Evidently, Fernando had decided that if he couldn’t entice Nina into his bed, he would have fun harassing her with his dirty jokes and bawdy songs.
Nina decided to ask the captain if she could move to another cabin, away from Fernando, but as soon as she went out into the corridor, she stumbled across One-Eye.
“Follow me,” he said and pointed to Fernando’s door. “The master is waiting for you.”
Nina took a step back. How had she ever ended up on this steamer? She had already given up on the whole idea of going to Wuhan.
I’ll ask the captain to drop me ashore at the nearest village, she decided. Then I’ll hire a carriage and return to Shanghai.
One-Eye grabbed Nina by the arm, but she pulled herself away and ran down the corridor.
The light in the passenger lounge was on, and Nina could hear voices coming from behind the glass door. She entered the room and saw three men and a plump dark-haired woman sitting at the dinner table.
“Good evening,” Nina said in Russian, with a forced smile. “May I join you?”
“Sure you can,” the woman said. “Judging from your accent you’re from Moscow, aren’t you? My name is Fanya. What’s yours?”
Nina guessed that Mrs. Borodin had taken her for a Bolshevik. Who other than a Bolshevik would be sailing up the Yangtze towards Wuhan in a Soviet steamer?
“Is that character bothering you?” Fanya asked as she noticed Nina’s nervous glances at One-Eye’s silhouette behind the door.
“He’s been following me for some reason.”
Fanya got up from the table and headed to the door, her worn-out shoes shuffling over the parquet floor.
“Who sent you here to eavesdrop on our conversation?” she snapped in her broken English. “Get lost!”
To Nina’s surprise, One-Eye shrugged his shoulders and disappeared.
“I don’t know how to thank you—” Nina began, but her new acquaintance just waved her hand.
“You need to play hard with types like him.”
“If he keeps pestering you, tell us, and we’ll sort him out,” promised one of the diplomatic messengers, a strong young man with a luxuriant blond mustache.
The men tried to be as gallant with Nina as possible and treated her to cookies and candy with a portrait of—Felix Dzerzhinsky, of all people!—the head of the secret police.
“Why don’t you just leave the poor woman alone?” Fanya exclaimed, laughing at her comrades’ clumsy attempts to win Nina’s favor.
Gradually Nina calmed down. The irony of it alclass="underline" her enemies, the Bolsheviks whom she had feared more than anyone else, had taken her under their wing.
She stayed with them until the early hours of the morning. They sang songs, told stories, and then played cards.
Finally, Fanya rose from the table and yawned. “It’s already dawn—let’s get some sleep.”
At that moment an artillery shell whooshed overhead, and the entire company fell silent.
Felix sat on a log, smoking a cigarette, watching the scarlet sunrise over the Yangtze, while Chinese artillerymen tried to figure out how to take their guns across the river.
Things were really bad in the Dogmeat General’s army. Russian and Chinese officers were constantly at one another’s throats, many of them had taken to the bottle, and confusion in the rear was common place. Supply officers would only buy food from profiteers who paid them bribes, and half of the army was suffering from disease and illness. Medical care was almost non-existent, and Dogmeat’s soldiers were so hungry that they were no longer as interested in attacking the enemy’s position as they were in their logistical supply lines.
Father Seraphim approached, wearing a padded coat decorated with a Red Cross armband. His beard was completely wild and his eyes were red and bleary.
“Are they gonna give us our money or not?” he asked Felix. “They owe us five months pay and that’s no laughing matter.”
“Dogmeat probably thinks he’s better off keeping us as cannon fodder, and then fodder for his army when the supplies finally run out. He’s got no plans to pay us and let us go,” Felix muttered.
Sadly, it was true: they had nowhere to go and no other choice but to fight to survive one day at a time. They knew that if they were taken prisoner, they would be horribly tortured before being executed.
Felix looked up and noticed a small steamer sailing round the bend of the river.
“Do you see that red flag on her stern?” a Chinese officer shouted as he ran past. “It’s a Soviet ship! We must stop it. It’s bound to be delivering food to Wuhan.”
The Chinese discharged a warning shot across its bows, and the steamer anchored in the middle of the river.
As a Russian speaker, Felix volunteered to head the inspection on board, and along with other soldiers, he jumped in the rowing boat and rowed to the Soviet steamer.
Having ascended its rope ladder, he ordered the captain to hand him all his consignment notes. According to the ship’s papers, the Pamyat Lenina was sailing to Wuhan to pick up a cargo of tea and was only carrying spare parts for a power plant in its hold.
“Tea?” Felix shouted angrily. “They’re reduced to eating dogs and cats in Wuhan and you’re planning to ship a cargo of tea!” He turned to his soldiers. “Search the steamer. Put the crew under arrest and bring all the passengers into the lounge.”
The soldiers’ impatient knocks shook the Don’s cabin door to its timbers.
“Open up!” someone with a Russian accent shouted.
Fernando hadn’t expected Dogmeat’s soldiers to stop the Pamyat Lenina. There was a trade agreement between the Peking government and Moscow which allowed Soviet ships to freely navigate all Chinese rivers, despite the war.
The Don rushed around his cabin. If Dogmeat’s men were to find out about the Avro, it would be curtains for him.
There was a heavy blow, and the door flew off its hinges. A tall, hook-nosed young man with a revolver in his hand burst into the cabin, followed by a number of Chinese soldiers behind him.
Fernando hurriedly handed him his passport. “I’m a citizen of Mexico. I’m a neutral here.”
The man looked through the Don’s documents and grinned.
“Jose Fernando Burbano? Nice to see you.”
The Don turned yellow. “How do you know me?”
“I used to be a policeman in the International Settlement. Your name regularly featured in our reports.”
Fernando put his hand to his heart. “It’s all lies and slander! I am an honest businessman. I have a radio station in Shanghai—”
But the young man wasn’t having any of it.
“What are you doing on a Soviet boat?” he barked.
“I’m on a secret mission, under Mr. Sterling’s orders. I have been told to negotiate the evacuation of foreign refugees from Wuhan—with Mikhail Borodin. By the way, did you know that his wife is here?”
“What are you talking about?” the man said, frowning. “We have reviewed the lists of passengers—”
“She is traveling with forged documents.”
The man grabbed Fernando by the shoulder and dragged him to the lounge, where the other passengers were sitting, terrified.
“Stay here,” the man ordered and left.
The Don leaned against the wall, casting glances at the white-faced Bolsheviks. Nina was there too. She was sitting on the couch, shaking like a leaf.