The Gordian Knot - Bernhard Schlink [74]
“No, Fran. I’m going to bring this to an end. You think it’s already at an end. But it isn’t, not for me.”
Late in the evening she tried once again to change his mind. She tried the next day and the day after. She tried being calm, then with tears and shouting, with reasoning, pleas, threats, swearing, and seduction. Sometimes he noticed with both shock and relief how afraid of him she was, in the same way she was afraid of Benton.
The next day she brought him the letterhead from Gorgefield Aircraft and the name of Benton’s contact there. The day after she brought the cans with the negatives of the construction drawings. On the copies Georg had, the Mermoz logo was barely visible in the lower right corner, where the original had a majestic double-decker plane stamped with the letters M, E, R, M, O, and Z between the upper and lower wings. On a copy, Georg pasted on the Gorgefield logo and covered it with White-Out until even the G, whose arc formed the curve of the earth and whose crossbar formed the fuselage of an airplane, could only dimly be made out. He had Fran make a copy of this copy, and to accompany it wrote a short letter on Fran’s typewriter:
Dear Sirs: The enclosed document might interest you. The entire set will be offered for thirty million. Will you bid? Someone who understands the situation and has complete authority will be available for a meeting in San Francisco. Place and time of the meeting will be furnished to you next Wednesday at 10 a.m. Have your telephone operator expect a message with the code name “Rotors.” The deal must be concluded by Friday of next week.
He mulled over whether he should address the letter to “Dear Sir or Madam” or just “Dear Sirs,” and whether the code name “Rotors” was good enough, but both issues were unimportant. Beneath the address, he simply wrote “Re: Attack Helicopter.” He put the letter and the prepared copy in the envelope, addressed it to the Soviet embassy in Washington, and on Wednesday evening dropped it in a mailbox. He did this in the dead of night with Jill on his arm. He sat for a long time in front of a lamp with the negatives Fran had brought, trying to assess their authenticity and completeness. When he rolled them up again and stuck them in the cans, he wasn’t much the wiser.
On Saturday he booked a flight to San Francisco for himself and Jill. He wanted to meet the Russians on Wednesday, but wanted to talk first with Buchanan, Benton’s contact at Gorgefield Aircraft. But before that, he wanted to find a place where he could meet with the Russians. He would need two days to prepare.
After Fran gave up hope of changing Georg’s mind, she tried to stay out of his way. He was prepared to respect that, but it was hard to do in the small apartment. They didn’t utter a word as they sat opposite each other, or when they met at the door between the living room and the bedroom or in the hallway, letting the other go first or passing each other, barely touching, with Fran lowering her eyes: a withered intimacy that made Georg sad. But sometimes he was reminded of girls in ancient or distant cultures who have been promised to a man and are only allowed to show themselves to him after the wedding. Fran was again sleeping in the living room. Days ago, after their initial arguments, when she had aroused him but still had not been able to make him give up his plan, she made a point of sleeping in the living room.
On Friday evening he greeted her according to the ritual of the past week. In the morning he had gone shopping with Jill, also to accustom himself again to the outside world, and had spent the afternoon in the kitchen. He prepared a Cucuron dinner: tapenade on toast, duck Provençale, and chocolate mousse. She was withdrawn