Эльвира Барякина - White Ghosts

The hearing dragged on forever, like a school lesson taught by an uninspiring teacher.

Huo Cong told Fanya that her husband was an evil man. “From the documents seized in your embassy, it has come to light that Mikhail Borodin called Dr. Sun Yat-sen ‘a simpleton who thinks too much of himself.’ Here in China, we believe that only the greatest scoundrel would possibly condemn his master behind his back.”

Fanya fidgeted on her bench, and Nina thought she was going to blurt out something terrible. But, thank God, Fanya managed to control herself and merely repeated what Levkin had told her to say: “I’m just a woman, and I don’t interfere in my husband’s business.”

Nina was questioned about the airplane, where had it come from and who was the person she was going to sell it to.

“I was slandered!” she said passionately. “Ask the people who signed the search protocol. Let them prove that it was my airplane.”

The judge mumbled something, and the interpreter shook his head. “These people are not here,” he said. “The matter could take several more weeks if they are summoned. So it’s not in your best interests.”

Nina looked helplessly at her lawyers. What did the judge have in mind? Was he just hoping to close the case as soon as possible? Or was he really trying to help her?

The lawyers talked interminably in their incomprehensible Mandarin dialect.

If Huo Cong were to sentence me to death, what would happen to me? Nina thought. She had often had nightmares of being dragged to a place of execution through an angry, jeering crowd. She would try and fail to find Klim among the sea of hostile faces. She would scream his name, but he would never respond.

The judge finally announced that there would be an adjournment. Everyone stood up while he went out, and the guards escorted the exhausted prisoners out of the courtroom.

“It seems that Huo Cong might be willing to listen to Ma Dazhang,” one of the diplomatic messengers whispered to Nina.

She nodded blankly. She still couldn’t remember which of her lawyers was Ma and which was Guo.

On the night before sentence was to be pronounced, Nina couldn’t sleep a wink. I want to fall asleep and never wake up again, she thought with a macabre shiver. Although that might be exactly what happens to me once Huo Cong pronounces his verdict .

Nina passed her hand over the back of her neck and caressed the dimple that Klim so loved to kiss. This was the spot that the curved blade of the Chinese executioner’s sword would hit, and in a split second, everything that had once been Nina—everything that had been so warm, precious, and full of life—would be nothing more than a bloody mess.

How will Klim and Kitty cope with my death? she thought, trying to suppress the convulsive sobs that wracked her body. Will they feel sorrow at my passing? Will they remember me at all?

Never before, even during the war, had Nina experienced such a desperate fear of death.

She remembered herself as a child watching a baby deer with broken hind legs. Hunters had found it in the woods and taken it to the city to show to the children. It had been looking at little Nina, shaking with pain and terror, its face covered with dirt and snot smeared all over its matted fur.

Then the baby deer had been taken away, and later one of the hunters had brought Nina’s mother a chunk of meat, still warm and bloody, with a clump of red fur hanging off it. “Here,” he said, “feed your children.”

Nina now felt as helpless as that little animal.

Nina found herself back in the courtroom again, intersected with dusty rays of sunshine and stuffy with the smell of fresh paint. Huo Cong began to read the introductory part of the sentence, and the interpreter translated, barely able to suppress his yawns.

Nina kept her eyes peeled on the judge, a single thought pulsating through her head: This man is about to pronounce my death sentence .

Huo Cong applied his seal to a piece of paper and said something quietly and impassively. Here it comes, thought Nina.

The interpreter scratched his cheek.

“On behalf of the Republic of China,” he declared, “Judge Huo Cong declares you—not guilty.”

Fanya and Nina burst into tears, and the diplomatic messengers hugged each other and shouted in relief.

Someone grabbed Nina by the shoulder. She turned and was surprised to see Levkin’s tense and deadly pale face.

“Let’s get out of here!” he hissed to her. “Hurry up if you want to live.”

Huo Cong had decided that the two hundred thousand dollars that the Soviets had offered him would be sufficient to support him for the rest of his life. He and Klim had agreed that he would get half the money before the sentence, and the other half after the prisoners’ release.

Klim was now waiting for him in a gas lamp repair shop used by Bolsheviks as a safe house. It was a stone’s throw away from the courthouse, and it had been arranged that Huo Cong would come there immediately after pronouncing sentence to receive his second payment.

Klim stalked between the drawers and boxes, constantly glancing at his watch, anxious with anticipation. If all was going to plan, he would see Nina in less than an hour. According to the agreement, the judge would release her from the courtroom, and Levkin would immediately take her and the other prisoners to the Soviet Embassy.

Klim tried to imagine seeing Nina in person again. What would it be like? What would they say to each other?

He knew that Daniel had asked Levkin to pass on a message to Nina, too. Previously, Klim thought that he would nobly step aside and refrain from standing in their way, but now the very thought of doing so made his fists clench. Nina is mine, he thought. I won’t give her up.

Now it was 11:00 a.m., and the judge should have already pronounced sentence.

Klim wanted to see what was going on up the street and approached the glass door with a “Closed” sign on it, but the master repairman, an old Polish communist named Janek, stopped him. “Stay inside.”

Time crawled by so slowly that Klim thought that his watch had broken. Every time the shadow of a passerby flashed past the glass door, his heart skipped a bit.

Everything will be just fine, he kept telling himself. The main thing is not to panic and to stick to the plan.

Daniel had promised that he would bring a car that would take Klim and the judge to the Legation Quarter, but so far, there was no sign of him.

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!”