“When was that?”
“The first phase started in 1935. Golokhov began experimental operations first in Russia, then in Germany, Japan, and China. He wanted to create a firm foundation for later plans. Some populations took up the new coliforms quicker than others, especially where sanitation was spotty. The altered coliforms had spread across Russia by 1939, I would guess, and worldwide by the end of the Second World War.”
“We’re born with them, now?”
“No, but we acquire them a short time later from our parents, animals, the environment,” Cousins said. “You have to understand—Golokhov chose hardy strains likely to dominate. Now, they’re all over the Earth. Every one of us carries bacteria that can be programmed from outside. Programmed to make chemicals that change how we think.”
“Like a bomb in two parts,” I said. “We carry one half, they carry the other.”
“Exactly,” Cousins said.
“Why stay in Irkutsk? Why not just move straight to Moscow?”
“It was isolated. It was his home. And besides, Irkutsk was on the main rail line to Siberia,” Cousins said. “Beria supplied the lab with trainloads of political prisoners. Golokhov picked out those who were mentally ill, took samples of blood and lymph, stomach fluids, chyme, and so on. After they were shot, he ground up their brains. Using all his samples, he isolated peptides and enzymes and other fractions he suspected could alter human behavior, and fed them to his reverse-engineering bacteria. The bacteria were then programmed to induce a variety of psychotic states.”
By eleven-thirty, after I had ventured into the kitchen twice to make coffee and didn’t even think about Janie, we had worked our way up to Lydia Timashuk and the Doctors’ Plot of 1952, followed by the “expatriation” of two million Jews to Siberia, then the death—some called it murder—of old Joe Stalin. I was more than hooked, and we hadn’t reached the end of 1953.
It was the biggest thing I had ever encountered in all my days of doing history. The documentation was exquisite—copy after copy of state papers, memos, letters. There must have been quite a hemorrhage from the old University of Irkutsk.
And it was pure nightmare.
“No wonder Banning went cuckoo,” I said. “Makes me sick just thinking about it.”
“It gets worse,” Cousins said. “By the late 1930s, Golokhov had established centers in Moscow, Paris, and London. He even managed to get around Lysenko’s destruction of genetics in Russia. Beria probably protected him, and I guess he knew where to be successful, and where to just shut up. By 1950, it’s possible he was conducting secret research in the United States. There are five towns across the continental U.S. where he may have set up operations. I’ve been to one of them, in the hills east of Livermore.
“In 1953, Rudy thinks Golokhov opened a laboratory in Manhattan, under the guise of an international organization trying to create vaccines for polio, malaria, and dengue fever.”
I’d had dengue—we called it breakbone fever—in Laos in 1970. I had nearly died and couldn’t remember most of those weeks. “False front?”
Cousins nodded. “They were creating Manhattan Candidates, all over the U.S.”
“Jesus,” I said. I felt goose bumps go up my arms. “And because we all have the altered germs . . . we’re all potential Manhattan Candidates?”
Cousins nodded. “My guess is that in the thirties and forties, only about a third the people in the world could be reliably programmed by Silk. Their operations were pretty fragmented. Thank God for that. Orwell might never have finished 1984.”
I let out a whoosh of breath. “Why just a third?” I asked.
“Because we’re all custom built. We don’t use our hormones, enzymes, peptides, neurotransmitters, all the necessary chemicals in our bodies and brains, quite the same way. That puts a roadblock in the path of creating new operatives. But I’m sure they’ve refined their techniques. My guess is they now have 80 or 90, possibly even 100 percent success, especially if they choose their people carefully. And of course it all depends on the dose you can deliver. When you start an operation, you send three or four handpicked people, with the necessary supplies, into the target area. They lay down some phages in nearby supermarkets, or deliver them right to the home, and wait a couple of days. How often do salesmen come knocking? Seventh Day Adventists?”
“Not very often, where I live,” I said. But I took his point.
“How safe are the fresh vegetables in supermarkets?” he asked.
I cocked my head. “You could run this sort of thing on a shoestring. Free labor, free resources, skim off the top. Jee . . . zusss. What about the Internet?”
“I think you see the problem,” Cousins said.
At twelve-thirty, I asked Cousins to stay over and we’d continue later in the morning. He nervously declined.
“I don’t want to put you in any danger,” he said. “I’m a Jonah, you know.”
He piled together the papers, stuck them in their envelopes, and slid the envelopes into the blue backpack. “I have a place to stay. I’ll be safe,” he said. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Please don’t think I’m being paranoid.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Paranoid” was not the word.
“But I would like your opinion.” He was like a jumpy doe with a newborn fawn. “Is this stuff legit? Banning isn’t crazy?”
“It looks promising,” I said.
“I’m going to Manhattan soon to visit an old building,” Cousins said. “It may have been Golokhov’s main lab in the fifties. I’m looking for proof—and for samples to test. Would you like to come along?”
That shook me. I had learned to prefer a desktop to the field. I said I’d give it some thought.
“There’s one more thing,” he said. “You have a VCR?”
“Yeah. Janie—my wife—loved movies.”
“Seeing is believing, right?” He reached into the backpack and handed me a videocassette. “From Russia,” he said. “From Irkutsk. We can talk about it tomorrow.”
After Cousins left, I ignored my fatigue and plugged the tape into our VCR. The tape jumped a lot. I doubted very much that it was the original. Russians use the SECAM video system. We use NTSC.
With my rusty grasp of Russian, I translated the white Cyrillic letters flashing over the screen.
