Jack of Spies by David Downing Read Free Book Online

handed him the note, grabbed the hat, and walked back toward the platform. The police were still there, and the train seemed almost set to leave—there was nothing else for it. He put on the hat, arranged his suitcase so that it would be shielded by his body, and started the long, semicircular walk that would take him around the back of the train. He was too tall and the suitcase too big, but out where the light barely reached, he was hoping they’d see only the hat.
    And it worked. Thirty nerve-racking seconds and he was behind the train, looking up at the dimly lit carriages. As he reached the inner end of the last carriage, the whistle sounded, and almost instantly the wheels began to turn. He stepped aboard and climbed up onto the vestibule platform. The temptation to stand and wavehis coolie hat at the Germans was enormous, but discretion triumphed. He ducked inside what was clearly a third-class carriage and strode up the aisle in search of less crowded accommodation.
    The Chinese passengers, noticing his bizarre souvenir, seemed relieved to see him pass. They were doubtless thinking that he would be more at home in first, with all the other inscrutable foreign devils.

The House Off Bubbling Well Road
    Most of those traveling first class were European, and the only two Chinese occupants of the carriage were dressed in Western attire. McColl exchanged smiles with a couple of fellow Englishmen whom he recognized from his time in Peking and, after placing his suitcase in the luggage rack, gratefully sank into the forward-facing seat of the last unoccupied booth. The train was already out in open country and rapidly gathering speed.
    The carriage had modern electric lights, both along the ceiling and above the seats. He took time to scan the other passengers, taking care not to arouse suspicion, and saw none who looked obviously German. Seeking to untangle the low murmur of voices, he could pick out only English, French, and Chinese.
    Surely he was safe for now. There might be Germans waiting in Nanking or Shanghai, but they had no jurisdiction in either. He just had to reach a telegraph office and send off the information he’d gathered, and they would have to accept that further pursuit was meaningless.
    He closed his eyes and realized how easy it would be to fall asleep. But first there was work to do—summarizing his findings as briefly as possible and then encrypting them for dispatch. Hepulled out his notebook and pen, ordered a whiskey from the hovering steward, and put his mind to work.
    It took about two hours, and the resulting page and a half of cipher seemed a somewhat derisory return on his investment of time and money, not to mention the risk to life and limb. But the aviation unit and bigger harbor guns were new information, and he thought that Cumming would be pleased. Not enough to give him a bonus, but perhaps enough to offer more work.
    He yawned, switched off the light above his seat, and turned his mind to Caitlin Hanley. It was a long time since he’d felt so attracted to a woman. The name, like the dark brown hair and green eyes, suggested Irish descent, and the New York accent had seemed softer than most he remembered, even when berating the local American consul at a diplomatic reception. “Women deserve the vote more than men do,” was the first thing he heard her say, and the patronizing chuckles that followed from the consul and his minions had been enough to make McColl intervene on her behalf. He had no strong opinions on the matter of suffrage, but he knew a bunch of reactionaries when he saw one. It was hard to imagine, he told the other men, that women would do a worse job of running the world.
    She had given him a suspicious look, as if uncertain of his motives, and soon walked away to join a Western-dressed Chinese couple.
    McColl wasn’t sure he had liked her, but there was something there that intrigued him, and he’d casually asked one of the junior diplomats who she was. The