The group stood as if on cue. Juan leaned across the table to shake hands with Justus Ulenga and Tony Reardon. When he grasped Sloane’s she pulled him forward slightly and said, “May I speak to you in private?”

“Of course.” Cabrillo looked at Linc. “Take them to the Pinguin. I’ll escort Ms. Macintyre myself.”

They took their seats as soon as the group left. Sloane studied him the way a jeweler inspects a diamond that he is about to cut, looking for the tiniest flaw that could ruin the gem. She came to some sort of decision, leaned forward, and rested her elbows on the table.

“I think you’re a fraud.”

Juan had to suppress a guffaw. “Excuse me,” he finally stammered.

“You. This ship. Your crew. None of it is what it appears to be.”

Cabrillo fought to keep his expression neutral and the blood from draining from his face. In the years since he’d founded the Corporation and started traipsing around the globe on a succession of ships all named Oregon, no one had ever thought they were anything but what they appeared to be. They’d had harbor officials, inspectors of every kind, even a canal pilot on their transits of Panama, and no one had shown the slightest suspicion about the ship or its crew.

She doesn’t know, he thought. She’s fishing. He had to admit to himself that they hadn’t pulled out all the tricks they utilized when they were in port and about to be inspected, but there was no way an untrained person who’d been aboard for all of thirty minutes could see through their carefully laid deception. His heart slowed as he came to this realization.

“Care to explain?” he invited casually.

“The little things, for one. Your helmsman was wearing a Rolex exactly like the one my father had. That’s a two-thousand-dollar watch. A bit too nice if you guys are as poor as you say.”

“It’s a fake,” Juan replied.

“A knock-off wouldn’t last five minutes in the salt air. I know because I had one when I was a teenager and working on my father’s fishing boat after he retired from the merchant marines.”

Okay, Juan said to himself, she’s not completely untrained when it comes to ships. “Maybe it is real but he got it from a fence who stole it. You’d have to ask him.”

“That’s a possibility,” Sloane said. “But what about your steward? I’ve been working in London for the past five years and recognize English tailoring when I see it. Between his Church’s dress shoes, custom suit pants, and handmade shirt, Maurice was sporting about four thousand dollars’ worth of duds. I doubt he bought them off a fence.”