MiG Pilot: the Final Escape of Lt. Belenko

But the more he delved into daily American life, the further the fundamental understanding he sought seemed to recede from his reach. Looking for the cheapest apartment available, he rented one in what he was told was a working-class neighborhood. Although not as commodious as that in Virginia, the apartment was by the standards he knew luxurious, and everything functioned: the air conditioning, stove, plumbing, garbage disposal. Talking and sometimes drinking beer with the neighbors, he learned that they indeed were what he would term workers, and not only could they afford to rent apartments like his for $200 monthly, but some actually planned to buy their own houses. From them he also began to learn about labor unions, collective bargaining, and strikes, all of which utterly mystified him.

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.