Jack of Spies (3 page)

Fifteen minutes later he was skirting the wall of the barracks and entering the town. In the square in front of the station, a bunch of coolies were huddled over some sort of game, their rickshaws lined up in waiting for the next train. McColl walked the few blocks to Friedrichstrasse and wondered what to do with the rest of the day. Tsingtau in winter was worth a couple of days, and he’d been there for more than a week. Like an idiot he’d forgotten to bring any reading, and the two bookshops on Friedrichstrasse had nothing in English. A German book on his bedside table would rather give the game away.

It occurred to him that the British consulate might have books to lend, and indeed they did. Just the one—a copy of
Great Expectations
some careless English tourist had left on the beach the previous summer. But the consul was out playing golf, and the English-speaking Chinese girl left in charge of His Majesty’s business was unwilling to let the salt-stained volume out of the building without his say-so. It took McColl fifteen minutes and no small measure of charm to change her mind. And all this, he thought bitterly, for a book he already knew the ending to.

Still, Pip’s early travails kept him entertained for the rest of the morning and half the afternoon. He then ambled around the German and Chinese towns before dropping anchor in the bar of the Sailors’ Home down by the harbor. Through the window he could see the huge gray ships straining at their chains in the restless water.

What would this fleet do if war were declared? It could hardly stay put, not with England’s ally Japan so close at hand, with
ships that outmatched and outnumbered the Germans’. No, if the East Asia Squadron weren’t already at sea when war broke out, then it soon would be. But sailing in which direction? For its home half the world away? If this was the intention, then whichever direction it took—west via the Cape of Good Hope or east around Cape Horn—there would be ten thousand miles and more to sail, with uncertain coal supplies and the knowledge that the whole British fleet would be waiting at the end of its journey, barring its passage across the North Sea. And what would be the point? More than five cruisers would be needed to tip the balance in home waters.

If McColl were in charge, he knew what he’d do. He’d send the five ships off in five directions, set them loose on the seven oceans to mess with British trade. That, he knew, was the Admiralty’s nightmare. Each German ship could keep a British squadron busy for months, maybe even years, and that
might
tip the balance closer to home.

Whether or not the Imperial Navy had such suicide missions in mind, neither he nor the Admiralty knew, and he doubted whether any of his current drinking companions did either. He bought beers for a couple of new arrivals, traded toasts in pidgin English to Kaiser and King, and eavesdropped on the conversations swirling around him. But no secrets were divulged, unless Franz’s fear that he had the French disease counted as such. Most of the seamen had their minds on home, on babies yet unseen, on wives and lovers sorely missed. No one mentioned the dread possibility that none of them would ever see Germany again.

McColl stayed until the sun was almost down, then walked back through the town as the lamplighters went about their business. Guessing that von Schön had not yet departed, he looked in on the hotel bar and found the young German sharing a circle of armchairs with several fellow-countrymen. Seeing McColl, von Schön smiled and gestured him over. “Please, join us,” he said in English, “we need your point of view.”

He introduced McColl to the others, explaining in German that the Englishman was also a businessman. They raised their hands in greeting.

“What are you all talking about?” McColl asked von Schön.

“Whether a war will benefit Germany,” the other replied.

“And what’s the general opinion?”

“I don’t think there is one. I’ll try to translate for you.”

McColl sat back, careful to keep a look of noncomprehension on his face. One middle-aged man with a bristling mustache was making the argument that only a war could open the world to German business.

“If we win,” another man added dryly.

“Of course, but we haven’t lost one yet, and our chances must be good, even against England.”

Several heads were nodding as von Schön translated this with an apologetic smile, but one of the younger Germans was shaking his head. “Why take the risk,” he asked, “when we only have to wait a few years? The biggest and fastest-growing economies are ours and America’s, and the rules of trade will change to reflect that fact. It’s inevitable. The barriers will come down, including those around the British Empire, and their businesses will struggle to survive. In fact, if anyone needs a war, it’s the British. It’s the only way they could halt their decline.” He turned to von Schön. “Ask your English friend what he thinks. Would British businessmen favor a war with Germany?”

