“Got no idea who the source was but somebody sure as hell told somebody something,” he almost yells over the roar of his engine. “Hell no, Barclay didn’t, though. He wouldn’t without clearing it with me. He wouldn’t even think of it.”

“Interpol’s very careful who it talks to. You have to be authenticated and verified.” I gently lead him closer to what will most assuredly be an unpalatable truth.

“I don’t think it was a phone call. It sounds like they got an e-mail,” Marino says, and the ugliness he’s about to face is going to enrage him.

I look at his profile inside the dark SUV, at the big dome of his bald head, his strong nose, and the hard set of his heavy mandible.

“I do know that e-mail is the quickest and simplest way to report something to them,” he’s saying. “The forms and everything are right there on the Internet. They’ve got it all on a website. It’s easy but it’s also going to be monitored and traceable.”

“So we certainly would expect that the Washington office of Interpol, the NCB, would know if an e-mailed tip was bogus,” I say pointedly. “In other words, the NCB should know if it weren’t from a real member of the law enforcement community or someone else in an authorized position to report an incident or a threat.” I know what I’m suspicious of, and Marino doesn’t like the tack I’m taking.

“You sure as hell would think so,” he says with a hint of defensiveness, which is what I expect because he should know what’s coming.

He should have figured it out before I did, but it’s an unpleasant truth. And those take longer. They’re harder to swallow.

“And it also could be that Interpol hasn’t been contacted by anyone legitimately,” I suggest. “And that you weren’t either,” I add, and he acts as if he didn’t hear me.

“You would think the investigator who called me could have helped out a little by saying they weren’t sure the tip was credible, that maybe some whack-a-do is jerking everybody around.” Now Marino sounds personally offended, and he continues to ignore what I just said. “But I took what I was told at face value.”

“Are you absolutely certain it was an Interpol investigator who called you?” I begin to confront Marino with what I suspect, and he’s silent.

To borrow his colorful and bewildering vernacular, this is the real piece of cake, the poison in the ink, the snake under the tent, and the elephant in the woodpile. I’m asking him who he was really talking to, because all the signs point at his having been played for a fool. Or at least that’s exactly how it’s going to feel to him.