I hadn't given much thought to what my KGB contact would look like, but I didn't expect the man who now extended his hand to me. He said, "Good day, I'm Sergei Ivanovich." He was a young guy in acid-washed blue jeans and a tan windbreaker. I wondered at first if he was really KGB.

He was casual and friendly. I immediately felt at ease with him. His English was rusty, not much better than my Russian, but going back and forth between the two languages, we managed to communicate.

Though we met outside a cafe, it was too nice a day to go inside; nowhere does spring seem more of a miracle than in Siberia, so we agreed to go sit in the park.

He knew I was a journalist and told me right away, "I am interviewing you. You are not interviewing me." And just to further set things straight, he told me, "this is all official." I was not a special case, and the KGB was not doing me any favors, regardless of how the interview had been set up.

He opened his briefcase and took out his notepad, the only thing in it. The small pad could just as easily have been slipped into a pocket. I needed to convince him that I should be granted entrance to Tomsk 7, one of Russia's few remaining closed cities. Tomsk 7 contains the world's largest nuclear facility and 100,000 people whose lives revolve around it. The city had built nuclear weapons, and until Glasnost, its existence had been secret. Tomsk 7 drew the worried attention of the world in 1993 when a plutonium reprocessing plant there exploded.

"So, why do you want to go to Tomsk 7," he asked. I took a deep breath and began my speech: I had heard there was an independent television station there, and as I had done a story on the station in Tomsk, I wanted to write about that one too. I had practiced a formal argument, about how such an article would show the country's progress towards democracy, and so on, but it seemed overblown now. Sergei Ivanovich appeared more than willing to let me in.

"Well, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be allowed to go," he said, "but, unfortunately, the decision is not up to me. I'll discuss it with my superiors and get back to you."

With the interview formally over, his job was done. But I was the first American he had met, and he was certainly the first KGB agent I had encountered, so we kept talking. We hit it off as if a mutual friend had introduced us at a party. "Just call me Sergei," he said. I thought, maybe he's been trained to get along with Americans, or maybe I've just seen too many movies. We went to lunch.

In a nearly empty students' cafeteria, he told me that he would never have had imagined that he'd end up as a KGB agent. He had never wanted to be one, things had just worked out that way after graduating from the military academy. He'd answered an ad in the newspaper, and had been an agent now for ten years.

The official business seemed far behind us when he asked, "What do you really want to see in Tomsk 7?"

"I want to see everything," I said. He chuckled, and told me that he had lived in Tomsk 7 for most of his life. The city itself holds no secrets, he said. It's not so different from Tomsk. In fact, he thought it could be opened, as long as the plant was guarded. But, of course, that decision was Moscow's.

Most requests to enter the city are still refused, he said. Just a month ago native of Tomsk 7 who married an American in Moscow applied for a visa for his wife and him to visit his family. They were denied. "Why?" I asked. Sergei shrugged. "It's a closed city."

Sergei walked me to the bus stop. "If you get into Tomsk 7, are you going to tell people that the KGB helped you do it?" he asked.

Remembering that everything was being done officially, I said "I will say only that I met with a KGB agent for a very official interview... and then had lunch."

A friend of mine had arranged for me to meet with Sergei Ivanovich. His name was Andrei, and though he worked in Tomsk, he had lived in Tomsk 7 all his life. He was a cautious but good-humored guy. I had lunch with him almost everyday. The whole thing started one night at a party. We'd had a lot to drink, and Andrei was telling me about life in Tomsk 7. He is free to come and go as he pleases, but friends and relatives from outside the city must get a visa to visit him. The only way to phone into the city is from a single outdoor phone at the guarded city gates, a 20-minute drive from Tomsk. Mail comes to the city only through a single box in Tomsk's main post office where, previously, it was inspected by the KGB. A common nickname for Tomsk 7 is Potchtovi, meaning post office box.

Things in Russia may have changed, but people from Potchtovi aren't as free as other Russians. Just this year, he said, a friend of his had tried to go to America, but the KGB had somehow prevented him. The guy hadn't even worked on anything sensitive, he said. To leave the country, all residents of Tomsk 7 must apply to the ministry of nuclear energy, even if they don't work at the combine. "I should be able to go wherever I want," he declared. "I should be able to have my friends visit me anytime. Fucking Tomsk 7! Fucking K.G.B.!" he shouted in English, nearly exhausting his lexicon. He brooded for a moment then, wide-eyed, declared, "You will visit me in Tomsk 7, You'll be a guest in my home."

A couple weeks later, he told me he might have found a way. "Guess who I was drinking with last night?" he asked, after being grumpy all morning with a hang over. It turned out that Tomsk 7's Chief of KGB was an occasional drinking buddy of his! "He's a regular guy," a physicist like Andrei himself. Andrei had told him about me, and he said he would see what he could. A couple days later, the KGB called the office to ask about me.

