wide and three feet tall.

Yuri’s hand trembled as he reached out and unlatched one of the doors. He hesitated for a moment before pulling it open.

“Blyad!” Yuri blurted. He was horrified. The compartment was empty! Quickly he yanked open all the doors. All the compartments were empty. There were no HEPA filters in place! For two hours the system had been venting to the outside with no protection!

Yuri staggered back. It was a catastrophe. Only then did he become conscious that the phone was still incessantly ringing in the background. He knew who it was. It was the shift supervisor wondering why he’d stopped the pulverizer.

Yuri dashed into the control room while he mentally tried to estimate how many grams of weaponized anthrax had been spewed out over the unsuspecting city. From his walk to the factory he knew there was a moderate northwesterly wind. That meant the spores would have been vectored to the southeast toward the main military compound. But more important, it meant that the spores would be heading toward the ceramics factory!

“It’s the fourth house on the right,” the Estonian woman said, yanking Yuri from the grip of his nightmare-like reverie. The woman’s finger jutted through the Plexiglas divider and pointed at a set of white steps.

Yuri was instantly conscious he was perspiring profusely and his face felt hot. He’d been forced to remember an event that he actively avoided thinking about. After twenty years, the memory of that terrible day still had as powerful an effect on him as it did when it happened.

The Estonian woman paid the fare before climbing from the cab. She tried to give Yuri a tip, but he refused. He thanked her for her generosity and for the offer to share her holiday. Self-consciously he avoided looking at her. He was afraid she’d see his perspiration and flushed face. He was worried she might have thought he was having a heart attack.

As the Estonian woman mounted her steps, Yuri switched on his off duty sign. He drove ahead to a fire hydrant and pulled to the curb. He needed a moment to get his breath. He reached under his seat and pulled out his flask of vodka. After making sure he was not being observed, he took a quick, healthy swig. He allowed the liquor to slide down his throat. The sensation was delicious and calming. The overwhelming anxiety he’d experienced just moments before abated. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

The aftermath of the pulverizers being run without the HEPA filters turned out to be worse than Yuri could have imagined. As he’d feared, an invisible cloud of anthrax spores had drifted out over the southern part of the city, an area that included the major military installation as well as the ceramics factory. Hundreds of people became sick with inhalational anthrax and most of them died. One of the victims was Nadya.

Her first symptoms were fever and chest pain. Yuri knew immediately what she had but hoped he was wrong. Sworn to secrecy on the pain of death, he did not tell her his suspicions. She was taken to a special hospital and housed in a separate ward with other patients complaining of similar symptoms. The group included a number of military personnel. Her course was relentlessly downhill and extremely rapid. She was dead within twenty-four hours.

The KGB immediately began an elaborate campaign of misinformation, claiming the problem came from contaminated cattle carcasses processed at the Aramil meatpacking factory. The families of the dead were denied their loved ones’ bodies. By decree all the dead were buried in deep graves in a separate part of the main city cemetery.

Yuri suffered terribly. It was more than the emotional trauma of losing his mother and the enormous personal guilt of knowing that he was involved in causing her death. As the most junior employee involved in the disaster, he was the designated scapegoat. Although the subsequent official investigation suggested that most of the responsibility lay with the night maintenance worker and the shift supervisor who did not replace the clogged filters with new ones nor adequately record that they had removed the old filters, it was Yuri who took most of the blame. Theoretically, he was supposed to check the presence of the filters before start-up, but since the filters lasted for months and were rarely changed, no one checked them on a daily basis, and Yuri had not been taught to do so by his shift supervisor during his orientation.

Because of national security issues and the required secrecy, Yuri was held for a time in a military stockade instead of a normal prison before being sent to Siberia. In Siberia he eventually ended up at another Biopreparat facility called Vector located in a city called Novosibirsk. Although Vector was known mostly for work with weaponized viruses, including smallpox, Yuri was assigned to a small team trying to improve the efficacy of weaponized anthrax and botulinum toxin.

As for his brother Yegor, Yuri had never seen him again. He’d not been infected by the released anthrax, but he was not allowed to visit Yuri during Yuri’s confinement in the military stockade nor in Siberia. Then, after graduating in June, Yegor was drafted into the army. In December 1979, he was sent into Afghanistan in the initial invasion and was one of the first casualties.

