A train whistle blew, off to the north. Along with the other laborers who’d worked so hard rebuilding the rail line through Harbin, Vasili Yasevich stood by the track and waited for the train to roll by. Like his comrades in socialist labor, he wore a padded cap and a quilted jacket. But he was pink and fair and round-eyed, so he stood out in spite of his ordinary clothes.
“Here it comes!” Somebody pointed. All the workers craned their necks up the line.
Here it came indeed, black smoke puffing from the locomotive. The engineer leaned out the window and waved to the crowd. He looked no more Russian than Vasili.
A claque set up a cheer: “Long live Sino-Soviet solidarity!” The engineer couldn’t possibly have heard them over the din of the mechanical monster he controlled. Even if he had heard them, he wouldn’t have understood what they were saying. The cheer was for the benefit of the Chinese onlookers.
He tried to keep his breaths as shallow as he could. Maybe that wouldn’t do any good, but it couldn’t hurt. He hadn’t wanted to come into the blast zone to greet the Soviet train. When your gang boss told you to come, though, what you wanted stopped mattering.
The train was a long one. Some of those tarpaulined shapes lashed to freight cars had to belong to tanks. They would help Mao and Kim Il-sung twist the Americans’ tails down in Korea.
Those covered tank shapes looked to be the same T-34/85s that had driven the Japanese from Manchukuo with their tails between their legs in August 1945. Vasili had heard that the Russians had a new model, bigger and lower to the ground and generally meaner than their old warhorses. People who knew about such things-or made noises as if they did-complained that Stalin was giving his allies the junk he didn’t use himself any more.
Vasili had no love for the Soviet Union. With his upbringing, it was unlikely that he should. But he didn’t have anything in particular against their Chinese allies. Mao’s men made better overlords than the Japanese had.
They did unless they decided to give him to the MGB, anyhow. It hadn’t happened yet, and they’d seized control of Manchuria well before they took the rest of the Chinese mainland. Vasili dared hope they would keep leaving him alone. If they didn’t actually like him, indifference would do.
He also didn’t have anything in particular against the United States. Even if the Americans had wrecked Harbin, they were the biggest reason Manchukuo was no longer a going concern. The Chinese Nationalists and Communists could have fought Japan for the next hundred years without beating it.
More flatcars rumbled past. If those tarp-shrouded mysteries weren’t airplane fuselages, he couldn’t imagine what they would be. And if they were fuselages, the flat things strapped down by them would be wings. Could you bolt them on and start flying? He didn’t see why not. Maybe not flying saved wear and tear on the engines. Maybe it just gave the U.S. Air Force less of a chance to shoot down the Russian planes.
Then again, the U.S. Air Force might shoot up the train, or bomb it, or fire rockets at it. Vasili was glad none of the cheering Chinese around him could tell what he was thinking. He’d go to the MGB in a hurry if they could.
Another Soviet railroad man waved to the crowd from the caboose. That seemed to be what he was there for: waving to the people he passed. It was a nice, easy job-unless you happened to run into American planes.
A Chinese man next to Vasili nudged him and said, “You’re the round-eyed barbarian who sells ma huang, right?”
“That’s me,” Vasili answered with a mental sigh. If you were Chinese, anyone unlucky enough not to be was a barbarian by definition. And the man was right about which kind of barbarian he was.
“I want to buy some,” the fellow declared, as if sure Vasili had brought some to the ceremony to cater to his needs.
But Vasili had come to the the ceremony because he got a day off from work and because he was ordered to show up, not to do business. By Chinese standards, that made him a lazy man. The Chinese were ready-eager-to do business anywhere, any time. “I’ll sell you some tomorrow after work. Where do you want to meet?”
“I need it. I’ll come home with you now,” the man said.
“No.” One of the things Vasili had learned was that there were times when Chinese were the most formal, flowery people in the world. There were others when nothing but out-and-out rude got through to them. This looked to be one of those. “Tomorrow after work. Where?”
“I’ll come home with you now,” the man repeated.
“I said no, you stupid turtle. Do you think I want you in my house?”
The Chinese man’s eyes opened so wide, they almost went round themselves. He hadn’t looked for a round-eyed barbarian to behave-and to sound-like one of his countrymen. Then he bristled, as if getting ready to fight.
Vasili reached inside a jacket pocket. He carried a straight razor in there, just because you never could tell. He didn’t threaten with it. He didn’t even show it. He had no intention of starting anything. But if the Chinese man did, Vasili aimed to finish it.
The man didn’t know what he had in his pocket. A knife? A pistol? Nothing at all-only a bluff? The Chinese decided he didn’t want to find out. He stomped off, cursing as he went.
“Good job,” another man told Vasili. “I know Wu there a little bit, I’m sorry to say. I wouldn’t trust him inside my house, either. You may be a round-eye, but you’re nobody’s fool.”
“Thanks.” Vasili wasn’t ready to take this stranger on trust, either.
“Being a round-eye, do you know how other round-eyes think?” the man asked him.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Being a Chinese, do you know how other Chinese think? That’s the kind of question you’re asking.”
“Is it? I suppose it is.” The man chuckled. “A lot of the time, I do know how other Chinese would think-they’d think the way I do. Isn’t it the same with round-eyes?”
“A lot of the time, it is,” Vasili admitted. “Not always, though. Different kinds of round-eyes often don’t think alike, any more than Chinese and Koreans and Japanese do.”
“Koreans?” The stranger sounded dismissive. “Japanese?” He sounded disgusted. But then he nodded to Vasili. “All right. I see what you mean. What I wondered was, when the Americans find out the railroad line through Harbin is fixed, will they drop another one of those terrible bombs on the city?”
“Oh.” Vasili shrugged again. “I can’t begin to guess. I hope not. They’re busy over on the other side of the world. Maybe that will keep them from noticing Harbin-for a while, anyhow.”
“Ah. Yes, that makes sense.” The Chinese man nodded. Around them, the crowd that had come out to celebrate the railroad’s reopening was breaking up. Men who had the day off were probably looking for ways to enjoy it as best they could. The stranger changed the subject: “Was nasty Wu there right? You have ma huang to sell?”
“A little,” Vasili answered. “My father trained me as a druggist. He knew what an excellent medicine it was. When I have the chance, I follow in his footsteps.” Chinese honored and respected their parents more than Russians were in the habit of doing. Putting it like that was calculated to please.
And it did. “Will you sell me some?” the man asked. “I’ll meet wherever you want.”
Vasili smiled. Even if Wu hadn’t listened, this fellow had.
–
The Independence touched down at Los Angeles International Airport, a landing as smooth as a baby’s cheek. “Well, we’re here,” Harry Truman said. A cross-country flight, even on an airliner as luxurious as this one, was always wearing.
“Quite a view, wasn’t it?” asked Joseph Short, who’d taken over from Stephen Early as Truman’s press secretary. His deep-South drawl made Truman’s Missouri twang sound almost New England-y by comparison.
“It was, yes. The kind I hope I never have again,” Truman said. Sitting on the right side of the DC-6 as it descended across Los Angeles from east to west, he’d got a good look at what the Russian bomb had done to the heart of the city. After a moment, he went on, “Who was that guy who captured their flyer and turned him over to the cops?”