White Ghosts

29. THE GREAT WALL ARMORED TRAIN

Every day more and more warships sailed into Shanghai with reinforcements, and Martha’s establishment was now working round the clock. The Madame would take the most promising clients aside and let them in on a “secret of the house”: “Every night a mysterious young lady arrives at the Havana in a mask. Her dresses are the latest word in chic from Europe, her ears and neck adorned with the finest diamonds, but you wait until you see her dance.”

“Who is she?” the client would ask, intrigued.

“A lady of quality. You can always tell a high society damsel by her manners. She is very discerning; she won’t dance with just any man, but when one does take her fancy, she is his for the entire night.”

“You don’t say!”

“It’s true. And the lucky man she chooses is in heaven. She orders champagne, and then they go upstairs. The rich have their own whims and fantasies—after all, they are in a position to make them a reality. She never ever tells anyone her name, but we call her Messalina after the Roman empress who liked to pretend to be a prostitute.”

The clients were sure Martha was telling them tall stories, but none could resist the lure of the lady in the mask. And she would never disappoint, appearing at midnight on the dot—pale with blood-red lips, her dress slit up to the middle of her thigh—accompanied by a black attendant in a turban carrying a huge curved scimitar.

On her arrival, the orchestra would stop playing and all eyes would be drawn towards Messalina. And she—seemingly oblivious of the attention—would saunter around the tables, assessing each and every one of the customers. All of them would ask themselves with their heart in their mouths, Will it be me?

Eventually she would halt next to some confused and lucky individual, proffer her velvet-gloved hand to him, and greet him with a simple “Good evening.”

Martha guarded Messalina’s secret identity jealously. The taxi-girls and the rest of her staff were strictly forbidden to try to make her acquaintance, and the clients were told that anyone who tried to remove Messalina’s mask would have their head chopped off. Whenever the femme fatale took a client to her room, her bodyguard would stand sentry at the door, his scimitar drawn.

Before dawn, Messalina would disappear, and Martha would stow the crumpled banknotes in her safe, thinking: A girl in a mask—it’s ingenious. If Messalina ever gets married or, God help us, slits her wrists, there will be no shortage of substitutes.

At dawn the Madame invited Ada into her office, switched on the table lamp, and started calculating Ada’s cut of the takings. “Twenty, thirty, forty…” Martha’s plump hands deftly counted the banknotes, stacking them portrait side up.

“I don’t know what these men are thinking about,” she grumbled. “The NRA is at Shanghai’s gate, the governor has fled, and the Red Guards are about to take control of the Northern Railway Station. But all our army boys can do is carouse their nights away in brothels. Of course, it’s good for business, but all the same…”

She hadn’t finished her sentence before a powerful rumble rattled the window panes.

“That’s the Great Wall armored train!” Martha gasped, looking anxiously out of the window. “It must be in the North Railway Station fighting the rebels.”

Ada went pale, scooped the money into her bag, and hastily buttoned her coat. “I have to go.”

“Where? Wait!” Martha shouted, but Ada was already outside.

Despite the early hour, the street was crowded. Policemen blew their whistles, and fire trucks raced past. A huge cloud of smoke blotted out half the sky.

Ada spotted a vacant rickshaw.

“I need to go to the North Railway Station,” she told the rickshaw boy, but he shook his head.

“I’m not going there. There’s heavy fighting there.”

Ada noticed a man walking past with a decrepit bicycle.

“Can I buy it from you?” she said. “How much do you want?”

She paid fifty dollars for the rusty piece of junk and rode it down the street, still in her smart dress, fur jacket, and heels.

The Great Wall and its crew were trapped on a short section of the railroad next to the North Railway Station. The Red Guards had dismantled the tracks and leveled the embankment on either side of the station. The train was forced to move back and forth, its heavy guns obliterating hundreds of shacks where the enemy was taking shelter. Soon a huge fire started, torching the entire neighborhood next to the railroad.

When the Great Wall returned back to the North Railway Station to refill its boilers, the train’s commander, Colonel Kotlyarov, summoned Felix to his staff car.

“The Red Guards won’t dare make a direct attack until they’re sure we’ve run out of ammunition,” the colonel said. “Unfortunately, they don’t have much longer to wait.”

“If we surrender we’ll be sure to die,” Felix replied.

Kotlyarov nodded. “We need to send a messenger to the foreign concessions and ask for their help.” He wiped a dirty sleeve on his perspiring forehead, leaving a sooty smudge. “You speak English well, Rodionov, and you know how to deal with the British. After dusk, you need to find a way through to the International Settlement.”

“Yes, sir.”

Felix left the staff car and stepped up onto a flatbed car protected by armored steel plates on its sides. On seeing him, the soldiers from his machine-gun detachment jumped up. “Permission to speak, sir. What’s the plan?”

“We’re going to make contact with the folks in the foreign concessions.”

Smoke from the fires had turned the sky a brick-brown. Large flakes of ash settled on shoulders, caps, and hair.

A pair of heavy boots thudded along the platform.

“Felix, Ada’s here!” Father Seraphim roared.

“What?”

“She’s waiting for you over there, by the station platform.”

Felix jumped out of the car and immediately recognized her, standing between a couple of soldiers.

“You’re alive!” she shrieked and threw herself into his arms.

He held her tight, his arms trembling.

“You silly girl!” Father Seraphim sighed. “Why on earth did you come here?”

“I spotted her riding her bicycle along the platform,” one of the soldiers reported excitedly. “I thought she was a spy or something and was about to shoot her. But then I heard her shouting in Russian.”

Felix caressed Ada’s slender fingers in his hands, looking perplexed. “What am I going to do with you now?”

“I couldn’t wait,” she kept saying. “I couldn’t live without you.”

Felix frowned at his comrades-in-arms who were crowding around them and eventually lost his temper, shouting: “Why don’t you leave us alone, guys? This is a private matter.”

Suddenly a machine gun barked somewhere nearby.

“Take cover!” Felix yelled and, grasping Ada’s hand, he pulled her up into the car.

Panting, they leaned against the sandbags piled up along the wall of the car. The armored train jerked and moved forward, clattering.

“Why didn’t you write to me?” Ada asked, sobbing. “I waited for so long!”

Felix pressed her to his chest. “I’m a military man. I could have been killed at any time. I didn’t want you to worry about me. And if I managed to survive, then I knew I’d be coming back to you.”

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.

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.

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.