The Gordian Knot - Bernhard Schlink [81]
Georg sped down the winding mountain road with his radio turned up all the way. His shirt fluttered in the wind. “It worked!” he yelled triumphantly. “This is the beginning of the end for you, Joe Benton! It doesn’t matter what Buchanan thinks of my story, but, believe me, he’ll be less and less pleased with your side of things!” Georg imagined Buchanan giving Benton the sack: “You’re such an idiot, Benton! You were underhanded in your dealings—it doesn’t matter in how many ways, but you were underhanded. I have no time for people like you!” Georg thought, the one thing that upsets me is that you’ll probably never find out that I was the one who dug your grave! Buchanan won’t tell you about me, just as you didn’t tell him about me either. But who cares! Georg chuckled. And now for the Russians. And why not bring in the Chinese too, the Libyans, the Israelis, the South Africans? It’s like a cocktail where you throw in all kinds of spicy things: one sip and you hit the roof. If the world wants to dance to a crazy tune, it might as well be mine!
Jill brought Georg back down to earth. She was lying on the bed with her eyes wide open. She had vomited and was whimpering. Fern’s diagnosis was an upset stomach. Georg could only see that the poor baby was suffering, and he had a bad conscience. Fern suggested he give her some Coca-Cola.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“If you have an upset stomach, you drink Coca-Cola. Everyone does it. My mother even had a little bottle of Coca-Cola syrup always handy.”
“You’re not seriously suggesting I give Jill Coca-Cola! How old were you when your mother used that household remedy on you?” Household remedy! Georg had to force himself even to use the words. Household remedies were wormwood, chamomile and linden blossom tea, compresses, and alcohol rubs. Coca-Cola as a household remedy! America really was a new world.
Fern was exasperated. “You can’t expect me to remember if I was given Coca-Cola when I was two months old, but I was given it ever since I can remember.”
They got a can out of the refrigerator. Georg picked Jill up, dipped his finger in the brown liquid, and then popped it in her mouth. She sucked at his finger, and he repeated it a second time and then a third.
“Do you think that’s enough?” he asked.
Fern had been watching carefully. She flicked a lock of hair out of her face and said with conviction, “Five should do the trick.”
He dipped his finger two more times, and then carried Jill onto the terrace, through the rooms, down the stairs to the laundry room, and back up the stairs. He kept mumbling softly to her, telling her fairy tales and crooning lullabies. By the time he got back to the terrace, she was asleep. He sat down carefully on the edge of the deck chair and looked down the street, counting five abandoned car wrecks and three sailboats in the bay. He watched a dirigible heading north.
44
ON WEDNESDAY, AT PRECISELY TEN in the morning, Georg called the Soviet embassy in Washington from a pay phone.
“Embassy of the USSR, can I help you?”
“I would like to leave a message under the code name ‘Rotors.’ Have your man in San Francisco take a cab to the corner of Twenty-fourth and Third streets, then walk east on Twenty-fourth all the way to the end. Have him wait there for a motorboat that will appear at eleven. Did you get all that?”
“Yes, but …”
Georg hung up. It took him ten minutes to get back home. He didn’t hurry; it would take a good fifteen minutes for the embassy in Washington to contact its man in San Francisco and tell him where to go. Fern and Jill were at the Golden Gate Park, and Jonathan barely looked up from a new painting he was working on as Georg went over to the desk. “If you want some paper, it’s in the top left-hand drawer,” Jonathan said. Georg took the gun out of the bottom right-hand drawer. It was still unclear what Jonathan’s new picture was to be of.
By twenty past ten Georg was lying on the roof. Illinois and Twenty-fourth streets were quiet. From time to time he saw a van,