Jack of Spies (7 page)

“It’s fine. The railway did us proud—there was even a special boat waiting to take it across the Yangtze. It’s in the hotel basement for now, but we have to drive it over to Woosun on the twenty-eighth. The freighter doesn’t come upriver.”

“Good.” It sounded as if Mac had been his usual efficient self. He had worked for Athelbury’s firm for almost six years now, after answering an advertisement for a mechanic. Fifteen men had come to interview, but the skinny, shock-haired seventeen-year-old with the pleasant, puglike face had known more about automobiles and their engines than the rest of them put together.

Jed returned with three beers. He seemed to be growing by
the day, McColl thought—their mother would hardly recognize him when they got home. “So where have you been this evening?” he asked them.

They exchanged glances, almost involuntarily, McColl thought. He knew where they’d been.

“Don’t blame Mac,” Jed said. “I would have gone on my own if he hadn’t come with me.”

“I hope you went somewhere decent. Somewhere clean?”

“We went to the Lotus Flower—it’s in the French Concession. It’s famous—the navy goes there.”

“So diseases from all seven seas. I—”

“Come on, Jack. Don’t tell me you’ve never been to a place like that.”

No, he couldn’t. And “Not for a while” would hardly help.

“So how old were you the first time?” Jed demanded.

McColl laughed. “The same age you are now. Satisfied?”

Jed laughed, too. “Yes, I think so.”

“Just don’t let Mum find out.”

“I wasn’t planning to!”

“All right. So did you enjoy it?”

“Yeah. It was kind of quick, though.”

“It gets slower.”

“I was thinking—we only have a few days left …”

“And you’d like another go?”

“No, no. Mac and I were talking about trying some opium—”

“Christ, first a sex fiend, then a drug addict. I’m supposed to be looking after you.”

“You’re supposed to be showing me the world. And everyone says you can’t get addicted on one pipe. I’d just like to try it, see what it’s like. What harm could it do?”

“You, too?” McColl asked Mac.

“I’ve always been curious,” Mac confessed.

“You’ve had it, haven’t you?” Jed challenged his brother.

“Only once, when I was here before. But I met a lot of
Europeans who liked to indulge, and some of them were addicted.” He caught their expressions. “Oh, all right—I don’t suppose one visit will do us any harm. But I’ll be busy for the next few days. How about celebrating the Chinese New Year in a stupor?”

“Sounds good to me,” Jed said.

“What are you busy with?” Mac asked.

“This and that. Somebody I said I’d look up for a friend. I don’t suppose either of you has run into Caitlin Hanley?”

“Who?”

“The American journalist from Peking. You thought she was too clever for her own good.”

“Oh, her. No, I haven’t.”

Mac shook his head. “Nor me.”

“I think he’s smitten,” Jed suggested to Mac.

“She is a looker,” Mac responded, like the dimmer half of a comedy team.

McColl drained his glass. “Let’s get some fresh air.”

They walked out onto the pavement, zigzagged their way through the traffic still filling the Bund, and leaned in a line against the parapet above the river. The moon was rising downstream, the sampans shifting in the dark waters below. Some firecrackers exploded somewhere behind them, outriders of the coming New Year, and what looked like a giant firefly was rising up above the opposite bank. “It’s a burning kite,” McColl explained. “Someone just died, and a relation is sending their goods on behind them.”

They watched it climb and disappear.

“I like it here,” Jed said.

McColl smiled to himself and cast a glance at his brother. He could smell the Chinese perfume on him, sense the liberation that his evening had been. And then a darker thought, how young and full of life Jed looked and how coldly that group of German businessmen had discussed the prospect of war on that afternoon in Tsingtau.

Jed and Mac seemed reluctant to rise the following morning, and McColl breakfasted alone in the huge Victorian dining room before venturing out into the cold, crisp air. Cumming had asked him to look into the recent visit of an Indian revolutionary named Mathra Singh while he was in Shanghai, and there seemed no time like the present.

The Central Police Station was only a five-minute walk away, on the corner of Foochow and Honan, and he was soon presenting himself at the duty desk. Superintendent Brabrook was the contact name McColl had been given in London, but he was on compassionate leave. His deputy was a Chief Inspector Johnston.

McColl was escorted up several flights of stairs and along a corridor whose only concession to Chinese culture was a series of cuspidors. Johnston’s room was similarly English, with just an electric ceiling fan to distinguish it from a Scotland Yard office. The man himself was bald, red-faced, and seemed less than pleased by McColl’s arrival. “Yes, we heard you might drop in,” he said after offering a moist hand. “But what Mathra Singh has to do with London, I’ve no idea. Anything related to the Indian community here, we report to the DCI. In Delhi,” he added, in case McColl had forgotten where the Department of Criminal Intelligence had its headquarters.

“London is keeping a close eye on Singh’s allies in San Francisco,” McColl explained calmly. “So they’re naturally keen to know what messages Singh brought across the Pacific.”

“The usual gibberish, I suppose,” Johnston said contemptuously. “But one of our own Sikhs, Constable Singh, has the details. Mathra Singh was his assignment.”

“Was?”

“Oh, yes. He’s gone. Back to India, I think. Singh will know. I’ll find out if he’s in the building.”

McColl was left to examine the paintings on the walls—all of
hunting expeditions—and the photograph on the desk of an angry-looking wife and bored-looking children. “The usual gibberish,” he murmured to himself.

