Assumed Identity

6

“Who do you think phoned your house? Who asked for Victor Grant?”

Doyle-who’d been silent for the past five minutes, brooding, preoccupied about his wife-now turned toward Buchanan. “I’ll tell you who it wasn’t. Your controllers. They told me they’d contact you by phoning either at eight in the morning, three in the afternoon, or ten at night. A man would ask to speak to me. He’d say that his name was Roger Winslow, and he’d suggest a time to meet at my office to talk about customizing a boat. That would mean you were supposed to go to a rendezvous an hour before the time they mentioned. A wholesale marine-parts supplier I use. It’s always busy. No one would notice if you were given a message via brush contact from someone passing you.”

Buchanan debated. “So if it wasn’t my controllers who phoned. . The only other people who know I claim to be Victor Grant and work in Fort Lauderdale customizing pleasure boats are the Mexican police.”

Doyle shook his head. “The man I spoke to didn’t have a Spanish accent.”

“What about the man from the American embassy?” Buchanan asked.

“Could be. He might be phoning to make sure you’d arrived safely. He’d have access to the same information-place of employment, et cetera-that you gave the Mexican police.”

“Yeah, maybe it was him,” Buchanan said, hoping. But he couldn’t avoid the suspicion that he wasn’t safe, that things were about to get worse.

“Since you’re supposed to be working for me and living above my office,” Doyle said, “you’d better see what the place looks like.”

Doyle turned off Ocean Boulevard, taking a side street across from the beach. Past tourist shops, he parked beside a drab two-story cinder-block building in a row of similar buildings, all of which were built along a canal, the dock of which was lined with boats under repair.

“I’ve got a machine shop in back,” Doyle said. “Sometimes my clients bring their boats here. Mostly, though, I go to them.”

“What about your secretary?” Buchanan asked, uneasy. “She’ll know I haven’t been working for you.”

“I don’t have one. Until three months ago, Cindy did the office work. But then she got too sick to. . That’s why she can make herself believe you came to work for me after she stayed home.”

As Buchanan walked toward the building, he squinted from the sun and smelled a salt-laden breeze from the ocean. A young woman wearing a bikini drove by on a motorcycle and stared at his head.

Buchanan gingerly touched the bandage around his skull, realizing how conspicuous it made him. He felt vulnerable, his head aching from the glare of the sun, while Doyle unlocked the building’s entrance, a door stenciled BON VOYAGE, INC. Inside, after Doyle shut off the time-delay switch on the intrusion detector, Buchanan surveyed the office. It was a long, narrow room with photographs of yachts and cabin cruisers on the walls, displays of nautical instruments on shelves, and miniaturized interiors of various pleasure craft on tables. The models showed the ways in which electronic instruments could be installed without taking up undue room on a crowded vessel.

“You got a letter,” Doyle said as he sorted through the mail.

Buchanan took it from him, careful not to break character by expressing surprise that anyone would have written to him under his new pseudonym. This office was a logical place for someone investigating him to conceal a bug, and unless Doyle assured him that it was safe to talk here, Buchanan didn’t intend to say anything that Victor Grant wouldn’t, just as he assumed that Doyle wouldn’t say anything inconsistent with their cover story.

The letter was addressed to him in scrawled handwriting. Its return address was in Providence, Rhode Island. Buchanan tore open the flap and read two pages of the same scrawled handwriting.

“Who’s it from?” Doyle asked.

“My mother.” Buchanan shook his head with admiration. His efficient controllers had taken great care to give him supporting details for his new identity.

“How is she?” Doyle asked.

“Good. Except her arthritis is acting up again.”

The phone rang.