TYLER KEEVIL

Fearful Symmetry

The night is freezing and the fierce wind catches her off-guard, cutting through her jacket and raking across her skin. She leaps down from the train, her backpack slung over one shoulder. The doors hiss shut behind her; the brakes wheeze as they release. She looks around. It’s too dark to see any station signs. The conductor seemed to be indicating that this was her stop, but his English was about as good as her Russian. Now, as the train lurches into motion, she wonders if she’s made a mistake.

The platform is open to the sky and encrusted with ice. There is one other person on it – a tall man standing at the far end. She starts walking towards him, and he comes to meet her halfway. He has a dog with him – a mottled brown Laika that pads along at his side. They stop within a few feet of her. The man has an untrimmed moustache, half-gone to grey, and is wearing a wool watch cap like the one her father used to wear. When he grins, a row of gold-capped teeth glitters in the darkness.

‘You are the animal woman?’ he says. ‘Nicole, yes?’

She smiles back, feeling her lips crack in the cold.

‘And you’re Vargas.’

They do not shake hands. The dog sniffs around her feet, wagging its tail.

u

 

His truck is the only vehicle in the parking lot. He’s left it running; a plume of exhaust is billowing out from the muddy tailpipe.

‘Gas must be cheap up here.’

‘Is not gas.’

As they get closer she can smell the odour of burning vegetable oil, like a fast-food joint. Some kind of bio-diesel. There is a gun rack bolted inside the back of the cab. She stashes her rucksack beneath it and climbs into the passenger seat. The dog takes up position between them, idly thumping its tail as Vargas puts the truck in gear. Beyond the station entrance the roads haven’t been cleared, but he has chains on his tires and they plough along at a good clip, churning up a wake of snow.

‘You stay at our house tonight,’ Vargas says. ‘Tomorrow I show you where the man is killed, and then you give us permission to hunt.’

She can’t tell if it’s his accent, or his manner, but everything he says sounds like an order – as if he’s accustomed to being obeyed.

‘It might not be that simple.’

He scowls and jabs at his cigarette lighter. Driving with one hand, he fumbles about on the dash until he finds a half-smoked cigar, which he fits between his teeth.

‘Is a killer. You will see.’

‘It could also be a new species. Or endangered.’

‘We are all endangered here.’

The lighter pops, emphasizing his point. He raises it to his cigar. As he puffs, the orange coil casts a soft glow across his jaw. She opens her window an inch or so.

‘I know you,’ he says. ‘You Americans. You live in big cities where there are no animals, so you think they are like the cartoons. You want to live with them and play with them. You want to save every single one.’

‘I’m not American,’ she says. ‘I’m Albertan.’

He chuckles. ‘Is same thing, now.’

She turns away from him and looks out the window. All she can see is snow smothering the fields, forests and farmhouses. It is greyer here than at home. As grey as the ash Vargas taps from the end of his cigar. Her brief warned her about that. The wording was typically convoluted, but she got the impression that if this area were part of New Europe or the Americas, it would have been deemed uninhabitable.

‘Is the cough bad here?’ she asks.

‘Of course.’

The dog has been poking around among the rubbish at her feet. It drags a tattered magazine onto the seat, and begins to gnaw the corner. Patting the dog, she extricates the magazine from its jaws. It is an old copy of Hustler, a special Americas edition featuring models from all the new states and territories. She flips through it. The glossy pages are wrinkled and worn. Near the back she finds Miss Alberta: sprawled on a bearskin rug and draped in an American flag, her legs splayed for the camera.

‘You must have a lot of time on your hands,’ she says.

He leans forward, mashes his cigar in a coffee cup on the dash. It’s difficult to tell in the dark but she thinks his face is reddening.

‘Is a gift. A joke.’

‘Looks like you got good use out of it.’

He snatches it from her and shoves it back under the seat – the truck swerving to the right as he does so.

 

From the back his house looks as if it’s buried in snow; the only thing that’s visible is the peaked roof, poking up like a tent. Around the front, the walk, driveway, and yard have been dug out and cleared. Like most of the houses on the outskirts of town, it is a one-story bungalow with wooden siding and a lean-to garage. The garage door is automatic, but as it shudders up it gets stuck halfway; Vargas has to climb out and duck inside to lift it himself before driving the truck through.

Inside it is warmer, but not by much. Nicole can still see her breath in front of her face. She takes off her toque and gloves but leaves her jacket on. Vargas leads her to the kitchen, where a woman is standing at the stove. He introduces her as his wife, Anya. Anya glances back and smiles and continues stirring whatever it is she’s cooking. Her wooden spoon makes a rasping sound against the base of the pot.

‘Hungry?’ Vargas asks Nicole, and she nods. ‘Good. We eat soon.’

They sit at the table. From the next room comes the flicker and murmur of the television. Nicole recognizes the familiar sounds of a hockey game: the crack of sticks, the thud of a puck hitting the boards, the low rumble of excited fans. It reminds her of home, and her father, and a time when she still had both. At one point, Nicole notices a small boy peeking around the doorframe. She does not know how long he’s been there, watching her. His skin is pale as flour and his black hair seems unnaturally thin – like a baby’s hair. When she smiles at him, he giggles and shirks back out of sight.

Vargas barks something at his wife and she brings them bowls of reddish stew, thick with chunks of meat and cabbage and potato. Whatever it is, it is good. A loaf of homemade bread is placed on the table between them. Vargas grips it in his hands, tears it in two, and motions for Nicole to help herself. His wife does not join them. She waits by the stove, hovering like a servant.

At first they eat in silence. Then, halfway through the meal, the pale boy scampers into the kitchen and whispers something in his father’s ear. Vargas grins.

‘Her?’ he says, nodding at Nicole. ‘She has come to play with our tiger.’ He adds something in Russian – perhaps repeating his joke – but his son does not laugh.

‘I’m Nicole,’ she tells the boy.

‘Nika,’ he says, and beams. He pats his chest. ‘I Nicholas.’

She looks at Vargas, surprised.

‘Yes,’ he says, grudgingly. ‘That is his name, too.’ Then, as if he doesn’t want to dwell on the coincidence, he asks her, ‘How long will it take? What you do?’

‘If I get a sample at the site, maybe a week.’

He is about to eat a spoonful of stew. Now he lowers it, scowling. He says something, loudly, in Russian, that makes his wife jump. ‘More people will die.’

‘They should be warned to stay out of the area.’

‘They need food to eat. Furs to live.’

She shrugs, helping herself to another chunk of bread. ‘That can’t be helped. If the animal is rare, or a mutation, the process might go on even longer.’

He crosses his arms, frowning. She takes this to mean he doesn’t understand, which isn’t a surprise. It’s her area of expertise and the legality is so murky that half the time she wonders if anybody understands – or if they make it up as they go along.

