The Gordian Knot - Bernhard Schlink [79]
At Palo Alto he exited the highway. Gorgefield Aircraft was on Alpine Road; after houses with green gardens, streets with green trees, and shops with blossoming flowers and shrubs by their entrances and around their display windows, the street led up into hills covered with grass of a burned golden brown. As the road coiled farther and farther up the hill there were no more houses, no trees, and hardly any cars. A large granite rock inlaid with a bronze company logo stood at the intersection where he turned off to Gorgefield. After another bend he looked down on a wide green valley. The road ended in a loop, on three sides of which stood five-story buildings made of granite or that had granite facades. On the fourth side a parking lot stretched out left and right by the entry-way. Sprinklers were spinning on the green lawns; through the open car window he could hear them hissing, and saw rainbow-colored sunbeams in the spray.
He parked and went to the main entrance, where laurel trees stood in containers. The hall wasn’t cool, it was freezing. He shivered. The doorman looked like a policeman: a badge on his shirtsleeve, a name tag on his breast pocket, a gun on his belt. He asked Georg for identification, but since Georg couldn’t confirm that he had an appointment with Buchanan and wouldn’t tell him the reason he wanted to see him, the guard didn’t let him through. Finally the guard called Buchanan and handed Georg the receiver.
“Mr. Buchanan?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“My name is Georg Polger. You don’t know me, but what I have to tell you is quite important. I’d like a brief word with you, but not on the phone. Could you have me sent up? Or come down yourself if you prefer. As far as I’m concerned, the guard can frisk me for weapons, and feel free to bring some weapons yourself—I don’t want to kill you, I just want to talk with you.”
“Could you pass me over to the guard?”
Georg heard the guard say “Yes, sir” a number of times, after which another guard escorted him to Buchanan’s office on the third floor. Buchanan’s secretary served him a cup of coffee, had him wait for a while, and then took him in to Buchanan. He was a small, stocky, middle-aged man wearing a short-sleeved shirt with a tie. He had a strong handshake and numerous spider veins on his cheeks. He offered Georg the chair in front of his desk, and looked at him inquiringly.
“My story will sound incredible, but it’s not important right now whether you believe it or not. The main thing is that you remember it so you can recall it when the time comes. Because when the time comes it will be too late to be telling it for the first time. Do you follow?”
It was only when Georg asked the question that he noticed that Buchanan was slightly cross-eyed. One of his eyes simply couldn’t listen to Georg with interest.
“Go on,” Buchanan said.
“I’m German, West German. As I’m sure you know, the partition of Germany has divided many families. Half my family lives in East Germany, among them my cousin. He works for the Stasi, what you might call the East German CIA. In fact, you could say he’s not working for the Stasi right now, but for the Soviets. You know that the Soviets have the East Germans under their thumb, just as they do the Poles, the Czechs, the Hungarians, and the Bulgarians. That’s also the case when it comes to these countries’ secret services. Now to my point: my cousin has been given a mission that has taken him from France to the United States. The Russians are interested in the design of an attack helicopter that either the Europeans will build