Yuri sighed. He did not like to think about his past miseries. It made him feel anxious and out of control. Furtively his eyes again scanned the neighborhood through the taxi’s windshield and with the help of his side mirrors and rearview mirror. There were a few pedestrians, but no one paid him any heed. Yuri took another quick swig from his flask before replacing the now empty container under his seat. Once again he’d run out of vodka before the day was finished.

Still feeling agitated, Yuri opened the door and got out. He didn’t step away from his cab. He merely stretched and twisted from side to side to relieve a chronic discomfort he felt in his lower back from sitting all day. He took several deep breaths. Somewhat soothed, he climbed back into the cab. He was about to switch off his off-duty light when he realized that his present location wasn’t that far away from Walker Street and the Corinthian Rug Company. Needing a diversion, he decided to head down to the neighborhood. It would make him feel a lot better if he had some positive news about the rug merchant.

At three-thirty the city traffic was starting to coagulate as it always did as rush hour approached. It took Yuri more time than he expected to drive down Broadway, especially in and around Canal Street. Fighting to maintain his patience, Yuri finally was able to turn onto the relatively quiet Walker Street.

As he approached the Corinthian Rug Company office he fully expected to see it shut up tight as it had been earlier. He was prepared to accept the situation as further corroboration that Jason Papparis had been infected and was either dead or at death’s door. The question in Yuri’s mind was whether he should risk inquiring again in the stamp store. But to Yuri’s surprise and consternation the front door of the rug company office was wide open and the lights were on!

Dismayed, Yuri put on the brakes and slowed his cab to give himself a glimpse inside the shop as he glided by. What he saw was Jason Papparis standing in front of one of his file cabinets!

“O Godspodi!” Yuri mumbled despite his atheistic beliefs. He pulled into a loading zone. Twisting around in his seat he looked back at the open door of the rug store office. What could have gone wrong? The powder had to be effective. He’d used all the tricks that he and his team had devised at Vector. In the ten-plus years he’d worked at the Siberian facility he and his coworkers had increased the efficacy of weaponized anthrax by a factor approaching ten. Most of the increase had come from simple additives to the powder to maximize the suspension and the diffusion of the particles in the air, although some of the increase had come from the way the cultures were grown. With his current weapon, Yuri had used all the stratagems.

Yuri ran a hand through his hair. Maybe the letter had gotten lost or delivered to the wrong person? Or maybe even someone in the post office had decided to open it out of curiosity? Yuri wondered if he should have thought of a different way of infecting Mr. Papparis. At the time he’d come up with the letter idea, it had seemed so perfect.

Yuri got out of the cab. With the taxi’s blinkers on he ran across the street, skirted a mountain bike locked to a “No Parking” sign, and passed the stamp store. As he came abreast of the window of the rug office he peered inside. Jason was nowhere to be seen. The two doors that he could see in the rear of the office were closed.

After making sure no meter maid or policeman was in sight, Yuri walked to the open door. He hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to do. Confused curiosity propelled him over the threshold. He had to talk to the rug merchant.

“Did someone call a taxi?” Yuri called. His voice was weak and uncertain.

A figure loomed up from behind the desk supporting the copy and fax machines clutching papers in his hand. To Yuri’s shock the man was wearing a surgical mask, a hood, and a gown. The image was so unexpected that Yuri stepped back out the door.

“Wait!” Jack called. He tossed the papers he was holding onto the desk and ran after the taxi driver. He caught up to him on the sidewalk.

“Did you call a taxi, Mr. Papparis?” Yuri asked. He glanced over at his waiting cab. He wanted to get the hell out of there.

“I’m not Mr. Papparis,” Jack said. He pulled off his latex gloves and struggled to get out his medical examiner badge. He showed it to Yuri, who backed up another step. Yuri thought it was a police badge.

“The name’s Jack Stapleton; I’m a medical examiner,” Jack said. He put away his wallet, then undid his face mask. “How well did you know Mr. Papparis? Did you drive him often?”

“I’m just a cab driver,” Yuri said meekly. He wasn’t sure what a medical examiner was, although with an official badge he obviously worked for the government.

“How well did you know Mr. Papparis?” Jack repeated.

“I didn’t know him,” Yuri said. “I never drove him.”

