Jack of Spies

by David Downing

  McColl looked through them. With one exception the male visitors were Indians, but none resembled Har Dayal or Khankhoje. The odd man out was wearing what looked like a Catholic priest’s robe, but his face was blurred by rain. If only the weather had been kinder …

  The one woman pictured was also white, and heavily pregnant. Palóu couldn’t be certain that she’d visited the ashram office, but his son Alfredo had seen what looked like waving arms in the window at the same time as he heard shouting, and when the woman emerged, she looked angry and tearful. His second son, Paco, had followed the woman to an apartment on Sanchez Street, and identified her as Alice Burrows. She was unmarried, with two young children.

  It wasn’t a bad start, McColl thought, and today the sun was shining. He paid Palóu for the last three days and told the detective to persist for another three. There was at least enough money for that.

  Back at the hotel, he found Jed and Mac completing their packing. They had already driven the Maia to the city freight depot for ferrying across the bay and were now required to make their own way to the Oakland terminal. McColl went over on the ferry to see them off, and as he watched the Overland Limited rattle out across the points he felt both relieved and depressed at the prospect of spending so much time alone. “Beware knife-wielding Chinamen,” had been Mac’s farewell comment. Or knife-wielding Indians, McColl silently added. Or gun-toting Irishmen.

  He decided to visit the pregnant woman and spent the ride back to San Francisco wondering how to approach her. If the most probable explanation of her visit—that one of Har Dayal’s bright young men had gotten her pregnant and then abandoned her—were true, then anger might induce her to talk. But only if she’d given up hope of getting him back. And maybe not even then.

  What did McColl have to offer in exchange? Nothing except money, which she might well need. Could he say he’d come from the ashram in the spirit of putting things right? No, because then he couldn’t ask questions. His only hope was some sort of honesty—he wanted information on her boyfriend and his chums, and he was prepared to pay for it.

  When the cab dropped him off on Sanchez, he realized that her apartment was just around the corner from the other ashram building on Hill Street. It was a poor area, and her building seemed poorer than most. And here I am, he thought sourly, an angel of deliverance.

  Or not. The encounter didn’t go well. She opened the door with a small boy in her arms, obviously swollen with his unborn sibling, and declined his suggestion that they talk inside. When he offered payment for information about the Yugantar Ashram, her only response was to coldly ask him who he was. A private detective, he lied, thinking he should have left all this to Palóu.

  “And who’s paying you?”

  She was, he realized, far from stupid. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”

  She gave him a long, disdainful look, then shut the door in his face.

  Next morning he walked to the top of Nob Hill and took in the view that Jed and Mac had raved about. Their train would be halfway across Nevada by now, still two days away from Chicago. He hoped Jed would realize his dream of seeing some authentic Red Indians.

  Caitlin had said she would try to come over that afternoon, and the lack of a message when he returned was a hopeful sign. She arrived soon after two, and asked if she could have a bath—there’d been no hot water at the Keanes’ since the previous morning. Half an hour later she emerged in a towel, which slipped away in mid-embrace. “Why are you still dressed?” she asked.

  “We’re getting good at this,” she said half an hour later, with what sounded almost like sadness.

  Because we love each other, McColl thought but didn’t say.

  “So what are Jed and Mac doing today?” she asked after a while.

  “They’re on the train to Chicago. They and the Maia left yesterday.”

  “Oh. So why are you still here?”

  “Loose ends,” he said vaguely, before realizing she might think he meant her.

  If she did, she found no objection. “So when are you leaving?” she asked.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “I’m taking the train on Monday. I’ve seen all the people I need to—I saw Agnes again yesterday—she liked you, by the way—and the Keanes are driving me mad. I was planning to go on Tuesday, but Liam took the liberty of reserving me a compartment for Monday, because Father Meagher was already booked on that train, and Liam—or my father—thinks I need a chaperone. For the last four days of a three-month trip!”

  “Don’t you like Father Meagher?”

  “He’s a horrible man. One of those priests who stares at your breasts while he gives out moral instruction. He probably spends as much time jerking himself off as he does praying.”

  McColl laughed.

  “But I do have nice breasts,” she said, looking down at them.

  “You do indeed.”

  “Not too big and not too small.”

  “Just perfect,” he agreed.

  “I’m glad you like them,” she said, reaching for the cigarettes on the bedside table.

  “What sort of man is Liam Keane?” he asked, once they’d both lit up.

  “Oh, he’s not so bad. He’s one of them—you know the type—a revolutionary where Ireland is concerned, reactionary in every other respect.”

  “I know the type.”

  She turned toward him, as if intent on gauging his response to what she was about to say. “I was wondering … Will your business be finished by Monday?”

  “It should be. Why?”

  “Well, I thought we could take the same train. Make passionate love under Father Meagher’s nose …”

  “Not literally, I hope.”

  “You know what I mean. It’ll be fun on the train. And after that you’ll be going back to England, and who knows what’ll happen.”

  “To us?”

  “To us.”

  “What would you like to happen?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But at the moment I find it hard to imagine letting you go.”

