MiG Pilot

by John Barron

  The Party described American labor unions as subterfuges by which the Dark Forces more handily controlled and manipulated workers. The few strikes reported were represented as impulses of revolution, which, of course, the police lackeys of the Dark Forces would quickly crush, rather than as a form of normal labor relations. When Belenko saw his first picket line, he saw another great lie.

  They turned the truth upside down again! What they said American labor unions are is just what Soviet labor unions are. Why, these workers and their unions can shut down a whole factory by just walking out and demonstrating. What would have happened if we had done that at the tank factory? But how can you allow that? How can you allow workers to stop production if they don’t think they’re paid enough? That doesn’t make any sense. It’s chaos.

  Although he got along amicably with his fellow students, Belenko had no close friends among them because he preferred to associate outside the institute with Americans who could educate him about the United States. There was one student, however, whom he delighted in seeing. Maria was an exquisite young woman, an arresting figure in yellow or brightly printed dresses or white lace blouses, a classic Latin beauty with flowing black hair, dark eyes, full lips, and a soft olive complexion. Beyond the beauty he could see, Belenko sensed in her presence the grace and confidence of a lady whose inner security enabled her to laugh, tease, and be at ease with anyone. She brightened his thoughts as a fresh flower might, and sometimes he wondered if the librarian who had benefited him when he was a boy in Siberia might not many decades before have been like her.

  In one of the group discussions a young Iranian, who sported a $20,000 Mercedes, orated about the “plastic society” and materialism of the United States, citing Coca-Cola, fast-food chains, neon signs, and trash along the highways as examples. As if challenged to a fight, Belenko instinctively stood up. “Which society led man into the nuclear age? Which society led man into space and the moon? If we were in your country, what would happen to us if we openly said what we thought was bad about it? If this society is so terrible, why have we all come from our own countries to learn here? Why here instead of some other society?”

  As he was walking toward his car after class, Maria called to him to wait for her. “I agree with what you said, and I am proud of you for saying it.” They began discussing their reactions to the United States, comments from one excited comments from the other, and they stood, each holding three or four books, talking for nearly an hour before Belenko proposed dinner.

  Maria ordered rum and Coca-Cola, which Belenko thought a comical concoction. “No, it is not. If that Iranian knew you are supposed to put rum in Coca-Cola, he would not denounce it.”

  Answering his questions, Maria told him of her background. Her parents owned a plantation in South America, but she had attended a university and resolved to do something worthwhile. The only practical choices that seemed to be available to her as a woman were teaching or nursing, so she had chosen to be a teacher in rural areas, where teachers were most needed. There she had become interested in helping the mentally handicapped and retarded children for whom no organized, scientific programs were offered. Because so much of the research concerning birth defects and retardation was conducted in the United States, she desired to broaden her knowledge of English, and when her parents, anxious to get her out of the countryside, offered her a trip to the United States, she decided to study at the institute.

  According to the custom of her class and culture, her parents virtually had arranged for her to marry the scion of a neighboring plantation family. Although she scarcely knew the man and had not yet consented, her sense of duty and devotion to her aging parents made refusal difficult.

  She found the United States largely a classless society; at least she had been able to meet and relate to people irrespective of their social origins or economic status. In her opinion, the opportunities in America were limitless, and personally she would have liked to stay. But she knew that all her life she would feel guilty if she did not return to her own land and do whatever she could to help her people.

  He asked her to dance, and on the small floor she gently pulled him close to her. “You dance as if you were a prize fighter and I your opponent. Hold me lightly. Or tightly, if you want.”

  He drove her home and bade her good-night with a handshake. Lying awake, he visualized her dancing and felt her again in his arms. She is as beautiful inside as she is outside. She knows something about life, what is real, what is useless. We think the same. I speak only a few words, and she understands all I mean to say. She is all I ever wanted. But she is going back to her country in a couple of months. I cannot follow her. I cannot ask her to give up her country and stay with me. I do not know what will happen to me. I cannot even tell her who I really am. I care too much for her. I must not see her anymore. To go further will only hurt us both.

  Aside from exchanging greetings at the institute, he did not talk with her again until the night of a party at the home of an instructor. Having asked each student to prepare a dish typifying the cuisine of his or her country, the instructor put Maria and Belenko in charge of the kitchen, perhaps because they, along with a young French businessman, were the quickest pupils. The kitchen was hot and crowded, and they were kept busy washing pots, pans, and dishes, but they performed these pedestrian chores as a natural team, each eager to help the other. She reached up with a damp towel and wiped perspiration from his forehead. Once their eyes met, and neither could deny nor disguise the magic between them. Anything with her is joy.

  The class collected money to buy the instructor a gift in appreciation of the party and appointed Maria and Belenko to pick out the present. After they went shopping on a Saturday morning, his desire to be with her longer prevailed over his judgment, and he invited her to lunch. It was so easy to talk with her that he found himself expressing thoughts he had never articulated to anyone. “I believe there is a higher purpose in life than just surviving, just having all the possessions and money you need. I don’t know what the purpose is. But I think each person has to be free to the purpose.”