‘For it to count as a new species, any mutation has to be beneficial.’ Still he says nothing, so she continues: ‘If it is sterile or infertile, or if the mutation is deemed a disadvantage, the creature is considered invalidated and you’ll be allowed to kill it.’

Vargas seems to have stopped listening. He is idly stroking his son’s head.

‘Who decides?’ Vargas asks her. ‘Who says what is . . . invalidated?’

He pronounces the new word awkwardly – articulating each syllable.

‘My bosses at the protection agency.’

Gently, he raises his son’s arm, which he has kept tucked at his side until now.

‘What about Nicholas?’ he asks. ‘Would he be invalidated?’

She can see that his hand ends in a smooth, fingerless stump. Like a ball of putty. The boy smiles at her shyly, not understanding the conversation. As soon as his father lets go, he hides his arm again. Nicole lowers her eyes, stares into her stew.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know.’

They continue eating in silence, while Nicole tries to think of something – anything – to say. Eventually she asks, ‘You said it’s a tiger. How do you know?’

‘I know. That is how. Tomorrow I take you to the shack.’ He motions to his wife, who has been puttering about the kitchen. She comes forward to clear their bowls, their cups, and wipe the breadcrumbs away. ‘We must hike far. If you can.’

Nicole stands up to help, carrying her own dishes over to the sink. ‘No,’ she says, her expression serious. ‘I can’t hike. Women don’t do that where I come from.’

Vargas doesn’t find that very funny, but his wife is smiling.

 

She awakes in darkness. A phone is ringing somewhere. Her nose and ears are cold, her arms tingling with goose bumps. For a split second she thinks she is back there, in her family’s cabin in Northern Alberta. On those mornings when her father took her hunting, she’d learned to wake up early, without an alarm, to impress him. She rolls over, looking around. The mattress squeaks beneath her. She sees glowing stars on the ceiling, a stuffed tiger at the end of the bed. Its black-button eyes glisten back at her. She is sleeping in the boy’s bed, since they don’t have a guest room.

The phone is still ringing. Then, footsteps. A rumbling voice. She sits up to listen, even though she can’t understand. After he hangs up, she hears him coughing, clearing his throat. That is familiar, too. That sound. It echoes throughout the house, making her shudder. It could just be morning phlegm, in his case. She hopes so.

Seconds later, he’s pounding on her door.

‘I’m up,’ she calls out.

She is, too. Already standing, pulling on her jeans.

‘We go now,’ Vargas says, through the door. ‘There is another attack.’

She stops buttoning her shirt, then continues, more carefully.

‘No time for make-up,’ he says.

‘I don’t wear make-up.’

He grunts, as if he doesn’t quite believe her.

 

The village where the attack has occurred is half an hour’s drive to the east. On the way out of town, Vargas stops at a cluster of apartment blocks – squat and drab as bunkers. At the curbside stands a man in a parka, stomping his feet, his head framed by a cloud of his own breath. Vargas shoos his dog onto the floor, and Nicole shifts along to make room as the man climbs in.

‘Is Sam,’ Vargas says, putting the truck in gear.

Sam pushes back the fur-lined hood of his parka. He has tan skin, prominent cheekbones, and crow-black hair hanging loose to his shoulders. He is wearing a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, half-fogged over with cold, that sit low on his nose.

‘I feel bad that you have to stay with this grumpy bastard,’ he says to her. His accent is much softer than Vargas’s, his English nearly fluent. ‘What did he make you for breakfast? Toast?’

Nicole grins. ‘Burnt toast.’

‘Come to my place if you want some real food.’

‘Yes,’ Vargas says. ‘The Yuits are very rich – because the government gives them all our money.’

‘And your jobs. Right, Vargas?’

‘Is right.’

Sam chuckles and removes his glasses, starts polishing them on his shirt. He pauses to hold them up and check the lenses.

‘How long have you worked together?’ Nicole asks.

‘Not together,’ Vargas says. ‘I am his boss.’

‘Sure. For now. I’m just waiting until he catches grey lung. Then I’ll get his job.’ Sam leans forward, fiddling with the radio. ‘How about some music?’

‘Radio does not work. Is shit.’

Sam tries anyway, pressing buttons and turning dials, adjusting it through various stages of static, before finally giving up. Instead he snaps and hums to himself, bobbing his head as they drive along. The dog watches him, curious.

‘So our cat got hungry, huh?’ Sam says.

Nicole asks, ‘How do we know it’s the same animal?’

Vargas snorts. ‘Two attacks, one week. Is the same. We must kill it.’

Nicole considers this, studying the snowed-out landscape. They are passing an abandoned church; the roof has fallen in and the windows are clouded with frost.

‘For a conservationist,’ she says, ‘you’re pretty trigger happy.’

Sam guffaws, and Vargas jerks hard on the wheel – fishtailing around an icy pothole. ‘My job is conservation and protection. But people must be protected also.’

 

The village, according to Sam, was once a government-sponsored logging camp – before the collapse of communism. Now it is a ramshackle collection of trailers, cabins, and mobile homes. There are no people in sight, but smoke trickles from most of the chimneys and stovepipes. As they drive through, a three-legged dog hobbles out from a yard to yap at their truck. Vargas’s Laika snarls back, teeth bared.

Vargas pulls up in front of a trailer that lists at an angle in the snow – as if the supports on one end have given way. A snowmobile is parked in the drive. It looks new: the bodywork glistening blue, the undercarriage sleek and rust-free. As they get out, Nicole notices a woman standing in the window of the house opposite. She glares at them through the glass, both arms folded across her chest.

‘Friendly place.’

‘We’re not popular here,’ Sam says.

They wait as Vargas approaches the trailer. The door opens an inch or so, then swings wide. A bald man stands there, holding a can of beer in his hand. He gestures off to the right – towards the forest the village backs onto. Vargas says something to him, raising his voice, but the man keeps shaking his head. They argue for a while.

‘He doesn’t want to come with us,’ Sam explains.

‘Because he’s scared?’

Sam shrugs. Eventually, Vargas manages to coerce him. The man trudges out, in snowboots and a hunter’s cap – still carrying his can of beer. He leads them into the woods. The snow, as soon as they pass the edge of the village, is knee-deep, which makes the going difficult. For them, at least. The Laika is bred for the terrain, and scampers easily over the snowdrifts, stopping occasionally to let them catch up.

A few hundred yards in, the man says something and points ahead. Nicole sees an army-style canvas tent in the middle of a clearing. By the time they reach it they are all breathing hard.

The snow in front of the tent has been cleared and trampled flat. It is soaked in blood. The dog sniffs at it, wagging its tail. At first she thinks it is the blood of the latest victim. Then she notices a steel wire dangling down from one of the branches overhead. It’s the kind you would use to hoist up an animal while you skinned it.

