Finally the meeting ended, the audience poured out onto the deck, but Nina missed her chance to speak to Klim. He had swiftly passed her by, and pretending to be looking in a different direction he had dropped his map of the city at her feet. Nina picked it up and studied it for a while.
Had Klim done this on purpose? He knew that there was nobody else on board who could help her find her feet in Shanghai.
When dusk fell, the Chinese fishermen lighted round paper lanterns on their sampans anchored by the pier. They lived on their boats, sleeping in cramped cabins fashioned out of boards and reeds, cooking their food in small sooty pots.
The other refugees had long gone to sleep, but Nina was still pacing the empty deck. Jiří Labuda, a former Czech prisoner of war, approached her. He was a short, scrawny, gray-eyed young man with bright red hair and countless freckles peppering his nose. His right hand had three fingers missing.
“If you like, I could light your way back to your cabin with my cigarette lighter,” he said. “It’s already dark in the corridors, and you might trip.”
Jiří was always trying to please Nina, and it kept her diverted. She had rescued him from the angry officers who had accused him of stealing bread. They had decided to hang him to make an example, but Nina had shown them bread sacks chewed through by rats, and the officers had let Jiří go.
He had told her he had been a cellist and seemed destined for a brilliant musical career, but when the Great War started, he had been drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army. Wounded and captured, he had spent three years in a prisoner-of-war camp, where he learned Russian. Somehow he had ended up with the White Army flotilla, and now Jiří didn’t have a clue where he was headed and why.
“Let’s go to sleep,” Nina told him, but he didn’t move, staring intensely into the darkness behind her back.
She turned and shuddered at the sight of a large junk approaching their ship. It had a carved dragon on its bow, and its Chinese sailors were lit an eerie red by the onboard lanterns as they bustled about on deck.
“Missy, guns! Me wantchee guns,” shouted one of them, dressed in a bowler hat and a quilted Chinese jacket.
“What does he want?” Nina asked Jiří, perplexed.
He shrugged. “They seem to be speaking English, but I can’t figure it out.”
The sailor made a gesture as if he was firing with his finger and then pulled a banknote from his pocket.
“I think he wants to buy a gun,” Nina guessed. “Ask him will a revolver do? I have a revolver.”
It would be nice to sell it and get some money, she thought.
The sailor fanned his fingers out on both hands.
“He needs more than one gun,” Jiří said.
“How much then? Ten?”
“More, more!” the sailor shouted.
The captain of the refugee ship came out on the deck, accompanied by the sailors on watch. “What’s going on here?”
“This man wants to buy guns,” said Nina excitedly. “Let’s sell him something from our arsenal and get some money.”
The captain looked at her as if she was crazy. “The Great Powers have imposed an embargo here: it is prohibited to import any arms into China. If they catch us selling guns, they’ll deport us immediately.”
“How much cash have you got?” Nina asked quietly. “I don’t mean worthless paper rubles, but real money, dollars, that you can actually buy something with.”
The captain frowned. “I don’t have the right to trade these arms. They are not my property.”
“But you do have the right to sign off anything that has gone out of service.”
After a moment’s hesitation, the captain invited the Chinese on board.
“Come on up, but don’t make any noise,” he said. “Our passengers are already asleep.”
The first to appear over the side was a fat man wearing a fashionable hat and an unbuttoned leather coat.
“Good evening,” he said in French.
Nina was delighted. She knew some French and would be able to talk to the guests.
The fat man kissed her hand. “Oh, what secret treasures are hidden on this boat! Don Jose Fernando Burbano at your service, ma’am.”
Two Chinese followed him, the one who had initiated the negotiations, and another one, a huge, terrifying one-eyed man with a hideously burned face.
Nina offered them her services as an interpreter, but Don Fernando declined saying that this was no business for a woman.
“Does anyone know English here?” he asked.
Jiří raised his hand enthusiastically, like a student in a classroom, and Don Fernando patted him on the shoulder. “Come on then, Redhead, let’s see what you’ve got for us.”
The captain told Nina to go to her cabin, but she held her ground and resolutely followed the men down into the hold. She had calculated that if she sold her revolver to Don Fernando, she might get five or even ten Chinese dollars for it.
The sailors took turns spinning the handle of the dynamo torch while the captain showed Don Fernando his wares.
“We have rifles made in Russia, Mills Bomb hand grenades, handguns, gun sights, and periscopes,” Jiří interpreted, and Nina was surprised that she could understand some of the English.
The haggling went on endlessly. Finally, Don Fernando’s patience ran out. “You’re in no position to make any bargains,” he barked at the captain. “You should take what you’re given and be grateful.”
One-Eye handed him a small abacus, and the Don began snapping the beads to and fro.
“Cartridge shells, twenty boxes; Mosin-Nagant rifles, dreadful old crap. I bet half of them are out of service. Sixteen caskets, plus the grenades… Sixteen hundred dollars for the lot, and I won’t give you a copper more.”
Jiří interpreted his words: “He’s only offering six hundred dollars.”
Nina instinctively wanted to correct him: Sixteen hundred means one thousand and six hundred—
But the captain had already offered the Don his hand. “Well, to hell with you. Just take everything away quickly and get out of here.”
Nina’s heart was thumping.
“You pay the captain six hundred dollars,” she said to the Don in French, “and I’ll collect the rest of the money. But we need to be discreet about it.”
Don Fernando looked at her, and a knowing smile lit up his chubby face. “As you wish, ma’am. Come over to my junk, and we’ll settle matters there.”
Nina watched the sailors and deckhands shift the crates from one vessel to another, her whole body trembling with fear and excitement. If her fellow refugees had learned what she was about to do, she would be tried and punished in accordance with martial law. However, if she succeeded she would have the money that she and Klim needed to get settled in Shanghai. She would ask for his forgiveness, tell him she had a mental breakdown, and they would make up.
When the last crate had been transferred to the junk, Nina quickly jumped onto the gangway connecting the two ships.
The captain grabbed her by her elbow. “Where are you going?”
Nina gave him a forced smile. “I want to sell my revolver to Don Fernando. I don’t have any money left.”
The captain let her go, reluctantly. “Don’t stay there too long.”
But as soon as Nina jumped down onto the junk’s deck, a searchlight from the distant patrol ship flashed in the darkness, and a voice boomed over the river, speaking in English through a loud-hailer. “Don’t move! You are under arrest!”
A moment later, Don Fernando’s men had pulled up the gangway, and the anchor chain clattered.