The Trace of the Wolf

by Siegfried Wittwer

  "No, nothing! I don't think the comrades will find anything either. There were professionals at work: no fingerprints, no objects left behind, not the slightest hint!"

  "And the truck?" the hunter wanted to know.

  "Stolen!"

  "Of course, I should have guessed. Were they foreign agents?"

  "Unlikely." Litschenko grimaced. "What would foreign agents do with our guns and our money? Contrary to what they tell us, Western agents are well equipped. I once had a Walther P 88 in my hand. That's a weapon, Comrade Chrapow! Even it's supposed to be outdated by now. No, foreigners would not dare to draw the attention of the KGB to themselves by an attack."

  "So, criminals trying to replenish their arsenal," the hunter murmured. "I could crush guys like that like lice!"

  "You have to get your hands on them first," Litschenko sighed. He stared through the window at the grey city. Rain drizzled from the cloudy sky and made the houses seem more desolate than they already were. It was like a bad sign.

  "What do we do now, Comrade Chrapow?"

  The hunter raised his hand resignedly. "For the next few weeks, I'll be out of commission. You must go on alone. Nevertheless I would like to have copies of all reports, also from the investigation of yesterday's raid! As soon as I can walk, I will resume persecution, provided you have achieved nothing by then."

  "I'll do my best, but without your help we probably won't make much progress. So, get back on your feet, comrade!"

  Litschenko shook the hunter's hand. After the accident he found him more likeable and sociable.

  Suffering unites people more than the same ideology, he thought, as he closed the door of the hospital room and walked down the corridor smelling of urine, sweat and disinfectants. It also takes him off high horse and makes him more human.

  Litschenko returned to the barracks and visited the commandant's office. Cold cigarette smoke hung in the room and aroused feelings of disgust in him. After weeks in the forest with its clean, clear air, he felt a strong aversion to these smells of so called civilization. However, he suppressed his dislike, smiled at the secretary and had a report given on the status of the search for the two masked men. The militia hadn’t found anything. Even Michail Wulff had not been found yet, as Karatajew told him shortly afterwards. So, they had no choice but to keep asking all the services and authorities for updates and leads. Especially the foresters on both sides of the Ob received instructions to keep their eyes open and to report all suspects immediately. Litschenko had no choice but to be patient, even if he was under pressure to succeed. He hoped that the refugee would soon make a mistake, a major mistake, so that his pursuers would be on his heels again.

  ◆◆◆

  Michail Wulff had been on the run for almost a month. At the Ob River he cut down a row of birches and built a raft from the trunks together with the hoses of the motorcycle. After he had gutted the machine and dismantled everything useful, it was sunk into the Ob. He could use a lot of things: Fuel hose and trottle cables, tire rubber for shoe soles and also the two saddlebags in which he found tools and a thin but durable rope.

  For a week he drifted down the river at night and hid in the thicket or reeds during the day. After about two hundred miles he went ashore on the eastern bank and set off in the direction of Jenissei and the Krasnojarsk highlands. Two and a half weeks later he came across a narrow tributary of the Jenissei, which flowed almost dead straight to the east.

  During his studies at Moscow University Mischka had heard about a German archaeology student who had built a dugout canoe out of a beech tree with an axe within forty-eight hours. That's what he wanted to try now. After cutting down a suitable trunk and severing the crown and branches, Mischka felt every bone in his body. His hands were full of blisters and his muscles were screaming for rest. Surely the German student had trained for weeks before for his experiment and hardened his hands through hard work. If he wanted to make it, he had to use a native trick to make it easier for himself to hollow out the dugout canoe.

  In the evening Mischka stacked firewood on top of the trunk. Before he ignited the wood, he waited until the sun sunk like a red lantern on the horizon and the night had pushed itself from the east over the sky. He could not once again risk that smoke clouds betrayed him. Whenever the fire was extinguished, he used a hatchet to remove the charred wood from the tree trunk and set a new fire on exactly the same spot. The two ends of the trunk were also worked with fire and hatchet until they had a streamlined shape.

