“How can you afford to spend so much on people rather than weapons?”
“How can we afford not to?” responded the fighter-base commander, a colonel, who was escorting them. “The best weapons in the world are no good unless you have people willing and able to man them.”
That’s right, absolutely right. That’s what I was trying to tell the Party.
The base commander told Belenko that the Air Force wished to give him an American flight suit as a memento of the visit. Never had he admired any apparel so much. Although made of synthetics, it was silken and flexible in feel, light, yet warm. “You make a fine-looking American pilot,” Gregg said, as Belenko looked at himself in the dark green suit before a mirror.
“Let me show you something,” said an officer, who flicked a cigarette lighter and touched the flame to the flight suit.
“Don’t do that!” shouted Belenko, shoving the officer away.
“No, just trust me. It’s fireproof. If it burns, we’ll give you a new one.” The officer held the flame to a sleeve, and Belenko saw that the suit was, indeed, impervious to fire.
Belenko then asked to meet a typical sergeant, whom he questioned about his work and standard of living. Believing none of the straightforward answers, Belenko announced he would like to visit the sergeant’s quarters. Easy enough, said the commander. He lives only a few blocks away. Come on, we’ll go in my car. Obviously, this was a put-on. Can you imagine a colonel actually driving people around, including one of his own sergeants, like a common chauffeur?
The sergeant lived on base in a two-story stucco house with a screened front porch, small yard, and attached garage. Belenko asked how a sergeant could have such a large house, and the commander told him the size of the house allotted depended on the size of the family to occupy it. Oh, that’s absurd. And look at that car [a 1976 Impala]! They want me to think a sergeant owns a car like that. Why, it’s better than the colonefs car.
Upon looking at a major’s house, which was nicer but not that much nicer, Belenko gave up. I’ve seen the show. Why put them to more trouble?
That evening some officers took Belenko and Gregg to a good dinner at a civilian restaurant near the base. Belenko felt that the conversation, pilots talking to pilots, was genuine and stimulating. But when the host attempted to pay the check, the whole scheme was exposed to him. The proprietor, a Greek immigrant, refused to take money, and the meal cost well over $100. Gregg translated. “He says he owes this country more than he can ever repay, but as a token repayment he is giving us dinner. I think he’s guessed or someone has told him who you are.”
Sometimes, though, Belenko saw significance in the mundane, and some of his observations began to engender doubts about his doubts. On successive Sundays, Peter took him to the zoo in Washington’s Rock Creek Park and the King’s Dominion Amusement Park north of Richmond. The zoo, situated in lovely woods, maintains a large collection of exotic animals. The amusement park is a wholesome place offering many ingenious rides and delights for children and teenagers. Yet at both the zoo and park he was most impressed by the people.
Most, in his opinion, were from the “working class.” Try as he would, he could not honestly discern in their appearance or behavior any manifestations of the fear, anxiety, or privation which he from childhood on had been assured prevailed among the majority of Americans. Families and couples strolled about as if, for the moment anyway, they were carefree and having a good time. Among them were many black people. They were dressed just as well as the white people, were equally attentive to their children, and, so far as he could tell, seemed to have no qualms about mingling with the white people.
He momentarily froze, then pointed at a rather pretty young blond girl holding hands with a young black man at the amusement park. “Is that allowed in this country?”
“It’s their business,” Peter said. “Not ours, not the government’s.”
There was something else. According to the Party, zoos, museums, and other public recreational facilities in the United States cost so much that ordinary people could not afford them. But as he verified for himself, admission to the zoo was free, and while the rides at the park cost money, the workers, including the blacks, obviously could afford them.
He doubted that the zoo and park were Potemkin creations of the Dark Forces, as he had thought the shopping center, mansion, apartment, and air base were. His Sunday observations did not convince him that the United States was a land of universal contentment, justice, and racial equality. But if what he saw was fairly representative, then social and economic conditions were vastly different from what the Party said. If this is true, they’re bigger liars than I ever dreamed. If this is true, then something is right here.
It took Peter and Nick a while to locate “a real workers’ bar, a cheap place, “where the lowly laborers might repair in the evening, but they found an approximation on a side street in Falls Church. There was a long bar with stools on one side and a row of wooden booths on the other. Men in working clothes were drinking beer, talking, and laughing or watching a savage game (Monday night football) on color television. The menu of the establishment was chalked on a blackboard, and although Belenko already had dined, he insisted on sampling the food, which he ordered at random. A black man served an extravagant portion of barbecued beef sandwiched in a large bun, together with french fried potatoes, coleslaw, and a beer. The little green check totaled $2.08.
That was real meat, delicious, and so cheap. And I think that black man made it himself and was proud of it. The men’s room was clean. Nobody was drunk or vomiting or fighting. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen drunks or fighting on the streets here. But there are bars everywhere here. You can buy vodka and beer and wine here a lot easier than in the Soviet Union. And it’s so cheap, people could stay drunk all the time if they wanted. It’s as if 1980 has already cornel
When Belenko expressed some of these thoughts, Peter remarked, “I’m sorry to say that alcoholism is a serious problem in the United States. By our definition, between nine and ten million Americans are alcoholics.”
“What is your definition of an alcoholic?”
“Someone who is dependent on alcohol or whose consumption of alcohol harmfully interferes with his or her life.”
“Well, by that definition, three-fourths of all the men in the Soviet Union are alcoholics.”
Peter agreed that alcoholism was a more acute problem in the Soviet Union than in the United States but went on to explain the American problem with drug addiction.
Referring to purveyors of illicit drugs, Belenko exclaimed, “Why don’t you arrest them? Shoot them! Or at least put them in jail!”
“We try to arrest them. But, Viktor, as you will learn, it is not so easy to put someone in jail in the United States.”
Both Peter and Anna emphasized to Belenko the necessity of learning to drive, a task he relished. Upon being told that prior to his lessons he would have to obtain a Virginia learner’s permit, he was incensed.
“Why cant you just give me a license?”
“We don’t have the power to do that.”
“That is ridiculous. In the Soviet Union you can buy a license on the black market for a hundred rubles. If you can’t issue me a license, buy me one.”
“Take my word, Viktor, you’re going to have to pass a test like everybody else. We can give you false identity papers, but not a license.”
Belenko learned to drive in less than an hour but tended to maneuver a car as if it were a fighter plane and habitually exceeded the speed limit. He was driving with Peter along a four-lane divided highway, when a siren sounded behind them.