MiG Pilot: the Final Escape of Lt. Belenko

The hunt for protein led Belenko into the forest beyond the river that curved along the eastern edge of Rubtsovsk. They may have exaggerated, but old men claimed that the Aley River before the war was so clean you could see plentiful schools of big fish swimming five or six feet below the surface and catch them almost effortlessly. But around the city, continuous pollution from chemicals and factory wastes had turned the river into an open sewer, and the despoilment had eaten into the forest, shriveling flora and leaving a belt of scrubland.

About a thousand yards past the scrubland, Viktor entered heavy underbrush and, after pushing on for another half mile or so, came into a dense primeval forest colored and perfumed by wild flowers. He felt like Fabien, the doomed pilot in Saint-Exupery's Night Flight, who, lost and buffeted in a South American storm, suddenly was lifted out of the blackness of the clouds into tranquil heavens lit by stars. Uncontaminated, uninhabited, silent, and serene, the endless forest imbued Viktor with the same sense of space and freedom he was sure awaited him in the sky. And after school recessed for the summer, he virtually lived in the forest.

With a slingshot he killed birds — mostly sparrows, crows, and quail — that abounded in the forest and roasted them on a spit. He learned to detect birds' nests which often yielded eggs. And he gathered wild blackberries, strawberries, cranberries, and tart little green apples. Some days he came alone and, after gorging himself until he could eat no more, settled in a patch of light and read until darkness. More often he invited friends, most of whom were veritable waifs like him, and just as hungry. They constructed a log lean-to, and from this base ranged out in all directions to hunt and explore; their explorations were rewarded by discovery of a clear stream populated by plump trout.

Between May and September Viktor gained thirteen pounds, and with the resumption of school, he looked forward to presenting himself to the librarian. He expected that she would acclaim him for his growth just as she did for his reading. But she was not there. The new librarian would say only that she had retired and «moved away.» To where? None of the other teachers knew, or if they did, they would not say. Why would she go away without saying good-bye to me? What happened to her? He never did find out.

Viktor continued to pound the punching bag, to exercise and run, and by December he felt ready to stalk the four assailants who had jumped him the preceding February. He encountered one in the same park where they had beaten him. «I have come to pay you back,» he announced. «I am going to fight you. Are you ready?»

The boy tried to shove him away, as if not deigning to take him seriously. With a short, quick left jab, Viktor hit him squarely in the face, and he himself was surprised by the force of the blow. It is working! He dazed the boy with a left to the jaw, then a right to the ribs. The teenager tried to fight back, but the blow to the ribs had hurt him. Viktor hit him in the jaw with another left and then, with a right, knocked him down. He got up, and Viktor promptly knocked him down once more, this time with a left hook. «Have you had enough?» Viktor shouted.

«All right, let's stop,» said the boy, who was breathing heavily on the ground. He slowly got to his feet, whereupon Viktor, without warning, hit him with all his might in the right eye and felled him a third time.

«I did that so you will understand,» Viktor said. «The next time I will kill you.»

He caught two of the other three and battered them just as badly. His inability to find the fourth did not matter. He had avenged himself, and the fights, the third of which was witnessed by fifty to sixty students after school, established his reputation as someone who had best be left alone.

It also gained him an invitation to an adolescent party on New Year's Eve, 1958. Everyone was gulping homemade vodka, which smelled like a combination of kerosene and acetone. Although Viktor had never drunk alcohol before, he joined in, partially out of curiosity, partially because he thought drinking was expected of him. After about an hour he staggered outside, unnoticed, and collapsed in the snow. He awakened caked in his own vomit. His head throbbed with both pain and fright born of the realization that, had he lain there another couple of hours, he surely would have frozen to death. In his sickness and disgust he made a vow: Never will I do this to myself again. Never will alcohol get a hold on me.

Later he came to enjoy alcohol, particularly wine and beer. But he drank it in circumstances and amounts of his own choosing. The ability to control alcohol, or abstain from it entirely, gave him an advantage over many of his peers at each successive stage in his life, if only by granting him more time and energy than they had for productive pursuits.