The Trace of the Wolf

by Siegfried Wittwer

  "I resent such utterances, Comrade!" Litschenko rebuked Chrapow. "After all, I'm still your supervisor, and we'll let this old game of debt shift stay. After all, you haven't covered yourself with glory by your shooting skills either."

  The face of the hunter twitched, but he got himself together and looked at his counterpart with the usual equanimity. Only in his eyes did a wild fire glow.

  This man is a predator, Litschenko thought, he would like to rip my guts out right now. I must be careful, otherwise my wife will one day receive the message that I had a fatal accident.

  "By the way, we've had some initial success with our research. A truck driver from Chatanga overtook Michail Wulff about an hour before Nakama. He obviously had a little mishap. The man had wondered about the soldier's long hair and beard. That's why he immediately remembered him."

  "One hour before Nakama?" repeated Chrapow. He bent over the map on the leaning table of the barracks room and drove with the finger along the street. "Has he been seen by any other witnesses?"

  "Yes, another driver heading north reported that a Uas was heading south at excessive speed."

  "This brings light into his plans," the hunter murmured.

  "What do you think?"

  The hunter's finger remained on the map.

  "There, you see it. Here runs a tributary river of the Tunguska, which is known to flow to the west. I don't think he dared to get closer to Nakama with the Uas. I could imagine that he paddled down the river with one of our rubber dinghies and then set off to the west."

  Chrapow looked up triumphantly, but when he saw the lieutenant's face, he knew that this beginner had already made the same considerations.

  "I have already considered this and have therefore ordered a helicopter and a speedboat to follow this trail. In two days at the latest, we'll know more."

  "Assuming your men discover the dinghy! They didn't find the boat either," Chrapow replied.

  "There are always a few imponderables," Litschenko tried to wipe away the hunter's doubts. "But maybe you have other ideas that could help us."

  However, he did not wait for the answer, but turned towards the window and looked at the barracks. The many weeks in the wilderness had changed his perception. Suddenly the barracks appeared to him even grayer, more repulsive and colder than they already were. Somehow he could understand this young man who preferred the hard life in nature to being a convict.

  Actually, he thought, actually, we, his guards and bloodhounds, are also prisoners of the camp. By taking others' freedom, we make ourselves unfree. We're stuck in the same wasteland hating each other.

  ◆◆◆

  When Mischka stepped into the clearing, he instinctively felt that he was being watched. Nobody was there, and yet he knew he wasn't alone. The months in the wild had sharpened his senses. He was just about to retreat back into the thicket of the forest, when someone in a voice accustomed to orders shouted: "Stop! Freeze, and don't play any fake games, or I'll blow your head off!"

  A man showed up, the rifle in position. He was not wearing a uniform, but the working clothes of Siberian collective farmers. Mischka breathed a sigh of relief. As long as he did not run into the militia, there were no difficulties for him that could not be solved. It was unlikely that Litschenko's troops had followed him this far.

  The man looked at him from head to toe. Then he turned around briefly and shouted into the forest: "You can come out. He seems harmless."

  Four men appeared between the bushes, and when Mischka turned around, he stared into the grinning face of a Tungus.

  "Hello, guys," he tried to greet as calmly as possible, even though he was tense inside. "I'm a trapper and on my way east."

  The men did not answer, but stared at him as if he were an exotic animal from the Moscow Zoo.

  "I'm on my way east to..."

  "You already said that," interrupted the man who first approached him. He was redheaded, stocky and had a deep voice. "You're starting to repeat yourself."

  "Well, let him finish, Boris." A blond, boyish-looking man stepped forward. "You'd be scared too if five men suddenly attacked you."

  "Don't interfere, Kolja, I'm in charge of the interrogation. Finally, I discovered him. – So, man, where you from, and what are you doing here?"

  Now it was dawning on Mischka. Without knowing it, he had got into the territory of a group of men who had something to hide. No normal Siberian would react the way they did if he met a stranger in the forest, no matter how adventurous he looked. They had probably stopped him, because otherwise he would have discovered their secret.