  “Do you believe in God?”

  “I don’t know. I think there must be something higher than man. But I don’t understand what it is. Do you?”

  “I want to. All my life I have gone to church. Sometimes the music and quiet are very beautiful to me, and I feel as you, that there is something higher. Then I see things that the church does, and I am not sure. It is said in church that God is love. Maybe that is the purpose. To love someone and be loved by someone.”

  The drift seemed dangerous to Belenko, and he suggested they go.

  “Only if you will make me a promise.”

  “What is that?”

  “The week from tomorrow I am invited to the home of some friends of my parents. They live about forty miles away. Promise that you will take me.”

  Belenko, blond, fair, blue-eyed, with the athletic bearing of an officer, and Maria, her dark beauty adorned in lace and long white skirt, formed a striking couple, and the Spanish family welcomed them graciously to their American replica of a small hacienda. The host and hostess were especially interested in meeting a Russian. In accordance with the story prepared by the CIA for his use at the institute, he explained that he had fled while serving as a junior official on a Soviet trade mission to Scandinavia. His fresh perspectives of the Soviet Union, which conformed to the antipathies of the host, made him all the more popular.

  Belenko had thought they were to stay all day, but after a lavish luncheon Maria eloquently thanked the family, in English for his benefit, and announced that they must depart to prepare for examinations the next day; that was not true.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I wanted to be with you.”

  “We won’t be able to be with each other much more. You leave next week, don’t you?”

  “That is why I want to be with you now. May I tell you something?”

  “Of course.”
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  “You will not make fun of me?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “I love you.”

  “But why?”

  “It is the way I feel. I have never had such a feeling. When I am with you or see you or think of you, I am happy. I do not know where you have been or who you were. But I know you, Viktor.”

  “We will only hurt each other. After a few more days we can never see each other again.”

  “Do you like me?”

  “I love you.”

  On a Friday afternoon he drove her across the state to the airport from which she would fly out of his life in the morning. Throughout their discussions they spoke rationally, responsibly, bravely.

  They realized that genuine love does not spring up suddenly, spontaneously, magically, that it evolves gradually through shared experiences, interests, adversities. They recognized that they had known each other far too briefly to be sure that they were not just ephemerally and romantically attracted. And their backgrounds, their cultures were so different that these differences were bound to assert themselves in the future, no matter how harmoniously they got along now. Of course, Maria could not repudiate her obligations to her parents, her customs, her people and country. She never could be at ease with her conscience or happy outside her own country. No (for reasons he could not explain), he could not live in South America. Should they keep in touch? No, that would only torment them both. Why pursue what never can be? They should be grateful for the lovely friendship they had shared.

  After Belenko carried her luggage into the airport motel room where she would sleep until the morning flight, the front collapsed. She sobbed hopelessly, forlornly, as if all her life were ending. “Oh, Viktor, spend the night with me.”

  By dawn he knew that in her and their love he had found a fulfilling purpose of life. What can I do? I must do what is best for her. She will have a good life without me. I cannot take her away from her family, her people. What can I give to her? I’d better go while I can.

  He dressed quickly, quietly, as he had on the last morning in Chuguyevka. “Darling Maria, it is best I just go now. Wherever you are, I love you.”

  Through the closed door, he heard her crying hysterically. “Solo tu! Siempre, solo tu!"

  Shock anesthetized him for a while. Then, on the third or fourth day, the pain struck: ceaseless, incapacitating pain. You found the greatest beauty and purpose life can hold. And you threw it away. And you can never find it again. You will never see her again.

  At the institute he ceased to function; he could not concentrate or learn. The instructors concluded that the intensity of study had made him stale and that he had reached a plateau which temporarily bogs down the best of language students, and they recommended he take a couple of months off. If he could afford it, they suggested, he should tramp around the country, practicing English.

  Wearing his Navy flight jacket, he drove recklessly toward Washington, receiving three speeding tickets on the way, and pulled up, unannounced, at Peter’s house. That house, he previously had noted, because of the necessities enforced by eight children, always was run with the same precision as life on an aircraft carrier.

  “Father Peter, I have a plan. You send me back to Soviet Union as agent. Drop me in the Far East; I will show you just where to go through the radar. You think it is so difficult to spy in that country. But I know that country, and I can do it so easily. What you Americans never have understood is that you can buy anything in that country, very cheaply too.

  “A judge, only two hundred rubles. Plant manager, five hundred. Militiaman, fifty. What we really want we don’t have to buy. I can get you a MiG-23 and a Backfire [a Soviet bomber] for nothing. My friends will fly them wherever I say.

  “I know that place; I feel it the way nobody who is not Russian can. I can smell; I can move in it. You give me the documents and a little radio the size of my hand — I know from the Air Force you have them; the ones that squeeze and squirt transmissions into seconds — and we can talk every day. Let’s go! Let’s fight! Let’s show them the big finger!”