‘He was trapping?’ she asks Sam.

‘Looks like it.’

The man is explaining something to Vargas. He talks quickly, gesturing with his beer can, glancing around all the while. Nicole watches the dog. It is pawing at a pile of snow to one side of the tent. She walks over there and scratches its head.

‘What is it, boy?’ she asks. ‘What have you got?’

She brushes the snow away. At first she’s not sure what she’s seeing. The fur is frosted, the hide rigid as cardboard. An animal skin. There are others underneath.

‘What are you doing?’ Vargas says. ‘Do not touch things.’

She glances back, lifts one up. ‘These are sable skins.’

Silence. The bald man just stares at her. Shrugs. Takes a sip of his beer.

‘Yes,’ Vargas says. ‘He was poaching.’

He doesn’t sound surprised. She looks at him, at all of them. Trying to guess what’s going on. Sam is pretending to study the snowy ground, not meeting her gaze.

She says, ‘Then maybe he got what he deserved.’

She doesn’t expect the other man to understand, but apparently he does – he slams his beer can in the snow, spiking it like a football. Then he is approaching her, spitting at her, shouting in her face. She catches one word, which he yells repeatedly: ‘Blyad! Blyad!’ She has no idea what it’s all about, and can only hold up her hands, palms out, to both protect herself and profess her innocence. Eventually Vargas gets between them; he shoves the man back and points towards the village, ordering him to go. The man does, kicking through the drifts – still yelling at her over his shoulder. His beer can lies in the snow, sputtering foam.

She looks at Vargas for explanation.

‘This man is his brother.’

‘Oops,’ Sam says.

She shrugs. She can’t take it back, now.

For the next half hour, the three of them examine the campsite, treating it like a crime scene. Treading carefully. Not touching anything they don’t have to. The villagers, according to what the man told Vargas, heard the screams in the night. A few rushed out with rifles, but by then the screaming had stopped; the poacher was gone. They saw and heard nothing else. Or so they say.

While Sam studies the perimeter, she and Vargas check the tent. Inside they find a rug, a pot-bellied stove, and a mattress. The mattress is shredded and ripe with blood. They crouch down on either side of it. Vargas touches the blood; it is frozen.

‘Why was he sleeping out here?’ she asks.

‘So he can skin his hides,’ he says, ‘without us finding him.’

Leaning closer, she studies the mattress. It has an animal stench to it, of sweat and urine. Among the frozen gore, she spots a cluster of hairs. Maybe human, maybe not. Removing her gloves, she places the hairs in a ziplock bag. It only takes thirty seconds, but by the time she’s finished her fingers are numb from the cold.

‘What about the body?’ she asks.

As they consider that, Sam calls to them from outside. They find him standing at the edge of the campsite, restraining the dog by the collar. It pulls against his hold, its muzzle buried in the snow. There is a track there, wide and blood-streaked – as if something has been dragged into the woods. Keeping the dog on a lead, they follow the trail. Only fifty yards away, strewn across a starburst of crimson snow, they find the remains. Some ribs. A femur. Scraps of clothing. And the head, trailing a rope of spinal cord. The face has been gnawed, the nose and cheeks torn away. Nicole stares at the pieces of flesh, trying to make them fit, trying to imagine them as a man. Off to one side she notices a hand, oddly untouched, still clenching a hunting knife.

‘Can I take that?’ she asks, pointing.

He looks at her curiously.

‘The blood on the blade,’ she explains. ‘Maybe he cut it.’

The fingers are stiff around the handle. She has to pry them off individually; the knuckles crack and pop and the sounds evoke a shiver of frisson, trickling down her spine. Vargas is watching her as she stands and bags the blade and seals the top.

‘What about the remains?’ she asks.

‘We have coroner,’ Vargas says. ‘Is his job.’

‘Look at this,’ Sam says, pointing.

He has found clear prints, leading away from the carcass. They gather around and hunker down to study them. The shape – a rear pad and four claws – is definitely feline. Sam spreads his fingers and holds his palm over the print. It’s both wider and longer than his hand.

He whistles. ‘Big fucking cat.’

Vargas shakes his head. ‘Is too big. Too big for tiger.’

‘What else could it be?’ asks Nicole.

Then, as they contemplate that, his dog starts barking furiously. It is looking out at the forest, in the direction of the tracks. The three of them stand up. Nicole can see nothing but snow and trees and stillness. Nothing at all.

‘Should have brought the guns,’ Sam says.

‘We go back,’ Vargas says. ‘Now.’

He mutters to his dog, which stops barking and whimpers once, as if asking a question. Vargas gathers up its lead and they retreat, moving quickly and awkwardly in the deep snow, glancing back like fugitives as they go.

 

The vodka is cold and numbing and slides straight down her throat like an ice cube. The aftertaste is unbelievably smooth. No bite, and no cloying bitterness. Nicole places her glass on the table and smacks her lips, accentuating the flavours.

Sam and Vargas watch, waiting for her reaction.

‘That’s nice,’ she says.

‘You see?’ Vargas says, holding up the bottle with a kind of reverence. It is a plain black bottle decorated with lettering that glitters gold like his teeth. Nicole has never heard of the brand. ‘I told you the Yuits have all the money, all the luxuries.’

‘It was a gift from my grandfather,’ Sam says.

He takes the vodka from Vargas and pours out three more glasses, then places the bottle next to the others they’ve sampled. They are sitting at the table in his living room. It is cramped and cluttered with Yuit art and paintings, and dozens of stuffed animals frozen in life-like poses. They came back to his apartment so Nicole could use her laptop to scan and upload the samples she’d found at the site. Now it’s a matter of waiting, and drinking. Which, in Siberia, seem to be one and the same.

‘What next?’ Vargas says, eyeing the bottles.

Sam taps a clear bottle without a label, and Vargas groans.

‘No – not that Yuit shit.’

‘It’s a new batch. I filtered it better.’

He fills their glasses. The moonshine looks suspiciously cloudy. As the men bicker about that in Russian, Nicole takes her glass over to the sideboard, where her laptop is set up among stacks of movies – most of them American horror films and creature features. She logs in to check her email again. Still nothing. Straightening, she unzips her fleece and wriggles out of it. Her chest feels hot, her cheeks flushed. Drinking always does that to her. Especially vodka. Just above the sideboard is a shelf with three animals perched on it: a crow, a squirrel, and – in the centre – a ferret. The ferret has two heads. Both its mouths are twisted into a twin-snarl, teeth bared.

‘Is this real?’ she calls over.

‘The ferret? Caught it myself. It had two brains, too.’

‘Is nothing,’ Vargas says, thumping his chest. ‘I killed deer with six legs – and all legs worked. Are many freaks up here. You can make big money from them.’

