Free Jack of Spies by David Downing

one of the Bund for Tim Athelbury, his boss back in London. The nearby British post office supplied him with the necessary stamps, and he walked down Peking Road to the public gardens overlooking the confluence of Soochow Creek and the Whangpo River.
    It was another sparkling winter day, and he found himself remembering the house in Morar with its view of the sea, where he’d spent his early childhood. They’d moved to Fort William when he was seven and then to Glasgow five years later, as hisfather worked his way up the union hierarchy. He wondered how his mother was coping now that there was no child at home to act as a buffer.
    He could picture her picking the postcard up off the hall carpet and carrying it through to her chair in the parlor, but he couldn’t think of much to say. He told her he and Jed were safe and well, that the food was interesting but not a patch on hers, that all Chinese porridge was made with rice. Which was probably untrue, he realized—the best Shanghai hotels probably imported oats for their homesick Western guests. “Love to you and Dad,” he concluded, preserving the form for her sake. He would have to go and see them when he returned—it had been almost two years since his last visit.
    After scribbling a few trite lines to his boss—Tim was already receiving cabled reports of their sales—McColl walked back up the riverbank to their hotel, where he dropped off the cards in the guests’ mailbox.
    He spent the afternoon sightseeing with Jed, Mac having excused himself to write some letters of his own. As they traipsed around the Chinese city, McColl twice caught glimpses of the same Chinese man some twenty yards behind them. He could think of no reason anyone would be following him—the Germans would certainly know by now that he had unburdened himself of his Tsingtau observations—so it was probably a coincidence. Either that or a thief hoping to catch one of them alone in some dark alley. If so, he was out of luck.
    But then, out on the Bund a couple of hours later, he thought he saw the man again. He and Jed were standing at the parapet across from their hotel, watching the never-ending show that was the river, when McColl caught a glimpse of the familiar silhouette only to have it instantly obscured by a tram grinding its way around the bend into Nanking Road.
    “It makes me feel like an old hand,” Jed was saying, and McColl followed his gaze to where a party of Europeans wasdisembarking from a steam tender and taking what for many was a first wide-eyed look at the Orient. Seeing the expression on his brother’s face, he felt really glad he had persuaded their parents to let the boy tag along.
    When he glanced back across the street, his shadow was nowhere to be seen. A phantom, most likely. He remembered being told on his first visit that Europeans often imagined they were being followed—all empires, it seemed, were haunted by their subjects.
    Friday morning he was up with the light. The carriage and ponies he had hired for the day would be at the hotel entrance by nine-thirty, which gave him time to attend to some business. After strolling down the Bund to the telegraph office, he had a five-minute wait for the doors to open, but the replies he was expecting had indeed arrived and the three automobiles ordered earlier that month were awaiting shipment at the London Docks. Another two days and he could inform the Shanghai buyers that their vehicles were at sea.
    He walked back to the hotel, pleased that the weather hadn’t deteriorated overnight. It was certainly cold, but the sun was out, the sky mostly blue. The countryside around Shanghai could be depressing at the best of times, particularly for those with a social conscience. And that, he suspected, was something Caitlin Hanley had in abundance.
    The carriage was already outside the hotel, the smartly liveried Chinese handler chatting to one of the uniformed Sikh doormen, the ponies idly pawing the ground. McColl