Andrei was a bit shaken by the call. I think he found it hard to believe that he had asked the KGB to do something that had never been done before, to have an American visit a Russian in Tomsk 7. Such a request would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. I was thrilled to have the KGB inquiring about me. Andrei laughed at my enthusiasm, "Oh sure, you think it's great, but I'll probably end up in jail." About a week after the first call, the KGB rang again and told me where and when to meet Sergei Ivanovich and present my case.

For weeks, Andrei and I joked about what we would do if I ever got to Potchtovi. We'd go to Tomsk 7's little zoo and then retire to Andrei's flat and drink Altoiskoye ´Pivo, reputedly one of Western Siberia's best brews, impossible to find in Tomsk but readily available in Potchtovi.

Shortly before my first meeting with Sergei Ivanovich, Andrei advised me, "Don't say anything about ´Altaiskoye Pivo or the zoo to the KGB. Tell them you want to do a story about Potchtovi's independent TV studio," he said. I hadn't know there was an independent TV studio. I wondered who had thought of it, but I accepted the suggestion.

I met with Sergei Ivanovich for a second time. He said it looked like I might be able to go. I'd have to propose a schedule for the visit, and Andrei needed to get me an invitation from Studio-7 and a letter of permission from the city administration. "None of this will be a problem," he said casually, as if it had already been arranged. "All this paperwork is to satisfy the old thinkers."

If all went well, he said, I'd be allowed into the city from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. He warned me that not everyone in Potchtovi would be happy to see an American visiting their city. "I hope you don't meet any people like that," he said

* * *

The fledgling independent television station in Tomsk, TV-2, has weekly news program about Tomsk 7. Yabloka Razdora, The Apple of Contention, began airing in January 1994 and is hosted by a gruff old journalist named Victor Losha. He has gained near-free access to the city and investigates issues ranging from the effects of the April 1993 explosion to the plant's safety to its history. Losha, who was the first journalist ever to enter the Siberian Chemical Combine, has become an expert on the city. "I know everything that can be known," he huffed with a smile. Excerpts of his program have been purchased by Japanese state T.V. for a documentary on Russian nuclear power.

Up until the explosion, almost nothing had been reported about the secret city. In fact, until 1989, Soviet journalists were forbidden even to mention Potchtovi, and journalism was altogether banned inside the city.

"Socialism was a great restriction on certain spheres of life," said Losha, and it was doubly true for those in Tomsk 7. Like the weapons they produced, the citizens of Tomsk 7 were top secret and were guarded with equal intensity. Some of the city's inhabitants are among the most highly trained scientists in the world and thus among of the country's most valuable assets. From the experts at the plant to the KGB that guards them, Losha said, "It is not by chance that one comes to work there."

Many of the experts sent to deal with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster were from Tomsk 7. Not just the scientists, but also KGB officials specially trained in protecting state secrets.

For all the restrictions, there were at least as many rewards. Tomsk 7 has always been a privileged place to live. "Everything was special." Wages were much higher than the national average, and a direct train line from Moscow supplied the city with, among other things, food and consumer goods entirely unavailable to rest of the region. "Nothing was spared," Losha said.

Once they were called heroes. "They were always conscious of what they were doing," he said, and they got constant moral support from the government. "They felt taken care of. They felt safe." Their dangerous work was essential to the survival of the country.

Glasnost and Peristrioka "came to Tomsk 7 like an explosion," said Losha. They had everything they needed; the system worked for them. "They didn't want any changes." As the barriers to free speech came down, Tomsk 7 was suddenly embroiled in vicious controversy. People hated them for their privileges and the threat the plant posed to the region's health. But the greatest shock was that their fellow countrymen condemned them for what they were once called noble. "The environmental movement and your dear Greenpeace," growled Losha, labeled them "Enemies of Mankind."

In addition to the hurtful criticism, the future grew uncertain. Before, the workers at the plant could count on hefty pensions and the best health care. But with the collapse of their Soviet Union, the Cold War fizzled out, and Moscow impoverished and messed up, Potchtovi became confused and depressed. It seems quite possible that low morale played a part in the carelessness that lead to the 1993 explosion.

According to Losha, the April accident resulted from "a combination of human errors that would not have been dangerous in and of themselves." The underground tank used in reprocessing, which contained Uranium and Plutonium, he said, burst because the substances were mixed out of order while the acidity in the container was allowed to get too high.

The radioactive cloud which formed was blown away from both Tomsk 7 and its big brother, Tomsk. A small village north of Potchtovi, Georgievka, was not so lucky. Reportedly, radioactive contamination was under international safety limits, but the village's children were evacuated as a precaution.

Today, the Siberian Chemical Combine is under contract with France, Sweden, and Siemanns of Germany to reprocess nuclear waste. And, according to Losha, negotiations are currently underway with the U.S. to have American nuclear waste reprocessed at the Tomsk 7 plant. The combine also continues to produce nuclear explosives to replace charges in existing weapons, which degrade with time.

