MiG Pilot: the Final Escape of Lt. Belenko

Brandishing a wrench, the welder approached Viktor. By not retreating, he created a confrontation which neither man could back out of except through humiliating surrender.

He will swing from the right. I should duck under to the left. No. If I fail, the wrench will kill me or cripple me.

Viktor jumped at the welder and with a succession of rapid jabs knocked him against the wall and twisted the wrench out of his hand.

He turned and saw three other mechanics coming at him with wrenches. Stepping left, then right, then backward, he tried to prevent any of them from getting behind him, but they succeeded in maneuvering him toward a corner.

«Enough!» Yakov shouted. «All of you!»

Wielding a wrench of his own, Yakov grabbed Viktor by the arm and, jerking him away, announced, «The young man and I will buy the vodka.»

They walked four or five minutes before Yakov spoke. «You realize they would have killed you.»

«Maybe I would have killed some of them first.»

«And in your grave, would you have been proud? Listen to me, young one; I know. In a socialist society do not be a white crow among black crows; else you will be pecked to death. If you want to be a different kind of bird, never let the others see your true colors.»

At Yakov's insistence, Viktor attempted an apology to the welder; it was hard, but he offered his hand, which the welder refused. After they drank awhile, though, he slapped Viktor on the back and shook hands.

Viktor had violated both a daily ritual and a longstanding custom requiring the most junior man to fetch the vodka.

Typically, about 11:30 A.M. Yakov signaled the effective end of the workday. «Well, enough of that business. We can do that anytime. Let's talk real business. I have eighty kopecks. Let's organize something and send the kid. He'll bring us gas.»

The ensuing exchanges seldom varied. «I have a ruble.»

«I'll support you with seventy kopecks.»

«I can't. I have no money today.»

«Well, I'll lend you fifty kopecks.»

«All right, kid. Take the money, and do your job.»

Viktor jogged or ran, which he liked to do anyway, to a store a quarter of a mile away to arrive before the noon crowd formed. His duty was to bring back the maximum amount of alcohol purchasable with the money collected, after he had set aside enough for bread and canned fish. The cheapest vodka cost three rubles sixty-two kopecks a half-liter, and a bottle of Algerian red wine one ruble twenty kopecks; a kilogram of good Russian bread could be bought for sixteen kopecks, and a can of foul-tasting fish for forty kopecks.

Yakov entertained his colleagues by lining up the glasses, shutting his eyes, and, measuring by sound, pouring almost exactly the same amount of vodka or wine into each glass. Glasses filled, the party began and lasted until there was no more to drink. The men then settled by the coal stove to play dominoes, smoke, and tell jokes, allowing only an emergency to intrude on their leisure. The garage manager did not bother them; they accomplished in half a day all that was demanded, his superiors were happy, and by keeping in their graces, he could count on the mechanics if serious need arose.

Viktor in turn empathized with them; he understood that the garage was their prison and that they had given up even dreaming of parole. He realized, too, the meaning of the words that followed Yakov's first swig of vodka. «Ah, this puts a little pink in the day.» For him the garage became a comfortable haven from which he could pursue his overriding goal of flight.

Having survived scrutiny of his ideological stability, study of his education, and a rigorous physical examination, Viktor was one of forty young men selected for DOSAAF preflight training. Five nights weekly he hurried from work to the cafeteria, then took a bus across town to DOSAAF offices located in a prerevolutionary bank building. The subjects — aerodynamics, navigation, design and construction of aircraft, radio and electronics, meteorology, and rules of flight — were not inordinately difficult. Many cadets, though, could not manage both the volume of study required and a daily job, and by the end of the first month fully a fourth had dropped out.

Viktor never had been so happy as in DOSAAF classes. They were devoid of cant, pretense, hypocrisy. Defying regulations, the chief instructor omitted the teaching of political theory. Careers and lives might hinge on how much and how well they learned, and there was no time for trivia. The instructors were retired Air Force pilots, and in Viktor's eyes they stood as real men who had braved and survived the skies. They treated the cadets as both subordinates and comrades, as future partners from whom nothing should be hidden. Direct questions to them elicited unequivocal, comprehensible answers, and for any question concerning flight, they had an answer. The closer they led him to flight, the more its challenge engrossed him.