Sam grins. ‘The Chinese go crazy over the body parts. They think it will cure cancer and grey lung, and put a little lead in their pencil. And a lot of other bullshit.’

Nicole nods, takes a tentative sip of her moonshine. It tastes better than she expects. ‘Is that what the poacher was after?’

‘That,’ Sam says, ‘and the usual. Rare breeds. Endangered species.’

‘Is illegal, but . . .’ Vargas shrugs. ‘What else is there, up here? No logging, no farming. People must eat. People must live. So they hunt and trap and kill.’

‘Which is where we come in,’ Sam adds.

Nicole nods. She is standing at the window, now. It overlooks the adjacent apartment blocks, and the rest of town. There’s not much to see. Everything is squat and low and buried in grey snow, like ash. Directly below, she spots their truck, and the blue tarp stretched over the bed. It is covering the sable furs that they confiscated.

‘What will you do with the hides?’

There is a pause. Then Vargas says, ‘Evidence.’

She turns to look at him. He regards her steadily, his eyes heavy with vodka. She almost challenges him about it, but doesn’t. That’s not what she came here for.

‘Anything?’ he asks, pointing at her laptop.

She checks it again. ‘No.’

He grumbles about that for a while. Then, ‘How long?’

‘Normally it could be days. But I called in a favour.’ Passing behind his chair, she pats him on the shoulder. ‘I said: ‘my new friend Vargas is in a rush.’’

Sam laughs. ‘He was in a rush to get out of those woods – that’s for sure.’

‘So?’ Vargas splashes more moonshine into his glass, spilling some on the table in the process. ‘You went whiter than me. A snow-white Eskimo.’

‘It was stupid to go unarmed.’

Nicole takes her seat at the table again, allows Vargas to top her up.

‘Do you think it was out there?’

Vargas shrugs. ‘Something. There was something.’

Sam nods, deliberately solemn, then turns his empty glass upside down on the table, like a magician performing a trick. ‘You know what my people think?’

Vargas moans. ‘They only think about big government cheques.’

Sam waggles a finger at him. ‘They think,’ he said, ‘that Siberian tigers are spirits. They carry messages between heaven and earth.’

‘Yes. The message is: I am hungry.’

Sam holds up his hands. ‘I’m just saying that’s what they believe.’

Vargas grunts. The light in the kitchen is getting dim, now. Behind the layers of smog, the sun must be going down – even though it’s only two in the afternoon.

‘But it got me thinking,’ Sam continues, smiling. ‘Say this cat does turn out to be special or unique or whatever. Maybe that means its message is unique, too.’

She can’t tell if he’s just needling Vargas, or if he’s half-serious. Either way Vargas doesn’t rise to the bait. He stays silent. Nobody speaks for a few minutes. They sit and sip, wrapped up in the warmth of the vodka. Then her laptop pings, breaking the spell. She gets up to check it, feeling light and loose-limbed as she strides to the sideboard. The men watch, expectant. She scans the email once, re-reads it to make sure. Then she turns to them, trying to decide how to play this.

‘We have a saying in English,’ she says. ‘Don’t shoot the messenger.’

She expects anger, but instead the two men burst out laughing. They pound on the table, nearly falling out of their chairs. It takes her a moment to make the connection to what Sam said – about tigers being messengers. Then she laughs, too.

‘They say it may be a new species,’ she tells them, gasping.

‘Whoo-hoo!’ Vargas says, raising a bottle in toast.

‘And that you can’t kill it, until we find out if the mutation is a defect.’

The worse the news gets, the funnier it seems to be, until they are breathless, bent over in hysterics, their eyes watering. Nicole sinks to the floor, clutching her stomach. It aches – actually aches – with laughter, almost like she’s broken a rib.

She can’t remember the last time she laughed so hard.

 

The joke has worn off by the time her and Vargas head back to his house. For most of the drive, neither of them says anything. The heating fan rattles intermittently, and through her seat she feels the steady grinding of the tyre chains. The landscape beyond their headlights is drawn in black and grey, like a charcoal sketch. Vargas sits hunched forward, twisting his hands back and forth on the wheel. He is driving more slowly than usual; other than that he shows no signs of all the vodka he has drunk. Every so often, he coughs, clears his throat, and rolls down his window to spit – letting in a blast of icy air in the process.

He says, ‘If it kills more people, is their fault.’

‘I know.’

‘Is your fault.’

She doesn’t have the energy to argue, or the grounds to defend herself. The message was clear. The agency won’t issue a hunting permit unless they can provide more information. When she asked what was meant by ‘more information’ the reply came back: suggest examining site of first attack for further evidence. She didn’t mention this to Vargas at the time, but she tells him now.

‘I have gone to other site,’ he says, banging the steering wheel. ‘I tell you – is same animal. If a freak – so what? Is still a tiger, still a killer. It has the taste.’

‘I believe you,’ she says, ‘but it doesn’t matter.’

Back at the house, Vargas gets out a beer and settles on the sofa to watch hockey highlights with his son. Nicole sits cross-legged on the threadbare carpet, her laptop balanced on her knees, studying the DNA analysis the lab sent back to her. Lines of code fill the screen, a maze of genomes and chromosomes, a labyrinth of proteins and nucleotides. Certain sections have been flagged by their technicians.

‘What is this?’

Vargas is standing behind her, stooping to peer over her shoulder.

‘The genetic sequencing of the animal. By comparing it with a Siberian tiger, they’ve isolated the differences in the genes. Some of them, anyways. It takes time.’

He blinks at her, his eyes bleary and bloodshot. ‘So?’

‘None of them are frameshift mutations. Most are transpositions, along with a few point mutations. They still can’t tell if any are beneficial or sustainable, though.’

He waves his beer. ‘I do not know all this. Speak English.’

Nicholas comes over to join them. He leans against her, clinging to her shoulder in that overly familiar way children do. She can see his face reflected in the screen. She says, ‘The main alterations seem to be in size, and bone structure.’

Vargas snorts. ‘So is bigger. We know this.’

He goes back to the sofa and slumps into it, changes the channel to an American comedy dubbed over in Russian. Nicholas stays at her side, watching her work. She smiles at him and adjusts the settings – changing the lines of code into a visual DNA model. The double-helix winds its way up the screen, linked by ladder-rung bases of nitrogen compounds. It turns slowly on the spot, rippling and hypnotic.

‘Tiger,’ she tells him.

He gapes, awestruck. Then he whispers to her in Russian, tugs her to her feet, and drags her into his bedroom – wanting to show her something. On top of his pine dresser he has an old-style gaming console, and a battered monitor. He switches both on and picks up the controller, using his bad hand to deftly operate the tiny joystick.

‘Tiger,’ he says, beaming.