  Suddenly it flashed through his mind. These men were certainly illegal prospectors. Proschin had told him that in the Lundja region and further east, adventurers repeatedly tried to exploit unproductive gold mines that had been abandoned by the state. That was illegal and was punished with ten years of labor camp. But some were not deterred by it. A number of gold seekers even took up arms when the militia tracked them down.

  Mischka decided to play with open cards. If he admitted to also being in conflict with the state, they would probably let him go. His life was in danger, because in order to protect themselves from treachery, the path of the illegals were strewn with corpses, sometimes. That's what the Pope told him.

  "All right, guys, I'll tell you straight. I escaped from a penal colony because I didn't like the work or the food. Since then I've been living in the woods as a hunter and trapper. So, you don't have to worry about me ratting you out, because I have problems with the State Security Service myself."

  "Scared?" Boris shrugged his shoulders and looked at his comrades without understanding. "Ratting us out? Why should we hide from the authorities?"

  Mischka saw astonishment in Kolja's face and a faint smile in the corner of another man's mouth, standing in the background and looking at him with interest. He was slender, had a high forehead and wore glasses.

  The Tungus cleared his throat remarkably loudly. Mischka knew that he had hit the mark. These men had something to hide! He had to knock even harder on the bush. "I can understand why you wouldn't tell a stranger anything. But I can't start with your gold any more than you can start with my hunting bow."

  "Gold! Hear, hear," laughed one of the men, whose brown full beard reached to his chest.

  "Besides, I have to avoid any human settlement, because otherwise I'll be stuck behind barbed wire again," Mischka continued. "You see, I'm open to you. I'm delivering myself up to you."

  A hand lay on his shoulder from behind. "You're delivering yourself up to us?" said the Tungus. "No, we caught you! You're our prisoner!"

  In a sudden decision Mischka grabbed the wrist of the Tungus, dipped backwards under his arm and put his hunting knife at his throat from behind. The man screamed when Mischka raised his arm, but didn't dare to fight back. With his eyes wide open, he looked at the blade on his neck. Mischka read incredulous astonishment in the faces of the others. Boris was the first to react and raised his rifle.

  "Don't do that!" The man with the glasses stepped forward. "Put the gun down. You'll kill Trofim."

  The redhead hesitantly lowered his gun. "So, what now, Andrej?" he asked.

  "Let's hear what the young man has to say," he replied. Then he turned to Mischka and smiled.

  "Good work, boy," he said appreciatively. "Surprising Trofim isn't so easy. You've completely thrown him. Otherwise, he still has a last word or a trick in store."

  "I don't want to hurt him," Mischka replied. "I just wanted to show that I don't want to be your prisoner, I want to be your friend."

  He let go of the Tungus, cat-like took three steps back, put the knife back into the belt and said: "Don't be mad at me, man. I was just tempted to contradict you."

  Smiling, he reached out his hand to the Tungus. "I am Michail Wulff, a student of archaeology."

  The man grabbed his hand and tried to pull him jerkily to the ground, but Mischka rolled softly over the moss carpet and immediately stood again. Trof
im looked bewildered when Mischka thwarted his trick. Blonde Kolja applauded, and Boris also heard an appreciative humming.

  "Well, Trofim, that's enough," Andrej said kindly, but certainly. Apparently, he was the leader of the group. He turned again to Mischka and shook his hand: "We welcome you. We live here as hunters. What makes you think we're prospectors?"

  Mischka grinned at him broadly. "Your behavior and your faces speak volumes."

  Andrej looked at the others meaningfully. "I think I must introduce you to my comrades now that you've told us who you are. The one back there with the brown full beard is Pawlik. He's good at playing the violin. Then we have Boris. He's as strong as a bear and very hearted. Next to him stands our youngest, Kolja. You've already met Trofim, the Tungus reindeer herder, and I'm Andrej, a mining engineer by trade."

  Mischka nodded friendly to everyone. Trofim, who had recovered again, grinned at him comradely and reached out his hand, this time without ulterior motives.

  Pawlik cuddled his beard as if he thought hard. "You really are a hunter and trapper?" he finally asked Mischka.

  "What else can I do if I want to survive in this wilderness," he returned.