The restrictions of the past have been loosened, but not so much as in the rest of the country. For instance, while one-third of all KGB employees nation-wide have been sacked, there have been no KGB cutbacks in Potchtovi, Losha claimed. Nevertheless, there has been some "deterioration of discipline" in Tomsk 7. The guarded border shields the city from the wide-spread crime that has bruised the rest Russia, but according to Losha, crime in Tomsk 7 has risen at the same rate as it has in Tomsk. So, whereas there was some crime in Tomsk a few years ago and now racketeering is rampant, there was no crime in Potchtovi and now a car is occasionally stolen.

In an attempt to change Tomsk 7's image as a secret nuke factory and mini-Chernobyl, its cryptic name has been changed to something more provincial, even quaint --Seversk, meaning northern town. Each of the ten cities that remained closed in Russia, the "Nuclear 10," have been given new names. "Stupid and meaningless names that have no connection with history or culture," spat Losha. "No one likes them." Krasnayarsk 26 and Penza 19 now have names like Sniegersk, Snowville. Of course, the KGB's name has been changed too, but I don't remember it. Nobody uses it.

Changing Potchtovi's name has not made the city's inhabitant's more like ordinary Russians. "Everyone who goes there senses the difference," said Losha, who spends two or three days a week in Seversk. "Their mentalities are greatly different from those of the people in Tomsk and of Russia in general."

First of all, they are nostalgic, he said --by which he meant, for instance, that Potchtovi is home to the region's largest branch of the Communist Party. "They were brought up by the system" to be the keepers of state secrets. "They are very cautious about their work. They are not afraid, they are responsible and believe the secrets of the city should not be disclosed," said Losha.

The Japanese film crew which bought parts of Yabloko Razdora, said Losha, beginning an anecdote, were not allowed into the city, but were given verbal permission to film the gates. A babushka going through passport control spotted them and immediately tugged on the sleeve of a guard to point them out. They were detained until their authorization was verified.

* * *

Occasionally, while I lived in Tomsk, I helped out with English classes at the Pedagogical Institute. At one such time, I mentioned my interest in Tomsk 7. After class, a guy named Vitaly introduced himself. "Do you know about Georgievka?" he asked. "I am from Georgievka." He lives in Tomsk, now, however, and invited me to dinner to talk about his village.

He had a nice flat, and lived there with his girlfriend, his teenage younger sister, and his brother, who couldn't have been much older than 11. The two young women were students like himself, but the little boy was there for safety. His mother still lived in Georgievka.

Right after the explosion, Vitaly said, people from the combine put up signs around the village warning of radiation, warning not to pick berries or mushrooms or to hunt. Now, after only a year, most of the signs have been taken down, he said. "People think it's all over. They think they can live without fear."

A week later, Vitaly took me to Georgievka to meet his family. It's a about an hour's drive from Tomsk, and we passed through several little villages on the way, each looked the same: log houses and sheds made of scrap wood, muddy yards with a pig or some geese. It was early May, sunny and warm, and between the villages were patches of tall still-bare birches and stands of pine.

"We're getting close to Georgievka," Vitaly announced and pointed out a road sign warning of radioactive contamination. We got out to take readings with a hand-held, geiger counter. Nothing unusual.

Dirt roads run to Georgievka, but the single road running through the village is paved. The government paved it after the explosion to cut down on radioactive dust.

As we pulled up to Vitaly's family home, barking dogs and a fat red-faced man, one of his uncles, came out to greet us. It was a scarcely furnished old house with slanting floors and two or three beds in each room. It was a pleasant and comfortable place, better than an apartment in the city.

Everyone was preparing sprouted potatoes for the spring planting. Vitaly's sister was there helping out. She and her cheerful mother sat on the floor sorting out heaps of tendriled potatoes.

Vitaly took me to meet another one of his uncles. We found him working on his dump truck just off the village's swath of asphalt. Alexander Temofievich was a big, barrel-chested man. He had a round face with a wide jack-o'-lantern grin and witty eyes. He was a farmer.

The wind swirled dust around us as we were introduced. I held my breath. Suddenly, our meter started chirping and the digits on the display spun towards 100. We stopped talking and watched.

"Oh," said Vitaly, "It's on the wrong setting," and with the flick of a switch silenced the thing. Still, it was enough to make us all a bit more uncomfortable about the dust, so we moved our interview into the cab of Alexander Timofievich's truck.

He had not been in the village when Tomsk 7 exploded. When he heard it on the radio, "I was shocked and afraid for my family and business," he said. Everyone in the village found out from the radio. It said no one was in danger. A week passed before officials told Georgievka it had been contaminated. Nevertheless, regional politicians and officials from the combine continued to assured the villagers that there was no reason for concern.

