The physicians enhanced their credibility to Belenko by prefacing their answers with some qualifications. Medical care in the United States way expensive and becoming more so. The rising costs, the causes of which were many, concerned everybody. A disadvantaged minority of Americans probably did not receive care that was adequate by American standards, but the reasons often were sociological and cultural rather than medical or economic. And there were exceptions to the best generalizations they could offer. Then they answered his questions, and their answers flabbergasted him.
What! You mean they pay a doctor twice as much as a fighter pilot? You mean you pick your own doctor, and if he makes you wait too long or you don't like the way he treats you, you go to another doctor? That means he has to try to treat all his patients well, or they'll go somewhere else. And you can sue a doctor or the hospital if they do something wrong.
Wait a minute. Nobody ever told me the government pays for the old and the poor. And nobody ever told me about this insurance. Nobody ever said anything about insurance paying most of the bills. They lied. All these years, they lied, and they knew they were lying!
By some artifice, the CIA arranged for Belenko to audit courses temporarily at a medium-sized southern university, and he, together with a young CIA officer, rented an apartment near the campus. Representing himself as a visiting Norwegian eager to learn about the United States, he mingled among students, inquiring about their backgrounds, how they qualified for the university and supported themselves. He reconnoitered the medical school and noted all he would have to do to become a physician. One weekend he went from service station to service station asking for a job as a mechanic, and two stations offered him part-time jobs. He reckoned that he could earn at least $120 a week while attending school, and it would be much easier to work while attending an American university because no time was wasted on political indoctrination.
In this country, unless you are very stupid, you can go to a university of some kind no matter whether you are rich or poor, male or female, black or white, young or old. If I passed the entrance examination, I could do it. I could be a doctor. Even if I did not receive a scholarship, I could borrow money from the government. Even if I could not borrow money, I could earn enough as a mechanic. I would have to work hard at night and on the weekend and in the summer. So what? I could do it without anybody's help.
Someone in the CIA, through a friend, steered him to a family farm more than half a continent away from Washington. Yes, they needed a farmhand, and they would be pleased to take a young Russian and tell nobody he was Russian, provided he was able and willing to work just like anybody else at standard wages. Belenko was drilled in methods of secretly communicating with the CIA, given emergency numbers, and assured that a call day or night would bring him instant help. Gregg and Peter also gave him their home numbers and urged him to call whenever he felt like talking. And the CIA emphasized that all the money and support he might need were cached in Washington.
Before he left, Anna gave a party for him, serving deviled eggs with caviar, herring, smoked salmon, borscht, onion and tomato salad, piroshki, Georgian wine, and Russian vodka. She played the guitar and sang Russian folk songs, and some of the Americans, all of whom spoke Russian, joined her. They told Russian jokes and stories and danced as in Russia.
Their efforts, however, affected Belenko differently from the way they had intended. What is the matter with you? I'm homesick. I miss my rotten country. Idiot! Don't think like that. That is dangerous.
Belenko arrived by bus at the farm in the late afternoon, and the owner, Fred, his wife, Melissa, and partner, Jake, greeted him on the front porch of the large frame farmhouse painted white with green shutters. Supper, as they called it, was waiting, and after washing, he joined them and their three children around a long oak dining table laden with country food — pickled ham, relish, veal cutlets, corn on the cob, fresh green beans with onions and new potatoes, hot biscuits, iced tea, and peach cobbler with whipped cream. Always, in a new social situation, Belenko watched what the Americans did and tried to emulate them, so when they bowed their heads, he did the same. Fred said a brief prayer, and Belenko did not understand it all; but one sentence touched him: «Bless this home, our family, and he who joins us.» He thought far back through the years to the cold, barren day when his father had left him on another farm, the kolkhoz in Siberia. The squalid Siberian hut where he had been given milk and bread and the spacious farmhouse with all its largesse were as different as the moon and earth. But the spirit in which he was welcomed at each farm was the same.
Heretofore Belenko had thought that corn on the cob was fed only to livestock, and he tasted it with reservation. This is good! I wish I could send some to hell for Khrushchev. All the food was good. His conspicuous enjoyment of it pleased Melissa, and the knowledge he exhibited during talk about farming pleased the men.
He had heard about it; he had read about it; he had glimpsed signs of it from roads and the sky. But Belenko had to experience the efficiency of an American farm to comprehend. His understanding began in the morning as Fred showed him the equipment — a tractor, combine, harvester, machinery for seeding, irrigating, fertilizing, an electronically controlled lighting system that caused hens to lay eggs on schedule, automatic milking devices, two cars, a large pickup truck — and then Belenko saw, of all things, an airplane.
«Why do you have an airplane?»
«Oh, I was in the Air Force; gunner, not a pilot. But I still got the bug, and it's stayed with me. The plane comes in handy. We can get anything we need in a hurry and look over the whole place in fifteen to twenty minutes. Mostly, though, I keep it because for some reason I just like to fly.»
«I understand your feelings.»
«You ever fly?»
«Yes.»
«Good! Would you like to go up with me on Sunday?»
«Very much.»
In a few days Belenko deduced that beyond mechanization, there were two other reasons that enabled Fred, his wife, their children, Jake, and one laborer — himself — to work the farm embracing several hundred acres of cultivated land plus pasture and woodland. Fred and Jake knew about every scientific aspect of farming — veterinary medicine, fertilization, use of pesticides, crop rotation, irrigation. For almost twenty years they had kept meteorological records so they could make their own weather forecasts. They could service and repair all the machinery themselves. Along with Melissa, they were accountants and salesmen. And they worked, hard, carefully, enthusiastically, from sunrise to sunset, taking off only Sunday and sometimes Saturday afternoon. They treat this whole farm as if it were their private plot. Well, of course. That's right. It is.
On Sunday afternoon they took off in a Beechcraft from a grassy landing strip, climbed about 1,000 feet into cloudless sky, and flew in a rectangle, roughly tracing the farm boundaries. Fred ascended to 8,000 feet, described neighboring farms and their history, and then flew over the two nearest small towns. «Would you like to try the controls?»
Belenko nodded. Having flown a Beechcraft in Virginia, he knew its capabilities and limitations, and he banked easily 180 degrees to the left, then 180 degrees to the right, looking to ensure no other planes were in the vicinity.
«You really are a flier.»
«Do you like aerobatics?»
«Okay. Go ahead. But remember, we don't have chutes.»
The urge was childish but overpowering. Quickly he looped the plane, started another loop, and at the top flipped over, executing an Immelmann with which he had impressed Nadezhda. He rolled, stalled, spun, did every maneuver the plane could safely withstand. At first, Fred laughed and shouted, like a boy on a roller coaster. Suddenly he fell silent, and seeing him paling, Belenko leveled off. «I am sorry. I am acting like a fool.»