What if Daniel has lied to me? Klim thought. What if he had decided to get rid of his competitor and informed the police where they could find a corrupt judge and the Bolshevik agent, Klim Rogov?
At last he heard footsteps on the porch, and a bony finger tapped at the glass. Klim rushed to the door and was met by Huo Cong, who had already changed into a European suit and hat.
“Where’s the money?” the judge asked.
Klim gave him the bundle of money, and Huo Cong dumped it on the workbench.
“Did you release the prisoners?” Klim said anxiously.
The judge nodded and began to count the bills.
Klim was so overwhelmed with joy and relief that he wanted to hug the old man.
“Thank you,” he said quietly, but Huo Cong wasn’t paying any attention.
There was still no sign of Daniel’s car. Huo Cong lost count and began to start all over again.
“Hurry up!” Janek urged him as he looked through the blinds to the street. “If you two don’t have a car, then you’ll have to go on foot.”
Suddenly his face turned an ashen gray. “Damn it!”
Klim rushed to the window and saw a policeman walking down the street.
“Do you have a back door?” Klim asked.
“I do,” said Janek, his jaw shaking, “but it’s a dead-end alley. The only way out is on to the main street.”
Klim cursed and looked at the judge.
“Are the police after me?” Huo Cong asked, pressing the wads of money to his chest.
“They are,” Klim said, grimly watching a man in the distance talking to the policemen and pointing at Janek’s shop. “I guess the neighbors must have spotted you coming in.”
He noticed a number of rusty gas lamps standing along the wall.
“Are these carbide lamps?” he asked Janek.
“Yes,” the repairman said. “Why?”
Klim pushed him aside and took the lid off an iron box labeled with the chemical formula CaC2.
“Janek, I need a container—a jar or a vase—anything. We need to scare off the police. ”
The repairman nodded, finally realizing what Klim was up to, and took a couple of empty beer bottles from under the table. Klim filled them with dull gray fragments of carbide, poured in some water, and shook the bottles.
“I’ll be right back,” he said running out into the street.
The policemen rushed towards him, blowing their whistles. Klim left the bottles on the sidewalk and ran back into the shop. Two explosions went off, one after the other, shattering the window, and the policemen scattered, shouting.
“They’ll kill us all!” yelped the judge.
“Janek, do we have any more bottles?” Klim barked.
At that moment there was a roar of an engine, and a black car stopped at the back door.
“Get in!” Daniel shouted.
Klim, Janek, and Huo Cong got into the car, and it set off at top speed towards the main street. The policemen started to shoot at them, but it was already too late; the car had turned the corner and driven off, bouncing over the cobbled road.
Huo Cong was still clutching his money; Janek sat beside him, his hands pressed over his head.
“What happened back there?” Daniel asked.
Klim laughed nervously. “When I worked at the radio station, we used small amounts of calcium carbide to create the sound effect of explosions in our shows. I just repeated the performance for our police friends back there. Where’s Nina?”
“With Valdas,” Daniel said.
Klim was relieved. His mind was completely numb. How had they been able to make all this happen? He still couldn’t believe that everything had worked out fine.
They entered the Legation Quarter, and the car drove up to the gate of the Soviet Embassy, where journalists and photographers had already gathered.
Daniel stopped and let Klim and Janek get out of the car.
“Find out what’s going on here, and I’ll take the judge to the German Embassy,” he said.
His heart pounding, Klim approached the agitated crowd.
“Stand back!” the Red Army soldiers yelled at the crowd.
“Where are Fanya Borodin and her people?” someone shouted.
“We know nothing.”
Klim and Janek pushed their way to the gate and showed the guards their passes.
As they reached the porch with the stone lions, they met a stranger in a military jacket.
“Comrade Borodin and her companions have already left,” he said.
“Where to?” Klim asked in alarm.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know.”
“Where are Valdas and Levkin?”
“They have also left. All the embassy’s employees have been evacuated back to the USSR.”
Klim grabbed him by the shoulders. “Where are they?”
Pushing the man aside, Klim ran into the building, dashing from one room to another and throwing the doors open. A couple of guards chased after him. When they caught him, they pinned his arms behind his back and hurled him out of the gate.
Oblivious to the excited crowd around him, Klim stood frozen to the spot, staring at the embassy fence that looked as menacing and impregnable as a stockade of spears. How could they have taken Nina away, without even letting him say a word to her? Levkin must have realized a long time ago that he and Nina were more than “just friends.”
Maybe we just missed each other, Klim thought. Zhang Zuolin is bound to turn the entire city upside down to find Fanya Borodin and the other prisoners. They must be in hiding somewhere, I just need to figure out where.
Klim rushed to the German Embassy but the guards wouldn’t let him in. They told him they had never heard of Daniel.
Peking’s walls and fences were covered with portraits of the traitor judge Huo Cong and the political criminals he had released. A huge reward had been promised, but they had disappeared without a trace.
Klim felt as if his entire misadventure in Peking had been some sort of delirious dream. Depressed, he would drink himself into oblivion and wander the city for hours with no idea of where he had been and why he had gone there. He would then return to his hotel room and sit there hoping against hope that someone would call him.
Finally, Daniel Bernard appeared at the door of his room, thin, unshaven, and haggard.
“Any news of my wife?” Klim asked hopefully.
Daniel shook his head. “When I learned that you were still here, I figured that you’d been unable to find Nina either. So here we are with nothing to do but to live in the past.”
He took Klim’s “Receipts and Expenditures” diary out of his pocket and opened it at the middle page. He tore out the second half that was covered in his own handwriting and handed the front half to Klim.
“You keep the Russian part,” said Daniel, “and I’ll keep the German.”
Klim flipped through his mutilated diary. Its inside covers had doodles all over them—airplanes, cars, and portraits of Nina, some of them quite well executed.
“If you have something good to remember, then you have not lived your life in vain,” Daniel said, and he left without so much as shaking Klim’s hand.
A minute later a bellboy brought Klim a telegram from Tamara: “Kitty is missing you. Come back soon.”
The next day, Klim bought a ticket to Shanghai.
34. BACK TO THE USSR
Klim was sitting in his studio in front of the microphone, reading the world news.
“In response to increasing tensions with Great Britain and the other Great Powers, the Soviet Union has organized a National Defense Week teaching the population how to shoot and use gas masks. There are continuing clashes between the police and socialists in Vienna.”