Temofievich had tried to find out what was going on for himself. When he went to the regional governor, "He patted me on the back and told me that everything was all right." Unsatisfied, he borrowed a military radiation meter. "The results exceeded my imagination," he said. He found spots around his home where radiation levels far exceeded the norm.

Scientists came to the village and took soil samples, put up signs, and paved the road --"Our own little Autobaun," he called it bitterly. There were investigations by scientists from the U.S., France, Germany and Sweden. The studies all contradict each other, he said. "One commission says there is no heavy metal contamination; another says there is."

The international press reported that Georgievka's children were evacuated after the explosion. Temofievich said it was more than a month before anyone was moved out. The kids were sent to "rest homes" in Poland and western Russia at the expense of the chemical combine. They were brought back, however, after only a month --except for the children of the wealthy and well-connected, he said. Now, the Combine pays to have the kids get checkups twice a year.

For 3 months after the explosion each of the 40-some families in the village received 3,000 rubles as compensation from the government --a nearly useless sum, even then. They were also given food, though not much, some meat, vegetables and "bad apples," said Temofievich. "Nothing of significance was done. Everything they did was for show. Our personal well-being is not their concern."

Surprisingly, few people have moved away from the village. People have actually moved in. "It's those people from Potchtovi," he chuckled. "They're optimists; they're not afraid of anything."

Alexander Temofievich's livelihood has been all but destroyed by the Tomsk 7 accident. "No one wants meat from Georgeivka," he said motioning to the pigs roaming around outside the truck. He had been prosperous before the accident and had had plans to enlarge his farm. "But all that is impossible, now," he said. It's even difficult to find people to work for him now. Everyone is afraid to live in Georgievk

There is not much he can do. He checks his meat and milk for radiation, but, he said, "we don't have the equipment to do it properly." He keeps his animals away from areas known to be contaminated and buys "clean" fodder from outside the region. "Once," he said, "I asked the regional governor about getting some kind of compensation, and he laughed in my face."

As he spoke of the last year's trouble, It was clear how heavily it weighed on him. It was in his voice and eyes and in the urgent way he smoked his cigarettes. "I am a strong man, but sometimes I don't think I can take it," he said, looking away. In the months after the explosion he was so worried about his family and his business that he nearly had a nervous breakdown.

"They say everything is 'O.K.,' but whether it's true or not, nobody knows. Even now, we can't say how dangerous it is here. Nobody can tell." He stopped for a moment.

"I can tell you how much faith the foreigners had in those reports," he said, "they all left."

We paused for a moment and laughed at the pigs fighting in the dirt. The men in the other truck, who were waited for Alexander Temofievich and smoking, were laughing too. I asked, "Are you afraid?"

"If I was afraid, I wouldn't be here," he said unconvincingly. "Besides," he added, "We don't have a choice, afraid or not. My money is invested in this farm and in my home. We've got too many relatives here. We can't leave them."

The interview was over. The Russian farmer turned and spoke the story's conclusion, "The dust we breathe, the water we drink, we think it is dangerous."

As Vitaly and I walked back to the road, we met an old Georgian with his little granddaughter. We talked a bit as we watched his Vnuchka waddle back and forth, picking up stones, twigs, and handfuls of powdery dirt.

I asked the smiling grandfather if he wasn't worried about the child's health, about plutonium in the dirt. Smile unwaning, he shrugged, "They say it's safe. How can we live if we worry all the time. We've gotten used to it."

Then he asked to borrow my radiometer and checked the ground around the little girl. She wanted to play with it. The levels read normal. He handed the meter to Vitaly's red-faced uncle, who had come down the road to meet us. He grinned and joked, "He can't live without radiation."

We went back to the family home. I hoped they wouldn't invite me to lunch. But sure enough, before we even got in the door, I could smell that Vitaly's mother had made Borsht. The table was set for a meal.

Vitaly and I went out back to wash our hands with a hose. Crouching on a plank laid over the mud, we lathered our hands. "Please don't be afraid," he said.

Homemade Borsht, tomatoes and cucumbers in farm-fresh sour cream, pork ribs from Alexander Temofievich, and that morning's milk --"The dust we breathe, the water we drink..."

I ate the Borsht and the vegetables in sour cream. I said I wasn't very hungry and didn't eat the pork. I said I didn't like milk. When lunch was done, I complimented Vitaly's Mom profusely. Ashamed.

Vitally had to get back to Tomsk for a class. He kissed his mother goodbye. His uncle walked us out, past the dogs that now wagged their tails. I sat in the back seat of his car and rolled down the window. The red-faced uncle told me that he had been close to the explosion. As the car backed out of the driveway onto Georgievka's autobaun, he called to me, "But I am still alive. We are all still alive."

* * *

On April 15, 1994, a year after the explosion, an article in the Tomsk Weekly began:

The berries were the size of beans. Sweet, juicy. The kids of Nadezhda left not a single tree unpicked. The mushroom harvest was unbelievable. Whites, Underaspens, Butternicks, big and thick, each better than the last.

