MiG Pilot: the Final Escape of Lt. Belenko

Belenko grinned and tried to hand the trooper two twenty-dollar bills.

«No! No!» Peter yelled in Russian. «Take that money back, Viktor!» Then in English: «Officer, I am a representative of the Central Intelligence Agency. May I speak with you privately?» Peter got out of the car and talked with the trooper.

After a couple of minutes the trooper returned and said to Belenko, «I would like to shake your hand.»

With a seriousness that Belenko did not mistake, Peter warned that bribery of a policeman or public official was a major crime. «Some will take bribes, that's true. But ninetynine point nine percent won't, and if you try it, you will be arrested, and I may not always be around to rescue you. I'm telling you for your own good.»

Father Peter, he means what he says. But if officials don't take bribes, maybe the law is the same for everybody. Well, that's right, they put Nixon's men in jail.

The Party depicted America as awash in pornography, a social pox communism spares the Soviet Union. Having seen none in the Virginia suburbs, Belenko asked where all the pornography was, so Peter took him to an X-rated movie. «What did you think?» he asked as they left the theater a few blocks from the White House.

«At first I was amazed. Then I felt as if I were watching people go to the toilet. Nobody loved anybody in that movie. What I don't understand is why, if pornography is so popular, the theater was so empty.»

«Obviously, there's a market for the stuff, or the theater couldn't stay in business. But which would you rather do? Watch some whores go through the motions of making love or go out and find a girl and make love yourself?»

Anna invited Belenko to a Washington restaurant to meet her husband, an urbane, older man who was highly informed about the Soviet Union and spoke Russian confidently. Because Belenko was conditioned to believe that American presidential elections were meaningless, all candidates being puppets of the Dark Forces, he listened with surprise and interest as his host talked about the contest under way between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Anna favored Carter; her husband, Ford. They discussed, then debated, then ardently and angrily argued about the qualifications of the two candidates.

Wait a minute. Maybe elections here do make a difference. At least they think they do, and they are not fools.

It was the carrier, or rather, what he deduced from the carrier, that finally shattered the image of America instilled by the Party. He and Gregg landed on its deck in a small plane about 100 miles off the Virginia capes. The captain welcomed Belenko by saying that the United States Navy was proud to have him as its guest. He could see anything aboard the ship he desired; any question would be answered. But the captain believed that first he should watch the launching and recovery of aircraft, the essence of carrier operations.

As Belenko stood by the landing control officer, the fighters plummeted, thundered, roared down straight toward him. Bam! Screechl They hit the steel deck and crashed into the arresting gear. Then, with a tremendous roar that vibrated his body, the afterburners of a fighter ignited, and it shot off the deck, dipped toward the sea, and rocketed out of sight This, every ten seconds!

No show could have been more spectacular to Belenko. The technology of the ship, the planes, the diverse individual skills of the crew were incredible. But that was not what was most meaningful. Everybody of all ranks participating in the operation relied, depended on, indeed, trusted their lives to everybody else. Nobody abused anybody. They all were one team, and it couldn't be any other way. You couldn't terrify, intimidate, threaten, or coerce men into doing what they were doing. They had to want to do it, to believe in it. They couldn't do it under the influence of drugs or alcohol. And this was real. The Dark Forces did not not construct this carrier or recruit and tram men just to put on a display for him. Now he was inclined to believe what he saw and was told.

«Do you have a jail on this ship?»

They showed him the brig — five or six immaculate cells with standard Navy bunks — which happened to be empty. * In answer to his questions, the captain enumerated some of the offenses for which a sailor might be confined — drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana, assault.

«Why is your jail empty?»

«Maybe we're lucky. We don't have much trouble aboard this ship.»

«How many people do you have on this ship?»

«About five thousand officers and men.»

It's a small city, and nobody is in jail!

Noticing the insignia of the cross on the shirt collar of an officer, Belenko asked if the crew was required to profess faith in God.

The captain replied that although Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish chaplains regularly conducted services, crew members were free to attend or not and that religious beliefs or the lack of them was entirely a private matter of individual conscience.