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wanted to leave India in the spring of 1905 for two and a half years—more than twice the duration of his first expedition—and wanted a corresponding increase in funds to do so. It was an audacious request, as he well knew. “A bold demand which possibly may make an impression—or frighten,” he admitted in a letter to his friend Fred Andrews. It did both. And the effect in certain quarters was not what he hoped. Some were miffed that within a year of a role being created for him Stein was lobbying to take off. The title Archaeological Inspector had been added to his already long-winded one of Inspector General of Education for North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan. The authorities were annoyed that he wanted to depart before he had completed a detailed report on his first Turkestan trip and helped settle how the antiquities he brought back should be divided between museums in Britain, Lahore, and Calcutta. Stein realized he would have to delay his trip for a year to do this.
    Behind the scenes, other objections were raised too. There were hidden costs, argued one official. Although Stein had prepared a detailed budget—even including the cost of presents to local officials—he had neglected a vital element: he hadn’t allowed for his onward travel to Europe to accompany his finds and time in London to work on them. Meanwhile, another bean counter, scrutinizing the itinerary itself, pondered whether Stein couldn’t perhaps reduce his traveling time by cutting the Dunhuang leg of his journey. Had he done so, Stein would have missed out on the site of the Silk Road’s most remarkable discovery.
    As officialdom dragged its wearying chain, Stein waited to hear the fate of his proposal. Then, unexpectedly, in April 1905, a telegram arrived from his old friend Thomas “the Saint” Arnold. It must have seemed like news from the gods. Arnold, now back in London and working in the India Office, tipped Stein off that a decision on his proposal had finally been made. Arnold’s one-word cable to Stein read simply: “Rejoice.”

If daughters or sons of good family want to give rise to the highest, most fulfilled, awakened mind, what should they rely on and what should they do to master their thinking?
— VERSE 17, THE DIAMOND SUTRA

3
    The Listening Post
    Stein did indeed rejoice, but even before his pots of Marmite and desiccated cabbage reached him in India he was receiving unsettling news from Kashgar. Macartney regularly updated Stein about goings-on in the oasis, proudly boastful of his son Eric and quietly amused by the activities of a mutual friend there, an eccentric but much-loved Dutch priest named Father Hendricks. But Macartney’s letters went well beyond domestic chit-chat.
    “There is a piece of news which should interest you,” he wrote with typical British understatement. “A German expedition is now at Turfan. I had a letter from them only this week . . . I don’t know how many Germans there are. But the man who wrote me signed himself Albert von Lecoq [sic]; and he mentions a companion of his under the name of Bartus.” Exactly what they were up to at Turfan, more than 800 miles east of Kashgar, Macartney wasn’t sure; he suspected they might be geologists or intruders on Stein’s archaeological terrain. However, he did know they were heading for Kashgar. And the Germans were not the only ones bringing their buckets and spades to Turkestan. Macartney had learned of “another poacher on your preserves.” An American named Ellsworth Huntington had asked Macartney if he knew anything about old manuscripts discovered in the desert. “The sooner you are on the field, the better,” Macartney warned Stein.
    Having been forced to postpone his trip by a year, Stein’s frustration grew the more he learned of these rivals. As his departure day drew closer, the news from Kashgar became increasingly alarming. The two Germans had arrived in Kashgar in October 1905 and were staying under