If anyone even tried to link such an autumn harvest with the April explosion of the Siberian Chemical Combine, they were shamed in front of everyone, accused of panicking and other womanly "exaggerations."

Beginning in May of last year, the author, Vera Masai, went on to report, the number of children in the Tomsk region hospitalized for "broncho-lung disorders" has doubled.

Suspicious, Professor Tamara Vasilievna Matkovskaya investigated. She found that many of the children had unusually low white blood cell counts and some had low hemoglobin levels. With the support of the District Health Authority, Professor Matkovskaya conducted a survey of children's health in Georgievka, Naumovka and Nadezhda, all villages in "the explosion area."

First, she found that none of the villages had doctors. "Nobody wants to live in a furnace," added Masai. "The doctors know better than anyone what can happen from living in the area of such an explosion."

She also found unhealthy children. "Have you ever seen a school with dead silence during recess? A school that does not have a single bully who runs down the halls and annoys every passerby? Where the girls do not play their favorite jump-rope games? Naumovka's school is like that." Matkovskaya and her team examined 213 children in the three small villages. "None of the children evaluated could be called healthy." Many of the kids reported that in months after the explosion they experienced vomiting, headaches and diarrhea.

Additional, more thorough, examinations found that an abnormal number of the children suffered from health problems including vascular dystrophy, anomalies of the gall bladder and heart, ailments of the central nervous system, and digestive tract infections. All of which is proof, asserts the author, "that these children were not capable of fighting or resisting any infection."

The article concludes, "It would be a gift from God if everything ended with 'small blood,' but the hematologists assert that an epidemic of blood diseases can be expected in Tomsk and surrounding areas for four or five years."

I spoke to a young Oncologist and Gynecologist in Tomsk named Alexi Tetarin. Cancer rates in the area are high, he told me, especially for female genital and breast cancers. The female reproductive organs, he said, are particularly sensitive to radiation. He believes that the Siberian Chemical Combine is at least partially to blame.

Tetarin and most of his colleagues at Tomsk's cancer hospital are extremely skeptical of the official reports, and they expect to see cancer rates increase in the next decade, he said.

* * *

People in Tomsk have never been too fond of Potchtovi. Besides the health threat the plant poses, of which they are constantly reminded by the LED display of current radiation levels in the front of the old Communist Party building, Tomskers harbor a certain amount of jealousy towards the inhabitants of Seversk. "Potchtuki are spoiled snobs," a frank Siberian might say. "They brag about how much nicer life is there, how the streets are cleaner and safer, how the stores have everything."

"It's not so bad, now" a woman in Tomsk told me, but a few years back, it was difficult just to find enough food and other basic necessities in Tomsk, but Potchtovi had plenty. "Nobody liked them then," she said. About that time, people from Tomsk 7 gained a new nickname, Hobot, which translates as "the trunk of an elephant" and means about the same as the cat's meow.

* * *

On May 30, I visited Tomsk 7. Sergei Ivanovich instructed Andrei and me to meet him at 9:30 in front of a store in Tomsk. The day began with an appropriate omen.

Have you ever seen a missile stop at a redlight? As Andrei and I clattered up to our stop in a city trollibus, that is what we saw, a military truck with a 40-foot missile in tow waiting at a traffic light. The rocket was covered loosely with a few white sheets, and from a gap in its bedding stuck a red fin like a bare limb. I reached for my camera.

I don't know if it's still illegal to take pictures of military equipment, but they used to take your film away just for photographing Aeroflot liners. Sergei was obviously uncomfortable and walked ahead while I snapped away.

A moment later, with the rocket rolling away down the road, he smiled and shook his head as I laughed. He wasn't sure why I found a rocket at a red light in front of a busy grocery store so amusing.

Sergei Ivanovich was driven up in a white Volga. He stepped out wearing a dark pin-stripe suit. Now, he looked he like a KGB agent, and for the first time since I began the project, I was nervous.

More serious than usual, Ivanovich greeted us and ushered us into the car. Just as the doors slammed, Andrei announced that I had photographed a rocket. He said it like a joke, but it was too daring, not typical of his better-safe-than-sorry personality; had things really relaxed so much that you could joke about such things with the KGB? I felt a flash of panic and my eyes zipped to see Sergei Ivanovich's reaction. He turned around and said, "photographing missiles are you?" A mock scolding. Had Andrei ratted on me? It was certainly not a joke. I guess he thought I shouldn't have taken those pictures, or else he wasn't sure. He wanted to keep us both out of trouble, so he was checking.

As we drove through Kashtak, a hill-top area of Tomsk, a muddy planet of 9-storied cement slab apartment buildings, the radio played flamenco. I thought, 'I'm being chauffeured into a restricted military zone by the KGB. Could things be stranger?' And as if on cue, there was the missile parked on the side of the road, like a delivery truck. The driver was nowhere in sight.