  "And where did you get your clothes, boots, trousers and jacket from? That looks like military, doesn't it?"

  Mischka looked down at himself. "Oh, so that's why you're so suspicious! I can understand that. But have you seen a soldier with a bow and arrow?" He bent down, opened his backpack and pulled out his leather clothes. "Normally, I only wear leather. But recently, when my pursuers were badly guarding their van, I made some use of it and blew up the rest."

  "So, they're coming after you?" Boris wanted to know.

  "No, the troops have moved west. I've set them on the wrong track."

  "Not bad," Trofim interfered. "That's the kind of thing you like to hear. "I feel better every time the militia get their ass kicked."

  "So, now I've told almost everything about myself. Now to you. If I hadn't stumbled across your secret in the next ten minutes, you wouldn't have stopped me, but simply let me move on. Besides, you have an aversion to uniforms. Apparently you're at war with your party comrades, too. That's why I was guessing illegal gold diggers. Right?"

  Andrej smiled. "You're a smart boy. We could use a guy like you in our group. You can hunt, hunt silently, as we see. We're six hungry guys. There's a lot of supplies needed for the winter. We get some of our food from a Tungus, a cousin of Trofim who works on a reindeer collective farm up north. He's got a truck and gets around a lot. He comes by four times a year. Actually, he should have come this month. He's long overdue."

  Andrej looked at the men.

  "We'll need a lot of meat if Trofim's cousin doesn't come, and we can't afford to shoot wildly around here. Our friend here can hunt silently with bows and traps. What do you say if we hire him as a hunter?"

  The men nodded in agreement. Only Pawlik made a dubious face. He still had doubts about Mischka's sincerity. But in the end he agreed. "We can try it with him," he grumbled.

  "But Ivan will be happy," Kolja shouted.

  "Who's Ivan?" Mischka wanted to know.

  "Ivan is our cook," Andrej explained to him. "He loves roast moose and knows a lot of good recipes. Without him, our lives here would be half as good."

  Mischka was right. The men's hut was only two minutes away from the clearing where they had placed it. It was built from tree trunks in the style of a log house, while the roof was covered with grass.

  "It is not so easy to discover us from the air," Andrej enlightened him. "And it also insulates against cold and rain."

  The hut was comfortably furnished inside. Bunk beds, a table with several chairs in the middle, shelves, three oil lamps and on the back wall a stove made of field stones, which was fired from the kitchen and nevertheless heated the room sufficiently.

  "Well, what have you brought me there?" a red-faced giant called to them, his belly swelling over the belt of his trousers. It was Ivan the cook.

  "A young man who will provide us with meat for the next few months." Andrej pushed Mischka towards Ivan, who examined him from above. "Like us, he's no friend of the people."

  "No friend of the people," Ivan grumbled, "but hopefully a friend of good food."

  "Sure thing," Mischka gave back. "Since I haven't been able to wallow in the past few months, I'm looking forward to your cooking."

  He reached out his hand to Ivan. "I'm Michail Wulff."

  The cook seized it without hesitation and shook it warmly. "Welcome aboard, boy."

  Then he turned back to the others. "Does he know?"

  "He found out for himself, Ivan," Andrej replied. "He's a smart guy, but we can trust him."

  "Did you show him everything?"

  "No, he'll see it when the time comes. He's still on probation."

  Iwan was satisfied with this answer and started preparing the dinner. Kolja showed Mischka a corner where he could make camp for the night. "Tomorrow, I'll make you a bed. I used to work for a carpenter and I know a little about it. There's always a draught down on the ground. That's why a bed is better. But you're certainly hardened."

  "I guess you could say that," laughed Mischka as he parked his luggage. "To have a roof over my head is pure luxury for me."

  "Then don't get soft around here!" Pawlik shouted to him. "Someday you'll have to go back to the woods."

  "I think I'll just get used to the wind and the cold again. It's faster than you think."

  In the following weeks Mischka got together with the men and finally won Pawlik's trust. They were far from whiter than white, but rough journeymen with dark spots in their past. Everyone had his own story.

