Persuader

and smoothed the blob thinner and thinner. He flicked the tip occasionally to get rid of the excess. He was very delicate. It took him three long minutes but at the end of them he had the whole thing looking pretty much like it had before he arrived. He let it cool a little and then blew hard on it. The new silvery color instantly turned to gray. It was as close to an invisible repair as I had ever seen. Certainly it was better than I could have done myself.
    "OK," I said. "Very good. But you're going to have to do another one. I'm supposed to bring another truck back. We better take a look at that one, too. We'll meet up in the first northbound rest area after Portsmouth, New Hampshire."
    "When?"
    "Be there five hours from now." Duffy and I left him standing there and headed south as fast as I could get the old truck to move. It wouldn't do much better than seventy. It was shaped like a brick and the wind resistance defeated any attempt to go faster. But seventy was OK. I had a few minutes in hand.
    "Did you see his office?" she asked.
    "Not yet," I said. "We need to check it out. In fact we need to check out his whole harbor operation."
    "We're working on it," she said. She had to talk loud. The engine noise and gearbox whine were twice as bad at seventy as they had been at fifty. "Fortunately Portland is not too much of a madhouse. It's only the forty-fourth busiest port in the U.S. About fourteen million tons of imports a year. That's about a quarter-million tons a week. Beck seems to get about ten of them, two or three containers."
    "Does Customs search his stuff?"
    "As much as they search anybody's. Their current hit rate is about two percent. If he gets a hundred and fifty containers a year maybe three of them will be looked at."
    "So how is he doing it?"
    "He could be playing the odds by limiting the bad stuff to, say, one container in ten. That would bring the effective search rate down to zero-point-two percent. He could last years like that."
    "He's already lasted years. He must be paying somebody off." She nodded beside me. Said nothing.
    "Can you arrange extra scrutiny?" I asked.
    "Not without probable cause," she said. "Don't forget, we're way off the books here. We need some hard evidence. And the possibility of a payoff makes the whole thing a minefield, anyway. We might approach the wrong official." We drove on. The engine roared and the suspension swayed. We were passing everything we saw. Now I was watching the mirrors for cops, not tails. I was guessing that Duffy's DEA papers would take care of any specific legal problems, but I didn't want to lose the time it would take for her to have the conversation.
    "How did Beck react?" she asked. "First impression?"
    "He was puzzled," I said. "And a little resentful. That was my first impression. You notice that Richard Beck wasn't guarded at school?"
    "Safe environment."
    "Not really. You could take a kid out of a college, easy as anything. No guards means no danger. I think the bodyguard thing for the trip home was just some kind of a sop to the fact that the kid is paranoid. I think it was purely an indulgence. I don't think old man Beck can have thought it was really necessary, or he would have provided security at school as well. Or kept him out of school altogether."
    "So?"
    "So I think there was some kind of a done deal somewhere in the past. As a result of the original kidnap, maybe. Something that guaranteed some kind of stability. Hence no bodyguards in the dorm. Hence Beck's resentment, like somebody had suddenly broken an agreement."
    "You think?" I nodded at the wheel. "He was surprised, and puzzled, and annoyed. His big question was who?"
    "Obvious question."
    "But this was a how-dare-they kind of a question. There was attitude in it. Like somebody was out of line. It wasn't just an inquiry. It was an expression of annoyance at somebody."
    "What did you tell him?"
    "I described the truck. I described your guys." She smiled. "Safe enough." I shook my head. "He's got a guy called Duke. First name unknown. Ex-cop. His head of security. I saw him this morning. He'd been up all night. He looked tired and he hadn't showered. His suit coat was all creased, low down at the back."
    "So?"
    "Means he was driving all night. I think he went down there to get a look at the Toyota.
    To check the rear license plate. Where did you stash it?"
    "We let the state cops take it. To keep the plausibility going. We couldn't take it back to the DEA garage. It'll be