Leopard Adventure

by Anthony McGowan

  A rickety metal ladder led up into the cluttered interior. The seats had all been ripped out to make space for cargo so the passengers had to sit on crates and boxes.

  ‘Most irregular,’ sighed Miranda, cleaning the top of a dusty case with her handkerchief.

  Amazon wedged herself on the floor between her rucksack and a metal cage. She thought the cage was empty, until something in it hissed angrily.

  ‘Keep fingers out of cage,’ said Boris. ‘Unless you think nine fingers better than ten, ha ha.’

  Amazon pulled her hand away from the wire, but not before her fingers had brushed something so soft it felt like warm air. The two creatures inside looked almost like otters.

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Is sable,’ said Boris. ‘We take to release in mountains. Not many left because nice fur make best coat for Russian winter.’

  Miranda pulled a sour face. ‘The best coat for a sable, you mean.’

  ‘Sure. Is just what Boris mean,’ replied the Russian, rolling his black eyes. ‘Now fasten seat belts, ha ha. See joke is NO SEAT BELTS!’

  ‘Funny guy,’ said Amazon, without smiling.

  The Antonov trundled slowly along the runway, and laboured into the sky, only just climbing over the electricity lines at the end of the field. The old plane was seriously overloaded: as well as the team and their equipment, there were other mysterious boxes and packages belonging to Boris. The plane lurched and plunged at random, and the engines whined like hungry dogs. It was so noisy in the cabin that conversation was almost impossible, although it didn’t stop Boris from bellowing out Russian songs between mouthfuls of the very large, very smelly garlic sausage he was munching on. He offered Amazon a bite.

  ‘No thanks,’ she said, trying not to retch.

  Then Boris reached into his jacket and pulled out a bottle of vodka. ‘Must go say hello to my friend, pilot. Flying airplane thirsty work, eh?’

  He clambered heavily through the crowded fuselage, and disappeared through the door into the cockpit.

  Amazon was fascinated by the pair of sables. Their coats were a lovely rich velvety brown, and she desperately wanted to push her face into the softness. She found a piece of sausage, dropped by Boris, and poked it through the wire at the front of the cage. One of the sables sniffed it suspiciously and then nibbled. It seemed to like it and came back for more.

  ‘Sorry, little guy,’ said Amazon. ‘Nothing left.’ But she did risk touching again that luxurious fur and, rather than biting her finger off, the sable rubbed itself against her.

  ‘You definitely have a way with animals, don’t you,’ Frazer shouted.

  Amazon smiled back, and shrugged.

  Apart from making friends with the sable, the one reward of the dangerous flight was the view out of the small window. It was so beautiful it almost took Amazon’s mind off the lack of comfort, the stench of Boris’s horrible sausage and the fear of imminent death. Thickly wooded hills rolled away as far as the eye could see. The hills were cut by rivers – some wide and brown and lazy, others raging with a white intensity through narrow gorges.

  Miranda leant over and shouted into Amazon’s ear. ‘You’re looking at one of the most diverse and fertile environments on the planet.’

  ‘I always thought Siberia was just endless frozen plains with nothing alive except, I don’t know, reindeer or something.’

  ‘Technically this region is known as the Russian Far East, rather than Siberia. The Siberia you’re thinking of does exist, but further north and east. Don’t get me wrong, the winters here are pretty grim – long nights, freezing winds, lots of snow. But the summers can be quite warm. This is one of the last great forest wildernesses.’

  Boris re-emerged from the cockpit.

  ‘Pilot OK now for landing,’ he announced loudly. ‘Without vodka he would never have courage, ha ha!’

  On cue, the Antonov began to descend in a series of stomach-churning lurches. Amazon reached out and grabbed Miranda’s hand. Miranda looked at her quizzically for a moment, and then gave the hand a quick squeeze.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘These guys may appear to be oafs, but they’re professionals, and they’ve made this trip hundreds of times.’

  It was late afternoon when the old plane finally bumped down on to a rough airfield on a narrow strip of flat ground between the hills.

  Two battered Russian jeeps pulled up beside them as they were unloading their gear. A tall, thin guy with a straggly beard and dark shadows under his eyes climbed out of one of the jeeps and walked towards them with a gangly, awkward stride. He reminded Amazon, for some reason, of a sad ostrich.

