"The Gordian Knot" by Bernhard Schlink, summary

"The Gordian Knot" is a spy thriller about German lawyer Georg Polger, who escapes his routine in Provence and is unwittingly drawn into a secret clash between intelligence agencies and military concerns. A private translator becomes a bargaining chip in someone else’s hunt for the secret plans of a European combat helicopter. The novel was written and published in 1988; it was the author’s first independent fictional work after co-authoring a detective story about the private detective Selb.

In 1989, the book was awarded the prestigious Friedrich Glauser Prize for German-language detective fiction.

Provencal illusions

Georg Polger left his law practice in Karlsruhe, broke up with his girlfriend, Hanna, and settled in the Provençal town of Cucuron. The income from his occasional translations was desperately short. In March, he received an unexpected call from the town of Cadenet. The newly opened agency, Bulnakov Translation, offered a generous fee for processing computer instructions. The owner, Bulnakov, a heavyset man with a false sense of affability, immediately handed Georg a large order. His secretary, Françoise Kramsky, was in the reception area. Soon, Polger accompanied her to an industry conference in Lyon.

The road brought the travelers closer. Françoise seemed open, quick to laugh, and sensitive. A whirlwind romance ensued. Meanwhile, Bulnakov encouraged George to take the place of his Marseille colleague, Morin, who had died in a suspicious car accident. Polger bought the company from the widow and received secret contracts from the Toulon aircraft factory, Mermoz. Françoise moved into George’s house in Cucuron. She brought her personal belongings but kept the rented apartment in Cadenet, regularly disappearing there on Sundays.

Hidden camera and night blackmail

The idyll ended on a sultry July night. Waking in the dark, Georg discovered an empty spot on the pillow next to him. A strip of light led into the study. Françoise sat naked in front of the helicopter schematics spread out, camera in hand.

A furious row erupted. Françoise burst into tears. She claimed that Polish secret services were holding her father and brother, sentenced to death for throwing a Molotov cocktail at a police car, in a Warsaw prison. Spying was supposedly the only way to save the family. Polger tried to break the web and went to Bulnakov, threatening to go to the police. The head of the agency merely chuckled good-naturedly. The trap was sprung: Georg’s fingerprints were already on the film canisters, and the translator’s damaged yellow Peugeot matched the description of the car that had struck Morin’s car. Françoise coldly confirmed his boss’s story.

Georg hid copies of the plans in a gutter. Soon, a black limousine with tinted windows nearly pushed his car off an embankment. Near the garage, Polger found his three cats with bullet wounds in the back of their heads. The house was ransacked. Later, unknown assailants tracked Georg down a highway at night, dragged him out of the car, and brutally kicked him.

Waking up in the hospital with a cut eyebrow, the translator felt a profound horror at his own vulnerability. In Cadena, the traces had disappeared. The office was being repainted, and the owner of the villa claimed that Mademoiselle Kramsky had moved out a week ago. The local gendarme began openly ousting the German, the bank froze his accounts, and the Mermoz factory contracts vanished. A friend visiting from Heidelberg glanced at Françoise’s forgotten photograph: on the wall hung an architectural sketch not of a Warsaw church, but of New York’s St. John the Divine Cathedral. Georg sold the rest of his belongings and flew overseas.

On the trail of stained glass in the stone forest

New York greeted the newcomer with the noise of the subway and a thick wall of August heat. The first weeks were spent fruitlessly combing the parishes of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Money was rapidly disappearing. Former director of the community theater group, Calvin Cope, had difficulty remembering the face of the girl in the photograph, though he couldn’t name her.

Soon, Georg noticed he was being followed. A red-haired young man in a raincoat was methodically following him. Polger had acquired a fake beard, dark cream, hairspray, and false glasses. At Grand Central Station, the fugitive disappeared into a restroom stall, hastily applied makeup, and tailed his pursuer. The pursuer led him to the brown nine-story McIntire Building on Broadway, bearing the Townsend Enterprises sign.

A chance encounter at a neighbor’s party brought Georg together with Helen, a German philology teacher. A timid attraction developed between them. At a baseball game, the stadium television suddenly captured Françoise’s face in a red blouse among the spectators. Georg rushed down the rows of seats, pushing aside security guards, but the crowd concealed the fugitive.

Ambush in Manhattan

Polger decided to go all in. At the cafe, he sat down next to Ryzhiy, who was munching on a hamburger, and told him to convey Bulnakov’s request for a meeting.