  Trofim had been caught stealing and sentenced to work in the forest. Kolja, Iwan and Pawlik had earned their living in the state gold mines in the past, but had lined their own pockets. Boris had beaten up a superior as a soldier when that man wanted to trim him and had imposed curfews several times.

  "He was a real pig, believe me Mischka," Boris told him one night. "They only presented us common soldiers with a thin soup of water, while the officers received the finest food at their tables, and they called that communism!"

  Boris spit on the floor. "One day I told my lieutenant what I thought. Since then he had me on the black lister. – Then I blew up my top. I just went up to him and smashed his nasal bone. After that, I took off. Kolja picked me up. I've been with the guys ever since."

  "And Andrej?" Mischka asked the engineer, "What took you to the wilderness?"

  The person addressed looked ponderingly into the smoke of the hearth fire that hung between the ceiling beams of the hut. "I've been a political troublemaker, the spanners in the works of socialism, the eternal grumbler and naysayer. I saw it as my duty to call a spade a spade. But the comrades wanted neither carefully executed work nor quality, but only peace and quiet. So, they denounced me to the KGB and made sure I stayed in Siberia."

  "Those bastards!" Boris intervened as if he'd been convicted. He clenched his fists until his ankles came out white.

  "My wife then left me," Andrej continued in a low voice. "She no longer wanted to be married to an enemy of the people. – They put me in a uranium mine. Most prisoners had no idea at first that this work would ruin their health. They wouldn't believe me that the invisible rays of uranium ore would slowly destroy their blood and bones. But I didn't want to die slowly like the prisoners of war of the forties, only to be pushed into a mass grave with a bulldozer."

  He laughed. "Yes, and then I had a plan. Nobody wanted to work with me. So, I tried it single-handedly."

  Mischka leaned forward. He loved such stories, as they reminded him of his own escape.

  "What have you made up, Andrej?" he asked curiously.

  "An explosion, a dust explosion that spilled the tunnel I was supposed to investigate. Of course, it was just a little bit of dynamite that I had filched during a blast. While the others were working deeper into the mine, I had to check whether this tunnel
could be exploited further. By controlled demolition, I collapsed it.

  When the explosion echoed through the tunnels, panic broke out among the workers. Everyone wanted to go outside as quickly as possible, and our guards also fled head over heels. It was as fat in the fire."

  Andrej scratched his chin satisfied. "Of course, I was one of the first to arrive upstairs. My face was smudged with dust, my clothes torn. – ,They're all buried!' I shouted to the officer. ,Workers, soldiers, many are seriously injured or dead. Call for help!' The man obeyed without question. At first he called the camp commander, who immediately came buzzing with his Uas. When the rescue teams arrived, I stole away secretly in the turmoil of screaming and frightened men. I knew our camp commander would be busy for the next few hours. So, I went to his house, borrowed some of his clothes and other useful things, and took off north on his motorcycle."

  "Great, man!" Mischka's eyes were glowing. "Didn't he quickly realize that you were no longer among the prisoners and that he was missing a few little things?"

  "No," Andrej answered. "At first, everyone thought I was buried in the tunnel. It was too much confusion. No one knew who had really stayed down. Due to their panic-stricken flight, some of them were injured, and the camp commander only drove the motorbike on a few days a year. He used his company car most of the time. It was only very late that he realized who had relieved him of clothes and rubles. But I was already miles away by then!"

  The men laughed. Andrej was from the beginning the leading head of their group, which had found itself almost by chance. They were indeed illegal gold prospectors exploiting an unproductive state mine. Already one week after the first meeting they had taken Mischka into the tunnel and showed him everything. They trusted him, and he wanted to prove himself worthy of that trust. Nevertheless, the men were careful and did not let him go hunting alone. Kolja accompanied him constantly.

  That was a good idea for Mischka. He had had enough of loneliness and being alone. His companion also helped him to eviscerate and carry the captured animal. Kolja was a teachable student. He was interested in Mischka's hunting methods and quickly learned how to use the spear thrower. He had already been a good thrower before and had always performed well in the throwing discipline at the Komsomol sporting events. It wasn't long before he killed his first moose with the spear. He couldn't do anything about it with a bow and arrow. It was just too hard for him to aim at a target.