borrow money, I could earn enough as a mechanic. I would have to work hard at night and on the weekend and in the summer. So what? I could do it without anybody's help.
Someone in the CIA, through a friend, steered him to a family farm more than half a continent away from Washington. Yes, they needed a farmhand, and they would be pleased to take a young Russian and tell nobody he was Russian, provided he was able and willing to work just like anybody else at standard wages. Belenko was drilled in methods of secretly communicating with the CIA, given emergency numbers, and assured that a call day or night would bring him instant help. Gregg and Peter also gave him their home numbers and urged him to call whenever he felt like talking. And the CIA emphasized that all the money and support he might need were cached in Washington.
Before he left, Anna gave a party for him, serving deviled eggs with caviar, herring, smoked salmon, borscht, onion and tomato salad, piroshki, Georgian wine, and Russian vodka. She played the guitar and sang Russian folk songs, and some of the Americans, all of whom spoke Russian, joined her. They told Russian jokes and stories and danced as in Russia.
Their efforts, however, affected Belenko differently from the way they had intended. What is the matter with you? I'm homesick. I miss my rotten country. Idiot! Don't think like that. That is dangerous.
Belenko arrived by bus at the farm in the late afternoon, and the owner, Fred, his wife, Melissa, and partner, Jake, greeted him on the front porch of the large frame farmhouse painted white with green shutters. Supper, as they called it, was waiting, and after washing, he joined them and their three children around a long oak dining table laden with country food — pickled ham, relish, veal cutlets, corn on the cob, fresh green beans with onions and new potatoes, hot biscuits, iced tea, and peach cobbler with whipped cream. Always, in a new social situation, Belenko watched what the Americans did and tried to emulate them, so when they bowed their heads, he did the same. Fred said a brief prayer, and Belenko did not understand it all; but one sentence touched him: «Bless this home, our family, and he who joins us.» He thought far back through the years to the cold, barren day when his father had left him on another farm, the kolkhoz in Siberia. The squalid Siberian hut where he had been given milk and bread and the spacious farmhouse with all its largesse were as different as the moon and earth. But the spirit in which he was welcomed at each farm was the same.
Heretofore Belenko had thought that corn on the cob was fed only to livestock, and he tasted it with reservation. This is good! I wish I could send some to hell for Khrushchev. All the food was good. His conspicuous enjoyment of it pleased Melissa, and the knowledge he exhibited during talk about farming pleased the men.
He had heard about it; he had read about it; he had glimpsed signs of it from roads and the sky. But Belenko had to experience the efficiency of an American farm to comprehend. His understanding began in the morning as Fred showed him the equipment — a tractor, combine, harvester, machinery for seeding, irrigating, fertilizing, an electronically controlled lighting system that caused hens to lay eggs on schedule, automatic milking devices, two cars, a large pickup truck — and then Belenko saw, of all things, an airplane.
«Why do you have an airplane?»
«Oh, I was in the Air Force; gunner, not a pilot. But I still got the bug, and it's stayed with me. The plane comes in handy. We can get anything we need in a hurry and look over the whole place in fifteen to twenty minutes. Mostly, though, I keep it because for some reason I just like to fly.»
«I understand your feelings.»
«You ever fly?»
«Yes.»
«Good! Would you like to go up with me on Sunday?»
«Very much.»
In a few days Belenko deduced that beyond mechanization, there were two other reasons that enabled Fred, his wife, their children, Jake, and one laborer — himself — to work the farm embracing several hundred acres of cultivated land plus pasture and woodland. Fred and Jake knew about every scientific aspect of farming — veterinary medicine, fertilization, use of pesticides, crop rotation, irrigation. For almost twenty years they had kept meteorological records so they could make their own weather forecasts. They could service and repair all the machinery themselves. Along with Melissa, they were accountants and salesmen. And they worked, hard, carefully, enthusiastically, from sunrise to sunset, taking off only Sunday and sometimes Saturday afternoon. They treat this whole farm as if it were their private plot. Well, of course. That's right. It is.
On Sunday afternoon they took off in a Beechcraft from a grassy landing strip, climbed about 1,000 feet into cloudless sky, and flew in a rectangle, roughly tracing the farm boundaries. Fred ascended to 8,000 feet, described neighboring farms and their history, and then flew over the two nearest small towns. «Would you like to try the controls?»
Belenko nodded. Having flown a Beechcraft in Virginia, he knew its capabilities and limitations, and he banked easily 180 degrees to the left, then 180 degrees to the right, looking to ensure no other planes were in the vicinity.
«You really are a flier.»
«Do you like aerobatics?»
«Okay. Go ahead. But remember, we don't have chutes.»
The urge was childish but overpowering. Quickly he looped the plane, started another loop, and at the top flipped over, executing an Immelmann with which he had impressed Nadezhda. He rolled, stalled, spun, did every maneuver the plane could safely withstand. At first, Fred laughed and shouted, like a boy on a roller coaster. Suddenly he fell silent, and seeing him paling, Belenko leveled off. «I am sorry. I am acting like a fool.»
«No, that's all right. Take her down.»
Fred said nothing during descent, landing, or while they lashed the wings and tail to mooring rings, and Belenko was sure he had angered him.
«I'm afraid you have told me something you didn't mean to. You're the MiG-25 pilot, aren't you?»
You are a fool, Belenko! A snotty-nosed fool!
«Don't worry. I won't tell anyone. We thought we'd found ourselves a real good farmhand. I realize now that you'll be moving on. So I'll say only this. As long as I live, you'll have a home on this farm, and you can come and go as you please.»
Fred kept the secret, and Belenko continued to labor as an ordinary farmhand, driving the tractor, plowing, seeding, digging irrigation ditches, feeding cows and pigs, helping build a new barn and maintain the machinery. In return, he received $400 a month, free medical insurance, a cottage with a living room, bedroom, kitchen and bath, free meals with the family or all the food he wanted to cook himself, and use of one of the family cars in the evening and on weekends. These all were perquisites promised at the time he was hired.
Having recognized his identity, Fred additionally allowed Belenko to fly with him on weekends and, if he could be spared from work, on cross-country trips. Studying private and commercial aviation in the United States, Belenko concluded that even were he to start as a penniless farmhand, he eventually could become a ranking airline pilot. In Russian he drafted a program entitled «How to Be 747 Pilot — My Plan.»
He calculated that in three years he could easily save from his wages $12,000 which would more than pay for the 40 hours of flight time necessary for a private license and the additional 160 hours requisite to a commercial license. Once licensed, he would take any job as a commercial pilot, gain the reputation of a skilled, reliable flier, and prepare himself for airline examinations. Then he would work his way upward from copilot on small jets to the 747.
It will take maybe twenty years. But it can be done. Also, private pilots here are very friendly. They will let you fly with them for nothing. So I could get a lot of free flight time.
At harvesttime they employed temporary workers, combines came from nearby farms, and in three days 400 acres of tall green corn were transformed into what looked like a pretty meadow. That was a miracle. No, it was not. Anybody could do it — if he had the machines, and the machines worked, and he knew how and was free to do it.
The night harvesting ended, they sat on the front porch and drank cold hard cider. It reminded Belenko of the homemade wine the farmers had given the air cadets and students summoned into the orchards outside Armavir. The mechanism of the mind which often and mercifully deadens memories of the bad blocked out the sight of tens of thousands of apples rotting, of the system that made every harvest a national crisis.
That was a good time. The girls were pretty, the fruit sweet, the farmers friendly. We had fun. I wish I could see Armavir just for one day, hear nothing but Russian just for a day.