  The driver of the other jeep – a compact, bullet-headed man wearing sunglasses – got out, but leant against the bonnet, his face hard and blank.

  ‘Good to see you again, Bob,’ said Miranda, shaking the hand of the bearded man.

  ‘You too, Miranda,’ Bob replied, looking a little distracted. His face was long and haggard. He strained his thin neck to look round them towards the plane.

  ‘Is Doctor Drexler still with the others in the aircraft?’

  ‘Doctor Drexler isn’t here,’ said Miranda. ‘He had to stay back at the TRACKS base. And I’m afraid there are no “others”.’

  ‘You mean this is it?’

  ‘It’s all we could spare.’

  ‘But these are just … kids!’

  ‘Hey, I’m twenty-one years old!’ said Bluey.

  ‘OK, fine, but these two here …’ He waved his hand towards Amazon and Frazer. ‘I mean literally kids. Do you realize how serious the situation is? Or how dangerous? There are six kinds of deadly animal in these woods: the biggest tigers in the world, brown bears fiercer than any grizzly, black bears, wolves and, of course, the leopards. And there’s something more dangerous than any tiger or leopard –’

  Boris strode forward – he was no taller than Bob, but nevertheless seemed to dwarf him. ‘I, Boris, protect these children from tiger with bare hands, ha ha!’

  ‘In case you’ve forgotten, Boris,’ said Bob, ‘our job here is to protect leopards and tigers, not children.’

  ‘Look, mister,’ said Frazer, putting his hands on his hips and standing with his legs apart. ‘I don’t know who you are, but I’m the son of Hal Hunt, and I’ve been rescuing animals since I was seven years old. I’ve swum with sharks in the South China Sea, been dive-bombed by eagles on top of a volcano in Panama and had a bear chase me up a tree in Alaska. This girl here is my cousin, Amazon, and she’s as smart as a whip and about as tough as a kid could be, and just about the best natural shot with a tranq gun I’ve ever seen. The reason we’re both here is because my dad’s looking for her dad, and so there was no one else to come. But if you think you can do without us then we’ll get back on the plane and fly home again. And, anyway, just who the heck are you?’

  The man stared hard at Frazer and Amazon and then laughed, for what looked like the first time in many months. Possibly years.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, still smiling. ‘It’s been a difficult week. And I guess you guys are paying the bills round here. So, as long as you know what you’re letting yourselves in for …’

  ‘We quite understand,’ said Miranda firmly.

  ‘Dead right,’ said Bluey. ‘It’s what we’re all about.’

  ‘Team,’ Miranda continued, ‘let me introduce you. This is Bob Doolins – he’s probably the world’s greatest living expert on the Amur leopard, and he isn’t always this grumpy. He helped to stabilize the leopard population down in Southwest Primorye, and now he’s spearheading the project to reintroduce it into this part of the Sikhote-Alin range. Nobody knows more about the leopard than this man. So how’s it going, Bob?’

  ‘To tell the truth, things are not so good here, Miranda,’ said Doolins. ‘We’ve got fire and poachers and who knows what else. But let’s get your gear loaded up and I’ll brief you properly when we get back to the camp. We’re temporarily staying with the family of a local hunter and tra
pper called Makha, who’s acting as our guide. He lives with his wife, who I warn you is a rather fearsome old lady, and his grandson.’

  ‘Hunter …?’ said Amazon suspiciously. ‘I thought the hunters were the enemy?’

  ‘Take it easy,’ said Doolins. ‘It’s complicated … Let’s move it out.’

  It took them three hours to drive to the house of the hunter, bumping over rutted tracks that were so narrow the branches of the trees slapped like bony fingers at the jeep windows. Frazer and Amazon were in the back of the jeep driven by the quiet Russian in sunglasses. Bluey was in the front passenger seat.

  ‘I am Kirov,’ the driver said when they set off, and that was all.

  Amazon looked at Frazer and Frazer looked at Amazon, and they both fought the urge to giggle. But the laughter they swallowed down had more tension in it than happiness. There was something unsettling about the man: a vague feeling of danger, quite different from the bluster and bustle of Boris.

  Bluey twisted round in the seat to talk to them.

