Ball Lightning

“When I did my master’s, I used to hang out on an old BBS, Jane’s Defence Forum. Three years ago I met a Russian woman there—she didn’t reveal anything more about herself, but her language indicated she was no amateur weapons enthusiast, more likely a well-qualified expert. She was in bioengineering—not my field at all, but she had sharp ideas about new-concept weapons, and we got on well. We stayed in contact, often chatting online for hours. Two months later, she told me she had joined up with an international expedition to Indochina to survey the long-term effects of US chemical weapons from the Vietnam War on the region, and she invited me along. I was on break, so I went. When I saw her in Hanoi, she was nothing like I’d imagined: in her forties, thin—nothing of a Russian woman’s stockiness—with that kind of timeless beauty, Eastern and deep-seated, that made me feel warm and comfortable when we were together. With the expedition team, we began an arduous survey of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, where the US army had sprayed defoliants, and the Laotian jungles where traces of chemical weapons had been found. I found her highly professional, always working with a sense of mission and dedication. Her only fault was drinking: she drank to desperation. We were good friends in no time, and on several occasions, after she got drunk, she told me bits of her own experiences.

“I learned from her that as early as the 1960s, the Soviets had established a new-concept weapons institute under the General Staff called the Long-Term Equipment Planning Commission, where she and the man she later married worked in the biochemistry department. I wanted to find out what work the department had done, but I discovered that, even when drunk, she kept a clear head and said not a word about any of it. It was obvious she had spent a long time in key military research organizations. Later, after my persistent questioning, she told me about one project: the agency had once conducted research on a large number of people with so-called psychic abilities to see if they could find NATO nuclear submarines deep in the Atlantic. But this had been declassified long ago, and was the butt of jokes in the world of serious research. Still, it showed that her agency had adopted a dynamic approach, a clear contrast to the ossified thinking of Base 3141.

“The agency was dissolved after the end of the Cold War. Due to the poor conditions of the military in those days, researchers turned to jobs in the private sector, where they immediately ran into problems, and then their Western counterparts exploited the opportunity to trawl for talent. After her husband left the service, he accepted a high-paying position from DuPont, which promised her the same treatment if she was willing to come along, provided she brought her new-concept weapons research with her. They fought bitterly over this, and she laid it out for him: she wasn’t totally divorced from reality, and she wanted a better future, to own a comfortable detached home with a swimming pool, holiday in Scandinavia, and give a good education to their only daughter; and the superlative liberal research conditions were a definite attraction as well. If she had been on a civilian project, or even an ordinary military project, she would not have hesitated at all. But their research had been on new-concept weapons that could not be openly discussed. It was highly advanced technology nearing practical application, and the tremendous military power it held might decide the balance of power in the next century. She was dead set against seeing the fruits of half a lifetime of R&D put to use against her homeland. Her husband said she was being ridiculous. He was from Ukraine, and she was from Belarus. The homeland she had in mind had splintered into many countries, some of which were now enemies of each other.

“In the end, her husband left, and her daughter left with him. Her life was a lonely one from then on. Many aspects of this woman’s personality and demeanor were familiar, and it occurred to me that they were there in my hazy memories of Mom.

“In Laos, the team stayed in a village in the jungle. A strain of malaria transmitted by mosquito had already killed two children there. The team’s doctor was powerless to do anything: he said the onset of the virus was so fierce that there was no way to treat it locally. But the virus had an incubation period, and if it were possible to discover certain indications that might show up during that time, the entire village could undergo a physical exam, and those found to be infected treated.