Authors: David Downing
McColl had seen her once more. He was on his way to the railway station, his rickshaw passing her hotel at the exact moment her excursion returned. Which, he thought, had to be some sort of an omen. She had even offered a smile in response to his wave.
He stared out at the Chinese night. The sky had cleared, and an orange moon was rising above a wide plain. A few minutes later, the train crossed a wide braided river, moonlight rippling on the different channels as it rumbled loudly across the iron structure. When the river disappeared and the noise of their passage abruptly lessened, he finally closed his eyes, a smile on his face.
Sleep, however, was still not in the cards. The train was already slowing and soon pulled in to a surprisingly well-lit station.
JENCHOU
, the signs announced. A few minutes later, a bulky American approaching old age squeezed himself into the seat facing McColl’s, offered a hand to shake, and introduced himself as Ezekiel Channing III. He was, it transpired, the missionary who ran the local orphanage, on his way to Shanghai to collect a shipment of American school books.
McColl listened, offering little in return. The American seemed a decent enough sort, and if he needed to interrupt each thought to insert a quote from the Good Book, then what was the harm? He was doubtless doing valuable work, and he did, eventually, notice that his audience was struggling to stay awake.
“I didn’t get much sleep last night,” McColl said apologetically.
“Well, don’t let me stop you now,” Ezekiel said affably, opening up his leather-bound Bible.
It was still in his lap when McColl jerked awake seven hours later, but the missionary was asleep, gently snoring, with an
almost beatific look on his fleshy face. McColl wondered how many years the man had been in China and whether he would ever go home again.
The golden light of the just-risen sun was streaming in through their window, the train running along a high embankment. Dry paddy fields stretched toward the distant horizon, with only an occasional cluster of houses and trees to break the monotony. At the foot of the embankment, two women and a water buffalo raised their heads to watch the train go by.
They were an hour from their destination according to the conductor, and McColl, seeing no reason to wake Ezekiel, stared out through the window at the Chinese landscape until the outskirts of Pukow came into view. The missionary woke with a start as the train rattled though points and entered the terminus, and he gave McColl a lovely smile.
On the platform, rickshaw drivers and porters were jostling for position, intent on providing at least one European passenger and his luggage with transport to the river. Beyond them some modern-looking railway workshops nestled incongruously in the shadow of ancient city walls.
McColl took his time, alighting almost last and waving away frantic offers of assistance. It was warmer than in Tsingtau, particularly out in the sun, but winter was winter, even this far south. He joined the Chinese crowd marching down toward the quay in the wake of the conquerors’ rickshaws, keeping a wary eye out for anyone looking suspicious. But he saw nobody, either on the road or down by the mile-wide Yangtze, where a shiny, white steam yacht was waiting among the sampans to ferry them all across. He pushed through the beggars’ outstretched arms to the sloping gangplank and climbed back into the bosom of his fellow Europeans.
Once aboard it seemed an age before they cast off, but the crossing itself was quick, the launch ploughing through the ponderous brown current toward the far shore and the high city walls of Nanking that lay just beyond. The only interruption was
provided by a floating body, which surprised and distressed the American woman who noticed it. She would be well advised to avoid the Whangpo in Shanghai, McColl thought. Some days there seemed to be more bodies than boats in that river.
As he knew from the original journey to Peking, the walk from boat to station was fairly short on both sides of the Yangtze, but was he going straight on to Shanghai? The seven-hour journey was probably safe enough in daylight, but he felt eager to pass his information on, and the British consulate in Nanking was only a short ride away. If he missed the connecting train, there would always be another, and they weren’t expecting him in Shanghai for another couple of days. On the other hand …
The two men on the quayside decided him. They were Chinese, not German, but there was something in the way they scanned the disembarking passengers that put him on alert. True, one looked straight at him with apparent disinterest, but a watcher with evil intent would hardly attack him there and then, when he was surrounded by other Europeans.
McColl swung himself up onto a rickshaw and let the man pull him fifty yards toward the station before ordering a change of course, onto the road that ran toward the nearest city gate. “The house of the British,” McColl told him. “And the faster you get me there, the more I’ll pay you.”