  “Likewise,” he murmured.

  The Keanes had guests that evening, and Caitlin was expected back. After walking her to the tram stop, McColl ambled aimlessly down Market again toward the ferry terminals and bay, trying to make sense of the situation he’d gotten himself into. The thought of their sharing the journey to New York was irresistible, but then so was the opportunity of intercepting whatever seditious messages the good Father Meagher would probably be carrying from sea to shining sea. How could he do both? Wouldn’t he, in one way or another, be using her, an avowed enemy of empires, to help him serve his own? He told himself that there was no real conflict of interest, that he would be investigating Father Meagher’s probable role as a courier whether or not she was on the same train, but that wasn’t how she would see it. She would feel betrayed, and he couldn’t blame her. She would know that he had deceived her from the very beginning and would find it unforgivable.

  But what else could he do? What else could he have done? If honesty had been the price of keeping her, he might have considered it, but she’d made it clear that their time together would be measured in weeks, not years. And like it or not, that still seemed the obvious outcome. At some point in the not-too-distant future, she would go back to her life and he would go back to his—something he could do only if his cover remained intact.

  And nothing had really changed—his choices were as limited now as they had been in Shanghai. He knew he couldn’t just walk away, either from her or from his work, so he would take the train with her and Father Meagher, and he would make the most of whatever opportunities happened to arise. Maybe things would work out in some way or other that he couldn’t yet envisage.

  He started back up Market, freshly intent on having an enjoyable evening. Over the next few hours, he found a pot roast to thrill his taste buds, moving pictures to tickle his funny bone, and whiskeys enough to prepare him for sleep. At the St. Francis, he was j
ust getting into the elevator when the night clerk caught him with an envelope marked “Urgent.” He read it on the way up, pressed the button to take him straight back down, and read it again in the empty hotel bar: “An assassin waits in your room.”

  A joke, he thought. Some delayed-action prank by his younger brother.

  But it wasn’t in Jed’s writing. Or Mac’s.

  The Browning was still in his pocket, and touching it felt reassuring. What should he do?

  He went back to the night clerk and asked him who had left the message.

  “A boy.”

  “What sort of boy?”

  “A Spanish boy, I think. A poor boy.”

  “And when was this?”

  The night clerk shrugged. “Two hours ago. Maybe three.”

  McColl walked back toward the elevator, changed his mind, and went for the stairs. He climbed a few steps, then forced himself to stop—he really had to think this through. There was, apparently, an assassin in his room. Maybe one of the men who had killed Jatish. Armed, presumably, with a gun or a knife. If he took the man on, there seemed a fair chance one of them would get killed. It might be him, which would be most inconvenient. It should be the assassin—McColl did, after all, have the advantage of knowing that the man was there. But he would probably have to shoot him, which would be both noisy and distressing. Guests would be screaming, the police would be called, and he would be taken down to the local precinct house for questioning. The press would get hold of it, and his picture would adorn another front page, putting an end to his hopes of a new career.

  And not only that. It felt vaguely ridiculous, but he found himself wondering what Caitlin would think. One attempt on his life might be written off to madness or greed, but two, on either side of a very wide ocean? She would guess that there was more to him than she had previously suspected and start asking awkward questions. Which would also finish them.

  There had to be some other way. And he knew what it was.

  He went back to the lobby and shut himself in the telephone booth. It took a long time for someone to pick up at the Fairholme residence and even longer to persuade whoever it was that Sir Reginald had to be woken. When Fairholme appeared, he sounded sprightly enough and grasped the situation with commendable alacrity.

  “This can’t get in the papers,” McColl concluded.

  “Of course not. Leave it to me.”

  McColl told the night clerk he was expecting visitors and that he’d wait in the bar. Once there, he poured himself three fingers and sat in the dark, watching the street outside and imagining the man waiting upstairs.

  About forty minutes had gone by when an automobile pulled up close to the hotel entrance. Four men got out, none of them in uniform. A few moments later, two of them entered the bar.

  “I’m Strawson,” the older of the two introduced himself. “BOI. Is he still up there?”

  “As far as I know. I haven’t seen him, only this.” He passed across the message. Now that the cavalry was here, he hoped to God it wasn’t some kind of practical joke. “Shall I come up with you?”

  “Nope. You stay right where you are. We’ll take care of this.”

  McColl watched them go and spent the next ten minutes anticipating gunfire.

  None came, and Strawson reappeared. “Your assassin was in the wardrobe,” he said. “With this.” It was a fearsome-looking kitchen knife, the blade long enough to run him through.

  “Who is he?”

  “He hasn’t said. Local man, though, Caucasian. Just hired help, would be my guess.”

  “Ah,” McColl said, wondering if that was good or bad.

  “And he had this in his pocket,” Strawson added, unfolding a piece of paper on which “Death to English spies” had been written in large letters. “For leaving on the body, no doubt.”

  McColl shivered despite himself. “Where is he?”

  “He’s being taken out.”

  “And what will you do with him?”

