6

After a while a quiet young man, who claimed to be an administrative assistant, approached me and asked cautious questions about who I was and where I had come from. I just glared at him and told him not to intrude on my mission.

Fortunately for me, as far as the South China group is concerned, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. There is a simple reason for this: telegraph communications with the Soviet Union are unreliable and very expensive, and many departments are only allocated funds to send ten to fifteen typewritten pages per year. It takes three to four weeks for a courier to reach Moscow, so if someone has made a request about me, it’s going to be a long time before they get an answer.

But in the meantime, I need to prepare myself for all eventualities. I have to move out before someone finds my diary or figures out that the Daily News is not quite as “proletarian” as they first thought it was.

A later entry

I have come up with a brilliant idea: I’ll mail my diary to Ada. Not to the House of Hope address, where Wyer’s spies might intercept it, but to the Bernard’s. I’ll disguise the envelope to make it look like some publisher’s catalogue.

I’ll ask Ada to pass on my diary to Nina. This will be the best way to contact her and explain what has happened to me.

16. PILOTS

1

Nazar asked Klim if he would be able to write an article about the pilots living at the airfield on Dashatou Island. Sun Yat-sen’s recruiters had hired them from all over Europe, and now Canton boasted the most multinational air force in the world.

“These pilots are real heroes,” Nazar persuaded Klim. “They fly their machines without any reliable weather forecasts and navigate using the mountain tops and the railways. In fact, they don’t even have any maps. Would you dare go up into the sky without a map?”

Nazar’s biggest hero was Comrade Krieger, who was in charge of technical maintenance at the airfield.

Krieger was a German by birth but had grown up in Prague and received his engineering training in America. According to Nazar, Krieger had arrived in China during the Great War to organize the shipment of all sorts of goods to Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Later on, when Sun Yat-sen had started building his army, Krieger had joined his air force to help the Kuomintang and the communists to free the Chinese people from the warlords and foreign invaders.

“He’s an amazing man,” Nazar kept saying. “He not only built our airfield from scratch but has also learned to fly better than any ace. He is besotted with aviation. He thinks it is the future of warfare.”

“Sounds impressive,” Klim said. “Well, let’s go and interview these flyboys.”

2

It was raining when they got to Dashatou Island, and they had to run across the flooded airfield to reach the “canteen,” which was little more than a long table and a couple of benches under a thatched canopy.

There were a dozen tanned pilots sitting at the table in overalls stained with motor oil.

“Always a pleasure to have the press here!” they shouted, and after exchanging handshakes with their guests, they gave Nazar and Klim the seats of honor that had been improvised out of a couple of aviation fuel barrels.

It was pouring now, and it was so dark under the canopy that it might as well have been evening already. The orderlies, soaked to the skin, brought in pots of rice and fried canned meat with vegetables. Banana leaves were used instead of plates and enamel army cups instead of wine glasses.

Konstantin the Bulgarian filled the cups with baijiu, a kind of Chinese rice vodka.

“To the victory of socialism!” he toasted.

They all drank and talked, interrupting each other—in Russian, English, and German.

Klim took notes in his notebook. The pilots were all from different countries, but their stories were surprisingly similar. They had been sent to the front straight from school and had quickly learned how to survive, how to laugh in the face of danger, and to value camaraderie above all else. They were fond of women but loathed the responsibility and curbs to their freedom that children and a settled life entailed. The humdrum conformity of civilian life bored them.

“What kind of a man are you if you’re afraid of a fight?” the curly-haired Pierre from Belgium shouted. He had returned from the war covered in decorations but could never stick at a permanent job. He was forever getting into trouble with his bosses for arguing with his customers.

“What exactly are you fighting for here, in China?” Klim asked the pilots.

“For justice,” said Richard the Austrian, and he began recounting a recent operation they had undertaken against some rebels who had mutinied against Sun Yat-sen: “I banked and strafed their truck. The fuel tank exploded, and the soldiers jumped out of the truck with their pants on fire.”

The pilots roared with laughter. Here, in Canton, they were gods of war riding the clouds and wreaking havoc against the enemy.

