Connie's method of dealing with her unhappiness was to eat. She could find solace in a quart of ice cream, French fried potatoes, and a Big Mac, and she sought that solace frequently. Between that and a routine devoid of exercise, it wasn't long before Connie's weight ballooned.
The more Yuri drank, the more Connie ate.
As they became more entrenched in their respective bad habits, their mutual hostility grew. Yuri and Connie lived in the same house but ignored each other until mere proximity would ignite a conflagration.
Invariably, the quarrels escalated from stereotypic epithe's to physical violence, and when they did, Connie suffered more.
A break in this pattern occurred when Yuri befriended Curt Rogers and Steve Henderson. He did not tell Connie-about his new friends but spent much of his time away from home as a result of their acquaintance.
Curt and Steve never came to Brighton Beach. Yuri always traveled to Bensonhurst to see them. Connie was convinced he was having an affair, a belief that caused several knock-down, drag-out fights.
Then, all at once, Yuri began spending inordinate amounts of time in the basement. First he did construction, and the hammering and sawing drove Connie crazy. When she asked him what was going on, he told her it was none of her business. Then he started bringing in equipment, including powerful fans. Connie even caught sight of large stainless steel drums being carried in by white-trash 'honky'
skinhead youths.
Such people terrified Connie, and she made sure they didn't see her.
On more than one occasion, Connie demanded to know what was going on in her basement, but Yuri refused to discuss it. She began to think that Yuri was setting up a distillery to manufacture his own vodka. When she suggested this to him one evening, he responded by leaping at her and grabbing her throat.
'Yes, it's a still, ' Yuri snarled. 'And if you tell anyone, I'll kill you! I swear! And if you ever mess with it, I'll beat you to a pulp.
You stay the hell out of my basement! ' Connie had vainly tried to break Yuri's hold on her neck by pulling his arms away, but she couldn't. Usually when he was mad he just smacked her a few times, and that was it. But this was different. His black eyes drilled into her like he'd gone crazy.
In utter terror, Connie started to feel faint, her image of Yuri's empurpled face began to blur, and her knees buckled. Only then did Yuri let go of her. Connie staggered to regain her balance and choked from the pressure he'd kept on her throat. With a burst of tears she ran from the room and threw herself onto her bed. From then on, Connie refrained from bringing up the issue of what was going on in the basement. Whatever it was, it wasn't worth risking her life.
Yuri was irritated that Connie was home. On Monday nights she was supposed to work until at least nine. Her unexpected presence only added to the stress of a day that had already taken him on a roller coaster of emotions. With a trembling hand he poured himself a glass of ice-cold vodka from the freezer.
Leaning back against the countertop he took a sip of the glacial fluid and eyed the greasy remains of the fast food. In the background he heard the canned laughter of a television sitcom. He took more of the vodka in an attempt to stem his rising resentment. As he swallowed, his eyes wandered to the basement door. He was surprised to see that it was partially ajar.
'What the hell? ' Yuri questioned. He usually swore in Russian, but through his friendship with Curt and Steve he'd become equally capable in English. Confused and progressively dismayed, he put down his drink and stepped over to the door. He was certain that he'd closed it that morning before heading out in his cab. It was Yuri's routine to work in his basement lab for at least an hour in the morning and another hour in the evening to make sure his miniature bio-weapons production facility was working smoothly.
On Wednesday, his usual day off, he spent the whole day in the basement. That was when he activated his makeshift pulverizer, since most of the neighbors were at work. Like the pulverizer in Sverdlovsk, it made a racket even though it was a fraction of the size.
The door creaked as Yuri opened it wide. Snapping on the light, he started down the stairs. He stopped dead when he had a view of the stout combination steel and plywood door he'd made for the lab.
Someone had taken a crowbar to the padlock, snapping off the hasp.
Yuri stumbled down the rest of the stairs in haste. Outrage clouded his vision. His breath came in angry and worried snorts between clenched teeth. The lab and the revenge it promised was the current focus of his life. He was terrified it had been violated.
Beyond the plywood door was the entry chamber with a showerhead and plastic bottles of bleach.
Hanging on a wooden peg was a SCBA hazardous materials suit Curt had managed to get out of the firehouse.
The face mask was supplied by a steel cylinder filled with compressed air. When Yuri was in the lab he wore the suit with the cylinder on his back like a scuba diver.
The entry chamber had two other doors, both constructed similarly to that at the entrance. Both also had been secured by padlocks for safekeeping and both padlocks had been similarly broken off. Yuri yanked open the door to his left. It was his storage compartment and was surrounded on two sides with the concrete foundation walls of the house.
The third wall contained floor-to-ceiling shelving, which was filled with microbiological supplies such as petri dishes, spare HEPA filters, agar, and jars of nutrients. The room's interior was undisturbed, despite the broken lock.
Steeling himself against what he might find, Yuri moved over to the door to the lab itself. He switched on the interior lights before cracking the door. He could tell the main circulating fans were functioning normally by the breeze flowing into the room. It rustled his hair and caressed his face. To be on the safe side, Yuri held his breath while he scanned the lab's interior.
The gleaming fermenters were arrayed directly in front of him along the back wall of the lab. His makeshift hood was to the right. It functioned as his incubator, with a heat lamp and a thermostat, and also as his repository for the bio-weaponized anthrax and botulinum toxin he'd already produced.
Yuri's lab bench was to the immediate left. On the bench stood the glassware he used for crystallizing the botulinum toxin. Beyond the lab bench was the pulverizer and the drier for the anthrax spores.
Yuri's pounding heart began to slow. The lab seemed normal with nothing out of place. It appeared exactly as it had when he left it that morning, including the way the glassware was positioned on the bench.
With a sense of relief, Yuri pulled the door closed. It whistled from the inrushing air just before sealing on its weather stripping.
He looked down at the broken hasp. Although his anxiety had abated, his anger hadn't. Then his eye caught something on the floor. Next to his foot was a carelessly discarded French fried potato along with a small smear of ketchup. Connie!
A muffled titter of laughter filtered down from above. Yuri was consumed by fury. With a string of expletives, he rushed from the room and took the stairs two at a time. When he got to the partially open bedroom door he pounded it open with the flat of his palm.
Connie glanced up from her TV show. She was supine on her bed.
'Why did you go downstairs? ' Yuri snarled.
'I wanted to know what was going on in my basement, ' Connie said. 'I have a right, considering all the time you spend down there.'
'Did you touch anything? ' Yuri demanded.
'No, I didn't touch nothing! But I can tell you, that ain't no still, not with all that stuff that looks like it came from a hospital.'
'I'll teach you to disobey me! ' Yuri snarled as he hurled himself at his wife.
Connie screamed and rolled to the side. The combination of Yuri's impact and Connie's weight was too much for the slats under the box spring, and the bed collapsed to the floor.
MONDAY, OCTOBER 18
6:15 P. M. Curt was driving his Dodge Ram pickup with Steve riding shotgun.
They'd turned off Ocean Parkway onto Oceanview Avenue and were searching for Oceanview Lane.
'My God! ' Steve commented as he surveyed the neighborhood. 'I've lived in Brooklyn my whole life and I've never seen this cluster of little houses. It looks like some place in the Carolinas.'
'Seems they would have been knocked down by now and some highrises put up, ' Curt said. 'Keep your eye