The speed increased, and as they swung through the huge gateway, McColl leaned out to look back. There was no sign of pursuit, either then or when he looked again, half a mile or so down the long avenue that led to the consulate. The men he had feared had probably been waiting for a relative.
The Union Jack came into view, hanging limply above a traditional Chinese building. He paid off the rickshaw owner and thumped on the heavy wooden door, ignoring the sign in English and its highly inconvenient opening hours. A Chinese woman eventually opened it and seemed too surprised by his fluency in Shanghainese to protest his walking past her. The official offices
at the front of the house were empty, but a young Englishman was eating scrambled eggs in the kitchen at the back, still without a collar on his shirt.
“I have a signal for London,” McColl said as the young man swallowed. “Who are you?”
“Tompkins, Neil. First secretary. Only one, come to that. Nanking’s not exactly on the map these days.”
“My name’s McColl. I work for a man called Cumming in London. Connected to the Admiralty,” he added, with appropriate imprecision. He passed across the encrypted report. “It’s important this gets home as soon as possible.”
“Ah,” Tompkins said, staring blankly at the apparently meaningless jumble.
“It’s in code,” McColl pointed out.
“Ah,” he said again.
McColl had visions of the young man taking it down to the Chinese post office. “You can send it from here, I presume?”
“Of course. We have our own connection to Shanghai. But what is it?” he asked. “Or shouldn’t I know?”
“It’s naval intelligence. From Tsingtau.”
“Ah.”
“The sooner it’s sent, the better.”
“Our operator will be here at nine.”
“Chinese?”
“Yes, but utterly loyal.”
“Good,” McColl said. A pity, was what he thought—the sooner the Germans knew the information had been sent, the safer he would be. “I don’t suppose you know what time the morning train to Shanghai leaves?”
“Ten o’clock.” Tompkins consulted his pocketwatch. “You’ve still got time.”
It had been dark for an hour when McColl’s train pulled in to Shanghai’s main station. He walked out across the wide
forecourt to the tram stop on Boundary Road, where a huge crowd of Chinese people were willing a tram to appear around the corner of Cunningham Road. Three or four trams would be required to carry so many, and even then oxygen would be in short supply. And he felt impatient after so much sitting on trains. Deciding to cut his losses, he checked the change in his pocket. The meal on the train had cost him his taxi fare, but a rickshaw was still within reach. He hailed one of the hovering coolies and called out “the Palace Hotel” as he stepped up into the seat.
They set off, the coolie jogging along beside the new tram tracks for a few hundred yards before veering south onto North Honan Road. The smell of horse dung was strong in the air, the piles of manure awaiting collection by the night-soil teams. All the shops and cafés were still open, lit by the yellow glow of their paraffin lamps, and despite the evening chill many owners were sitting outside, blankly watching the world go by.
The coolie turned off the main road and hurried down an alley, the rickshaw bumping on the uneven surface, causing McColl to grip the sides. They were still in the International Settlement, but these back streets were Chinese territory in all but name, lined with vegetable and fruit sellers, cobblers and barbers and letter writers, fortune-tellers and tea traders. A succession of aromas teased McColl’s appetite—clove-scented rice, roasting chestnuts, egg foo yong. Every now and then, a beggar’s arm reached hopefully out and just as swiftly disappeared.
There were people everywhere, and at first sight all of them seemed to be arguing, haranguing one another in that barking tone some Europeans found so offensive. But look a little closer and there were smiles on many faces, especially the children’s. Family life often seemed a happier affair here than it did in London or Glasgow, and even the dogs seemed less aggressive.
The rickshaw emerged from the maze of allies, turning onto North Szechuan Road just up from the General Hospital and
crossing the Soochow Creek with its myriad sampans and dreadful smell. The coolie was panting a little now, sending yellow gusts of breath out into the cold air, but his pace showed no sign of slackening, and soon they were passing the Chinese post office. Another two blocks and they took the last turn onto Nanking Road. Here, outside the big stores, the faces on the sidewalk were mostly European, and the Chinese people packed in the passing trams looked like tourists in a foreign town.
