KILLER GERMS.

FOR YEARS, THE OLD SOVIET UNION BUILT A SECRET PROGRAM FOR GERM WARFARE. TODAY THE SOVIET UNION IS GONE. BUT THE DEADLY GERMS ARE STILL ALIVE.

In the spring of 1988, germ scientists 850 miles east of Moscow were ordered to undertake their most critical mission.

The scientists, working in great haste and total secrecy, first transferred hundreds of tons of anthrax bacteria--enough to destroy the world's people many times over--into giant stainless-steel canisters. They were trying to cover up a massive program of germ warfare by their government, the Soviet Union.

The scientists poured bleach on the germs to try to kill the anthrax, a deadly disease usually afflicting livestock. They then packed the canisters onto a train two dozen-cars long, and sent the cargo almost a thousand miles across Russia and Kazakhstan to this remote island in the heart of the Aral Sea, American and Central Asian officials say.

Here Soviet soldiers dug huge pits and poured the sludge into the ground, burying the germs and, Moscow hoped, a grave political threat.

At the time, Russia was part of the Soviet Union, a global superpower that had long vied with the West but now sought closer ties with it. Evidence was mounting in Washington that the Soviet Union was producing deadly germs that had been banned by a 1972 treaty. The stockpile had to be destroyed in case the United States and Britain demanded an inspection.

Today, Vozrozhdeniye (voz-ROZ-deh-ni-yeh) Island, or Renaissance Island, as it translates from the Russian, is shared by the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. It is the world's largest anthrax burial ground. For the last four years, American military scientists and intelligence experts have been secretly invited to survey the island and take samples of the buried bacteria.

ALIVE AND DEADLY

What they have found is stunning, the experts say. Tests of soil samples show that although the anthrax was soaked in bleach at least twice--once in the 66-gallon containers, and again after it was dumped and buried under three to five feet of sand--some spores are still alive and potentially deadly.

Normally, anthrax is spread from animals to people by direct contact, and is treatable with antibiotics if detected immediately. But the Soviets were working on a strain to be disbursed as an aerosol poison. If breathed in by humans, it would produce a pneumonia that would rapidly cause respiratory distress, followed by death.

"We have always known that anthrax is hard to kill," says one military expert, who would discuss the issue only if he was not identified. "But this strain has proven especially durable, and this wasn't even the most powerful strain the Soviets made."

President Boris Yeltsin of Russia dosed the site in 1992 and vowed that the laboratory would be dismantled and decontaminated within three years. But the cash-strapped Moscow government never followed through. And Russia has never acknowledged responsibility for the anthrax cemetery here.

Uzbek officials said it was only after their country became independent in 1992 that they understood the implications of their biological legacy.

"We were shocked when we first learned the real picture," says Isan Mustafoev, the country's Deputy Foreign Minister.

RISK OF DISASTER

And today the chance that these germs could escape is greater than ever. The surrounding sea's surface water has shrunk by half, its volume reduced by 75 percent as a result of wrong-headed Soviet irrigation policies. "The sea is dying," says Yusup S. Kamalov, an Uzbek scientist who heads the Union for the Defense of the Aral Sea, an independent environmental group.

The shrinking sea means that this deserted, isolated island will soon be connected to the mainland. Already the island has grown in size from 77 square miles to 770. Uzbek and Kazakh experts fear the buried anthrax spores could escape, stirred up by carriers like gophers and other rodents, lizards and birds, and brought to Uzbek and Kazakh territory. Central Asian and American officials also fear that as access to the island becomes easier, the buried anthrax could be dug up by terrorists and used to make more of it.

Most germ-weapon scientists familiar with the island say there is little immediate danger to the local population as long as the anthrax remains undisturbed. But in some of the pits, anthrax sludge is beginning to leach up through the sand, one recent visitor says.

"We're now totally in the dark," says Ian Small of the volunteer physicians' group Doctors Without Borders, a relief agency serving the local population. "It's scary not to know what we're dealing with."