It is a hunting game in which you get to select various weapons, various locations, various animals to stalk. She watches him as he plays, eyes fixed on the screen, his mouth slightly parted. His avatar creeps around a tropical jungle landscape while cradling a semi-automatic hunting rifle. It has a scope that allows him to zoom in and aim from afar. When an animal crosses his sights, it always goes down in a spray of blood: boars, baboons and exotic-looking birds. Before he can find her a tiger, though, Vargas appears in the doorway and growls something to his son in Russian. Nicholas drops the controller and scampers out. It’s bedtime, apparently.

Nicole yawns. ‘We go early tomorrow?’

For some reason, she’s started to adopt his curt, broken English.

‘Not so early.’ He glances at the ceiling, studying the fake stars, as if he’s a bit embarrassed by what he’s admitting to her. ‘Is long hike, but is not safe in dark.’

It takes her a moment to decipher his phrasing, and grasp what he means.

‘Because of the animal.’

‘We go at dawn, in light. Then, maybe we must stay overnight.’

He nods and strides out, pulling the door shut behind him. Nicole is left alone, sitting cross-legged on the floor like a child. Then, from the monitor to her left, a roar erupts, startling her. Claw-marks have appeared on screen, which flickers red before fading to black. Apparently the tiger has found the hunter before the hunter found it.

 

Nicole squats in the snow, struggling to adjust the straps on her snowshoes. The set is too big but she doesn’t want to give Vargas the satisfaction of asking for help. He and Sam are at the side of the truck, unloading rifles from the gun rack. They’ve come to a forestry commission parking lot, a few miles out of town. According to Vargas, it’s the closest they can get to their destination; they’ll start their hike from here. The morning light is still dim, the world still locked in monochrome. A glaze of smog coats the sky, grey and hazy, so heavy it seems to be weighing down the trees.

Finishing with her snowshoes, Nicole stands up. The two men are in the truck bed inspecting their guns: checking chambers, loading cartridges, adjusting scopes.

‘This is still only a research trip,’ Nicole says.

‘I know.’ Vargas tucks an additional cartridge into his pocket. ‘So?’

‘Isn’t that a bit of overkill? All the hardware?’

‘Is for protection only.’

Sam smiles at her. ‘Don’t worry – he’s not as trigger-happy as you think.’

The dog bounds up to her, its muzzle coated in snow. She rubs its head, packs down a snowball, and lobs it across the lot. The dog tears after it, snapping wildly.

‘Maybe I should have one, too,’ she says.

They stop working to stare at her. For a moment, sitting side-by-side in bulky snowsuits, with their legs dangling off the edge of the tailgate, they remind her of two overgrown boys, playing with toy guns.

‘You can shoot?’ Vargas says.

‘My father taught me.’

Vargas trudges over to the side door, to get a third rifle. She can see that it is lighter and smaller than theirs, and semi-automatic – not auto. But she doesn’t bother to mention this. Instead she checks the safety, and takes aim along the barrel, aware that they are watching her. If it’s a test, apparently she passes. Vargas grunts.

‘Just don’t shoot me,’ he says.

As they set out, she slings the weapon over her shoulder, so it rests vertically on her back. It knocks awkwardly against her rucksack, which is filled with her food supplies, sleeping bag, and laptop. She hikes between the two men, with Vargas out in front and Sam a few paces behind. Looking after her, no doubt. The dog scampers around, zipping ahead and bounding back, acting as their unofficial scout.

They make good time, padding steadily through the powder. It is well packed and squeaks beneath their snowshoes. Other than that the forest is almost noiseless; the snow dampens any sounds. Visibility is good because the trees – mostly various species of larch – are bare and leafless and spaced relatively far apart. All the branches are coated in an off-white hoar frost that looks like fungus.

‘You said it’s a full day’s hike?’ she calls to Vargas.

‘Why? You are tired already?’

‘I’m wondering what he was doing way out here, alone.’

They walk half a dozen paces before he answers.

‘If you asked him, he would say he is hunting wild boar.’

After two hours they take a break. They perch on a fallen tree, without removing their bags or snowshoes. Her calves are burning but other than that she feels good. Vargas looks a bit worse off. He is breathing hard, and his moustache is frozen with snot. Filling a cup from his flask, he offers it to her first. She drinks it down, and nearly gags – it’s vodka. She hands it back, trying to take it in stride, but can see him smirking to himself. She gets out her flask of tea and sips that instead.

‘Your father,’ he says, tapping her rifle. ‘He took you hunting?’

‘Sometimes. But never for tiger.’

She means it as a joke, but neither of them laughs.

‘We have a saying,’ Sam says. ‘If a tiger wants to eat you, you won’t see it.’

He pushes his glasses up his nose, cranes his neck to look around. Nicole finds herself doing the same. Studying the landscape. Trying to imagine just what, exactly, is out there. Then Vargas stands and tosses back the remaining vodka.

‘We keep going,’ he announces.

 

By mid-afternoon, the shack comes into view. It is a two-room shanty, with wooden siding and a corrugated tin roof, covered in snow. Long icicles hang like teeth from the eaves and there are small windows on each side, overlooking the forest.

Out front, after they’ve removed their packs, Vargas tells her about the first attack. Because of the shack’s isolation, it went unreported for several days. By the time he and Sam got out there, it had been snowing for hours. At first they thought the trapper – a local man – had simply left. Then the dog unearthed the remains. A few bloody bones, frozen in the snow. That was all. No tracks. No other traces.

‘But all his supplies had been used up,’ Sam adds.

Nicole looks from him to Vargas, trying to understand. They explain that they think the tiger had him trapped here, in the shack. He waited it out for as long as he could. Then, rather than slowly starve to death, he’d made a final attempt to escape.

‘A cat would never normally do that,’ she says, ‘if it was only about food.’

Vargas shrugs. ‘Maybe he shoots at it, and makes it mad.’

Nicole frowns. ‘Maybe.’

Afterwards they take her into the shack. It is as cold inside as out, and smells like an old fridge. There is a table in the main room, littered with empty food tins. Mostly canned meat and vegetables and soup. In one corner lies a single mattress, draped in woolen blankets. Opposite it, directly below one of the windows, stands a workbench. The wooden surface is well worn and stained dark brown. Notches – as if from a blade – line the edges. Vargas notices her studying it.

‘For scraping hides, cutting meat,’ he explains.

The other room is smaller and looks like it was added later. It has been used for storage. Among the clutter she sees paraffin cans, a set of cross-country skis, a few lanterns – the housings smoked black – and some rusty leg traps. A space has been cleared on the floor to the left; in the middle is a mound of shit and toilet paper.

‘Because he was scared to go out,’ Nicole says, quietly.

Sam grimaces. ‘I will be, too. Tonight.’