The coolie stopped as close to the hotel’s front door as the line of automobiles would let him and carefully counted the coins McColl handed over. “
Cumshaw
,” he demanded, holding out an upturned palm.
McColl had included a tip but added another. Why argue over a farthing?
Inside, the Chinese desk clerk informed him that Jed and Mac had taken Room 501 but were currently out. Despite a careful perusal of McColl’s passport, he refused to relinquish the room key until the English night manager had been summoned from wherever it was he lurked. The latter accompanied McColl up in the brand-new elevator and opened the door on what turned out to be a suite—the others had somewhat exceeded their instructions. It was at the back of the hotel, which McColl hoped had lowered the cost.
Once the manager had left, he took a look around. A Chinese variant on the British army’s camp bed had been erected in the lounge, and Mac’s belongings were neatly stacked alongside it. Jed’s were liberally scattered on either side of the double bed in the adjoining room, which the two of them would presumably be sharing. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.
The bathroom contained a large iron bath, and the hot-water tap was actually that. For Shanghai this was luxury. He started the water running in earnest, and by the time he’d come up with a fresh towel and a change of clothes, the bath was almost full. Stretched out in the water, he watched two tjiktjak lizards
chasing each other across the steam-blurred ceiling and thought about Caitlin Hanley.
Toweled and dressed, he went back down to the bar for a drink. They had Tsingtao Tsingtau beer, for which he had acquired a definite taste and which seemed the appropriate brew for toasting his recent escape. He took it over to an empty table, where someone had abandoned a copy of the
North China Daily News
. The local news was uninteresting, but one short piece caught his eye. Mohandas Gandhi had been arrested in South Africa.
McColl had met Gandhi, and under somewhat unusual circumstances. Their paths had crossed more than fourteen years earlier, when he himself was a nineteen-year-old soldier in the British Army. During the Battle of Spion Kop, his regiment had been one of those ordered to a supposed summit only to find itself surrounded by higher-placed Boers and subject to a withering crossfire. McColl had been badly wounded early on, then trapped underneath a dying comrade’s body for the rest of the night. The first face he’d seen when the corpse was lifted off him belonged to a smiling Indian medic.
They had talked a lot on the long stretcher trip down. The Indian was sure that McColl would recover—his faith in the body’s self-healing properties was matched only by a parallel faith in humanity’s. McColl hadn’t recognized his savior’s name at the time but had later discovered that Mohandas Gandhi was already a national celebrity. He had followed the Indian’s political exploits in the British press ever since and knew he’d recently been leading a series of nonviolent protests in Transvaal against the forced registration and fingerprinting of his fellow Asians. His arrest suggested he’d been too successful for his own good.
McColl sat back with his beer, remembering their walk down the mountain. It felt strange, even to him, but ever since that day he had drawn comfort from knowing that the Indian was out there somewhere, offering up his beatific smile and bringing
hope to those without it. The only person McColl had ever told this to was his mother, and her only reply had been a tearful hug.
“Fancy meeting you here,” a familiar voice said, interrupting his reverie. His younger brother was two inches taller than he was but not much more than half his age. He bore a striking physical resemblance to their father but lacked the latter’s less forgivable traits. Jed might be willful, obstinate, and full of himself, but he had inherited his mother’s kindness.
Although she had wondered out loud if the boy was old enough to go gallivanting around the world, she had made no real objection to the trip, provided his older brother promised to take care of him. And so far there’d been no cause to worry.
Mac was with Jed. “It’s good to see you, too,” McColl said, smiling up at the pair of them. Was he imagining it, or was Jed looking a little shamefaced? And Mac a little nervous?
“I’ll get the beers,” his younger brother said with a conspiratorial glance at Mac.
“So how was Tsingtau?” Mac asked as he took a seat.
“Cold. But useful.” Mac and his brother knew that he’d been making inquiries for someone back in London but had probably assumed it was all about commercial matters. McColl had done nothing to disabuse them of the notion. “Is the Maia in one piece?”