Ilfeld gave the customs people on the pier some double-talk and the four of them went aboard before anyone was allowed to disembark. The First Officer was a ruddy squat Englishman who told them the way to James Butler’s cabin.

Ross was startled by the closeness of the resemblance when James Butler opened up. It wasn’t Kendig but from a distance it might have been. The eyes were too close together, the hairline was a little wrong, the mouth too thick, the real Kendig was a little taller and less full in the hips and had longer legs.

Butler didn’t seem surprised. “Well come on in, gents.”

Ilfeld said, “You mind a whole lot if we search you for weapons, old buddy?”

“Go ahead. I’m not armed. But go ahead.”

The two goons spread him out in the frisk position with his hands against the top bunk and his feet splayed well out. They went over him meticulously and Ross waited until the ritual had been observed. Then he said, “I suppose you know who we are and why we’re here, don’t you?”

“I know why you’re here. I don’t know who you are.”

Ilfeld flashed an ID wallet and gave him time to read it. “I’m with the consulate staff here. This gentleman is from the State Department in Washington.”

“Sure he is.”

Ross said, “Here’s my identification,” but James Butler didn’t give it more than a glance and Ross put it away feeling a little foolish.

Butler said, “You gentlemen are out of your jurisdiction here.”

“A regular sea lawyer,” Ilfeld said.

Ross said, “You want to come along with us, Mr. Butler?”

“Actually I’m rather enjoying the voyage. I wasn’t planning to go ashore here at all.”

“And if we insist?”

“Then I’ll stand on my rights. You can’t hijack me off this ship if I don’t want to go. Not legally.”

Ross said, “Perhaps you three gentlemen wouldn’t mind waiting outside while I talk with Mr. Butler.” In his pocket he had the recorder running.

Butler sat down patiently. Ilfeld ducked his way out behind the two goons and the bulkhead door rang when it closed. Ross walked two paces—the width of the stateroom—to the porthole and hooked his elbow in it. “Okay, let’s cut the shit. What’s your name?”

“James Butler.”

“Traveling on a false passport is a serious offense.”

“No. Not if I stay aboard this ship until it returns to the United States. I haven’t tried to sneak into any foreign country on a false passport. And I haven’t defrauded anybody out of anything. I paid for my passage in full, in cash. I’m clean—you can’t touch me.”

Ross looked out through the open port. A dark rainbow rippled in the patch of oil that drifted on the water thirty feet below him. A quarter of a mile down the waterfront a tanker was pumping its cargo into tank lorries drawn up in a row along the dock. The sun was bright, fierce; when he turned inward to look at James Butler he could hardly see him for a moment until his vision adjusted. “You’re in a lot of trouble nevertheless.”

“I don’t see how. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Then you’ll have no reason to refuse to cooperate with us, Mr.—Butler?”

“Go ahead, ask your questions.”

“What’s your name?”

“Dwight Liddell.”

“Vital statistics, Mr. Liddell?”

“Fifty years old. Divorced. Unemployed. I was living in Bala Cynwyd for a while but my residence is in Trenton now. By profession I’m an aeronautical engineer. What else do you want to know?”

“Who gave you James Butler’s papers?”

“James Butler.”

“He said that was his name, did he?”

“He had the passport to prove it.”

“Mind if I have a look at it, Mr. Liddell?”

And suddenly there was a ball of excitement in him because there had to be a photograph in that passport—and Kendig had used it to get into the States a month ago.

But Kendig had thought of it of course. The photograph was Liddell’s.

“How much did he pay you to take us on this little wild goose chase, Mr. Liddell?”

“Call me Dwight,” Liddell said. “I don’t think it’s any of your business how much money changed hands.”

“But he did pay you.”

“Sure he did. What else would have induced me to put up with this grilling?”

“I haven’t even reached for a rubber hose, Mr. Liddell.”

“You won’t have to.” Liddell spread his hands and smiled. “My life’s an open book.”

On the twentieth he flew back to Washington and Liddell went on his way aboard the Cape of Good Hope. Ross had been a little worried about that but Cutter set him at ease: “No point making waves when it doesn’t prove anything. You did the right thing letting him go. Provided you milked him first.”

“I’ve got six hours of tape. He was pretty dry by the time I finished with him. He didn’t hold anything back except the size of the money Kendig paid him.”

“The man doesn’t want to have to pay taxes on it, does he. All right—I’ll listen to the tape tonight but tell me what’s significant on it in your estimation.”

“Not a hell of a lot,” Ross admitted. “Kendig dropped him off in Charleston by taxi in time to catch the boat. From what the FBI tells us Kendig turned the rental car in about an hour before the sailing. So we might get something from taxi companies or the airlines or whatever, but I’m sure the FBI’s working on that.”

Cutter nodded. “When it comes to that kind of drudgery they do as good a job as anybody.”

“The taxi they took to the pier in Charleston was a Yellow Cab.”

“Naturally.”

“I just thought I’d mention it. I happened to ask Liddell and he happened to remember it. Yellow Cab, he thinks it was, and he remembers the driver was black but he couldn’t tell me fat or thin, tall or short, bald or short hair or afro. He’s not lying, he’s just a typical witness.”

“We’ll pass it on to the Bureau. But either Kendig paid off the cab right there at the pier or he got himself dropped off downtown on a street corner. Didn’t you get anything at all out of Liddell?”

“Nothing that looked interesting to me. Maybe you’ll find something I missed.”

“Maybe I will at that.”

Q. Then you drove from Trenton to Charleston together in Butler’s car on the twenty-seventh, is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. That’s a long day’s drive. Did Butler make any stops on the way?

A. Well sure, we stopped for gas several times. We had lunch in a service area, one of those Hot Shoppes or Howard Johnson’s, whatever they are. We had dinner in a Chinese place in a shopping center outside of Norfolk. Oh, and he bought some typing paper in a discount store there.

Q. You remember the name of the store?

A. … No, I guess I don’t. But I remember the paper all right. It was Southworth Bond.

Q. How come you remember that, Mr. Liddell?

A. Well he wanted a heavy grade of paper. He really wanted twenty-four-pound paper but the heaviest they had was twenty-weight. See, the reason I noticed was that my wife writes children’s books. My ex-wife. She always buys twenty-four-pound paper because it duplicates better in copying machines. You know, it feeds easier, doesn’t get rumpled up. And she always buys this Southworth Bond paper, so I recognized the package when he bought it.

Q. What was it he bought, a ream of it?

A. They only had it in one-hundred-sheet packets. That’s what he bought. A pack of a hundred sheets and a pad of carbon paper.

Q. And this was ordinary letter-size? Eight and a half by eleven?

A. Well yes, sure. It wasn’t legal size or anything like that, if that’s what you mean.

Q. Okay. Then what happened?

A. After we left the shopping center? Well it was getting dark but we went right on, all the way to Charleston. It must have been after midnight when we got there. We put up in a motel.

Q. What motel?

A. I don’t remember the name of it. It wasn’t one of the big chains, I’d remember that. I mean you stop in a Holiday Inn or something, you sort of recognize the surroundings. This was just a motel, you know. It was just off Interstate Ninety-five but I couldn’t tell you which interchange—there’s four or five along there, exits for Charleston. We just got off the highway and stopped at the first motel we came to that had a vacancy sign.