Jack of Spies by David Downing Page A

towel and a change of clothes, the bath was almost full. Stretched out in the water, he watched two tjiktjak lizardschasing 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 bringinghope 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?”
    “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