“How did you know his name?”

“I just got a call to pick him up.”

“That’s interesting,” Jack said.

Yuri felt distinctly uncomfortable. He did not like dealing with state officials of any kind. Besides, the individual standing in front of him looked vaguely familiar, a fact that added to his unease. And on top of that the stranger was looking at him curiously, even suspiciously.

“Are you sure you got a call from a Mr. Papparis on Walker Street?” Jack said. “Mr. Papparis of the Corinthian Rug Company?”

“I think that’s what dispatch said,” Yuri said.

“I find that hard to believe,” Jack said. “Mr. Papparis died over the weekend.”

“Oh!” Yuri said. He coughed nervously while he struggled to come up with some plausible explanation. Nothing came to mind.

“Maybe he called last week?” Jack suggested.

“That could be,” Yuri said.

“Maybe we should call your cab company,” Jack suggested. “It would be helpful to know if Mr. Papparis was a regular customer. You see, he died of a rare infectious disease which I’m eager to investigate. Any information I could find out about his activities last week such as whether he visited his warehouse could be important. I’m also interested in contacts. Especially last week and particularly Friday.”

“I can give you the dispatch phone number,” Yuri said.

“Fair enough,” Jack said. “Let me get a pencil and a piece of paper.”

While Jack ducked back into the rug company office, Yuri breathe a sigh of relief. For a moment he thought that he’d made a terrible blunder coming to the rug company’s office. Now he was confident there wouldn’t be a problem. Dispatch wouldn’t offer any information. They never did, especially not about yellow cabs.

Jack returned in a moment and wrote down the name and number.

“What kind of disease did Mr. Papparis die of?” Yuri asked. He was curious what the authorities knew or suspected.

“A disease called anthrax,” Jack said.

“I know something about that,” Yuri said. “It’s a disease mostly of cattle.”

“I’m impressed,” Jack said. “How did you happen to know that?”

“I saw it as a boy,” Yuri explained. “I grew up in the Soviet Union in a city called Sverdlovsk. In the rural areas outside the city cows and sheep occasionally were infected.”

“I’ve heard of Sverdlovsk,” Jack said. “In fact, it was just today. I read that there was a leak there of anthrax from a secret bioweapons plant.”

Yuri practically gulped. He was staggered by Jack’s offhand comment. It was so totally unexpected, especially after Yuri had just been torturing himself with its recollection.

“Did you ever hear anything about that episode?” Jack asked. “Apparently there were a lot of cases and a lot of deaths.”

“I didn’t hear about anything like that,” Yuri said. He had to clear his throat.

“I’m not surprised,” Jack said. “I don’t think the Soviet government wanted anybody to know. For years they tried to say that it came from contaminated meat.”

“There were episodes of contaminated meat,” Yuri managed.

“The problem I’m talking about occurred in 1979,” Jack said. “Did you live in Sverdlovsk then?”

“I guess,” Yuri said vaguely. He was aware he was trembling. As soon as he could, Yuri broke away from Jack and hurried back to his cab. While he started the engine he looked back. Jack was putting his mask and gloves back on. At least he wasn’t out in the street trying to write down Yuri’s license number.

Putting the car in gear, Yuri drove off. His euphoria had been short-lived. Now he felt panic again. Although Jason Papparis’s death confirmed the potency of his anthrax, Yuri was concerned that a state official who related anthrax to its use as a weapon was out on site investigating the case. He had taken pains to infect someone who could have gotten the disease through occupational exposure. That fact was supposed to preclude any investigation.

Despite his distress, Yuri snapped off his off-duty light. Rush hour was a prime time for taxi work, provided the traffic didn’t bog down. Yuri needed the money. He had to work, and he picked up a fare almost immediately.

For the next hour, Yuri did short hops up and down Manhattan and back and forth across town. None of the customers bothered him too much, but the traffic did. Preoccupied and agitated, he found his patience stretched to the breaking point. After several near accidents, particularly one at Third Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street, Yuri decided to give up. When the fare climbed from the taxi at his destination, Yuri called it quits for the day. He put on his off-duty sign and headed for home in Brighton Beach. It was only a little after five P.M., his shortest day since he’d had the flu six months previously. But Yuri didn’t care. What he needed was a shot of vodka and, unfortunately, his flask was dry.

