Felix’s heart ached for Ada, for himself, and his comrades who were facing almost certain death within the next few hours. What were they fighting for? What were their deaths going to achieve? He could find no answer.

4

When darkness fell, Colonel Kotlyarov ordered Felix to prepare to leave the train.

“Good luck, son! Tell the British that we have sixty-four men, and we are experienced gunners, machine gunners, and military engineers. We can serve in the Russian Volunteer Corps and have a lot to offer the foreign concessions.”

When the engine driver slowed down, Felix and Ada leaped out of the car.

Rolling down the embankment, Ada cried in pain as something cold slashed her arm. Felix jammed his hand over her mouth, hissing, “Quiet!”

He bandaged the wound on her arm with a piece of fabric torn from the hem of her skirt, and they ran away from the railroad. Broken glass crunched under their feet, and they could feel the heat from smoldering embers through the soles of their shoes.

Several times Felix and Ada ran into the unknown detachments of soldiers. It was hard to tell whether they were Red Guards, police, or soldiers serving the governor.

“If we get arrested,” Felix whispered, “we’ll tell them that we got lost in the Chinese section of the city.” He paused and added. “Do you… I mean, will you marry me?”

Ada squeezed his hand. “Yes. Then, we’ll go to America.”

Felix looked at her face, illuminated by the flames of the fire.

“We’ll talk about all this later,” he said and gave Ada a quick kiss on the cheek.

5

The checkpoint on the Boundary Road was besieged by a crowd of refugees shivering in the cold rain. From time to time a British officer with a megaphone and an umbrella would climb onto an armored car protecting the gates to the International Settlement.

“I repeat,” he shouted, “Chinese policemen and soldiers are not allowed into the territory of the International Settlement.”

Ada listened to him, wistfully looking at the gate draped in barbed wire. She was covered in soot from head to toe, her hair was dripping, and the wound on her arm was throbbing.

Felix hadn’t had a chance to carry out Kotlyarov’s order. He and Ada had spent two days rushing from one checkpoint on the cordoned boundary to the next, but all to no avail. As soon as people heard their Russian accent, they chased them away, threatening to shoot them on sight. “Get lost, you Bolshevik scum!”

In much the same way, abandoned soldiers from the governor’s army ran from one gate to another—barefoot, bandaged, their epaulettes and insignias ripped off and in tatters.

The previous day, three officers from the Great Wall had joined Ada and Felix.

“It’s all over,” they had said. “The Red Guards blew up the train and slaughtered every single one of our men. We were the only ones to survive.”

“What about Father Seraphim?” Ada asked.

“Caught a bullet in the head.”

Here, on the Boundary Road, Felix eventually saw Johnny Collor patrolling the barricade, and his friend let him inside to talk to the officer in charge of the checkpoint.

“I’ll get you passes,” Felix had promised Ada and the officers, but now there had been no sign of him for over an hour.

Finally, Johnny Collor took the place of the British officer on top of the armored car.

“Whites will now be allowed to enter the International Settlement!” he shouted into the megaphone. “Including Russian military personnel.”

The crowd stirred. Those Chinese who spoke English began to translate Johnny’s speech.

Felix appeared at the gates. “Ada!” he called. “Come here!”

She rushed towards him, but a Chinese officer grasped her hand. “If you’re going in, so are we.”

The Russians started to argue with him. Felix tried to squeeze through the crowd to Ada, but dozens of hands grasped at him, pulling him back. The Chinese officer unsheathed his sword, slashed wildly, and Ada felt something hot spatter across her cheek. The crowd gasped and leapt back, and Felix fell with a gash to his neck.

Ada was deafened by the roar of a machine-gun shooting over the heads of the mob.

“To the gates!” shouted the Russian officer and manhandled Ada back through the cordon with him.

The crowd scattered, and the officers had a chance to drag Felix back into the cordoned area.

They carried him into an abandoned sweet shop. Ada struggled in Johnny’s arms, screaming hysterically, but he wouldn’t let her near the medics who had rushed forward and were now bent over Felix.

Their valiant efforts were to no avail, and he died an hour later.

