“Due to a confusion in communication, the factory was undergoing annual maintenance, and time was running short if the dressing was to be distributed to the one hundred twenty-seven dressing stations for seed grain scattered across the Soviet Union, the grain treated, and then taken back to the thousands of state and collective farms in time for planting. So an energetic young official and Party cadre was sent from Moscow to hurry things along. It appears he ordered the workmen to terminate what they were doing, restore the plant to operating order, and start it functioning again.”
“He failed to do it in time?” rasped Marshal Kerensky.
“No, Comrade Marshal, the factory started work again, although the maintenance engineers had not quite finished. But something malfunctioned. A hopper valve. Lindane is a very powerful chemical, and the dosage of the lindane to the remainder of the organomercurial compound has to be strictly regulated.
“The valve on the lindane hopper, although registering one-third open on the control panel, was in fact stuck at full open. The whole two hundred eighty tons of dressing were affected.”
“What about quality control?” asked one of the members, who had been born on a farm. The professor swallowed again and wished he could quietly go int
o exile in Siberia without any more of this torture.
“There was a conjunction of coincidence and error,” he confessed. “The chief analytical and quality-control chemist was away on holiday at Sochi during the plant closedown. He was summoned back by cable. But because of fog in the Kuibyshev area, his plane was diverted and he had to continue his journey by train. When he arrived, production was complete.”
“The dressing was not tested?” asked Petrov incredulously. The professor looked more sick than ever.
“The chemist insisted on making quality-control tests. The young functionary from Moscow wanted the entire production shipped at once. An argument ensued. In the event, a compromise was reached. The chemist wanted to test every tenth bag of dressing, twenty-eight in all. The functionary insisted he could have only one. That was when the third error occurred.
“The new bags had been stacked along with the reserve of seventy tons left over from last year. In the warehouse, one of the loaders, receiving a report to send one single bag to the laboratory for testing, selected one of the old bags. Tests proved it was perfectly in order, and the entire consignment was shipped.”
He ended his report. There was nothing more to say. He could have tried to explain that a conjunction of three mistakes—a mechanical malfunction, an error of judgment by two men under pressure, and a piece of carelessness by a warehouseman—had combined to produce the catastrophe. But that was not his job, and he did not intend to make lame excuses for other men. The silence in the room was murderous.
Vishnayev came in with icy clarity.
“What exactly is the effect of an excessive component of lindane in this organomercurial compound?” he asked.
“Comrade, it causes a toxic effect on the germinating seed in the ground, rather than a protective effect. The seedlings come up—if at all—stunted, sparse, and mottled brown. There is virtually no grain yield from such affected stems.”
“And how much of the spring planting has been affected?” asked Vishnayev coldly.
“Just about four fifths, Comrade. The seventy tons of reserve compound was perfectly all right. The two hundred eighty tons of new compound were all affected by the jamming hopper valve.”
“And the toxic dressing was all mixed in with seed grain and planted?”
“Yes, Comrade.”
Two minutes later the professor was dismissed, to his privacy and his oblivion.
Vishnayev turned to Komarov.
“Forgive my ignorance, Comrade, but it would appear you had some foreknowledge of this affair. What has happened to the functionary who produced this ... cockup?” (He used a crude Russian expression that refers to a pile of dog mess on the pavement.)
Ivanenko cut in.
“He is in our hands,” he said, “along with the analytical chemist who deserted his function, the warehouseman, who is simply of exceptionally low intelligence, and the maintenance team of engineers, who claim they demanded and received written instructions to wind up their work before they had finished.”
“This functionary, has he talked?” asked Vishnayev.
Ivanenko considered a mental image of the broken man in the cellars beneath the Lubyanka.
“Extensively,” he said.
“Is he a saboteur, a fascist agent?”
“No,” said Ivanenko with a sigh. “Just an idiot; an ambitious apparatchik trying to overfulfill his orders. You can believe me on that one. We do know by now the inside of that man’s skull.”
“Then one last question, just so that we can all be sure of the dimensions of this affair.” Vishnayev swung back to the unhappy Komarov. “We already know we will save only fifty million tons of the expected hundred million from the winter wheat. How much will we now get from the spring wheat this coming October?”
Komarov glanced at Rudin, who nodded imperceptibly.