  “Are you all right?”

  “What do you mean, all right?”

  “The idea is preposterous. Even if it weren’t you’re smart enough to know you’re much more valuable here than you could ever be there. It seems to me you are under some emotional duress. I’m your friend. What’s the trouble?”

  The code of Spartacus, which bound a man to solve his own problems, to rely on himself, to whimper to no one for help, clashed with his honesty, and uncharacteristically he compromised. He accurately reported the institute’s advice that he travel for a while, briefly mentioned his relationship with Maria, and confessed to some sadness at her loss.

  “Do you love this girl?’

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Do you want us to find her for you?”

  “No. It makes no sense. I do not belong in her life.”

  “Would you like one of us to go along on your trip?”

  “I must go by myself.”

  “All right, but I want the doctors to see you.” Physicians, to whom he confided nothing of bis psychological trauma, pronounced him totally fit, and he drove off to explore, discover, forget, and mend by himself.

  He first wanted to tour the small towns, backwashes, and heartland cities because they were the milieu he knew best in the Soviet Union. Conditioned to husband every kopeck, he searched out the cheapest lodging and cafes, although large, unspent sums and the interest on them were piling up monthly for him in Washington. He learned that in almost every small town there is a motel or hotel cheaper than the Holiday or Ramada inns, which he deemed luxurious hostelries. These lesser-known family establishments invariably were clean, and you could get an inexpensive meal providing all the protein you wanted.

  In a little Appalachian town he took a room in such a motel and asked the woman at the desk where he could obtain ice. “If n you wahnt ais, go dowen the hall and torn laift.”

  “I don’t want ass. I want ice.”

  “Jes go lik’n I saed.”

  After a drink he returned to the desk and inquired if the town had a hospital. “Ain’t no cause to go to the hospital. Doc will come righ heah.”

  “I’m not sick. I just want to see the hospital.”

  Probably persuaded she was dealing with an authentic nut, the woman gave directions, to be rid of him, and at the hospital an intern, upon hearing that he was a visiting Norwegian, volunteered to show him around. It was a small hospital with only thirty rooms, but they were even nicer than those at the Air Force hospital in San Antonio, and the intern’s answers were consistent with explanations of American medicine he had received in Texas.

  “What are you building out there?” The intern described the functions of a mental health clinic, which in this case would include treatment of mentally handicapped children. Belenko saw a dirty, feebleminded boy of twelve or thirteen wandering the muddy streets of Chuguyevka, a child destined to live his blurred, uncomprehending life unhelped, the butt of jokes and pranks, the village idiot whose purpose was to amuse by his idiocy and make his superiors glad of their superiority. He saw her, too.

  Only you. Always, only you, Viktor. Oh, Maria, where are you?

  On the road again, he stopped and talked casually with strangers in small Kentucky and Missouri towns; some revelations congealed in his thoughts. Many Americans would rather live in small towns or the country. Why? Because in many ways life is easier and better for them. They don’t have to go to the city to buy food and clothes. The government doesn’t allocate supplies first to some cities, second to others, third to the small towns, and fourth to the sticks.

  And where are all the criminals? Where are the fences? Why, in Rubtsovsk or Omsk or Salsk, if you didn’t have high fences around houses like the ones everyone lives in here, and dogs, too, the criminals would loot everything! The Americans, they complain about crime. They don’t know what crime really is. Let someone strip the clothes and
underwear off their wives or daughters at knifepoint in broad daylight on a street corner just so they can sell those clothes and underwear, and they will begin to understand crime.

  In Kansas City, Belenko visited the farmers’ market, the greatest, most dazzling assemblage of food and produce he had ever seen, and all so cheap. No residual doubts or reservations could withstand the sight. Before his eyes stretched the final, conclusive proof.

  No, this system works. They can produce enough food for ten countries, for twenty countries if they want. If anybody goes hungry in this country, he’s just stupid.

  From the market he wandered into a seedy section of the inner city and there at last found it — something just like in the Soviet Union: a stinking, dark bar crowded with bleary-eyed, unshaved, unkempt drunks growing drunker on beer and cheap rye whiskey. Ah, he knew them well; he had seen them all his life. What he had seen in America usually seemed initially like a mirage; this was real, and he was quite at home.

  Sipping a beer, he questioned the bartender. Where do these men work? How do they get off from their jobs in the day? How much do they earn? The bartender, after a fashion, explained the unemployment compensation, welfare, and food stamp programs.

  What! You mean in this country you don’t have to work even if there is a job for you! You mean the government pays you and gives you food so you can be a deadbeat and sit around and drink all day! Why, the Americans have done it! They have built True Communism! It’s just like 1980!

  Walking from the bar along a deserted street at dusk, Belenko recognized trouble ahead. Two thugs were eyeing him, wavering in their judgment as to whether they could take him. He knew them well, too. Rather than wait for them, he ran at them and belligerently demanded directions to his motel, which in their surprise they gave.