The Gordian Knot - Bernhard Schlink [61]
He spent the night on a park bench, his head resting on the folder for the reporter. Other people lay on park benches too. He didn’t stand out in his sneakers, jeans, polo shirt, and his old blue jacket. He woke up from time to time, heard dogs barking, drunks quarreling, a siren howling. He turned over and fell asleep again. In the morning there was a slight chill in the air, and he curled up. At six o’clock he went to a diner and had some eggs and bacon with home fries, toast and jelly, and coffee. His head was heavy from the wine. He was sure he could reach Larry later in the morning. He rehearsed mentally what he would tell the reporter, how he would show him the plans and photos, how he would explain it all. He found a copy of the Times next to him on the counter, abandoned by its owner, and read about Afghanistan and Nicaragua, a promising Democratic presidential candidate, and the trade deficit.
In the Metro section he read: “Two officers were injured yesterday while attempting to arrest and deport an illegal alien. One officer is still at the FDR Hospital, the other was released after treatment of minor injuries. The foreigner, a German by the name of Georg Polger, is now a fugitive. Anyone with information …”
At first Georg’s mind was a blank. Then the same thoughts kept recurring: This doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t make sense at all. The Russians might have some plants in the French secret service, but surely not in the American one. And even if they did have plants here, then surely not to the extent that they could send officers out after him.
Georg went through what he knew one step at a time, as he had arranged the information for the reporter. A European consortium—Britain, Germany, Italy, and France—come together to develop a new attack helicopter. Is that clear enough so far? Yes. They achieve a technological breakthrough. It’s not about a faster helicopter with stronger armor and higher payload: it’s about a war machine that can annihilate all other weapon systems. Consequently, the helicopter is scheduled for adoption not only by the four European countries that created it but by all the NATO countries, including the United States. That’s clear enough too. It is also clear that the Russians are interested in getting in on the act. They contacted him in the guise of the translation agency and saw to it that he became the head of a translation agency that worked almost exclusively for Mermoz, and then got at the plans through him. Still clear? Yes, still clear.
But Georg had difficulty piecing together how the story went on. He remembered Helen’s asking why the Russians or the Poles would want to destroy his life in Cucuron, and how they had managed it. He, and Helen too, had taken it for granted that they would want to sideline him as a source, to make him untrustworthy, and that consequently they had given the French damning evidence implicating him. But why did they bother with that when they could simply retreat behind the iron curtain, which was still ironclad enough to stop anyone from investigating further? Georg was aware, however, that the Russians found knowledge far more valuable when others didn’t know they had it. The question remained how they had compromised Georg with the French, and how they had made him seem untrustworthy, making his life in Cucuron miserable. There were endless possibilities. So far so good? Something was bothering Georg: he was no longer pleased with the way the story went on, but didn’t know what it was that was bothering him, or what other scenarios might be possible.
Now to New York and Townsend Enterprises. To sum up, he had hit upon the idea of New York because of the poster in Françoise’s room, he had looked for her here, and had