Von Schön explained what the man had said and repeated his question.

McColl smiled at them all. “I don’t think so. For one thing, most businessmen have sons, and they don’t want to lose them. For another, it’s only the biggest companies that make most of their profits abroad and that benefit most from the empire. If the rules change, they’ll find some way to survive—big companies always do.” He paused. “But let me ask you something. After all, it’s governments that declare war, not businessmen. How
much notice do the Kaiser and his ministers take of what German businessmen think?”

It seemed like a good question, if the wry response to von Schön’s translation was anything to go by. “This is the problem,” one youngish German responded. “The old Kaiser understood how to rule. Like your Queen Victoria,” he added, looking at McColl. “A symbol, yes? And an important one, but above politics. It didn’t matter what his opinions were. But this Kaiser … We Germans have the best welfare system, the best schools. We have given the world Beethoven and Bach and Goethe and so much else. Our businesses are successful all over the world. We have much to be proud of, much to look forward to, but none of that interests this Kaiser. He grew up playing soldiers, and he can’t seem to stop. In any other country, this would not matter a great deal, but because of our history and our place at the heart of Europe the army has always occupied a powerful position. I agree with Hans that we can get what we want without war, but when the crucial moment comes—as we all know it will—I think the Kaiser and his government will follow the army’s lead, not listen to people like us.”

It was a sadly convincing analysis, McColl thought, and as von Schön translated the gist of it, he listened to the others muttering their broad agreement. These German businessmen had no desire for war, but they realized that their opinions counted for little with their rulers. The one named Hans might be right in thinking that Britain was in decline, but only in an abstract, relative sense. And while it might be in a few traders’ interests to fight a war of imperial preservation, it wasn’t in anyone else’s. As far as most British businessmen were concerned, peace was delivering the goods. McColl himself was thirty-two years old, and he’d been born into a world without automobiles or flying machines, phonographs or telephones, the wireless or moving pictures. Everything was changing so fast, and mostly for the better. Who in his right mind would exchange this thrilling new world for battlefields soaked in blood? It felt so medieval.

War would be a catastrophe, for business, for everyone. Particularly those who had to fight it. He was probably too old to be called up, but you never knew—with the weapons they had now, the ranks of the young might be decimated in a matter of months. Whatever happened, he had no intention of renewing his acquaintance with Britain’s military machine and finding himself once more at the mercy of some idiot general.

It rained that evening and for most of the next two days, a freezing rain that rendered the pavements and quaysides treacherous and obstinately refused to turn to snow. McColl divided his time among cafés, the hotel lounge, and his room, following Pip on his voyage of discovery and engaging all those he could in conversation.

On two occasions he slipped and slithered his way to the edge of the new harbor, drawn by some pointless urge to confirm that the fleet was still there. It was. The occasional sailor hurried along the rain-swept decks, but no tenders were moving, and the bars on the quayside were shuttered and closed.

On Friday morning a note arrived from the consulate reminding him to return the book, which seemed somewhat gratuitous. The beautiful mission-taught writing was clearly the work of the Chinese girl, the overwrought concern for property more likely the golf-playing consul’s. He decided to have the note framed when he got home.

The weather changed that afternoon, the clouds moving out across the ocean like a sliding roof. He went for a long walk down the Pacific shoreline, ate dinner alone, and, once darkness had taken its grip, rode a rickshaw across town to the Blue Dragon. The old man was still hawking up phlegm, but the girl who’d rushed to greet him in the lobby was busy in the reception area, hovering over a young and nervous
Kriegsmarine
lieutenant. He was having trouble choosing and, seeing McColl, politely suggested he jump the line. “If you know which girl you want.”

“English,” McColl explained, shaking his head and gesturing that the other should proceed. The German threw up his hands, sighed, and turned back to the line of waiting females. “This one,” he said eventually, pointing at a child of around fifteen. McColl could almost hear the eeny, meeny, miney, mo.