  ‘Don’t get the wrong idea about Bob Doolins – I’ve heard a lot about him from the other Trackers, and the word is that he really is a great guy. The thing is he’s been out here a long time more or less on his own, and I think the pressure gets to him. Lots of people want our leopards dead, and the responsibility all falls on his shoulders.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Amazon, ‘but he could have given us a chance. I was always taught that it was good manners to hold off judging people until you’ve seen what they can do.’

  Now it was the turn of Bluey and Frazer to look at each other, suppressing smiles.

  ‘What are you two smirking at?’ she said. ‘OK, OK, so maybe I don’t always practise what I preach. But I’m learning.’

  Amazon was hoping that the drive would be as spectacular as the flight over the mountains, but the trees closed in on either side and so she saw nothing but the earth-dark trunks and the still-deeper darkness at the forest’s heart. At one moment she thought she saw something striped in the undergrowth, but it was just a last ray of early-evening sunlight piercing the canopy.

  After an hour the jeep in front of them stopped, and Boris got out, carrying the sable cage. Amazon leapt out to join him. She wanted to see the beautiful little creatures get their freedom.

  Boris carried the cage a little way into the forest, and Amazon joined him. It was her first real experience of the wilderness. It was intensely quiet, but the silence had a sort of watchful quality, as if the world were just waiting for her to go before it resumed its bustling activity.

  Boris looked at her and grunted, as if to say, ‘Oh, you?’ Then he set the cage down and opened the door, murmuring softly in Russian to the animals.

  ‘What are you saying?’ Amazon asked.

  ‘I say “run away and make some more little fur coats for rich ladies”.’

  Amazon ignored him, and crouched down next to the cage. The sables nervously sniffed at the air, and then suddenly shot out. One disappeared straight into the tangled undergrowth, moving its short legs and sinuous body with a lithe grace that took Amazon’s breath away. The other sable, however, stopped and turned. To her delight, it ran back to her, and let her indulge in one luxurious stroke along the whole length of its coat. It was like putting her hand in liquid silk. And then, with a chittering cry, the sable went to join its partner.

  Boris looked at her strangely. ‘Never seen that before,’ he said, and then turned to go back to the jeeps.

  It was almost dark by the time they reached their destination. The house was nothing more than a rough cabin in a clearing, with trees closing in on every side. There were a few outbuildings in various states of decay. It looked as though it was perhaps once a bigger settlement – a small village, even. But now it was lonely and desolate.

  The track they had been driving along ended here.

  ‘Looks like this is quite literally the end of the road,’ said Frazer.

  In reply, Kirov made a low grunt. He had, at least, taken off his sunglasses in the gathering gloom. His eyes were pale blue and gave nothing away about the soul within.

  Frazer climbed out of the jeep, desperate to stretch his legs after the long drive. Just as his feet touched the soft earth, he heard a frantic pounding of paws and a panting of breath. He looked up, and saw a black shape come bounding out towards him from the dark of the woods.

  It was a creature of shadow, something that drew the night around itself until the very darkness became flesh. Frazer thought he saw the eyes flash, thought he could see the glint of frothing saliva on the beast’s savage lips. He saw, in an instant, that a tiger or bear was about to end his career as a Tracker just when it was getting to be fun.

  Well, he was going to go down fighting. There was no time to get the X-Ark or even his pocket knife, but he clenched his fists, as if he were about to take part in a break-time brawl at school. Despite his courage, he could not fight his own body’s urge to cringe back, and to close his eyes.

  ‘Down, Boris, stupid beast.’

  Frazer opened his eyes and saw Boris clutching at the spiked collar of an enormous black dog. Despite its size, the creature squirmed and writhed at the big Russian’s feet, and Frazer couldn’t tell if it was terror or simply that grovelling joy you sometimes see in dogs when they greet their masters after a long separation.

  ‘This Boris dog, Boris,’ bellowed the Russian. ‘He is finest hunting dog in Russia, probably world.’

  Frazer sprang forward, relieved he hadn’t screamed. Had anyone even noticed his terror? He particularly hoped that Amazon hadn’t …

  ‘Yeah, I knew it was a dog,’ he babbled. ‘Anyone could see it was just a dog. Good boy,’ he added, reaching his hand out to the beast, then withdrawing it again when it was met with a snarl.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Amazon, coming round from her side of the jeep. ‘Your dog’s called Boris, Boris?’