While Sam takes a look outside, she and Vargas continue to poke around the shelter. It’s obvious he doesn’t expect her to find anything. She doesn’t really expect to, either. But it’s what she’s supposed to be doing, it’s what her office wants, so she does it. On the table, among the food tins, she notices a stack of smut magazines.

She holds one up. ‘Looks like he goes to the same bookstore as you.’

‘Is not funny,’ Vargas says.

As she puts the magazine down, she spots a cellphone half-hidden beneath the stack. She picks it up, turns it on. There’s still a bit of charge to the battery.

‘No signal here,’ Vargas says. ‘Or he would call for help.’

She ignores him, examines it anyway. First she scrolls through the picture gallery – mostly more porn – and then checks the videos. There are only a few, all fairly recent. She selects the oldest and clicks ‘play.’ It shows a man’s face, talking into the camera, as if he’s holding it at arm’s length. He is middle-aged, with a shaved head and a scar above his right eye. He is speaking quickly, in Russian. Obviously agitated. Vargas, having heard, comes over to stand beside her.

‘Is him,’ he says. ‘He is saying – it is still there. Will not go away. It knows . . .’ Vargas pauses, startled, then goes on, ‘It knows what I have done.’

The second video clip is dark. Too dark to see much, other than the shape of the man’s head, lit up by lantern light. This time, he is whispering. Vargas leans in closer to catch it, and translates for her. ‘He is saying to listen, listen to it. Is close.’

Nicole adjusts the volume. Faintly – through the tinny speakers – they can hear roaring, like distant thunder. The sound sends prickles along her forearms.

‘And next,’ Vargas says. He has started whispering, too. ‘Is one more.’

The final clip shows the man’s upper body – as if he has set up the phone on the table to film himself. He is sitting in a chair, wearing full hunting gear, cradling his rifle. The pale light coming through the window creates a halo-effect around his head. After waiting a moment, he starts to address the camera, struggling for words.

‘Is message to his family,’ Vargas says. ‘He says he has run out of food. He says he is going to try. He says . . .’ Vargas trails off. The raw emotion on the man’s face needs no translation, no explanation. Then, at the last, the hunter clenches his fist and shouts something, defiant.

‘He says he will show it how a Siberian dies.’

The end of the clip is him reaching out towards the camera. Nicole stares at the blank screen for a moment, before carefully placing the phone down.

‘It is proof, no?’ Vargas says. ‘That it stalks him. Is a man-eater.’

She nods, tells him it is. Though she’s still unsure what the agency will decide. Man-eater or not, if it’s a new species, and sustainable, they’ll want to capture and protect it rather than kill it. She is wondering if – and when – she should tell him that, when Sam pokes his head through the door. His glasses are all fogged up again.

‘There’s something at the back,’ he says.

Outside the light is fading; on the horizon the clouds have gone a sickly ochre colour. Behind the shelter, the dog has found a large pit dug in the snow. While they examine it, the dog paces around the edge, sniffing and whimpering. The surrounding snow is dotted with paw-prints – the same over-sized tracks they found yesterday.

‘This wasn’t here last time,’ Sam says.

‘No,’ Vargas says.

‘Why would it come back?’ she asks.

The words hang there as the three of them stare into the pit, thinking about it. The back wall is unnaturally flat, as if the cabin has foundations that go deep. Nicole brushes some ice crystals aside – revealing wood, gouged with claw marks.

‘It’s like it was trying to get into the cabin,’ Sam says.

‘Or at something beneath.’

Back inside, the three of them shove the table away from the wall, and lift up the tattered rug. Underneath is a small door, with a ring set into the wood, like the entrance to a cellar. It is not locked, and they lift it easily. Below, a stepladder drops into darkness. Vargas digs a flashlight out of his bag, and climbs down first. Then he says something in Russian – short and sharp, like a swear.

‘You must see,’ he calls up.

The cellar is no bigger than a walk-in closet. It is a tight fit for all three of them together. Vargas waits until her and Sam are down before shining his light around. They are in a kind of makeshift freezer, surrounded by shelving. Each shelf is laden with animal parts. Some in jars, some in plastic bags. She does not recognize all of them but she sees a kidney, a liver, a gallbladder. There are teeth and claws, too. Tongues. A menagerie of dismemberment. And on the floor, piled practically beneath their feet, are the hides. All neatly folded. The fur tawny and striped. She stoops to touch the one on top. Even stiff with frost, it feels unbelievably soft.

‘I don’t want to hear,’ she says, still crouched there, ‘any of your shit about families to feed, or needing to survive. This is a travesty. This is an abomination.’

‘Yes,’ is all Vargas says.

Sam is perusing the different shelves, like a clerk taking inventory. ‘There’s sable here, too. And lynx. All rare or endangered. He would have had help. They’d wait until spring, then haul a load out with snowmobiles or four-wheelers. Truckers or loggers would help them smuggle it into China. Risky, but the pay –’

He stops talking; he is standing quite still, staring at something in a styrofoam cooler against the far wall. They wait, expectant, but still he does not say anything. Vargas looks at her, then steps over. She follows. When she sees what he has found, her hand goes to her mouth. In the cooler is a small animal, about the size of a large housecat. Its coat is patterned like a tiger, but the proportions are different. It is stockier, with higher back legs – almost hyena-like. Built for speed and power.

Vargas pans his flashlight along the body. It’s obviously a cub; the feet are oversized, the coat fluffy rather than sleek. The mouth is open, wide, as if it died in pain, or crying out. A leg-trap, probably. Light glints off a pair of wicked-looking eyeteeth. Something about those teeth looks wrong to her. She reaches in, uses both hands to force the mouth closed.

‘Look,’ she says, pointing.

The eyeteeth come down outside the lower mouth, extending inches past the jaw. Vargas mutters something in Russian again – that same swear word. Srat.

‘Well,’ Sam says, ‘now we know what’s out there.’

‘And why it’s pissed,’ she adds.

 

She is sitting in a chair by the workbench with her rifle across her knees. The chair is cold and hard and she shifts around frequently. Beneath the window, a paraffin lamp sputters, giving off smoke. It makes the place stink but the window is open a crack for ventilation. She can see her breath in the light. Aside from their bodies, and the lamp, there is no heat in the shelter. Behind her the other two are stretched on the floor in their sleeping bags. Nobody wanted to sleep on the dead man’s mattress.

Every few minutes she opens her laptop, checks her emails. Her inbox is always conspicuously empty. Three hours ago she sent her report to head office, summarizing the videos, the underground storeroom, the cub specimen. Everything they’ve found. But she hasn’t received a reply, even though the satellite link is good.

At one point she thinks she hears something. A sound out there. A low rumble. But it does not come again and when she peers out the window she of course sees nothing. Just blackness, and flakes of falling snow, flickering like tinsel in the lamplight. She stays there, studying the dark, imagining what it contains. It makes her think of that Blake poem her father used to read her – the famous one about the tiger. She can remember most of the first verse, and recites it silently to herself: Tiger tiger burning bright, in the forests of the night. What dread hand, and what dread eye, dare frame thy . . . something. Thy fearful something.

