man who came aboard as Belenko, panicked. «Jesus Christ! We've lost him already! Where in the hell did he go?»
Once Jim translated the exclamations, Belenko laughed along with the four CIA officers who were to accompany them, and all welcomed him in Russian. Belenko asked if they had any urgent questions, and the senior American replied much as Jim had over the Pacific: Relax; don't worry. There will be plenty of time to talk later. You're too tired now.
He was right. Days of tension, drama, anxiety, and time changes had drained him physically, intellectually, and emotionally. His impressions, sensations, and thoughts were blurred and imprecise, and he felt as if he were suspended midway in half-light between dream and reality.
The executive jet was to him a masterpiece of design, maneuvering as nimbly as a fighter while outfitted inside like an elegant hotel suite. Well, I knew they were rich and built good airplanes.
He sampled sandwiches set out on a table unfolded in the middle of the cabin — thick layers of turkey, corned beef, pastrami, cheese and lettuce and tomatoes, between slices of white, brown, and rye bread. He unhesitatingly requested instructions as to how to eat the sandwiches and wanted to know the contents of each. They're delicious. But they probably have good food in the KGB, too. And so what? I didn't come here for food.
There was something wrong with the CIA officers; at least something he expected was missing. In their late thirties or early forties, they looked too trim, too healthy; they were too neatly and, he thought, too expensively dressed; more troublesome, they were too much at ease, too casual, too friendly with each other and him, too, well, too open, too guileless. They wouldn't frighten anybody. But of course. They're not typical. They were picked for this. We know the Dark Forces are clever. This is their way of fooling me.
Over the western deserts and the Rockies, Belenko slept in what he was told, but did not believe, was the CIA director's bunk. He was served tea upon awakening, and an officer pointed to the lights of a sprawling city on the port side of the plane. «That's Chicago. It's famous for stockyards and gangsters.»
«Yes, the gangsters of Chicago are very famous in my country.»
«Which country do you mean?»
Belenko grinned. «I understand your point.»
They landed at Dulles Airport around 4:00 A.M. in darkness and heavy rain and drove for about an hour along back roads until the car turned into a long driveway. The headlights illuminated an imposing southern mansion built of red brick with tall windows, a double door, and a two-story veranda buttressed by white porticoes. Jim pointed to a bedroom and told him to sleep as long as he could. On the ceiling above the large bed, he spotted a fixture, either an airconditioning outlet or a smoke detector. He was sure it was a concealed television camera continuously focused upon him, but he was too exhausted to care.
Belenko awakened at midmorning startled. What's that nigger doing in my room? Although he had never seen a black person, the prejudices against blacks he had been taught and absorbed throughout his life were thoroughly ingrained. On a scale of ten, blacks ranked in bis eyes tenth, below Asian minorities of the Soviet population, below Jews. He warily eyed the middle-aged maid, who smiled at him, said something in English he did not understand, set down a tray bearing a pot of coffee and a pot of tea and a note scribbled in Russian: «Breakfast is ready whenever you are.» While drinking tea, Belenko noticed laid out on a chair a pair of slacks, a sports shirt, socks, T- shirts, and boxer shorts, but not having been expressly told they were his, he put on his hybrid Japanese suit and went to the dining room.
There Jim introduced him to Peter, one of the three Americans who were to affect his future most significantly. Peter looked the way Belenko thought an artist or composer should; in fact, his countenance, distinguished by a handsome head of dark, curly hair, a delicate face, and black, meditative eyes, reminded Belenko of a portrait of Beethoven he had seen as a boy.
Peter was a devout Catholic, the father of eight children, an accomplished linguist, and one of the best clandestine officers the United States had. Out of the Army and graduate school, he had come to the CIA in 1950, two years after its organization. For a quarter of a century he had fought around the world on some of the fiercest and most pitiless battlefields of the subterranean war that continued to rage without pause between the Soviet Union and the West. Through combat, he had acquired an intuitive feel, an uncommon understanding of Soviet society, culture, history, the language, mentality, and ethnic idiosyncrasies of Russians.
