White Ghosts

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Shivering in her worn-out black coat and astrakhan hat, Nina Kupina paced the rusty low deck of the refugee steamer, cramming English verbs into her head: “Come, came, come; see, saw, seen; win, won, won.”

For several weeks now, two thousand Russian souls had been killing time in the Shanghai harbor, trapped on their ships bearing the faded banners of a state that no longer existed—the Russian Empire. But the Shanghai authorities still had no idea what to do with them. The representatives of the Chinese part of the city, the French concession, and the International Settlement had expressed sympathy for the refugees who had fled the Bolsheviks after the brutal civil war in Russia, but no one wanted these homeless and penniless foreigners on their territory or on their hands.

Just to be on the safe side, they had sent a Chinese battleship to keep the refugees in their sights. It was a sensible precaution. In the depths of their despair, the Russians might easily launch an attack on peaceful Shanghai. Their holds were brimming with arms: they had enough to start a small war.

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