The Gordian Knot - Bernhard Schlink [51]
“The cats, I keep thinking about your cats. Were they anything like Effi?” She narrowed her eyes, and bit her lips. There was horror and sadness in her face.
“One was white, one was striped, and the third was black with white paws. They were all a year apart, and little Dopey was always putting one over on Sneezy, just like Sneezy had done the year before with Snow White.”
“All those names are from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. What I don’t understand: You said that these men destroyed your life in Cucuron. Why did they do it, and how come they managed to do it?”
“I don’t know. They must have some link to the French secret service.”
“How can the Russian or Polish secret service have a link to the French one? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Don’t ask me. Either way, I didn’t get any more translation work, and I had all kinds of trouble with the municipality, the police, the bank, and my landlord.”
“What did they figure they’d get out of this?”
“I’ve asked myself that too. Perhaps they wanted me to be stamped as untrustworthy. Then there wouldn’t be anybody I could turn to with my story.”
“And you think they also found out about your coming to New York from the French secret service?”
“How else would they have? At any rate, the French customs officer asked me all kinds of questions on my way to Brussels to catch my flight to New York. The French secret service could have found all this out from customs, and the Polish or Russians from them.”
“I don’t like all this.”
Georg still felt that she was convinced he ought to go to the CIA. Was she right? For her the issue didn’t seem to be a possible threat to United States’, or to European national security. It doesn’t matter where the secret service sets up shop—it can do so anywhere. That its work is compromised if people report its activities, if its agents are extradited, and its branches have to move, is of less importance than national security. Georg took Helen’s love for the Union Square area seriously. She had a point. Furthermore, he found the idea attractive that a city is a small mirror of the world, containing within it life and work, business and religion, wealth and poverty, black and white, CIA and KGB. That’s what he liked about New York: it is the whole world, more so than any middle-class German city could be. He tried to explain this to Helen, but couldn’t convince her.
31
GEORG ASKED IN FOREIGN bookstores and libraries whether anyone knew Françoise. He showed her photograph at the cash registers and the counters of diners and stores near the MacIntyre Building. To no avail. He called Helen every evening, and she always came up with some excuse about why she hadn’t called him, though she had promised to. She hadn’t reached any of her colleagues yet.
He no longer cared whether he was being shadowed or not. On the last day of his reconnaissance in the area around the MacIntyre Building, he went into a diner, and, as he stood waiting for a table, saw the redhead having lunch. The diner was packed, and waiters were rushing past with laden trays, while the owner sat more customers by shouting at them where to sit. The redhead was eating a hamburger, drinking a Coke, and reading a newspaper. Just another regular.
Georg made his way through the diner and sat down at the redhead’s table. For an instant the man looked surprised, but then recovered his professional cool. “Don’t let me disturb you,” Georg said. “I think there’s no need for introductions. You might know me better than I know you, but I know you well enough to be able to ask you to pass on a message. There’s a gentleman in your—your organization with whom I would like to speak. He was working in France not too long ago; perhaps he’s still there, I don’t know. He called himself Bulnakov. A short man, stout, sixtyish. Do you know him?”
The redhead didn’t say anything,