“Sure. But it may give us a lead. Get it all on tape and we’ll all go over it when you bring it back.”
Ross swallowed that without a retort and went out. He threw the attaché case in the back seat and pulled out on the highway to Dulles.
On the plane he read the copystats of the fifty-one pages they now had of Kendig’s exposé. The latest sixteen-page chapter had arrived at the French publisher’s office four days ago, having been posted in Charleston on the day after James Butler had set sail from that port. The typescript was double-spaced, which made it easy to read between the lines. You had to give the bastard credit for effective understatement. Another few chapters like these and he’d blow the lid off every capital that counted.
It was cleverly conceived and executed; there was no innuendo, every statement was flat and factual. A government could deny it or confirm it but nobody could accuse Kendig of slanting it or getting things out of context. He simply didn’t go in for interpretation.
The matter of the Hammarskjöld assassination—chapter three—was a raw exposition of meetings, decisions taken at specific hours on specific days by named individuals and then a day-by-day trace of itemized actions by individuals, again named, effecting the mechanics of the event. There were no suggestive interpolations, no sub-text. Pages 47 and 48 were missing, withheld by Kendig; page 46 ended with the line, “Documentary evidence to support these facts, and witnesses who took part or observed these events, are as fol-”
Of course it was unsupported testimony but there’d been so many people involved and once the thing was published they’d all be on the defensive, details would be demanded of them, sooner or later one of them would crack and spill his guts out of guilt or disgust or desperation.
In a fine sense it was history and didn’t matter any more but to discount it on that basis would be absurd and specious. Kendig had them over a barrel and the barrel was headed right over the falls. Coming on the heels of the Nixon spectacle a book like this would wreak unimaginable damage because the structure of human faith was so weakened already; at least Ross saw it so, his own convictions having undergone severe questionings and doubts in the past few years. But in the end it came back to the same thing for him: there was still something worth preserving and worth fighting to preserve.
Casablanca was new to him but he’d been in Tangier and the ambience was the same—the startling juxtaposition of unspeakable poverty and first-class modernity. It was a resort city and a capital of commerce and there wasn’t anything in common with the Warner Brothers sets of the old movie that everybody knew. A Mercedes diesel taxi took him to the Hilton and he ate a big dinner and slept the clock around, trying to overcome the glaze of jet lag. In the morning he paid his call on the Agency’s stringer, a beefy sweating backslapper named Ilfeld who was Assistant to the Commercial Secretary at the consulate. Ilfeld brought along a couple of goons in wilted seersucker when they went down to meet the Cape of Good Hope. The port was shallow and not very big and there wasn’t much nautical traffic; Rabat was only a little way up the coast and that was most ships’ preferred port of call.
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.”