  The next morning dawned and colored the sky orange-red. Birds scurried through the foliage and began their morning singing, as if they were grateful for the new light of the day. Mischka leaned against a birch tree, took his head back and drew the fresh air deep into his lungs. He smelled the moss, the dewy earth, the scent of freshly cut wood and the spicy smoke of his fire. In spite of all his exertions, he found this free life in the wilderness incomparably beautiful. Even now, he never regretted his decision with a blink of an eye.

  In the twilight of the early day he looked at his work with a critical eye. The boat had taken shape, but it took him another day to finish the canoe. Tired and exhausted, Mischka lay down to sleep on a thick layer of spruce branches over which he had spread a blanket. Only a few minutes later he slept deeply and dreamlessly. In the evening he was awakened by the rustling of a forest warbler, who was searching the ground next to him carelessly for beetles and worms. Mischka remained motionless and watched the little bird with its Sulphur-yellow breast until it buzzed away with a "sip-sip-sip".

  After he had eaten a bit, he went back to work. His axe tirelessly slipped over the tree trunk, which gradually took on the typical curves of a boat. The work made him forget time and place. Until dawn, he succeeded in making a reasonable dugout canoe by burning and smoothing the wood. A thick branch had become a paddle. He also carved a pole with which he could stake the boat in the shallow water.

  After sleeping until noon, Mischka pushed the dugout over branches that served as rolls to the riverbank and loaded it with his belongings. It had a slight left twist, but was otherwise good in the water. For his purposes, the boat would be sufficient. After all, he didn't want to drive a race with it.

  The attempt to cover the traces of his work was futile. So, he set off in the hope that no one would come to this area in the near future. He had no choice but to take that risk.

  For the next two weeks Mischka paddled along the river at night until he finally reached the Jenissei. He crossed the wide river late in the evening and two days later turned into a tributary which he thought was the Stony Tunguska.

  Wanting to paddle against the current would have been back-breaking work, because overcoming the current required too much force. So, Mischka decided to pull his dugout canoe upstream from the shore during the night until it reached the Tunguska. He wanted to take the boat with him because he planned to return west one day on the same path. It was also easier to pull the luggage in the boat than to carry it on his back. If he passed villages or bushes blocked his way, he stalked the boat along the shore. He found that the groynes on the banks of the river formed swirls that made it easy to stack the dugout canoe upstream against the current.

  A week later he stored the dugout canoe well hidden in dense willow bushes on two thick branches, shouldered his luggage and set off for the mountains. It was time to find a safe place to spend the winter. Just as urgently, he had to build up a sufficiently large store of food in order to survive the severe Siberian winter. He didn't have much time for that. A new challenge was waiting for him, and he hoped that he had shaken off his pursuers so that he could prepare undisturbed for the winter. Clinking frost, dark, lonely months in an earth or rock cave and constantly gnawing hunger awaited him. But he wanted to get through that time. It would only strengthen his will to survive.

  Mischka clenched his right hand and made a fist, pushed it towards the sky and said to himself: "I will make it!"

  ◆◆◆

  They were
lucky! Outrageous lucky. A hunter had wandered by chance along a river east of the Ob River when he found the remains of a fallen beech tree, vast amounts of ash and a bed of fir branches. Two weeks later this man had informed the militia of his hometown of the unusual discovery in a conscientious manner. He was a sincere citizen of the Soviet Union who worried that foreign agents and collaborators could drive his homeland to ruin. He therefore informed the authorities of any irregularities he discovered within the hundred square miles in which his life took place.

  Lieutenant Ivan Litschenko and also Olejnik Chrapow were sure that someone had tried to build a boat here in order to make more comfortable progress and leave as few traces as possible. Also, the direction was the same as Michail Wulff had chosen so far. So, the hunted man tried to hide in central Siberia to continue his way after spring.

  A feeling of joyful excitement captured Litschenko as he wrote his message to Lieutenant Colonel Wdowetschenko. The hunt wasn't over, and he wasn't out of the game yet. In any case, he wanted to emerge victorious in the next round.

  First, he had to think about in which area Michail Wulff was probably hiding. He desperately needed a safe hiding place for the winter. Of course, the Middle Siberian Highlands offered itself for this. There was too little forest in the north, while the south was too heavily populated. Therefore only the area of Baikit within a radius of about seven hundred miles was considered, a huge, unclear area with dense forests and deep gorges, with caves and steep rocks.