  Strawson shrugged. “We’ll question him, of course, but I doubt he’ll even know who hired him. We can only charge him with attempted murder if we reveal his target, and I don’t suppose you want that sort of publicity?”

  “No.”

  “Well, we might be able to pin something else on him, but I can’t guarantee it. Odds are he’ll be back on the streets in a few weeks.”

  “Oh, I’ll be long gone by then.” McColl offered Strawson his hand. “Thanks.”

  “All part of the Service,” the American told him.

  Outside, three men were apparently helping another into the backseat of an automobile. As McColl watched from the window, Strawson claimed the seat beside the driver and the car moved slowly off, skirting three sides of the square before turning away down Geary.

  He took the elevator up to his room, where the bedclothes lay in disarray from his afternoon tryst with Caitlin and the wardrobe door was still hanging open. Love and death, he thought.

  He put the bed back together and lay down, wondering how Har Dayal’s people had gotten onto him and who had sent the warning.

  When he woke the next morning, the whole episode seemed like a dream, but the message of warning on his nightstand was real enough. His Shanghai wound was throbbing in protest, perhaps at the thought of another knife, more probably on account of the weather. Fog had rolled in overnight, and the buildings on the far side of Union Square were vague silhouettes.

  He took breakfast in the hotel restaurant and anxiously checked the morning papers for any news of himself. There was none. Leafing through the pages, he came across a picture of Larry de Lacey surrounded by teenage boys, all smiling at the camera. The next generation, McColl thought.

  He collected his coat and walked up an eerily fogbound Stockton Street to Juan Palóu’s office. As far as he could tell, no one followed him.

  “Better news this time,” the detective told him, reaching for one of the folders on his desk. “We have a lot of pictures and quite a few addresses. Here.”

  McColl leafed through them, admiring the clarity of the images. The first six faces were Indian, the seventh the one he wanted to see. Father Meagher featured in four of the photographs. He’d been caught twice through the window of the Ghadar office, once coming out through the door, and again crossing the street toward the camera. In the latter two pictures, he was carrying a large suitcase.

  “Did he bring the suitcase with him?” McColl asked.

  “It should say on the back of the picture.”

  According to the operative’s notes, the priest had been empty-handed when he arrived.

  McColl felt both vindicated and excited. If that suitcase turned up on the eastbound train, he was in business.

  The sense of self-congratulation lasted less than a minute. Two more Indians were caught by the camera, and the second was clearly Pandurang Khankhoje. And then a white face, one much more familiar than he expected. Rainer von Schön had his head turned toward the street as he pushed against the building door, as if to check that no one was observing his entrance.

  McColl stared at the picture for several moments, thoughts and questions tripping over one another.

  How blind had he been? All that time he’d thought he was fooling the German, had von Schön been fooling him?

  He thought back to Tsingtau. Who had made the first overture, himself or the German? He couldn’t remember, but the latter now seemed more likely. If von Schön worked for German intelligence, he might well have initiated an acquaintance with a suspicious British visitor.

  But if the German had seen through McColl, he would surely have arrested him there and then, not allowed him to escape and report his findings. No, von Schön had left Tsingtau still believing that McColl was the businessman he claimed to be and only later been told that this was not the case. He had then boarded the Manchuria intent on finishing the job that his Chinese hireling had bungled in Shanghai and been frustrated by the fact that his target was hardly ever alone.

 
McColl felt as if he’d been betrayed and knew that the feeling was ridiculous. His enemy had proved himself more adept at deception—it was as simple as that.

  And the game was not over.

  Dates and times were written on the backs of the photographs. Von Schön had visited the ashram the previous afternoon, only hours before the latest would-be assassin had climbed into McColl’s hotel wardrobe. Which hardly seemed a coincidence. The one remaining mystery was the identity of his savior, the author of the warning message. One of the undercover Indians, he guessed—the note-writer’s command of English had seemed a bit on the shaky side.

  So where had von Schön been staying? And where was he now? “Did anyone follow this man?” he asked Palóu.

  “My younger son tried, but the man jumped on a tram at the last moment.”

  Which came as no surprise. McColl went through the rest of the photographs, which were all of Indians. Most had names and addresses penciled in on the back—Palóu and his boys had done a wonderful job.

  McColl said as much.

  “The weather’s against us today,” the detective said with a gesture toward the fog-filled window.

  “Yeah, well, I’m afraid I can’t afford any more days anyway. Not for the moment at least. But I’m going to leave your name with … with my boss here and recommend that he use you if he decides to take matters any further.”

  “Thank you.” Palóu smiled. “You’re leaving San Francisco?”

  “In a few days. But there is one last thing I need to know. Could you find out if a particular someone has booked a seat on a long-distance train in the past few days?”

  “That shouldn’t be too tough.”

  McColl pulled von Schön’s photograph from the pile and handed it across.

  “Ah. Without a name it might be.”

  “His name is Rainer von Schön. At least I think it is. Until I saw that photograph, I thought he was just a businessman, but it seems he works for the German government. And I’d like to know where he’s headed.”

  Palóu nodded. “If he’s made a booking in that name, I should be able to trace it.”