During the trip across the Brooklyn Bridge, which seemed to take forever with the bumper-to-bumper traffic, Yuri agonized over the meeting with Jack Stapleton. He couldn’t understand what was motivating the man. What worried him particularly was that Jack might find some residue from the ACME Cleaning Service letter if not the letter itself. Yuri had no idea what had become of it. His original assumption was that the letter would be thrown away like all junk mail. But now that Jack was on the scene, Yuri wasn’t so confident.

South of Prospect Park Yuri stopped in a liquor store for a pint of vodka. Later, on Ocean Parkway, with the pint hidden in a brown paper bag, he took a couple of slugs when he was stopped for lights. That calmed him down considerably.

As he entered Brighton Beach and all the signs switched to the familiar Cyrillic alphabet, Yuri’s agitation ratcheted down a notch. The familiar letters provided a sense of nostalgia. Yuri felt like he was already home in Mother Russia. With the calmness came an ability to think. The first thought that came to him was that it might be wise to consider pushing up the date for Operation Wolverine.

Yuri nodded to himself as he turned onto his street. There was no doubt that advancing the date would help in regard to security concerns. It wasn’t that he was worried about being discovered. He just didn’t want his plans to be suspected. To be truly effective, a bioweapon should be launched with no warning. Yet pushing up the date was not without problems, particularly two big ones.

The first was that Yuri had yet to test the botulinum toxin, although he was more confident of its toxicity than he’d been about the pathogenicity of the anthrax powder. The other stumbling block was production. He wanted at least four or five pounds of the anthrax and about a quarter pound of the crystallized botulinum toxin. He didn’t care which agent he used for Central Park or which agent Curt used for the Jacob Javits Federal Building, since he was confident both would be equivalently effective. Meeting the production quota for the anthrax was not a problem, since he was already close to the amount needed, but the same was not true for the botulinum toxin. He was having difficulty with the Clostridium botulinum cultures. They just weren’t growing as he’d hoped or expected.

Yuri slowed as he approached his house. It was located in a warren of small structures that had been built as summer cottages in the nineteen-twenties. They all had wooden frames and small yards with postage-stamp-sized areas of fenced-in grass. Yuri’s house was one of the largest, and in contrast to most of the others, it had a freestanding two-car garage. Yuri rented the house from a man who’d moved to Florida but who was reluctant to give up his toehold in Brooklyn.

The garage door squeaked loudly as Yuri raised it. The interior was mostly empty, in contrast to the other garages in the area, which were crammed to the rafters with everything but cars. The floor of Yuri’s garage was stained from more than a half century’s worth of drippings from leaky vehicles. The stale smell of gas and oil fumes hung in the air. There was a small collection of yard tools, including an old push lawn mower against one wall. A wheelbarrow, some spare cinderblocks, and a collection of lumber leaned up against the other wall.

With his cab safely stored for the night, Yuri carried his empty flask and the half-empty pint of vodka to the house. With his house key he tried to open the back door. To his surprise the door was unlocked. He pushed it open and suspiciously looked inside.

Yuri had been robbed once. It had happened only months after renting the house. He’d come home around nine o’clock in the evening to find the place trashed. The burglars, apparently irritated at not finding anything of value, vented their frustration on Yuri’s meager furniture.

Pausing to listen, Yuri could hear the television in Connie’s bedroom. It was then that he noticed his wife’s purse sitting in the middle of the Formica kitchen table along with the telltale wrappings from one of the neighborhood’s fast-food joints.

Yuri had been married for almost four years. He’d met his wife, Connie, when he’d first started working for the taxi company as a radio car driver and before he had his own vehicle. At the time he’d been rather desperate. His visa was about to run out. Marriage to a U.S. citizen seemed his only option.

Connie was an African-American woman in her twenties who’d seemed bored with her life and had been happy to flirt with the newly arrived Russian. She went out of her way to be nice to him and, using her position as a dispatcher, made sure he got choice runs.

Yuri had initially been attracted to Connie separately from his necessity to obtain a green card. As a youth in the Soviet Union, he’d loved jazz, which he associated with American blacks. Becoming acquainted with one socially was exciting. He’d known no Negroes as he’d grown up in Sverdlovsk but had seen them on television, particularly in sporting events, and was duly impressed.