30. THE NANKING INCIDENT

1

During the long months spent in solitary confinement, Daniel pondered many things. He was angry with himself for being arrested and with Nina for betraying him—he had no doubt she was to blame. But all this was soon subsumed by a very real fear of death after he contracted food poisoning. He sent Edna a note asking for help but received no reply. The warden who conveyed the message informed Daniel that he hadn’t even been allowed into the house. With no doctor, no medicines, and without even the most basic human compassion from his family, Daniel was at his lowest ebb.

Fortunately, the poorly educated jailers hadn’t confiscated his kitsune netsuke. They had thought it was a commonplace Chinese lucky charm, and Daniel asked his warden to take the netsuke to a pharmacist who collected antiques.

The pharmacist visited the prisoner and then sent him the medicine Daniel needed. By an irony of fate, Nina had saved his life without ever meaning to.

His case never went to trial. The prosecutors and investigators were too busy defending the city with the Volunteer Corps, and in any case, no one was quite sure which authority and which court was responsible for Daniel’s trial.

Eventually, he was handed over to the Chinese authorities, but when the NRA reached the outskirts of Shanghai, the guards unlocked the cells and fled.

In a daze, Daniel walked out of the prison gate and made his way through the crowded streets. He noticed banners and portraits of Chiang Kai-shek in the windows, and every other Chinese was wearing badges with the Kuomintang emblem—the white sun over a blue field. Even the cigarette packets for sale had the emblem emblazoned on their covers. It appeared that the tobacco factory owners had been hedging their bets long before the surrender of Shanghai.

People in the streets looked happy, their eyes were shining, and it was hard to believe that only a few weeks earlier Shanghai had been gripped in a paroxysm of fear at the prospect of the arrival of the NRA.

Nationalism changes people in the most peculiar ways, Daniel thought with a rueful grin. Chiang Kai-shek had made the “white ghosts” nervous and been transformed in the eyes of his people from a bandit into a prominent leader. Carried by a wave of national pride, no one cared now that the new father of the nation had slaughtered vast numbers of its sons and daughters.

Soon Daniel was in the apartment of his cryptographer, the son of a German pastor and a Chinese woman.

“Where have you been?” he asked, fussing over Daniel. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

Daniel explained what had happened to him—without mentioning Nina, of course.

The cryptographer brought him a piece of soap and a change of clothing.

“Here, clean yourself up and get a proper rest. I’ll send a message to Berlin that you’re back.”

2

Daniel spent several days gathering information about what had been going on in the city while he’d been in jail.

Don Fernando told him about the seizure of the Pamyat Lenina: “Mr. Sterling sent the Dogmeat General’s men a telegram, and they let me go. But Miss Nina was taken into custody.”

“Did she really go to Wuhan after me?” Daniel asked, surprised. “I thought it was Nina who reported me to the police.”

“Oh no!” exclaimed Don Fernando. “She’s madly in love with you. When you were gone, she and I went to visit every morgue in the city. I was so sad that my heart physically ached—and all the while I still had to broker the deal to save Shanghai.”

Daniel felt a rush of warmth inside. “Where’s Nina now?” he asked.

“No idea,” said the Don, sadly. “Probably she’s finished.”

Fernando informed Daniel that he had persuaded Chiang Kai-shek’s representatives, Big-Eared Du, and Sterling, to come to an agreement that the Green Gang and the foreigners would provide the Kuomintang with funds in exchange for betraying the Chinese communists and their Bolshevik allies.

It had been promised that the NRA would sit tight until the Red Guards and the governor’s soldiers had destroyed each other, and then enter the city unopposed. The foreign concessions were left untouched, Chiang Kai-shek came to a number of agreements with the “white ghosts” on mutual cooperation and some preferences to make the common people a little bit happier, and the International Settlement city fathers issued a resolution: “Chinese citizens may now freely visit all the city’s parks.”

Within a few days, there was a huge crowd in the Bund, waiting for their chance to try the forbidden fruit.

These developments were a bolt from the blue for the Bolsheviks and the Chinese communists. Trying to save the situation, Mikhail Borodin called for everybody to disobey Chiang Kai-shek’s orders, but the Red Guards were in no position to resist the combined forces of the foreigners and the Kuomintang.