"He probably stopped at home for lunch," said Sergei Ivanovich. We laughed because it was probably true.

For about twenty minutes we drove on a straight road through the taiga. With the pines towering up at our sides, it was almost as if we were in a tunnel. The city gates came up like a toll booth or like any other border, just a fence in the way.

We let Andrei out to go through passport control. "I hope you have your visa," Ivanovich smiled at him. "We'll see you at 12:30."

Cars are checked through the border one by one. Each is ushered into one of three fenced corrals where soldiers examine papers and look in the trunk and back seat. We were waved through without question. "It's a special car," Ivanovich explained.

We passed the city monument, an indescribable bit of Soviet art, something like an atom. The name on it had been changed to Seversk. We drove a bit more through the woods, amongst which were some old log houses that pre-dated the nuclear age.

As we entered Tomsk 7, the trees pulled back and the road widened. It was Stalin's Emerald City. Clean and green. We were on Lenin Street, and it was lined by a broad swathe of hedges and trees and flower beds.

The difference between Tomsk and Potchtovi was immediately clear. Tomsk is an old city, of course, and the streets are too narrow for trees, but almost every building on Tomsk's Lenin Street is dilapidated, several are collapsing. Apartments in Seversk have lawns. In Tomsk, most residential areas look like construction sites, the ground torn up and littered with building scraps.

Sergei Ivanovich took me to the city's new, white marble school. Again, it was a complete contrast with Tomsk, where even the university buildings are crumbling, and the professors don't make enough money to live on. A class of English students awaited me. I was the first English speaker to visit their school. Even the teacher, who spoke quite well, had met only one other American. The students, most in their mid teens, were all well dressed and orderly. They didn't ask the questions that I am most asked by people their age, questions such as "Do you have a car? How many rooms are in your house? How many TVs and VCRs do you have?" and so on. Maybe the Potchtuki kids were shy, or maybe they had their own TVs and VCRs.

Towards the end of the session, one student invited me to speak Russian and ask them some questions. "How do you like living in a closed city?" I asked.

A pretty blond girl immediately piped up, "Everything is better. We don't have crime. The city is clean. There are better things in the stores." Her classmates broke into uncomfortable laughter and her teachers blushed.

"So, you don't think the city should be opened?" I asked.

"Oh, no," everyone agreed.

"Is it fair that Seversk is spared the difficulties the rest of the country suffers, especially crime, and lives better than most Russians ever have? Is it democratic?" I asked. They said nothing for a moment; then another girl answered that it was fair because their parents' work was difficult and dangerous. The rest quickly agreed.

Our time was up, but they invited me to come back. "I'd like to," I said, "but it's not entirely up to me," I smiled and looked over to Sergei Ivanovich. I figured everybody knew who he was, but a teacher later told us that the kids thought he was my bodyguard.

Once outside, I asked Sergei why he had brought me to the school. "Is one of your kids in the class?" I asked.

He chuckled wryly. "No," he said, "a friend of mine is one of the school's administrators. He asked me if I could get an English speaker to visit. I said I could, but he didn't believe me." He paused and smiled. "So we bet on it. I won the bet," he chuckled. I remembered how he had insisted that my visit was "official," and laughed.

We met Andrei in Seversk's central square in the shadow of a monstrous statue of Lenin. In his wind-blown trench coat, the leader holds up one hand as if he had made the entire town instantly appear. But Lenin didn't look quite right. Though he was about 4 stories high, he seemed a bit squat, as if his own iron shoulders were crushing him.

We were late for my meeting at Studio 7, but before going, I asked Sergei Ivanovich to take a few snap shots of me at the stocky Lenin's great feet.

"How does an independent television station function in a closed city?" I asked Studio 7's Managing Director Georgi Nikolaevich Radygin. Andrei, a translator, and I were crowded into his small office. A television above our heads played a soccer game, and the station's Programing Director stood in the doorway. Radygin hesitated before answering.

"There is some question about the independence of the station," he said. The city administration and the Komsomol had provided all the studio's initial funds. Moreover, 51% of the Board of Directors is controlled by the city and the rest is held by the Russian Union of Youth (the new name for the Komsomol), of which Radygin himself is the First Secretary. "For this reason, we can only really say that it is only partially independent," he said. How is that independent at all, I asked?

The newscasts and other programing are unrestricted, he said. "We can say what we want to say. We may discuss all issues and criticize." For instance, it was through Studio 7 that GreenPeace warned Seversk of the possible consequences of the April explosion. Of course, they had to have official permission to do so.

In their reporting of the accident, Radygin said, Studio 7 "did not try to calm people" but neither did it sensationalize the incident. The national media, he said ironically, gave the impression that "we were encompassed in a cloud of radiation." The station was the first to report the explosion, though not until 4 hours after it occurred.

