by Robin Cook
“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 Bio-preparat, 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 online, 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 i
n order, he picked up the telephone that connected him to the day shift supervisor, Vladimir Ger-giyev. 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 fine 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 sup
ervisor 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 or 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.