Jack of Spies by David Downing Page B

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 bythe 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 ofEuropeans 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