The child took the German’s much larger hand in hers and led him away like a horse.

The other females all sat back down in unison, reminding McColl of church. “You want see Hsu Ch’ing-lan?” the girl asked McColl.

“Yes.” After making sure that the German was behind a curtain, he walked down to the madam’s room.

Hsu Ch’ing-lan was just the way he’d left her, sitting at her desk, holding a cigarette between two raised fingers, wearing the same blue silk. But this time she was reading an ancient copy of
Life
magazine—he recognized the cartoon of Woodrow Wilson.

She smiled when she saw him, which seemed promising.

They went through the usual ritual, exchanging small talk until the tea arrived, before getting down to business. “The girl I told you about,” she began, “my cousin from Shanghai. She is very intelligent. She has been with an officer on the flagship and persuaded him to talk about their plans.”

“How?” was McColl’s immediate reaction.

“How do you think? There are many men—most of them, I think—who like to talk about themselves after sex. They feel good, and they want the woman to know how important they are.”

“But …”

“Let her tell you herself.” Ch’ing-lan rang her bell and told the answering girl to bring Hsu Mei-lien. “You will see how intelligent she is,” she told McColl while they waited.

The girl who arrived was still a child, but every bit as bright as her cousin had said she was. She began in halting English, then switched to rapid-fire Shanghainese when Ch’ing-lan told her that McColl spoke that language. Her officer’s name was Burchert, and they’d been together the last three nights. If she had understood
him correctly, he was an
Oberleutnant
on the
Gneisenau
. Once he was in the mood, she had started by saying how she’d seen the big English battleships in Shanghai and how brave she thought the Germans in Tsingtau were, to think of fighting them. But surely just sailing out to meet them would be foolhardy. They must have a better plan than that.

And that was all she’d had to say—after that, nothing could stop him talking. As far as he was concerned, it was entirely about coal. They could keep their ships together if there was enough coal, while the English who were hunting them would have to split their fleet to search an ocean as wide as the Pacific. And that would give the Germans their chance, to destroy them a piece at a time. But only if they had the coal.

“And where will they find it?” McColl wondered. “Did you ask him?”

She gave him a derisive look. “I don’t ask questions,” she said. “I just let him talk. If I ask a question like that, he will suspect something.”

“Yes. He probably would.” McColl smiled at her—she really was quite remarkable. But had she told him anything new and useful? The East Asia Squadron’s dependence on limited coal supplies seemed obvious enough, even for the British Admiralty. Where could the Germans find coal in the Pacific? If Japan entered a war against them, then not from the home islands or Formosa. Supplies from Australia and New Zealand would be cut off once war was declared. And the Germans would know that any colliers loading up in a time of deepening crisis would be followed. So they would have to build up stocks on various islands while peace continued—stocks that the Royal Navy would have to seek out and burn if and when a war broke out. “Anything else?” he asked her.

“He says their gunners are better than the English.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” He smiled at the young girl. “Thank you.”

Hsu Ch’ing-lan dismissed her. “Clever, yes?”

“Very,” McColl agreed. Too clever to be working in a Tsingtau brothel. But then millions of Chinese people seemed to be short-changing themselves, biding their time. “How about the man with the flying machines? Has he booked another spanking?”

“Pao-yu is seeing him tonight,” Hsu Ch’ing-lan told him.

“Then I’ll be back tomorrow.”

As it happened, he saw her sooner than that. It was still dark on the following morning when a hand shook his shoulder and he woke to the smell of her perfume.

She said something in a dialect he didn’t understand, and the gaslight flared to life. More words, and a familiar-looking member of the Chinese hotel staff slipped out the door and closed it behind him.

“This is a nice surprise,” McColl said, hauling himself up onto his elbows. She was wearing a long black coat over the usual dress.

“I don’t think so,” she said, coldly. “Pao-yu—the girl who spanks the flying-machine man—has been arrested.”