"The progressive movement gives us hope that the government cannot influence us," said Radygin. "I want to say that establishing an independent television station in a closed city is progress."

Where Radygin was mild and conservative, his much-younger right-hand man, Programing Director Alexi Baguzov, was sharp-edged and a bit cocky. In Radygin's absence, Baguzov told me that the boundaries of the station's freedom had really never been tested. He believes that the city administration would clamp down if the station were to broadcast "serious criticisms of the combine." But right now, he said, "the sheep are safe, and the wolf is not hungry."

After the interview, we met up with Oleg, the camera man for Victor Losha's program and toured the city in his car with a video camera out the window. Up Lenin Street and down Communist Avenue, all was green and nicely taken care of. There are no bad areas of Seversk. There are no poor, no beggars as in Tomsk.

The monuments to Soviet Communism still stand in Potchtovi, --the giant hammers and sickles, Lenin's resolute grimace, the Bolshevik slogans on the sides of buildings, and the photograph displays of good workers-- but their red paint is faded and peeling. No one can bring themselves to restore the symbols of the past, and yet, no one can bring themselves to tear them down.

The pigeon aviaries all along the city fence by the river, however, were in good shape. "Why is keeping pigeons so popular," I asked?

"Understand," said Oleg, "when things are popular, it's because everyone has to do it. They take you by the neck and show you what your hobby is."

"It's not that way now," Andrei objected.

"See that field over there," Oleg continued, "On Saturdays there's a whole crowd there flying model airplanes." You have to choose. You can do pigeons or planes.

We stopped to have a look at the walls of our pen. The entire city is surrounded by four 15-foot-high fences topped with curls of razor wire and rigged with motion sensors. "Sometimes racoons set off the alarms," Oleg said. I took pictures, and as always, it made Andrei antsy. "Those pictures should only be for you, okay?" he said. "Don't publish them." The KGB had let me in with my camera, but he was still uneasy.

Oleg dropped us off at the zoo, declining an invitation to join us. The entrance was marked with a life-size statue of a polar bear and cub. I joked about the two-headed animals which we were certain to find inside. The camel had two humps but only one head.

Beyond the extravagance of just having a zoo in the middle of Siberia, it was unimpressive, a small zoo with small cages. It was feeding time. All the carnivores got fish, and the whole place stank of it. A group of small kids were led slowly from cage to cage, past the camel, the llama, the mountain goat, and then through the building housing the animals less equipped for Siberia, the crocodile, snakes, a barrel-worth of monkeys, piranhas, and so on. They watched the baboon act autistic and the bears and wolves pace vacantly back and forth in their cells. The kids seemed pleased, and thus the zoo had fulfilled its purpose. The nuclear physicists' kids were happy.

I was beginning to get a feel for the city now, or at least the part that made it so strange, like the zoo, which wasn't made to serve any kind of educational purpose, as a resource for study. If its designers had wanted to do that, it would have been built in Tomsk, where everybody could use it. The kids in Potchtovi are free to go to Tomsk. The zoo was created solely to demonstrate the people of Tomsk 7 their own privilege. It was part of the military complex, built in the same spirit as seaside resorts for soldiers.

And the T.V. station, it was a new kind of pacifier, one for the New Democratic Russia. They say it's independent, free, but it's really under the city administration's thumb. It was all for show --just like those "bad apples" and the 3,000 rubles a month given to the families of Georgievka.

Of course, as Radygin said, there is progress, but the old system dies slowly. One could only expect it to take even longer in a place like Tomsk 7. Incidentally, I understand that school kids from Tomsk are now allowed fieldtrips to the Potchtovi zoo, so they can see the privileges of Potchtovi too.

Andrei and I bought a couple beers at a kiosk. As we popped open the cans, he toasted my visit.

"And to you," I said, raising my can, "the first citizen of Tomsk 7 to have a foreign visitor. The man who pulled down the fence, the man who opened Tomsk 7."

He turned a bit serious, "No, that's not me." He didn't want the city opened. He just thinks it should be easier to have friends over. In a poll done recently, he told me, 87 percent of the city's inhabitants think it should stay closed.

We went for a walk in the park. Amongst the tall pines, we came across a playscape of Soviet jet fighters soaring into the sky loaded with rockets --a blunt reminder of the Cold War that had been so much a part of both of our lives. Did you play on those, Andrei? I almost asked. But how could I? When I was a kid, Red Dawn had been one of my favorite movies. I told Andrei that one of those rockets had my name on it.

"Things are still being cleaned up from winter. Everything will look better in a few weeks," Sergei said as we strolled through the park. Things looked pretty good to me. Potchtovi must be a great place to be a kid, a little kid anyway. There was a sports stadium busy with runners and soccer practice; a kiddie carnival with a little carousel and ferris wheel. Down by the river there's a beach, too. They even have a sailing club.

