At the time, he had never heard of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, or any other dissidents. He had never read a samizdat publication or any other illicit writings, nor had he ever heard a foreign radio broadcast. He was unaware that anyone in the entire Soviet Union opposed the system itself, except, of course, the traitors traduced by the Dark Forces.
For all the unconcealable defects, the admitted mistakes of the past, the conspicuous inefficiencies, there was empirical evidence that the system, after a fashion, did work. The harvest, after all, had been gathered. Workers after some years did get apartments. Before holidays, meat and even toilet paper could be bought in the stores. Tanks were manufactured, and as he himself had written, they were the best tanks in the world, and the Soviet Union had thousands of them. Besides, things were worse in the West, where capitalism inexorably was disintegrating in accordance with the laws of history.
There remained in his mind, however, corrosive thoughts that he could not extirpate, contradictions that multiplied doubts while sapping faith. You can't be sure of anything the Party says. It was wrong about Stalin; it was wrong about Khrushchev. Little that I see is like what it says. We are not equal. Each of us is different, and nothing will ever make everybody the same. There never will be a perfect man. Why, that's ridiculous. The workers know that; everybody knows that. And this new base for True Communism; at the rate we're going, we won't build that for a hundred years, two hundred years. Something's wrong here. I just don't know what.
Although Viktor did not try to be «a white crow among the black crows» at the factory, he did attract the attention of management. Noticing his mechanical aptitude and how quickly he learned, a supervisor made him a kind of utility man who substituted for absentees, and he became adept at a variety of jobs. Solely because he preferred to do something, anything, rather than lounge about idly, he always was willing to work. Sometimes on Saturday, when there was no DOSAAF class, he did contribute to the purchase of vodka and share a glass or two with his colleagues. Otherwise, he did not drink on the job, and he never showed up incapacitated with a hangover.
One morning in April his supervisor told him to report to the office of the factory manager. Also present were a Party representative, who was part of management, and the deputy personnel director, who probably was a KGB officer. The manager, an earnest man, stated that the factory required engineers combining the talents and personal qualities he exemplified. Therefore, the factory was willing to send him to a university to study industrial engineering for five years. It would pay him three-fourths of his present salary, plus an allowance for food, lodging, and travel. Because the factory was a vital defense installation and in light of his DOSAAF training, he would be exempt from military service. In return, he would have to commit himself to work at the factory for at least two years after his graduation. The manager said he realized that the offer was a surprise and that he wanted him to ponder his answer carefully. He would need an answer by June.
The honor and opportunity were enormous, and to almost any young man of his status, the offer would have been irresistible, as it was intended to be. Out of politeness, Viktor thanked the manager and promised to deliberate in the coming weeks. To himself, he instantly answered no. This is a swamp, and it will trap you, and you never will escape. I would live a little better than the workers, but for what purpose would I live? Here there is no meaning, no hope, nothing to look forward to.
Outside the factory Viktor did have something to look forward to — the possibility of entering the Air Force in the fall and, every week or so, a few hours with Nadezhda. From her manner in class no one would have discerned that they knew each other personally. But on Sundays, when they skated, attended a hockey match or the theater, to which she once invited him, or merely walked in the park and drank tea, neither disguised their liking for the other.
Toward the end of the month she called him aside before classes began. «Pay close attention tonight. This may be your chance.»
There was a special speaker, a colonel who had come to solicit applications for the Soviet Air Defense Command flight-training program conducted at Armavir in the Caucasus. The colonel was candid and businesslike in his briefing. Khrushchev believed that rockets alone could defend against aircraft, and consequently, he had cashiered thousands of fighter pilots who now were dispersed in civilian life, their skills rusted by disuse. The performance and tactics of American aircraft in Vietnam increasingly proved that Khrushchev was wrong. Valuable as missiles were, aircraft also were essential to combat aircraft. The Mother Country required a new generation of fighter pilots to rebuild its interceptor forces. Only the best would be chosen; their training would be long and arduous. But for those who succeeded, the career opportunities, material rewards, and honor of joining the elite of the Soviet armed forces would be great. Selected applicants would report to Armavir in June for the examinations that would determine whether they were admitted to the program.
The colonel in charge of DOSAAF helped Viktor prepare an application the next evening and forwarded it with an ardent endorsement. Two weeks later the colonel informed him he had been accepted for the examinations.
Viktor took three bottles of vodka with him to say good-bye to the men with whom he had worked at Factory 13. They congratulated and toasted him; sincerely, he was sure. After two bottles were gone, they sent for more vodka, and as he left, the celebration was growing more boisterous.
In a few hours, their happiness will evaporate, and they will be lost again in the swamp. Their lives are over. Something is wrong; I don't know what.
CHAPTER III: The First Escape
An overpowering, unrelenting stench saturated the unventilated coach, emanating from its filthy toilet, from the vomit of drunks, from bodies and clothes too long unwashed. The windows, grimy and flyspecked, could not be opened. And the unupholstered wooden benches of the coach, with their high, straight backs, made any posture miserable. Yet the very squalor of the train sustained him by reminding him that he was journeying away from squalor.
On the fifth morning he awakened from a half sleep and saw that during the night the train had entered the rich plains surrounding Armavir. Under the yellow sunshine they were moving through fields of green wheat, then past blooming orchards and vineyards. Bounding from the train as if springing out of a cage, he delighted in the comparative cleanliness, warmth, and gaiety of Armavir. It was an old city with cobblestoned streets, trees, flowers, and a number of colorful prerevolutionary buildings that had withstood war and social change. Among the 200,000 inhabitants were substantial numbers of indomitable Armenians and Georgians and an abnormal proportion of pretty girls, many of whom attended a nursing school or teachers' college.
The clime was balmy and benign, and wanting to exercise, Belenko jogged to the camp for applicants eight miles outside the city. A spirit of high expectancy and camaraderie pervaded the throngs of young men he joined there. They had traveled from all reaches of the Soviet Union, more than 4,000 of them, lured and united by the hope that they would be chosen to fly. No one told them that the slightest physiological flaw, no matter how irrelevant to health or flying, would disqualify them. No one told them that survivors of the physical scrutiny would have to score almost perfectly on the written tests to have a chance. No one told them that out of the thousands, only 360 would be selected. Consequently, they talked of imminent glories and rewards in the sky, never acknowledging that they might be among the rejected, condemned to two years of harsh servitude as common soldiers. Few complained about the drudging tasks assigned them while they waited their turn to be examined — unloading bricks, digging ditches, laying concrete slabs for runways, weeding fields. This was a small price.