  Boris looked perplexed. ‘What? No, dog not called Boris-Boris. Boris-Boris is stupid name for dog. Only idiot call dog Boris-Boris. Is this how you call dog in America?’

  ‘No, I’m not from America! I meant to say … I just meant that it seems weird you’ve called your dog Boris, the same as you.’

  ‘You forget, my name not really Boris. But I see how this can confuse tiny American mind, made soft with fast food and computer games.’

  ‘So how are we going to tell you apart?’ Amazon persisted. ‘I mean, if someone says that Boris has to go walkies, how do we know if they mean the person or the dog?’

  Boris looked very seriously at Amazon, which made it even harder for her not to laugh.

  ‘Is good question. OK, when we say just “Boris” you all know it mean Boris, me, man of Russia. When we want Boris dog, then we say “Boris dog”. Is clear?’

  ‘Is clear,’ said Frazer, who had got his cool back, and was pleased to have the chance to try out the comedy Boris voice he’d been practising. Amazon’s giggle floated through the evening air.

  The cabin was made from logs of rough-hewn pine. Inside there was just a single large room, with an iron stove at one end. At the other end there was a raised platform, accessible by ladder.

  At the stove was the hunched figure of an ancient woman. She was wearing a long smock made out of some kind of leather, which had an almost scaly sheen to it, and her weathered face was curiously oriental.

  The old woman turned to stare at the new arrivals. She peered at them through small black eyes, which were deeply hidden in the folds and wrinkles of her leathery face. She made a strange gesture with her hand, almost as though she were performing some blessing or curse, and muttered to herself in a language that Amazon could tell was not Russian. It made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. And then, with a grunt, the old lady returned to the huge iron pot she was stirring with a wooden spoon as big as an oar.

  Amazon and Frazer looked at each other. ‘I suddenly feel like we’re in a fairy story,’ Amazon whispered.

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed
Frazer, ‘one of those scary ones where the witch eats the kids. Just remember to poke a stick out of the bars of the cage so she still thinks you need fattening up.’

  ‘Boy is right,’ rumbled Boris, who’d overheard their words. ‘Old crone is witch for sure – Russian name for this is Baba-Yaga. People who live here is barbarian savage. We call them fish-skin tartars, because they wear skin of fish for cloth. These people say prayer to tree, to sky, to rock, to fire – any old rubbish or figment of imagination. Even to tiger, eh, ha! They should clear off and leave woods to civilized man like Boris.’

  ‘I don’t like that kind of talk, Lunakarski,’ said Bob Doolins, who had just come in. ‘The Udege have lived in these forests for centuries before the Russians and Chinese came, so they have a far greater right to be here than you.’

  Boris shrugged and walked away, waving his hand dismissively. ‘Don’t need no talk from Yankee about Russian forest.’

  Doolins turned to Amazon and Frazer. ‘He’s only sounding off like that because the old woman’s husband and grandson aren’t here yet. They’ve been out scouting the area, checking for illegal trappers.’

  ‘Who are these people?’ Frazer asked. ‘What did you call them … Oo-duh-gay?’

  ‘That’s right. The family who live here are part of a group called the Udege. They are related to a number of other native tribes – the Nanai, and the Ulch.’

  ‘They look kind of Chinese …’

  ‘They do originally come from Manchuria in northern China, but that was hundreds of years ago. There are less than two thousand of them left, and only a handful still speak the Udege language and keep the old ways alive.’

  ‘But they’re hunters,’ said Amazon. ‘How can that be good? Don’t they kill the tigers and leopards?’

  ‘No. That oaf Lunakarski was right about one thing: the Udege have great respect for the tiger, in particular, and they would only ever harm one to save their own lives. It’s true, though, that they are some of the finest hunters and trackers in the world, and that the animals they hunt – deer and wild pigs, mainly – are also the prey of the tigers and leopards. But they never take more than they need to survive, and they respect the spirit of the place and the animals they kill. The real threat up here isn’t the Udege or any of the other native groups – it’s the hunters who kill to order for Chinese medicine, and the loggers who destroy the forest.’