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Novosibirsk, Siberia is a prominent city lying along the Ob River in Western Siberia. The winters are cold and snowy, and the summers are hot and dry. There is plenty of sun even during the winter months, and the temperature differences between summer and winter are extreme, one of the highest on the European and Asian continents. The city boasts of its opera and ballet companies, theaters, art galleries, and numerous Russian Olympians, most notably Alexander Karelin, the nine time Greco-Roman wrestling world champion (including three Olympic gold medals). It is also the home of some of Russia’s finest universities and scientific research centers.

The scientific complex known as Gradient is located forty kilometers southeast of Novosobirsk, the site of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Science. Gradient has eighty labs and administrative buildings. In the basement of building 42 are well-guarded, isolated virology-research laboratories devoted to the development of virus weapons of mass destruction. In the adjacent building 43, and connected by secret tunnel, is another basement facility devoted to the development of bacteriological weapons of mass destruction: anthrax and bubonic plague.

Efforts to aerosolize these biological weapons and make them transportable without mitigating their lethal potential finally met success after many years of intense ground-breaking work.

Not long after the Soviet Union collapsed, Iran began recruiting Gradient’s premier scientists and administrative officers with the idea of developing state-of-the-art biological warfare capabilities. However, the United States has a stake in Gradient’s invulnerability, so together with the Russians they worked to make the Russian facility, and their own, impervious to the possibility of theft. The best American-made cameras and motion sensors, plus a triple layer of visible and invisible fences now surround both facilities in Russia and the United States. The facilities are as invulnerable as human beings can make them.

Gradient is equipped with a negative pressure ventilation system so there is no chance of viral or bacterial contamination reaching the outside. The entrances and exits are hermetically sealed. Wastewater, decontamination suits and instruments receive treatment at temperatures sure to destroy any viral or bacterial pathogens. The power supply has a double foolproof back up system.

Sixty-one year old Anatoly Shenko had started working in Novosibirsk ever since he obtained his Ph.D. in microbiology from Rostov University at the age of twenty-five. After twelve years of research in Novosibirsk’s main virology facility, he went to Gradient where he worked on top-secret biological warfare: anthrax and small pox. He became one of the leading experts in his field and obtained the highest level of security clearance.

Anthrax is one of the diseases of antiquity. Some consider it to have been the cause of the fifth and sixth plague of Exodus. It is the first disease proven to result from infectious bacteria.

Louis Pasteur developed the first antibacterial vaccine in history against anthrax. The illness comes from Bacillus anthracis whose two protein toxins can cause severe symptoms, or lead to death. Three forms of the disease exist: cutaneous anthrax causes a severe localized infection of the skin; gastrointestinal anthrax develops from the ingestion of contaminated meat; inhalation anthrax can cause disease on inhalation of the bacteria. This latter form has the greatest potential for biological terrorism.

Bacillus anthracis is a spore-forming organism. They become inactive and non-infectious (a spore) when deprived of nutrients, or subjected to adverse environmental conditions. They have hibernated, so to speak, or developed a state of suspended animation. In this form, they can survive in the soil for decades. If inhaled by man, the spores will then find themselves surrounded by the proper environment and necessary nutrients. Then within sixty days, the spores will come to life. Unless treated early this illness is fatal.

Anatoly Shenko developed the procedure for reducing the anthrax bacillus to its smallest spore form, thus realizing the potential for a very effective and easy to disseminate aerosolized agent.

The other biological weapon that Shenko worked with was smallpox. In ancient times, this scourge could decimate a town, at times killing fifty percent of a population as well as scarring many for life.

An effective vaccination technique throughout the world has eliminated smallpox as a threat. Therefore, for over thirty years, no one has received vaccination. The smallpox virus that has been stored in four laboratories around the world is available in case it should ever be necessary to make vaccine. This could be the source for bio-terrorism if the samples are not well controlled, and one of these storage laboratories was Gradient where Anatoly Shenko did his pioneering work in biological warfare. Smallpox virus is the ideal biological warfare agent as it disseminates in the air when aerosolized.

Anatoly Shenko was quiet and reserved. He was devoted to his work. His sedentary existence working in his administrative office and his laboratory bench resulted in his gaining weight over the years. He was a short man, now almost as wide as he was tall. He had male pattern baldness, with hair present only above his ears and the back of his head. In all the years he had worked in this risky environment, he was one of the few who managed not to get infected with the organism they were working with. He attributed this to never taking for granted the strict safety measures that he, as chairman of the safety committee, had developed.

Anatoly was married, had four children including one mentally, and physically retarded son whose constant care and expense took a toll on him as well as his wife and family.

Growing up under the Soviet Communist system, Anatoly was a card-carrying Communist, but never made the money or had the benefits that upper echelon Communist political bosses received. When the Soviet Union collapsed, embittered by his personal plight, Anatoly breathed a sigh of relief. However, over time, conditions did not change for him and his family.

He worked late one evening in order to prepare another batch of smallpox virus to be stored. But, in reality, he had a plan to obtain a good supply of the virus and the anthrax spores and smuggle them out of the country. He was getting older. His health was poor. How much longer would he be around? His wife was also in poor health. Her physical difficulties, complicated by significant worry over her disabled son added up to a chronic depression. Anatoly would not go to his grave without arranging for the long term care of his son that would not include institutionalization. He had made all arrangements. He was content.

After the threat of smallpox ended, the international community agreed that rather than destroy all smallpox virus remaining, they would keep enough for purposes of research or vaccine development. In Russia, this was his domain.