Perhaps. Indian would-be revolutionaries had been giving the British some considerable headaches over the last decade. Groups of exiles, first in London and then in New York City, had talked, published pamphlets, sought support, and raised money in pursuit of liberation from British rule. They had been continually monitored, arrested, and deported whenever sufficient cause could be found, and sometimes when not. But they kept popping up. The latest manifestations were in Berlin and San Francisco, where anti-English feelings were strong enough to grant the Indians significant political latitude. A young man named Har Dayal had arrived on the American West Coast in the summer of 1911 and over the last two years had managed to imbue Indian students and migrant workers with his brand of revolutionary fervor. The previous November he had launched a party and a newspaper, both called
Ghadar
, the Punjabi word for “revolt.” Neither was likely to topple the empire, but rather more worryingly for Cumming and company, Har Dayal had cultivated links with other enemies of the Crown resident in San Francisco, most notably the Irish and the Germans. If a European war did come, it wouldn’t be confined to Europe.

Johnston returned with a uniformed man in a turban. “This is Constable Singh,” he told McColl.

They shook hands.

“Tell him about your namesake,” Johnston instructed the young man.

“There’s not much to tell, sahib,” he began. “Mathra Singh arrived on September thirteenth and left on the Monday of last week. He stayed at a hostel in the Chinese city and attended several meetings of the Indian community here. He was very outspoken, as you would expect. His views are not commonly held in my homeland, but they are not without supporters.
Those who expressed agreement at the meetings here were noted, and an eye has been kept on their activities. The
Ghadar
newspapers that Mathra said were on their way from the United States have been intercepted and burned, and I forwarded a full report of his visit to Delhi. I think that is all, sahib. Unless you have questions?”

McColl couldn’t think of any. “No. Thank you, Constable.”

Singh bowed slightly, exchanged glances with Johnston, and left.

“And thank you, Chief Inspector,” McColl added, shaking the moist hand again. “Your cooperation is appreciated.”

So that was that, he thought once back outside—there was no need to think about
Ghadar
again until he reached San Francisco. He wasn’t sure whether he felt relieved at ducking a chore or annoyed that a possible payday had eluded him. A bit of both probably. At least he could concentrate on looking after his brother and finding Caitlin Hanley.

But first there was the matter of his wardrobe. He walked back up past Trinity Cathedral to Nanking Road and took a tram heading west. The tailor’s shop he’d used on his last visit was at the eastern end of Bubbling Well Road, across from the Race Club, and seemed unchanged from five years earlier. Li Ch’ün was still standing over his cutting table, scissors in hand, pins lined up between his lips. He not only recognized McColl but even remembered his name.

“I don’t think I’m any fatter,” McColl said as Li took his measurements with a tape labeled
MADE IN BIRMINGHAM
.

“Half inch maybe,” Li Ch’ün decided. “Look fabrics,” he ordered.

McColl chose two and saw no point in haggling over a few pennies. He arranged to pick up the suits in a couple of days and told Li Ch’ün to expect a visit from his younger brother, Jed.

“I give good deal,” the Chinese man promised, helping McColl into his coat.

A tram clanged to a halt as he reached the stop, and he climbed aboard, running the usual gauntlet of Chinese stares. The racing grounds slipped past on the right, and soon they were passing the town hall and back among the European shops on Nanking Road, where a posse of businessmen’s wives were window-shopping for jewelry. Where would she be staying? In one of the better Chinese hotels, as she had in Peking? There were so many more of them in Shanghai.

He decided he would try the European establishments first, if only because their number was limited. The Kalee, the Burlington, and Bickerton’s were all within an easy walk, and then there was Astor House, the city’s most exclusive hotel, on the other side of Soochow Creek. Surely no self-respecting suffragette would stay there?

There was also the Hotel des Colonies in the French concession, and probably others he hadn’t heard of. It might make more sense to hang around the Shanghai Club and ask any fellow Americans that he ran into.

Four hotels and two hours later, he passed between the two Sikh doormen and entered the club, intent on lunch. The food was disappointing, and expensive by Shanghai standards; more to the point, no one had news of his quarry. Two of the Americans he approached were certain she was still in Peking, while one was convinced she’d already gone home.

He left, walked south down the Bund, then turned inland along the canal that marked the border between the French and International concessions. The Hotel des Colonies was on the Rue du Consulat, but she wasn’t staying there either. He was back on the pavement, wondering where to start with the Chinese hotels, when he saw her across the street, in animated discussion with a rickshaw coolie.

Though “discussion,” as McColl soon discovered, was something of a misnomer. She wanted a ride to an authentic Chinese teahouse, and either the man couldn’t understand her or he was
simply refusing to comply, on the not-unreasonable grounds that single European women did not visit such places.

It turned out to be the former.

“I didn’t know you spoke Chinese,” she said, almost indignantly.

He seized his chance. “I know a teahouse not far from here. Will you let me buy you tea?”

“A real one? One that the Chinese use?”

“I promise,” he said. “If there are any other Europeans, we’ll leave immediately.”

She smiled at that and allowed him to help her into the rickshaw. She was wearing a long, black coat over a crimson blouse and an ankle-length gray skirt, but no hat. Her hair was tied back in a loose bun, stray wisps hanging over her ears.

McColl told the bemused coolie where they were going—a teahouse he knew just inside the nearest Chinese city gate—and climbed up beside her.

“Thank you,” she said, giving him another smile.

Like most of the buildings that surrounded it, the teahouse looked shabby from the outside, but the carved wooden screen beyond the door was truly beautiful. “To keep out the bad spirits,” she murmured to herself, as if she were remembering a line of homework.

Inside, numerous round tables were scattered across a huge room, and upwards of a hundred people were talking, shouting, laughing, eating, or playing mah-jongg. None of the faces were white, and if the stares the two of them received were anything to go by, European patronage was far from a common occurrence. Once they were seated, she showed no hesitation in staring back, her eyes aglow with excitement. When McColl asked her what tea she wanted, she just waved an arm and told him to order for both of them.

He did so.

“There’s no deference,” she noted with satisfaction. “They’re just being who they are.”