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the platform, half expecting a posse of policemen to erupt from the two carriages. But there were none, only fifty or more Chinese men staring out of the open wagons hitched to the back of the coaches.
    He entered an almost empty saloon. There were no other foreigners and only two Chinese men, both in Western suits. They stood up to bow and smile but offered no conversation, and McColl was happy to follow their lead. He took a window seat at the other end of the car and barely had time to place his luggage on the rack before the train slipped into motion.
    If his memory of the local geography was accurate, they wouldbe outside the Tsingtau concession in ten minutes or so and, theoretically at least, beyond German jurisdiction. Of course they owned and ran the railway and probably considered it part of their writ. The local Chinese population might argue the point, but he wouldn’t like to bet on it. There was a British consulate in Tsinan, but also another German concession. This was much smaller than the one around Tsingtau but would still have some soldiers on hand.
    He wouldn’t feel safe until he was on the train to Pukow and Nanking, which was eleven long hours away.
    The line was still following the shore of the bay, the train advancing at a satisfying pace. It occurred to him that cutting the telegraph wires that ran alongside the tracks would increase his chances by leaps and bounds, but even if granted an opportunity, he lacked the requisite tools.
    And maybe there was no need. The train rattled past the concession’s border post without even stopping, and there were no police or army officers waiting on the platform at Kiautschou, the first town in Chinese territory. It looked like he could relax until they reached Tsinan.
    He got off for a stroll at Kiautschou and took a small clay pot of tea back to his seat. As the train got under way, the conductor sat down beside him with a pot of his own, clearly intent on conversation.
    Over the next twenty minutes, McColl learned a lot about the man and his family. The wife who loved living in Tsingtau, who taught in the school there—the best school in China, according to some. The children liked it, too, though he sometimes thought they were missing much of their German heritage. But they could never have afforded servants in Germany.
    It was clear that he loved his train and the pretty German stations, so out of place against the Chinese backdrop. He told McColl about the line’s short history and how flat it was, with several hundred bridges and not a single tunnel. He pointed out kilns by theside of the line, where bricks had been baked and then broken for ballast, because Shantung province was devoid of suitable stones.
    McColl responded with a wholly fictional life, which he located in Alsace to mask any linguistic mistakes. It was a relief to be speaking openly again, after a fortnight of pretending not to speak German, and he found himself liking the conductor. It was a strange place for a German to end up, but this one seemed at peace with himself and the world.
    The man left after an hour or so, and McColl sat there watching the barely changing scene through his window—a wide valley dotted by small villages, an occasional row of planters in the winter fields, the distant line of brown mountains under a gray sky. He eventually woke with a jolt of alarm, but it was only a coal train rumbling past in the opposite direction, bound for Tsingtau and von Spee’s ships. He imagined the colliers steaming out into the wide Pacific, dropping their loads on a hundred scattered islands for the future use of a fugitive fleet.
    He thought about the girl the Germans had arrested. What would they do to her? If it had been Hsu Ch’ing-lan’s cousin, then Ch’ing-lan would have moved heaven and earth to save her—that was the Chinese way. But Pao-yu wasn’t family—at least not as far as McColl knew—and if not she’d probably just be abandoned. Which was also the