“It is a transposition cipher,” I said, my voice steadier now that I had the fabric in my hands. “The stitches are not even.”

I ran my thumb along the hemline.

“A standard tailor uses a consistent thread count per inch,” I explained. “But here, the spacing changes.”

“It looks like a simple decorative chain stitch,” Aries observed.

“It is not,” I said. “Every fifth stitch is double-backed. It represents a binary sequence.”

I pulled a small seam ripper from my coat pocket.

I began to carefully slice the thread, pulling the blue silk lining away from the canvas backing.

“Underneath the silk, there is a second layer of linen,” I said. “It has been stamped with a silver-nitrate ink.”

As the silk peeled back, the pale gray ink became visible in the dim light of the passing street lamps.

It was a list of container numbers, vessel names, and bank routing codes.

“This is the manifests for the southern terminals,” Aries said, his voice dropping an octave. “The ones Vancamp claimed were lost at sea.”

“It proves he has been running his own cargo through your berths for eighteen months,” I said.