"Did the Russians tell you where they came from?" I asked.
"From Hokkaido," the American military attache said.
"No, no, I mean recently. Where has the ship been sailing."
"They claim they've been following currents across the Pacific, looking for new fishing grounds."
"Then they were not near British Columbia?"
"Not according to their stories, nor to the ship's log."
"There's a couple of ways we might check that. The Russians went ashore in B.C. Maybe they'll have pollen grains or dust in their clothes that could be traced to that part of the world."
"It's a possibility. We'll look into it."
"And then there's my sloop. We scraped along the side of the fishing boat and some paint must have come off. I haven't had time to repair it. At least that might prove we have met before, if the paints are similar, which would make our bomb warfare theory much more credible."
"It certainly would. We need all the evidence we can get."