MiG Pilot

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.

In his sleep a terrible vision visited him. Vorontsov was smiling, beckoning, calling, and pulling him from the State Department conference room with an invisible chain wrapped around his waist. “It is time, Viktor Ivanovich. You are coming home. Come with me, Viktor Ivanovich.” He awakened shouting, “Nyet, nyet!'

That was a ridiculous dream. You drank too much of that cider. Take some aspirin, and go to sleep.

Reflecting on the nightmare in the morning and vaguely sensing its portent, Belenko undertook to exorcise the causes by assaying his experiences in rural America. You came out here looking for the worst, and what did you find? These farmers, they live better than almost anybody in Moscow or Leningrad. I’m not even sure that Politburo members can buy in Moscow everything you can buy out here in Sticksville. Why, a common laborer on this farm is better off than a Soviet fighter pilot. And you don’t have to put up with all that shit, from the first day of school until the last day you breathe. These farmers, they don’t listen to anything they don’t want to. They just show the government or anybody else the big finger. They are not afraid. They are free people. They say all their guns are for hunting. But they would shoot anybody who tried to deport them or take away their freedom.

And the way they do things works. Look at the harvest! Did they bring in the Air Force and the Army and students and workers from two hundred fifty kilometers away and screw around for weeks and let a third of the crop rot because the machinery broke down and nobody knew or cared what he was doing?

Lied! It’s worse than lying. The Party turned the truth upside down. It’s the kolkhozniks who are the serfs. No wonder a farmer here produces ten times as much as a kolkhoznik! No wonder they have to buy from the Americans! Don’t forget that. Don’t forget what you’ve seen with your own eyes, here and there.

After this analysis and introspection Belenko concluded there was no more to learn on the farm, and he had already recognized an insuperable defect in his plan to obtain pilot’s licenses while working on the farm. To fly commercially or even alone and to investigate the United States as thoroughly as he wished, he would have to improve his mastery of English markedly. So when the CIA summoned him to Washington to confer about some sensitive new matters, he decided to leave permanently and immerse himself wholly in language study.

Fred flew Belenko to the airport of a city some 150 miles distant. “Remember, you always have a home.”

From a list compiled by Peter, Belenko chose a commercial institute specializing in teaching foreigners seeking high proficiency in English. Peter suggested that before departing, he ought to buy a car, gave him some automotive magazines, and took him to several dealers. You can buy a car in this country as easily as a loaf of bread! Everybody wants to sell me a car! They don’t care whether I can pay for it now or not. Just give them a few hundred dollars, and they give you a car. How can they trust people like that?