“I can’t wait for our Northern Expedition to start in earnest,” Konstantin said. “But first Sun Yat-sen must destroy these ‘paper tigers’ from the Chamber of Commerce.”

“I’m not sure that he can,” Klim said cautiously. “The merchants’ army has already taken Xiguan and won’t allow the government troops and tax collectors to enter.”

“Nonsense!” Nazar said, his cheeks flushed with vodka. “We’ll shell them into submission. Chiang Kai-shek has already received the mountain guns he needs. The only thing that is stopping him is that the shells we received from Shanghai are the wrong size for the guns. Our men have to manually shorten each sleeve. But soon we’ll show the rebels what for.”

“Is Chiang Kai-shek going to shell his own city?” Klim asked.

“Not the whole city, only those traitors in Xiguan.”

A bedraggled and muddy basset hound came to join them under the canopy.

“This is Mucha!” Nazar yelled, laughing and trying to fend off the dog as it strove to lick his face. “Leave me alone, you smelly mongrel!”

A man wrapped in a military cape appeared out of the rain, and Klim stared at him dumbfounded, unable to believe his eyes. It was Daniel Bernard.

“Comrade Krieger, take your beast away!” Nazar said with a laugh, but Daniel didn’t laugh with him.

“What is this man doing here?” he asked, pointing at Klim. “He is a spy. I’ve met him before in Shanghai.”

3

They searched Klim and brought him to a dingy guardhouse. The walls were covered with damp political posters, the roof leaked in several places, and there were tins on the floor to collect dripping water. Two soldiers with Mausers stood behind Klim.

“Was it Edna who ordered you to spy on me?” asked Daniel.

Klim watched him rummaging through his belongings on the desk. “I had no idea that you were in Canton.”

It was obvious that Daniel wouldn’t want anyone in Shanghai to learn about his secret double life, and the only way to keep that secret would be to bury his old acquaintance in the nearest ravine.

Klim had great difficulty portraying a semblance of calm. “I was asked to write an article for the People’s Tribune, and so I—”

His words trailed off as he heard Nazar giving a yelp from behind the wall. “I met him at the Whampoa Academy and thought he was Soviet. A-ah! Don’t hurt me!”

Klim went cold. Thank God, he had sent his diary to Shanghai. If Daniel had found and translated it, Klim would have been summarily executed as an enemy of the revolution.

The rain turned into a full-blown storm, and the raindrops drummed into the tins. Mucha tried to enter the guardhouse, but Daniel shouted at him sharply, “Get out of here!”

He pulled folded sheets from Klim’s wallet and went to the window to examine them.

“Avro 504,” Daniel said, grinning. “And you said you weren’t a spy. Were you sent here to figure out what kind of airplanes we have?”

“This machine belongs to the White Cossacks trapped in Shanghai,” Klim said. “They asked Fernando Burbano to find a buyer for it, and I helped him with the translation.”

Daniel looked up at him in surprise. “Is the Don in Canton? Finally!”

He went out on the porch and gave the soldiers some orders.

The scales finally fell from Klim’s eyes. Fernando and Jiří knew Daniel and had been working for him. It had been Nina who had brought them together, and they had used the fake Czechoslovak Consulate as a front to smuggle arms to Sun Yat-sen. When Jiří had been arrested, he had started giving testimony against Daniel, and Wyer had killed him to shut him up. The captain was evidently not keen for rumors to get out about his German son-in-law helping the Bolsheviks and Chinese nationalists.

“Don Fernando can vouch for me,” said Klim when Daniel returned to the guardhouse. “We have known each other for years. He’ll confirm that I’m not a spy.”

Daniel took the Avro specifications. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

When he left, the soldiers made Klim sit on the bench, tied his hands behind his back, and sat down at the desk to play cards.

Time passed unbearably slowly, and in the end Klim lost all hope. Even if the Don had not already left Canton, he would be sure to refuse to vouch for Klim. The old mercenary had no reason to save Klim’s worthless skin.

Water overflowed from the tins on the floor, but the soldiers didn’t even notice. They were totally engrossed in their game, slamming down their cards hard as though they were swatting insects.