On the way out of the park, we passed through a garden which used to be named for a Soviet writer, but his statue had been removed. "It's stupid," said Andrei, "They say now that Lenin was bad. They say Stalin was bad. Who's next?" I had never heard him say anything like that before. I nearly asked him if he didn't think Stalin was bad, but it was a nice day, we'd just been to the zoo. Who wants to argue? I knew the answer anyway. He would have said that Stalin had done a lot of terrible things, but that he had taken the country a long way, had kept it from being conquered. Though, perhaps, Stalin had done things to set up the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union, the country could certainly benefit from a leader with some of his better qualities today.

In the early evening, Seversk's sidewalks were crowded with people and the air full of mosquitos. Most of the stores were closed, but there were plenty of vendors. On nearly every corner, women in lab coats sold Kvas, a drink made from bread.

We went into a grocery store and bought bread and our Altaiskoye Pivo with Andrei's special Potchtovi credit card.

The store was better stocked and cleaner than the ones in Tomsk, but not by much. There was one thing though, the grocery store sold lingerie and so did almost all the stores in town. Another privilege? Later, I wondered about it to one of Andrei's neighbor's who joined us for dinner. "Yes, that's true," he laughed, there's more lingerie in Potchtovi than in Tomsk. "Moscow is trying to pacify us with lacy women's underwear," he joked.

We drank our delicious Altaiskoye in Andrei's nice three-room flat while his wife made dinner. We didn't talk about Tomsk 7 anymore. In fact, it was easy to forget we were even in a closed city. Now, I was seeing the other part Seversk, behind the facade.

Tomsk 7 was Andrei's hometown, no matter what else it was, and I was a guest in his home. Here was his wife and his next door neighbors and his daughter whom he adored. We were enjoying ourselves, having a nice dinner with friends --just living.

By the time we finished supper, it was quarter to ten. Time to go, Andrei reminded me. Such a shame, we still had plenty of beer, and we were all tired and comfortable.

"Really, Andrei, who's going to know if he spends the night?" said his wife.

"No, no, I'd better go," I said. "Thanks for everything. Dinner was wonderful." I had promised Sergei Ivanovich. Andrei would ride with me to the border.

As we stepped outside, the warmth of Andrei's home was still around us. It was perfect evening for a walk. Though it was light out until past midnight at that time of year, the light was soft, and the people on the street were just strolling, not hustling around as in the daytime. We got on Bus Number 40 to Tomsk.

How does one live in a closed city? It seemed pretty simple. But as we approached the border, the sight of the guards and the gates sobered me up. Would there be some kind of hassle? Would they want to check papers I didn't have? Do people ever really get used to this? The bus slowed to a crawl. A line of four soldiers stood on each side of us. They didn't stop the bus, they just watched as we passed.

* * *

"I used to think the city should be opened," Victor Losha told me a few days after my visit to Potchtovi, "Now, I do not."

It's been closed for 40 years. Two or three generations have lived their entire lives there. If the gates were opened, "the social stress would be ruinous," he said. People in Seversk couldn't deal with the chaos that rules so much of Russia. "They're work is dangerous and harmful," said Losha, "They need to be calm."

* * *

Sergei Ivanovich called me a week or so after my visit to Potchtovi. "I have a surprise for you," he said, "Meet me at 2 p.m. on Tuesday in front of the Kino Teatr."

"The KGB has a 'surprise' for me. If you don't see me on Wednesday, you'll know what happened," I joked to my friends.

"What can they do?" one replied. "You're already in Siberia."

It was June now and hot. The city buses were packed with sweaty people. The buses were always packed, but in the winter everyone wears thick coats, and riding a crowded bus is like being stacked between mattresses --quite a bit more pleasant than being pressed up against wet clothes and sticky skin.

The sidewalk in front of the movie house was full of vendors, Babushki selling ice cream, warm beer and soda, and flowers. I bought a glass of flavored water for 200 rubles. Sergei Ivanovich came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. He wore jeans and short sleeves, but still carried his black briefcase.

He led me down the street and around the corner. We entered a building with a large marble foyer and a reception desk. "Wait here," he told me and went to talk to the old woman behind the counter. She picked up a phone.

Shortly, a woman, smiling broadly, came down the stairs. "This is Yana Patrovna," Sergei said, she is the curator of the museum and will give us a tour of our collection of Russian Icons.

An Icon, she said as we stood before the gold-covered art, is not merely a religious painting. It is a window to the soul and to God. She spoke with such fire and spirit, I was mesmerized. And though she talked a mile a minute, I understood almost everything. "Do you understand me?" she would ask when I looked lost. Sergei would helped translate. He was beaming.

I never would have thought he'd bring me here.

With the tour over and me converted, Sergei Ivanovich pulled from his KGB briefcase, usually empty save for a notebook, a bouquet of flowers for our guide.