I read the publisher’s address. “White Truth Press, Ojai, California. UFO abductees and would-be-Aryans. Pitiful.”
“But what I’m after is serious,” Cousins said. “Banning found some files in the National Archives in the 1990s, and when he read about my research in a magazine, he got in touch with me. His material was interesting, so I went to see him. Ever since, a lot of peculiar stuff has been happening.”
I stared at him for a few seconds, long enough to make him feel uncomfortable.
“Look,” I said. “I’ve read The Odessa File. I wish I had written it, this house would be a lot nicer.” And maybe I could have gotten better medical care for Janie. “But I’m not much for Nazi conspiracies. I don’t believe in trivializing real horror with skinhead fantasies.”
Cousins looked dismayed, but he was resilient. He said, “It’s not Nazis and it’s not just Communists. It’s biologists, some of the smartest people in the world. Pioneers, in their way. And it’s really important to me, Mr. Bridger.”
“Ben,” I said.
“I need confirmation. That’s all I’m asking. A little help from someone who taught me history when I was a kid.”
He was so sincere, and his voice so level. I didn’t want to be in the house alone. The kitchen was definitely haunted. Maybe I was the crazy one here. Besides, Cousins reminded me of my son. I really missed my son.
“Okay,” I said with a sigh. “We got half an hour, then it’s my bedtime.”
Cousins told me he was doing research on life extension—indefinite life span. He had published a few papers and had contracts with two pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs that replenished skin collagen. It sounded legitimate. Biology is sexy, I hear.
Then Rudy Banning came into his life. Banning sent Cousins a letter asking if he had heard about research conducted in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
“I wrote Banning and asked him what he knew. He said that scientists in Russia had stumbled onto a kind of human immortality, using substances extracted from primitive organisms. Coincidentally, they discovered some very effective methods of controlling human behavior. All this before we had more than an inkling about DNA and genes.”
That was too large to swallow all at once. I took a chunk and chewed it: “How could immortality lead to mind control?” I asked.
“Let’s concentrate on mind control,” Cousins said. “Bacteria are wonderful little factories. They can make almost any substance you program them to. And you program them by providing them with the appropriate genes. In the early 1930s, at Irkutsk University, a biologist named Maxim Golokhov was studying huge, primitive, single-celled organisms he had found in Lake Baikal. To his astonishment, he discovered that the big cells had recruited an unknown type of bacteria to help create a primordial immune system. Even more amazing, Golokhov discovered that the system was adaptive—ingenious and flexible. The bacteria sensed the presence of invading organisms and made negative peptide molds that precisely matched a target molecule, immobilizing and killing the invader.”
My eyes must have looked sleepy. Cousins’s response was to talk faster and wave his hands.
“But when their work was finished and they cleaned up the leftovers, these same bacteria could also make molds of the molds, re-creating a positive with the same qualities as the original. They could reverse-engineer almost any organic substance and encode a gene to reproduce it. Theoretically, that was fantastic—Nobel prize material. But Golokhov was more interested in surviving in his own harsh political world—neutralizing the forces that were targeting him and his wife. If he wanted to make something useful to the human monsters of his time, he had to think of a practical application for his discovery. He came up with an astonishing scheme . . . something really dreadful. He decided he would reprogram bacteria commonly found in humans. His first problem was to transfer the necessary genes. He used phages—”
I asked what “phages” were.
“Viruses that attack only bacteria.”
“Make them sneeze?” I asked.
Cousins did not smile. This was his stuff, his meat and drink, and it wasn’t funny. “Some phages ferry host genes from one bacteria to another. Golokhov infected E. coli bacteria—”
“Like in the wells out here?” I asked.
Cousins did not enjoy being interrupted. “Ordinary gut bacteria. Yeah, sometimes they’re a sign of sewer pollution. Using phages, Golokhov gave his bacteria genes reverse-engineered from psychotropic chemicals in hallucinogenic mushrooms. He sprayed the altered bacteria on vegetables and served them raw to student volunteers. About a week later, the students got high. They stayed high for months.”
“So in the sixties he moved to California and turned into Timothy Leary,” I said.
This time Cousins gave me a weak and tolerant smirk, about what my crack deserved. In fact, so far, he had my attention. “Before we go any further, I’d like to see what kind of documents you have. No sense wasting our time if Banning’s put together a farrago.”
“I beg your pardon?” Cousins said.
“Just show me your stuff.”
He pulled out three fat envelopes. With all the deliberation of a young stripper feeling the shys, he spread their contents on the wrought-iron patio table beside a citronella candle.
The bug lights gave everything a jaundiced glow.
I read a fair amount of Russian. It took me about ten minutes to come wide-awake. The imprimaturs and typewriter fonts, the stamps and signatures (I saw “Beria” about thirty times in as many pages), all looked very, very correct. I had never known Banning to fake documents, nor had anybody else, to my knowledge. It was the conclusions he had been drawing since the early 1990s that sank his career, not the validity of his sources.
“Where did he say he got these?” I asked.
“Actually, we’ve both been digging in old archives,” Cousins said. “I went to Irkutsk last year.”
“So . . . it isn’t just Banning, it’s you, too?”
He nodded nervously.
“A lot of stuff from Irkutsk University,” I said.
“They’re opening old files,” Cousins said. “Glasnost still lives.”
“All right. I see the names Golokhov and Beria on a whole bunch of documents having to do with a secret research project. What’s the context?”
“Golokhov started off as an idealist, like so many of us. But he and his fiancée were Jewish. There was trouble, we don’t know what kind exactly. They were going to be arrested and deported even farther east. In 1937, Golokhov approached Beria, the future head of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, and told him what he had learned. Beria saw it as his ticket to bigger things.” Cousins pulled out a copy of a letter requesting that meeting. “Beria handed the matter up to Stalin a week later. Golokhov made his pitch and showed Stalin some movies. Comrade Stalin financed Silk right then and there, and Beria gave it a cover story, hiding it behind a program to discover—”
“How to synthesize silk.”
“Yeah. The operation had two components. First, Golokhov had to alter gut bacteria to accept genes from his phages. He gave them the equivalent of standard electrical outlets that new genes could plug into. Then, he had to make sure everyone—and I do mean everyone—had the new bacteria in their bodies. Silk began with Golokhov releasing altered E. coli into the general population. There are lots of ways to do that—spraying fruits and vegetables, in the air, doorknobs, money, clothing . . . handshakes. Bird droppings. Even animal feed. No doubt he had the assistance of agents who thought they were engaging in some sort of Communist subversion. Some might have even guessed at germ warfare.”
