In fact, even if the initial concentration of chemical agents had been 10 times higher, it would not have created the required breakthrough effect. But nobody dared to say anything about that. With his usual brilliance, Dubov substantiated the need to expand in-depth research of adsorption of aerosolized chemical agents in the gas-mask filter.
Anyway, that work was not useless or wasted. Many new facts were discovered in the course of the research. In particular, it was discovered that the vapor of chemical agents remains unchanged on an adsorbent catalyst for a long time. I think this is a rather dangerous discovery for reasons of health protection. Somebody might try to develop a method of displacing toxic agents from the adsorptive catalyst and drive them into the lungs. On the other hand, this discovery creates a number of other disturbing questions about how gas masks can possibly be used again after they have been used for filtering contaminated air, for example at a factory for destroying chemical weapons.
What is the legal status of a contaminated gas mask? Can every used mask be regarded as a carrier of potentially hazardous chemical agents, even in small quantities? I am not ruling out the possibility of using gas-mask filters for the purposes of intelligence and industrial espionage.
Under the circumstances, it is interesting that the aforementioned graduate student, Valery Belikov, “discovered” a peculiar thermal effect in activated carbon, which allegedly took place when a chemical agent was breaking through the gas-mask filter. Of course, that was sheer juggling of the data, because, as my experiments convincingly proved, not one of the tested substances could break through the filter. However, none of this bothered Belikov, or prevented him from completing his work and defending his master’s thesis without a trace of embarrassment. I regret that I didn’t dare talk about this openly at the preliminary defense of Belikov’s thesis. At that time, I really did not want to enter into conflict with my new bosses, who certainly knew about everything.
After he received his degree, Belikov joined the Communist Party. He had to wait for his party membership for several years because of the notorious enrollment quotas set by the Central Committee of the CPSU: three workers to one intellectual.
It’s worth mentioning that Belikov was the last secretary of the Party Committee at GOSNIIOKhT. He was elected when the party had already fallen to pieces and only the department heads and Director Petrunin remained. President Yeltsin issued a decree after crushing the coup attempt in August of 1991, and it banned all political parties at enterprises.
Despite all the problems connected with his failed discovery, Bogomazov managed to get the maximum benefit from our collaboration.
Bogomazov was watching me at work with the Varian 3700, an American gas chromatograph, and he noticed that I was using the special tips filled with rubidium sulfate for the thermionic detector very thriftily and carefully. The tips were packaged together with the new chromatograph in small quantities, and when they were used up it was extremely difficult to buy new ones. My friend Sergey Pichidze from Shikhany used to supply me with them occasionally. At that time, however, I only had a very small stock of new ones.
Hard currency at that time was always in short supply in GOSNIIOKhT, and if we ran out of the detector tips, it could have stopped our experiments. Our repeated attempts to refill the used heads by pressing fine rubidium sulfate powder into them did not give us positive results. Maybe we were not persistent enough.
In the early 1980s, the Dzerzhinsk branch of the Special Design Bureau began making rather good gas chromatographs with a wide range of detectors including the one we needed – the thermionic detector with a rubidium sulfate tip. Unfortunately, it was very unstable in work, and its performance was changing all the time, making it practically useless for quantitative analysis of phosphorous-containing compounds.
Once, Bogomazov asked me for a used detector tip, so I gave it to him. I watched as he manipulated the head in some way, with the help of a solution, but I was rather skeptical about his attempts.
The next day, Bogomazov returned the old detector tip to me, but now it was restored and looked like a new one. I was intrigued and both of us stayed to work into the evening to test it out. Our tests showed splendid results. The detector showed a stable zero background and high sensitivity – no worse than the sensitivity guaranteed by Varian. We kept testing the detector for a whole week and results were always good. Our inventor soon restored all of my used detector tips, and solved the problem of purchasing new ones from the American manufacturer.
However, Bogomazov was not content with what had been achieved – his nature longed for grand-scale achievements. On the basis of this success he decided to remodel the thermionic detector of the Tsvet-110 gas chromatograph.
After he had made some changes, the domestic thermionic detector had practically the same sensitivity, selectivity, and stability characteristics as its American counterpart. Bogomazov immediately suggested starting up a plant at GOSNIIOKhT for manufacturing thermionic detectors for sale.
Although Director Patrushev supported Bogomazov’s idea, this plan was never realized. The market for these detectors was very limited, and the artificially low prices for chromatographs, fixed by Price Commission of the U.S.S.R. Council of Ministers, did not allow them to sell detectors at a price that would even cover the costs.
Bogomazov would not have been himself, if he allowed that to stop him. He always tried to get the maximum benefit from all his achievements, although that sometimes brought him bitter disappointment. He realized that he would never make a successful career searching for toxic agents capable of breaching the gas-mask filter, so he decided to switch over to thermionic tips.
At that time, Bogomazov’s stepbrother was the director of a large precious stone factory in Moscow. Leonid Brezhnev’s daughter often visited that factory, and she liked to fill up her handbag with diamond jewelry made there.
Bogomazov made contacts there with some people who provided services to powerful people. In this way, he met the future mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, who was then the director of the NPO Khimavtomatika. At that time, Luzhkov enjoyed the personal confidence of the Minister of Chemical Industry, Leonid Kostandov, and ran errands for him.
Khimavtomatika also had a section that participated in the Foliant program. In particular, it designed an automatic line for taking samples of Substance 33, and it arranged for their delivery to a laboratory at the chemical plant in Novocheboksary. Luzhkov was Director of Khimavtomatika and in charge of Khimavtomatika’s branch in Dzerzhinsk, so he was directly interested in improving the quality of Tsvet-110 chromatographs.
Evgeni Bogomazov with his innovative ideas came in very handy, and Luzhkov provided him with a laboratory and equipment at Khimavtomatika. Bogomazov began working there without pay, in the evenings and on his days off, mounting thermionic detector tips on new chromatographs.
It wasn’t at all difficult for the MACD graduate to arrange to have the new director of GOSNIIOKhT, Petrunin, visit Khimavtomatika. He went along with Luzhkov and “accidentally” visited the room where Bogomazov and his assistant were working. Luzhkov then told Petrunin about Bogomazov and his achievements, and he added that Bogomazov had to work at Khimavtomatika in the evenings because he probably couldn’t find understanding at GOSNIIOKhT.
Soon after that, Petrunin sent for Bogomazov and appointed him head of a new laboratory for the analysis of field test samples. That was the hour of Bogomazov’s shining glory.