There’s rustling behind her. A cough. Looking back, she sees Vargas coming into the light. His hair is tousled, his capped teeth bared in a glittering grimace.

‘I have a few more hours yet,’ she says.

She knows he gave her first watch as a favour. It’s easier to stay up, than get up halfway through the night, or early in the morning.

‘I cannot sleep,’ he says. ‘But maybe you can.’

He pulls up a chair beside her, places his flask on the floor. When he glances at her laptop – closed now to conserve the battery – she expects him to ask about that, but he doesn’t. Maybe he’s already guessed. Now that the agency has proof of its ability to breed, and the validity of its mutation, there’s no way they’ll issue a permit to kill it. Instead they’ll send up a team of their own to trap it, take it alive. Which may take time. Which may cost lives.

‘You have shot animals,’ he says.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I have shot animals.’

The dog comes up, nuzzles Vargas’s palm. He strokes its head, and it sits beside him, thumping out the seconds with its tail.

‘This man,’ he says, ‘is the same as yesterday for you, no? You think he maybe deserved to die. For what he did.’

‘I didn’t say that,’ she says.

‘You are thinking it, though.’

He bends forward, picks up his flask. Unscrewing the lid, he pours himself a cup of vodka. His hands are trembling. She can’t tell if it’s from the alcohol or not.

‘I am lucky,’ he says, taking a sip, ‘to have this job.’

‘Yes.’

‘I did not always have it.’

She waits. He cradles his cup in both hands, as if drawing warmth from it.

‘Before, I was like them. You understand?’ He is not looking at her, but rather at a point on the floor – as if gazing right through it to the slaughterhouse below. ‘I made money that way.’

She leans her rifle, barrel up, against the workbench. ‘And the hides you confiscate,’ she says quietly. ‘Like the sable fur. You sell those on, don’t you?’

In answer, he lowers his head. They sit like that for a while.

Then she says: ‘I don’t know what you expect me to say.’

‘I do not know, either.’

He takes a long drink from his cup. She stands up, nearly knocking her chair over backwards in the process. She’s not going to be his priest, give him absolution.

‘I need some sleep,’ she says.

As she walks away, he mutters something that stops her.

‘Maybe it knows.’

He is staring into his cup, which is empty.

‘Maybe it does,’ she says.

 

Vargas is gone. Or that’s what it looks like, when she wakes up. Sam is still on the floor beside her, and the door is slightly ajar. She scrambles to her feet, startling the dog, and rushes to the window. But no – Vargas is there. Taking a piss in the snow. When he comes back in, the slam of the door startles Sam.

‘You didn’t get me up,’ he says, rubbing his eyes. ‘Morning was my watch.’

Vargas only grunts. His face is haggard, his eyes puffy. She knows Sam must notice that, too, but he chooses not to mention it. Working mostly in silence, they put away their sleeping bags, pack up their gear, pull on their parkas. As she gnaws on a frozen energy bar, Nicole notices Vargas staring dully at his snowshoes – like a child who’s forgotten how to tie his laces. She goes over to see what the problem is.

‘Idiot,’ she says, lowering her voice. ‘They’re on the wrong feet.’

He nods and switches them over. His movements are slow and laborious. The stink of vodka radiates from his pores, like a sickly cologne.

The temperature has risen in the night and it has stopped snowing. Now a mist hangs above the fresh snow. They don’t realize how dense it is until they’re standing in front of the shelter, ready to leave. Visibility is about thirty yards. Beyond that, the snow blends into the mist, the trees become shadows.

‘We could wait until it clears,’ Sam says.

‘Is fine,’ Vargas says. ‘We go.’

‘Isn’t that risky?’ she asks.

‘Stay if you want, if you are scared. I go.’

Vargas starts off without waiting for a reply, the dog trailing at his heels. Sam and Nicole exchange a glance. ‘The stubborn bastard,’ she says. ‘He’s half-cut.’

Sam nods. ‘I’ve never seen him like this.’

They follow. It’s either that or let him go. Even drunk, and exhausted, Vargas sets a good pace. Their track has been covered by the snowfall, but he manages to find it. He trudges along with his head down, bulldozing ahead. He does not watch the forest at all. Nicole does, though. She watches the mist, and the way it seems to be moving. Curling about trees, wrapping around branches. Landscape, mist and sky are all a uniform grey. It feels as if she is walking through a dream, the snow soft as cloud beneath her feet. When she looks back, the shelter is already gone – absorbed by the haze. She keeps one hand on the butt of her rifle, slung across her shoulder.

They hike. She doesn’t know for how long. Two hours, maybe. Or more. Time is counted by her steps, and her breaths. An endless procession. Only the dog breaks the repetition. Like yesterday it acts as their scout, darting ahead or to the sides, before racing back to rejoin them. Sometimes it goes far enough that she loses it completely in the mist. At one point, she realizes she hasn’t seen it for a while.

‘Vargas . . .’ she says.

From up ahead comes a ferocious yapping, and the dog reappears. It streaks towards them, wild-eyed, trailing trickles of urine in the snow. Its tail is straight back between its legs. Vargas shouts at it, cuffs it, then holds his palm up for them to halt.

Nicole’s rifle is already in her hands, even though she can’t remember reaching for it. When she moves to slide her finger on the trigger, she finds that her glove gets in the way. She shakes it off, discards it in the snow. Through her inner glove she can feel the chill of the gunstock. She is not shaking. Her hands are steady.

‘We can’t kill it,’ she says, mostly to herself.

Vargas is clumsily removing his rifle from his back. The dog crouches at his side, ears flat back on its head. The mist seems to have thickened, pressing in on them. Nicole looks first one way, then the other. She sees nothing, hears nothing. They are floating in a void. In front of her, Vargas finally has his rifle ready. He turns unsteadily, looking beleaguered and bewildered. She will always remember his face in that moment. Pure terror. As if he’s been struck suddenly, inexplicably blind.

‘I can’t see fuck all,’ Sam whispers.

She glances behind her; he is fiddling with his glasses, trying to de-fog them. As she turns back, she hears a whispering sound, and a section of mist seems to shift, morph, as if it’s taking shape and coming alive. Then Vargas is gone. Just gone. Off to the left there is a splash of snow; kicked up by the impact of man and animal. The dog is barking insanely; Sam is shouting behind her. She raises the rifle, sights along it, and hesitates. The two figures are tangled together, thrashing around. In the flurry of white, the fury, it’s difficult to tell them apart and she doesn’t know what to shoot at, doesn’t know what to kill. Then it rears and roars, draws back as if to attack again, and as it plunges down she fires, once, the report resonating right through her body.