Connie’s attentions were even more welcome in light of Yuri’s loneliness. The mostly Russian Jewish community in Brighton Beach where he’d been advised to move ignored him. The couple began to date and frequented jazz clubs both in Manhattan, where Connie lived, and in Brooklyn near Yuri’s apartment. At the same time Yuri began to learn about American racism, which initially confused him, since he’d assumed African-Americans would be held in high esteem for their cultural contributions. He’d never heard the term “nigger” until he and Connie were accosted on the street on several occasions. He was also surprised to learn that Connie’s family, particularly her brother Flash and his friends, did not think highly of him. They called him a “honky,” which he learned was as derogatory a term as “nigger.”

For Yuri marriage solved both the green card and the loneliness issues, at least initially. Unfortunately, Yuri soon learned that Connie had no intention of being the wife that Yuri expected from his Russian heritage. She had no interest in domestic duties and anticipated eating out every night as they’d done during their brief courtship. As Yuri’s climb up the economic ladder reached an impasse with the realization that he would not be able to use his microbiological background without expensive retraining and that he could not afford to stop driving a cab, his tolerance for Connie’s lifestyle dwindled. If it wasn’t for the fear of losing his green card, he would have kicked her out.

Connie’s ardor ebbed equivalently. Initially she’d seen Yuri as a romantic figure who’d come from a distant land to rescue her from a boring life. But soon after their marriage Yuri refused to do anything except drive his cab and drink vodka in front of the television. And then there was the violence. Connie had never been beaten before. After the first incident she would have left if she’d had someplace to go. The problem was that she’d burned her bridges when she married Yuri against her family’s wishes. Pride kept her rooted where she was.

Connie’s method of dealing with her unhappiness was to eat. She could find solace in a quart of ice cream, French fried potatoes, and a Big Mac, and she sought that solace frequently. Between that and a routine devoid of exercise, it wasn’t long before Connie’s weight ballooned. The more Yuri drank, the more Connie ate.

As they became more entrenched in their respective bad habits, their mutual hostility grew. Yuri and Connie lived in the same house but ignored each other until mere proximity would ignite a conflagration. Invariably, the quarrels escalated from stereotypic epithets to physical violence, and when they did, Connie suffered more.

A break in this pattern occurred when Yuri befriended Curt Rogers and Steve Henderson. He did not tell Connie-about his new friends but spent much of his time away from home as a result of their acquaintance. Curt and Steve never came to Brighton Beach. Yuri always traveled to Bensonhurst to see them. Connie was convinced he was having an affair, a belief that caused several knock-down, drag-out fights.

Then, all at once, Yuri began spending inordinate amounts of time in the basement. First he did construction, and the hammering and sawing drove Connie crazy. When she asked him what was going on, he told her it was none of her business. Then he started bringing in equipment, including powerful fans. Connie even caught sight of large stainless steel drums being carried in by white-trash “honky” skinhead youths. Such people terrified Connie, and she made sure they didn’t see her.

On more than one occasion, Connie demanded to know what was going on in her basement, but Yuri refused to discuss it. She began to think that Yuri was setting up a distillery to manufacture his own vodka. When she suggested this to him one evening, he responded by leaping at her and grabbing her throat.

“Yes, it’s a still,” Yuri snarled. “And if you tell anyone, I’ll kill you! I swear! And if you ever mess with it, I’ll beat you to a pulp. You stay the hell out of my basement!”

Connie had vainly tried to break Yuri’s hold on her neck by pulling his arms away, but she couldn’t. Usually when he was mad he just smacked her a few times, and that was it. But this was different. His black eyes drilled into her like he’d gone crazy.

In utter terror, Connie started to feel faint, her image of Yuri’s empurpled face began to blur, and her knees buckled. Only then did Yuri let go of her. Connie staggered to regain her balance and choked from the pressure he’d kept on her throat. With a burst of tears she ran from the room and threw herself onto her bed. From then on, Connie refrained from bringing up the issue of what was going on in the basement. Whatever it was, it wasn’t worth risking her life.

Yuri was irritated that Connie was home. On Monday nights she was supposed to work until at least nine. Her unexpected presence only added to the stress of a day that had already taken him on a roller coaster of emotions. With a trembling hand he poured himself a glass of ice-cold vodka from the freezer.