Probably Peter still would have been somewhere abroad had he not contracted on an Asian mission a rare disease for which no cure was known. He was brought home in hope that medical researchers might devise one. Unless they succeeded, he did not have many years to live. Because of disability provisions and tax benefits, he would have profited financially by retiring. He had resolved, however, to fight as long as his body allowed.
Peter amused and relaxed Belenko, bantering with him as if they were meeting for nothing more serious than a game of golf and telling Russian jokes.
«Did you hear about the very sincere Armenian students? They went to a learned professor and asked, 'Is it truly possible to build communism in Armenia?'
' 'Yes,' replied the professor, 'but why not do it to the Georgians first?'»
«That's funny; and true, too.»
Having changed into the slacks and shirt procurred for him before he awoke, Belenko met his «baby-sitter,» Nick, who was his age. Born of Russian parents, Nick was a Marine sergeant who had volunteered for two tours in Vietnam and, Belenko surmised, at one time or another had engaged in secret operations against the Russians. He, crewcut, bulging biceps, quick reflexes, unquestioning obedience, and all, was on loan to the CIA. Confident, trained for trouble, Nick could relate to Belenko as a peer and somewhat as a Russian as well as an American. He was to be in the next weeks companion, guide, friend, and, although it was not put that way, bodyguard.
The countryside of northern Virginia, wooded, rolling, and with the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains visible from far away on a clear day, is beautiful in all seasons. But it was the man-made order of the farmlands they passed that most struck Belenko: the symmetry of the fields; the perfection of their cultivation; the well- maintained fences; the fatness of the cattle grazing in lush meadows; the painted barns; the white farmhouses that to him seemed huge; the cars, trucks, and machinery parked nearby; the apparent paucity of people working the farms.
«Where are the outhouses?» he asked.
The Americans laughed, and Peter explained how septic tanks and automatic water pumps made possible indoor plumbing in virtually all American farmhouses. «Probably there still are outhouses in some rural or mountainous regions. I just don't know where.»
They stopped at a shopping center on the outskirts of a small Virginia town and headed toward a clothing store, but Belenko insisted on inspecting a supermarket on the way. He noticed first the smell or rather the absence of smell; then he explored and stared in ever-widening wonder. Mountains of fruit and fresh vegetables; a long bin of sausages, frankfurters, wursts, salami, bologna, cold cuts; an equally long shelf of cheeses, thirty or forty different varieties; milk, butter, eggs, more than he had ever seen in any one place; the meat counter, at least twenty meters long, with virtually every land of meat in the world — wrapped so you could take it in your hands, examine, and choose or not; labeled and graded as to quality. A date stamped on the package to warn when it would begin to spoil! And hams and chickens and turkeys! Cans and packages of almost everything edible with pictures showing their contents and labels reciting their contents. Long aisles of frozen foods, again with pictures on the packages. And juices, every kind of juice. Soaps and paper products and toiletries and much else that he did not recognize. Beer! American, German, Dutch, Danish, Australian, Mexican, Canadian beer; all cold. (How many times had he thought and even urged during seminars with the political officers that people be offered low-alcohol beer instead of vodka?) Nobody doled any of this out. You picked it out for yourself and put it in fancy, clear little bags and then in a big, expensive cart. It was all just there for anybody to take.
Turning into an aisle lined on one side with candies, confections, and nuts and on the other with cookies, crackers, and cakes, he saw another «nigger,» who cheerfully bade him «Good morning.» (There was no gainsaying it; the «nigger» was a handsome fellow except for his color, he did not look like a slave, and he was dressed in the same clean light-blue uniforms the other store workers wore.)
Never had Belenko been in a closed market selling meat or produce that did not smell of spoilage, of unwashed bins and counters, of decaying, unswept remnants of food. Never had he been in a market offering anything desirable that was not crowded inside, with lines waiting outside. Always he had been told that the masses of exploited Americans lived in the shadow of hunger and that pockets of near starvation were widespread, and he had seen photographs that seemed to demonstrate that.