The next day, Georg stepped into the cool of the McIntyre Building. A screen flashed in the conference room. The footage dispassionately showed a night chase in Provence, a ramming attack, and the brutal beating of Georg as he lay on the side of the road. A thinner Bulnakov swaggered into the room in a respectable three-piece suit, introducing himself as Joe Benton. The spy cynically offered thirty thousand dollars and a ticket to Europe in exchange for silence. Georg demanded millions.

Benton summoned two burly young men with the demeanor of undercover cops. On the third-floor stairwell, the German suddenly ducked, pretending to adjust his shoelace, and with a powerful blow of his shoulder, hurled the guard into the open shaft of the inoperative elevator. The second pursuer was stopped by a bucket of floor paint overturned at his feet on the slippery steps.

Georg took refuge in an empty apartment three floors below his rental. The morning column in The New York Times dryly reported on the incident: an illegal immigrant had injured two law enforcement officers during a deportation attempt. The pieces were complete. The Warsaw Pact secret services were a sham. A brutal industrial espionage operation was underway: the Californian giant Gilman had stolen advanced components from its competitor Mermoz, preparing to disrupt a gigantic NATO contract for a single combat helicopter. Benton was working as a private contractor for the Americans.

Apartment on Prince Street

Helen’s colleague identified the girl in the photograph. Her real name turned out to be Fran Kramer, and her address was on Manhattan’s Prince Street.

Polger tracked her down at the entrance to her building. She was pushing a baby stroller. Georg knocked the flimsy door chain off and burst into the hallway. Fran was holding her two-month-old daughter, Jill. The unexpected visitor declared the infant a hostage. Fran confessed: the girl’s father was unknown, the work for Benton’s private detective agency had been going on for years, and the "Gilman" contract had earned the firm thirty million.

They lived cooped up for a week. George washed dishes, changed diapers, heated formula, and cradled a screaming Jill in his arms. Fran went to the library. Under threat of violence against the child, the fugitive stole fourteen reels of original microfilm drawings from Benton’s safe.

Polger drafted an ultimatum to the Soviet embassy in Washington, offering to buy the plans, enclosing a fake "Gilman" form. He then picked up Jill and flew to San Francisco, leaving the girl in the care of an actress friend, Fearn.

Interchange at the California Terminal

The first meeting took place on a hill near a vacant lot beyond Twenty-fourth Street. The Soviet side was represented by a gaunt, elderly gentleman with the manners of an Oxford professor and a childish tie adorned with gnomes. The professor examined the negative and calmly informed them that exactly the same film had previously been offered to them by another seller for twelve million. The man mentioned the legend of Alexander the Great: instead of fruitlessly trying to unravel a tangle of conditions, sometimes it’s best to cut the Gordian knot with a sword.

Polger rushed to Palo Alto to see Buchanan, the head of security at the Gilman concern. Georg posed as an intermediary for his East German cousin, ready to turn in the seller of corporate secrets. Buchanan was visibly nervous, having mentioned the odd slip of the tongue about "uncle."

Fran called at dawn. Benton had discovered the missing tapes and urgently flew to California with a partner, intending to eliminate the blackmailer. Georg arranged a simultaneous meeting for all parties in the central terminal of San Francisco Airport.

The Professor appeared on the second level of the station, carrying a flat briefcase. Benton and Red were striding down from the arrivals area. Georg slammed his fist against the display case. The alarm blared. Pulling the stunned Soviet spy along with him, Polger rushed onto the escalator and hurled the film canisters from above right at Benton’s feet.

Buchanan reacted instantly. Drawing his pistol with both hands, the security chief pumped a bullet straight into Benton’s forehead. With a second shot, he knocked the confused Professor down onto the escalator steps. A stampede ensued. In the ensuing chaos, Georg snatched up the wounded diplomat’s dropped briefcase and disappeared into the panicked crowd.

Inside the briefcase were bundles of small bills totaling three hundred and eighty-two thousand dollars and a spare tie. The press trumpeted the thwarting of an Eastern spy raid by the concern’s vigilant security forces. Meeting Fran, who had rushed to pick up her daughter, in the arrivals hall, Georg persuaded her not to return to New York.

Epilogue on the Coast

Five years later, the narrator visited the couple in Lisbon. The family had two more children, and Georg had returned to literary translation. Sitting on the terrace over a glass of wine, the friends reconstructed the hidden mechanics of the airport tragedy.

Buchanan’s question about "Uncle" was no accident: he personally served as the second seller of stolen secrets and was conducting parallel negotiations with the elderly Soviet resident. Benton’s appearance threatened to expose the machinations within the concern itself. Shots to kill eliminated the unwanted witnesses to the secret deal forever. The Gordian Knot was cut with blood, but Georg reasoned otherwise: knots don’t exist; people weave the traps of their own illusions.