Bernhard Schlink - The Gordian Knot

Georg was fiddling with his sunglasses again. He had worn them all day until dark. “There is something I noticed in the manuscript,” he said, “that passed me by when it actually happened. Something I didn’t understand at the time. You describe the exchange I had with Buchanan where he asks me if I am my cousin, and then asks if my cousin isn’t in fact my uncle. He asked me that quite specifically, it all came back to me. When I read it, I was surprised that I’d told you about it and that you’d remembered it. It seemed like one of those weird, funny little details. But maybe it’s neither funny nor weird. I’d always thought that Buchanan shot Joe and the professor because his foremost concern was the security of Gorgefield Aircraft, or because he didn’t want a court case that would end up in a scandal for Gorgefield, or that he hated Benton for double-crossing him, or simply because he was trigger-happy. I thought it would be one or all of the above-or something along those lines-and that he meant to shoot me, not the professor.”

“He saw you and thought this proved you were the Russian agent, that the cousin story was just a cover, and that in fact there was no cousin-which there wasn’t.”

“But there was an uncle,” Georg insisted, “the uncle Buchanan asked me about, the uncle who was a Russian agent: a man too old to be my cousin but just the right age to be my uncle: the professor.”

“What do you mean?”

Georg jumped up and began pacing about the terrace. “Why would Buchanan have asked me if my cousin was in fact my uncle? Because he knew there was a man of that age in the Russian secret service who was involved with the helicopter deal. If he hadn’t known that, he wouldn’t have had any reason to ask. The only other reason would be his having a weird sense of humor-his way of telling me that he thought my cousin story was nonsense. But I don’t think that was the case. I’m not saying my story about the cousin was particularly convincing. But I don’t think Buchanan regarded it as nonsense. Not to mention that I don’t think Buchanan had such a weird sense of humor. So the bottom line is that he knew there was a man from the KGB who was old enough to be my uncle and who was involved in the helicopter matter. How did he know?” Georg stopped pacing up and down the terrace and looked at me challengingly.

I began to see his point. “Because he…”

“Because he knew him!” Georg cut in. “Buchanan knew him because the other seller wasn’t Joe, but the professor. The two must have met at some point, and though they wouldn’t have exchanged business cards, Buchanan recognized the professor. And he knew that the professor would recognize him too.”

“Furthermore, he knew that he and the professor didn’t have the appointment you spoke about on the phone,” I added, “and regardless of how you sounded on the phone, it was clear you weren’t the professor.”

“So something was wrong,” Georg said, “and to figure out what was wrong, Buchanan went to the airport. And suddenly Joe turned up!”

“And he suspected that Joe had heard about Buchanan’s offer to the Russians and was about to expose him. So he wiped the slate clean: no Joe, no professor, no traces, no evidence.”

Georg stood there with his hands in his pockets, looking out over the ocean. He didn’t say anything for a while. Then he spoke again. “I was really thrown for a loop. Not because of all Buchanan’s shady dealings at the expense of Gorgefield Aircraft, but because of how I tended to overlook critical issues and ignore them, thinking they were just insignificant details.”

“Do you have a specific detail in mind?”

“Helen told me once,” Georg began, but then turned and looked at me. “You know all the details, you wrote them down. Why should I go over it all again?” He went to the table and raised his glass. “To Joe Benton!” We drank, and he refilled our glasses. “And to the nameless professor, who tried to teach me how to cut through the Gordian knot.” He sat down. “I reread the story about Alexander the Great and the Gordian knot. It was just as the professor said: many had tried to unravel the knot, but Alexander simply cut through it with his sword. Whoever was to unravel the knot would rule Asia, and the promise came true for Alexander. And yet he fell ill in Asia and died. You see, he ought to have tried untying the knot. All knots can be untied, because we are the ones who tie them.” Georg smiled at me. “There are no Gordian knots, just Gordian ribbons.”

Bernhard Schlink was born in Germany. He is the author of the internationally bestselling novels The Reader and Homecoming , as well as The Weekend and the collection of short stories Flights of Love and four prizewinning crime novels- The Gordian Knot, Self’s Punishment, Self’s Deception , and Self’s Murder . He lives in Berlin and New York.