  Litschenko leaned with both arms on the tabletop and stared at the card. Where are you, Michail Wulff? Where will you hide to spend the winter? Make another mistake so I can pick up your trail.

  He hoped to catch the fugitive while the Siberian was in hospital. Then he could finally return home to his Katja and little Nikolaj. Surely they missed him as much as he missed them. Litschenko felt a slight melancholy deep inside his soul. He needed the success to secure his professional future and the happiness of his family. If Chrapow caught the man, he wouldn't benefit.

  Litschenko breathed heavily. Then he tore himself off the map, stepped up to the window of his room and stared out into the late summer afternoon. Cloud fragments hung like ruffled cotton balls in the steel-blue sky. A flock of wild geese moved south in a V-formation, a vanguard of migratory birds seeking shelter in the south from the severe cold of the Siberian winter.

  Soon the temperatures will drop and the first night frosts will start, he thought. I must quickly have a profile of Michail Wulff spread in the encircled area, if I want to catch him before the onset of winter.

  Lieutenant Litschenko turned back to his desk, picked up the telephone receiver and dialed the number of the local KGB.

  ◆◆◆

  Mischka discovered the cave more by chance than by his sharp eyes. He had settled in the evening under the protective branches of a spruce to rest. It's been a long day. The ascent into this lonely valley had consumed his strength. Here he wanted to wait for night fall to continue his search for a cave or a crevice in the morning, which he could convert into a hidden refuge. Mischka just yawned heartily when he saw bats rising below the edge of the opposite rock face.

  Bats! An unmistakable sign of a cave! Maybe it was big enough to serve as his shelter. He looked over it in great detail. But no crack, no shadow of a cave was to be discovered in the rock. Only a dense shrub grew two yards below the rock edge, clutching into the rock face like a drowning man. Further to the right, a small waterfall foamed from a crevice, plunged twenty yards deep into the valley, and filled the air with spray flags in which the sunlight broke and small rainbows conjured up.

  On the left side, the rock face merged into a slope littered with boulders, between which birches and spruces clawed their way into the poor soil in order not to be uprooted by the polar winds of the winter. The peaks of a mountain range were enthroned above, gradually turning red in the evening sun. Snow residue stuck in shady rock channels like cream on a cut cake.

  Mischka enjoyed the sight. Automatically, feelings of home rose in him as he admired the idyll of the valley. He immediately felt at home here. Nature also provided him with a richly laid table. There were berries and mushrooms, roots, tasty herbs and game in abundance. Further down in the valley, on the shore of a lake, he had discovered vast amounts of acorns, which he had to debitter by boiling and watering them. This resulted in a porridge with a neutral taste, which he could turn into nutritious meals with the help of dried berries. From the spokes of the motorcycle, he would make fishhooks to stock up on a large supply of dried and smoked fish, while he would catch the roe deer, chamois and pheasants with loops from the throttle cables of the Dnepr. He wanted to keep the Makarov's ammunition in case of an emergency. If his supplies were not sufficient, and this was to be expected, he would also have to go hunting in winter.

  The next morning Mischka shouldered his luggage and climbed the slope in serpentines. Spider's webs covered with dew glistened in the morning light. Insects scurried through the still damp grass, while the birds greeted the sun with their songs.

  At the end of the slope two mighty boulders stretched into the sky like archways of an ancient city. They left open a narrow passage through which one could reach a meadow above the rock face. Only a few spruces and crippled birches grew here. A century-old beech hid in the slipstream of one of the boulders. Its trunk was like a Sequoia and was rotten and hollow inside. Its gnarled roots ran like muscle strands of a bodybuilder over stones and rock slabs and gave her stability.

  Further up the meadow turned into a scree, which lay below a rock ridge. Mischka determined the cardinal points on the basis of the position of the sun and the mossy trees and breathed a sigh of relief. The ridge protected the square from the east storms, while the two boulders defended the north wind. Should he not have discovered a cave here, this place would also be suitable for the construction of a refuge. Of course he had to camouflage it well so that it was not discovered by chance from the air or from a mountain ridge.