Leaning back against the countertop he took a sip of the glacial fluid and eyed the greasy remains of the fast food. In the background he heard the canned laughter of a television sitcom. He took more of the vodka in an attempt to stem his rising resentment. As he swallowed, his eyes wandered to the basement door. He was surprised to see that it was partially ajar.

“What the hell?” Yuri questioned. He usually swore in Russian, but through his friendship with Curt and Steve he’d become equally capable in English. Confused and progressively dismayed, he put down his drink and stepped over to the door. He was certain that he’d closed it that morning before heading out in his cab. It was Yuri’s routine to work in his basement lab for at least an hour in the morning and another hour in the evening to make sure his miniature bioweapons production facility was working smoothly. On Wednesday, his usual day off, he spent the whole day in the basement. That was when he activated his makeshift pulverizer, since most of the neighbors were at work. Like the pulverizer in Sverdlovsk, it made a racket even though it was a fraction of the size.

The door creaked as Yuri opened it wide. Snapping on the light, he started down the stairs. He stopped dead when he had a view of the stout combination steel and plywood door he’d made for the lab. Someone had taken a crowbar to the padlock, snapping off the hasp.

Yuri stumbled down the rest of the stairs in haste. Outrage clouded his vision. His breath came in angry and worried snorts between clenched teeth. The lab and the revenge it promised was the current focus of his life. He was terrified it had been violated.

Beyond the plywood door was the entry chamber with a showerhead and plastic bottles of bleach. Hanging on a wooden peg was a SCBA hazardous materials suit Curt had managed to get out of the firehouse. The face mask was supplied by a steel cylinder filled with compressed air. When Yuri was in the lab he wore the suit with the cylinder on his back like a scuba diver.

The entry chamber had two other doors, both constructed similarly to that at the entrance. Both also had been secured by padlocks for safekeeping and both padlocks had been similarly broken off. Yuri yanked open the door to his left. It was his storage compartment and was surrounded on two sides with the concrete foundation walls of the house. The third wall contained floor-to-ceiling shelving, which was filled with microbiological supplies such as petri dishes, spare HEPA filters, agar, and jars of nutrients. The room’s interior was undisturbed, despite the broken lock.

Steeling himself against what he might find, Yuri moved over to the door to the lab itself. He switched on the interior lights before cracking the door. He could tell the main circulating fans were functioning normally by the breeze flowing into the room. It rustled his hair and caressed his face. To be on the safe side, Yuri held his breath while he scanned the lab’s interior.

The gleaming fermenters were arrayed directly in front of him along the back wall of the lab. His makeshift hood was to the right. It functioned as his incubator, with a heat lamp and a thermostat, and also as his repository for the bioweaponized anthrax and botulinum toxin he’d already produced.

Yuri’s lab bench was to the immediate left. On the bench stood the glassware he used for crystallizing the botulinum toxin. Beyond the lab bench was the pulverizer and the drier for the anthrax spores.

Yuri’s pounding heart began to slow. The lab seemed normal with nothing out of place. It appeared exactly as it had when he left it that morning, including the way the glassware was positioned on the bench. With a sense of relief, Yuri pulled the door closed. It whistled from the inrushing air just before sealing on its weather stripping.

He looked down at the broken hasp. Although his anxiety had abated, his anger hadn’t. Then his eye caught something on the floor. Next to his foot was a carelessly discarded French fried potato along with a small smear of ketchup. Connie!

A muffled titter of laughter filtered down from above. Yuri was consumed by fury. With a string of expletives, he rushed from the room and took the stairs two at a time. When he got to the partially open bedroom door he pounded it open with the flat of his palm.

Connie glanced up from her TV show. She was supine on her bed.

“Why did you go downstairs?” Yuri snarled.

“I wanted to know what was going on in my basement,” Connie said. “I have a right, considering all the time you spend down there.”

“Did you touch anything?” Yuri demanded.

“No, I didn’t touch nothing! But I can tell you, that ain’t no still, not with all that stuff that looks like it came from a hospital.”

“I’ll teach you to disobey me!” Yuri snarled as he hurled himself at his wife.

Connie screamed and rolled to the side. The combination of Yuri’s impact and Connie’s weight was too much for the slats under the box spring, and the bed collapsed to the floor.