Then Sam shouts: ‘There!’

His rifle patters, unleashing a drumroll burst. Around the mass of flesh and fur she sees the impact of the bullets – churning up snow.

‘Hold it!’ she screams. ‘Vargas is under it!’

Sam stops firing, the echoes fading away like thunder. Then the only sound is the dog, yapping in panic. Right next to it, directly in front of her, is an empty pair of snowshoes. Vargas was snatched right out of them.

‘I didn’t even see it happen,’ Sam says.

Holding their rifles ready, they shuffle forward. A big furrow has been ploughed in the snow where the animal landed with him. As they approach, she sees that it is not quite as big in length as she expected. But it is broad, especially in the haunches. Its thick hind legs are splayed out behind it, and it is slumped on its right side. In that position, lying limp and lifeless, it looks harmless as a stuffed animal.

‘Is it . . .?’

‘I think so.’

The fur coat is bloody, riddled with holes. There is blood, too, in the surrounding snow. Beneath it is Vargas. Both man and beast are still, as if they’ve fallen asleep together. A peaceful repose, of predator and prey. Nicole drops her rifle, kneels and shakes him, shouts his name. No response. But he’s breathing.

It’s only when she and Sam try to shift the animal off him that they see how oddly the two are interlocked. The cat’s mouth is wide open, hungering for him. The barrel of Vargas’s rifle is wedged sideways between the animal’s jaws, and its extended cuspids are resting up against his abdomen. As far as she can tell he’s not injured there. It looks as if, when it attacked, he turned his rifle sideways in defence, submitting to the animal rather than trying to kill it – which is probably what saved his life.

 

The local clinic is a low brick structure that was once a military barracks, a remnant of the first cold war. The walls and ceilings are encrusted with green paint that is flaking off in palm-sized patches. Vargas has been assigned a private room near the rear of the building, on the recovery ward. When Nicole walks in, the blinds are closed and Vargas is sleeping. He has a neck brace on – from whiplash, apparently – and both his forearms are wrapped in bandages. Several ribs were broken, too, but overall his injuries were relatively light. At the sound of her footsteps, he jerks awake – tugging on the wires attached to his hairy chest, nearly pulling over the heart-rate monitor.

Then he sees her, and sighs. ‘Is you.’

She holds her hands up, fingers curled like sets of claws. ‘Bad dreams?’

He laughs, weakly, then starts coughing. It goes on a long time and ends with him clearing his throat. He spits into a tissue, folds it up carefully, and tucks it away.

She asks, ‘Have you had that cough checked out?’

‘Is nothing. Is fine.’

She shakes her head, crosses to the window, and throws open the blinds – letting in a wash of wan light. He shields his eyes and blinks back the brightness.

‘So,’ he says, his voice still hoarse. ‘You save me, Sam says.’

She nods. As it turned out, it was her bullet – that first one – which killed it.

‘Somebody had to. It was you or it.’

He tilts his head and squints at her. ‘Maybe you wish you have missed?’

‘My bosses do. I’ve been on the phone with them all morning.’

‘You are in trouble?’

‘I’ve been temporarily relieved of my position.’ When he just stares at her, she’s not sure if he understands, so she adds: ‘I’ve been suspended. Fired, basically.’

‘Is so stupid,’ he says. ‘They will save a tiger instead of me.’

‘It was more than a tiger.’

‘Is very true,’ he says. ‘So fast. So powerful.’ He holds up one hand, and smacks it with the other, acting out the attack in pantomime. ‘Like that. You saw?’

‘Yes – incredible.’

‘And the teeth. This long!’ He extends his arms to demonstrate, looking as excited as his son. ‘It was – how do you call it? Sword-tooth? Like a sword-tooth?’

She smiles. ‘A sabre-tooth. Not quite. But it was similar.’

‘It looks at me, you know.’ He holds two fingers up to his eyes. ‘There. Like that. It sees into me. It came for me. To tell me things. You understand?’

She nods. She is standing over him, hands clasped, gazing down; light from the window casts a cross on his bed. Something about the situation – their postures, the setting, the solemnity – makes her feel like an abbess, taking his confession.

‘What did it tell you?’ she asks.

He looks down into his lap, and plucks at the sheet tucked across his abdomen. ‘That time – it is running out. For us, for it, for everything.’ He glances once at her, almost timidly. ‘Is hard to say in English. You must learn Russian. Then I tell you.’

‘It’s a deal.’

He yawns, looking like a tiger himself. ‘You leave now?’

‘I have a train to catch,’ she says.

‘Go then – go back to your city. Is safer there, no?’

She reaches over to clasp his hand. He winces, and when she lets go he shakes it out – pretending that she’s hurt him. ‘You are too strong,’ he says, ‘for a woman.’

In the doorway, as she’s leaving, she meets his wife and son coming in. The woman – Anya – glances at her, sniffs, and brushes by, almost as if she blames Nicole for her husband’s condition. Little Nicholas gets tugged along behind his mother, but he manages to look back at Nicole, raising his bad arm to wave good-bye.

Nicole lingers in the hallway to watch as they converge on Vargas. His son scrambles onto the bed; his wife wraps him up in her arms. She is scolding him and crying at the same time. He murmurs to her in their language, the tones gentle and reassuring. Before they notice her spying, Nicole turns and walks quietly away.

Out front, Sam is waiting in Vargas’s truck, ready to take her to the station. He honks twice when he sees her. The dog is in its usual position on the front seat, and the radio is turned up high – blasting out scratchy Russian rock.

‘You fixed his stereo,’ she says.

‘Just a loose wire. I think he broke it on purpose.’

Sam hums along to the tune as they rumble down the highway. The pavement is soaked in slush; the snowbanks at the roadside have shrunk in on themselves. The weather has turned surprisingly mild, almost like a winter chinook back home. They ease past a mud-spattered tractor, and Sam leans forward to turn down the music.

‘Think you’ll have space for those hides?’ he asks.

‘Space for what hides?’

‘The sable. Vargas didn’t tell you?’ He jerks a thumb at the rear window, towards the truck bed; she can see the hides back there stacked under the tarp. ‘He wanted you to have them, as evidence.’

‘I’ll make room,’ she says.

‘Who says a tiger can’t change its stripes, huh?’

‘What about the haul in the shed?’

‘We’ll need time to catalogue it. Could give us some leads in tracking down buyers and suppliers. Think your organization would agree to send us some help?’

The dog whines and nuzzles into her lap, its tail going like a metronome.

‘They might back it,’ she says, idly scratching its ears. ‘But I doubt anybody would be stupid enough to volunteer to work with you assholes.’ She thinks about it for a moment, and then adds, ‘Except maybe me.’

When they both laugh, the dog perks up and cocks its head, as if trying to understand the joke.