  He put his luggage down and massaged the cramped muscles of his shoulders and neck. Then the rope came out of the backpack. He doubled it over itself and knotted tough birch branches between the two rope ends, creating a rope ladder. Mischka peered over the edge of the rock in various places, but could not find the shrub he had spotted the evening before two yards below the rock edge, because the rock face formed an overhang. Only the waterfall could be seen, whose water spray were driven up from the wind to the meadow. Mischka thought highly of the distance between the bush and the waterfall, tied his rope ladder to a spruce trunk, let it slide over the edge and began to climb down.

  It was a strange feeling to hang over the abyss, frightening and exciting at the same time. Deep below it, the stream searched its way between mossy boulders into the valley. Trees and stones looked like the decorations of a model railway. The rope ladder was a shaky affair. His fingers clung tightly to the birch staffs until his ankles turned white. Actually, it was madness to climb a rock face with such a primitive aid!

  After a few tries Mischka discovered the shrub. It was a crippled birch tree that grew about five yards to his left on a rocky outcrop. Mischka wondered how this tree had managed to take root here. Carefully he climbed up again, attached the rope ladder to another tree and climbed down again. This time he got to the rock outcrop directly. It formed a narrow platform. At its back side, a man-wide, low crevice divided the rock face. It was covered by the bushy branches of the birch tree.

  Mischka pressed his back against the rock face and shook the trunk of the birch tree. It was bombproof. Its tough roots clung deep into grooves and crevices so it could withstand all storms. Mischka tied the end of his rope ladder to the birch tree so it couldn't swing like the yard of a leaking ship during the ascent and descent. Then he squeezed his way through the rift into the interior of the cave. There he waited until his eyes had become accustomed to the darkness.

  Carefully he crawled on his hands and feet. He constantly scanned the
cave floor in order not to fall into a hidden crevice. After a few yards the corridor widened and opened to a room the size of a living room. He liked the cave. Only the entrance was hard to reach. In winter, it would be a breakneck climb to get in via a rope ladder. He had to come up with something.

  At the end of the room a corridor opened which led deeper into the mountain. Mischka leaned into it. Suddenly hundreds of black shadows buzzed around his head. Full of panic he dropped to the ground and tried to protect his head with arms and hands. But then he had to laugh out loud. They were bats, the rightful inhabitants of this cave! They scared him! But they were completely harmless. He had to come to terms with them or drive them away if he wanted to build his winter quarters here.

  Shortly behind the cave the corridor divided. A tunnel wound down deeper into the mountain, while a wide crevasse stretched upwards. Mischka decided to first explore the crevasse before venturing further into the depths. Besides, he really needed a torch. The daylight here was completely swallowed up by the darkness of the mountain. Feeling all sides, he ascended the fissure. It narrowed after two yards and then seemed to end.

  Dead end, Mischka thought, as he let his fingers slide over the rock. Suddenly he touched wood, rotten leaves and earth. A joyous excitement seized him. The fissure obviously had an exit! While he supported himself with his left hand, he pulled the piece of wood with his right. Earth and leaves fell on his head and shoulders, while small stones and pieces of wood tumbled down. Daylight fell brightly into the cave like the headlight of a motorcycle and dazzled Mischka for a few seconds. He turned his gaze away to get used to the brightness, and then looked up. Above him was a frame of rotten wood, through which glistening sunlight fell. He began to dawn where he was. The crevice ended directly in the trunk of the hollow beech, which was rooted next to the stone block!

  Mischka pulled himself up and climbed through the narrow opening in the middle of the tree trunk into the open. The cave was a direct hit! Two entrances, well camouflaged, leading into the interior of the mountain. So, it was certain that he would spend the winter here. The crevice in the beech tree trunk was to become his main entrance, which he had to camouflage, of course, if he was tracked down here. The opening in the rock face was not only a hidden window, he could also rappel from it and flee down into the valley if one discovered his main entrance. Until then the pursuers had descended the slope again, he would have a sufficient lead to be able to escape them. Another possibility to escape was perhaps a path over the rock ridge. He'd be exploring it in the next few days.