Each night at 5 p.m., as the last of the Pokrov plant's day shift boards the village bus for home, the job of protecting the factory's virus collection falls to a night watchman and a large German shepherd. The dog is judged highly capable — "He's very mean," one plant official confides — but also a poor substitute for the kind of security called for at a place that holds the seeds of multiple epidemics.
If the dog is reliable, that is more than Pokrov can claim for the rest of its security apparatus.
The plant's alarm system is 30 years old, and officials acknowledge it no longer works in parts of the campus, which is overrun with weeds and littered with debris. The military garrison once assigned to Pokrov is gone, and today's guards are mostly old men. A visitor recently saw no sign the guards were armed.
There are bars on the windows in the small building where pathogens are kept. But once inside, security for the virus freezers consists of a simple lock and a string with a seal of soft clay. A disturbed seal is a signal that viruses may have been tampered with, presumably after the thief has gotten away.
Lawrence Renteria, a Virginia-based security contractor who is helping several former weapons plants improve their systems, says Pokrov is in better shape than some.
"It isn't pretty," says Renteria, senior system engineer for Stratford Technology of Montross. "At one plant we visited, security consisted of two fat guys in sweat pants. They say they patrol the plant. But we know they don't."