Free Jack of Spies by David Downing Page A

introduced himself to the handler and received the usual graduated reaction to his fluency in Shanghainese, the surprise shifting into annoyance—this foreign devil would be harder to bamboozle. After he had taken a quick trip back inside to check his appearance and collect a bottle of Hirano drinking water, they started down Nanking Road, where both ponies chose to empty their bowels.
    They found the house without difficulty, a suburban villa that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Hampstead. A Chinese amah opened the door, but Caitlin was right behind her, ready to go. She looked approvingly at the ponies and carriage and allowed him to help her up. “So where are we going?” she asked.
    He joined her. “I thought we could drive out into the country for a few miles, turn south, and visit the Longhua Pagoda—I’m told it’s quite something. We can have lunch there and then head back along the river to explore the Chinese city on foot. How does that sound?”
    “Wonderful,” she said with a smile.
    The handler jerked the Mongolian ponies into motion and directed them back to Bubbling Well Road. The road wound its way west for a couple of miles through European-style housing, passed the sentry box marking the border of the International concession, and headed out into increasingly open country. The land was flat, crisscrossed by irrigation ditches and larger channels, and there seemed to be a lot of people working the fields for the time of year. McColl would have liked to explain what they were doing, but he didn’t have a clue. When was rice planted? And were those mulberry trees?
    Fortunately for him, she appeared happy just to drink it all in. They sat in companionable silence for what seemed a long time—long enough, he decided eventually. “Where’s home?” he asked her. “Where in the States, I mean.”
    “New York City. Brooklyn, if you know where that is.”
    “I do. Did you grow up there?”
    “Yes.” She smiled, apparently at the memory, and hitched her riding skirt up an inch or so. “In a brownstone near Prospect Park.”
    “Brothers and sisters?”
    “Two brothers, one sister.”
    “And what does your father do?”
    “He’s sort of retired,” she said vaguely.
    “And did you always want to be a journalist?”
    “No. But I always wanted to be something. I went to Wesleyan College,” she added, as if that explained something.
    “That’s in Connecticut, isn’t it?”
    “No, that’s Wesleyan University. Wesleyan College is in Georgia. It’s the oldest college for women in America. That’s where I met my Chinese friend Ch’ing-ling. She’s Sun Yat-sen’s secretary now—that’s why she’s in Japan.”
    “You do move in exalted circles.”
    She laughed at that. “We were both outsiders at Wesleyan—which is probably why we became so close. She for being Chinese, me for … well, I didn’t come from a wealthy Protestant family like all the others. My aunt paid for me—she wanted me to have chances in life that she never had. She would have paid for my sister Finola as well, but Finola wasn’t the slightest bit interested in going to college. I love her dearly, but green eyes are about the only thing we two girls have in common.”
    They were entering a cluster of houses that, with their attendant trees, felt like a small island in the sea of paddies. There were men sitting outside most of the doorways, their eyes firmly fixed on the intruders, even when talking to one another.
    “I’d love to see inside one of the houses,” Caitlin said hopefully.
    McColl told the handler to stop and tried to think up an acceptable reason to snoop around in someone else’s home. There wasn’t one. “I’ll give you a mace for a look inside your house,” he told the nearest resident. A mace was worth about threepence, probably quite a sum in a place like this.
    The man quickly conquered his surprise and extended a hand toward his door. McColl took the lead, holding the door open