18

“He is. But he  will    still   be  hunted  for all that.   What    is  best    let alone,

that    accursed    thing   is  not always  what    least   allures.    He’s    all a   magnet!

How long    since   thou    saw’st  him?    Which   way heading?”

CAPTAIN AHAB,

Moby-Dick^1

THE HUNT FOR THE TIGER BEGAN ON THE TAKHALO—THE

FIRE RIVER. IT was Tuesday, December 16, another brilliant, bitter
day, and the hunting party that took charge of it was formidable. Six men
descended the riverbank at the apiary and headed downstream on the ice,
every one of them armed. In addition to Trush and Lazurenko were three
local hunting inspectors who had been brought in to assist, along with
Nikolai Gorunov, the Belarusian sheriff of Krasny Yar. There were no
dubious locals or green cops this time; these men were all seasoned
professionals. Like Trush, Sheriff Gorunov is a born Alpha, a handsome,
fire-breathing dragon of a man who smokes with an alarming vigor:
cigarette clamped between his canines at the point where filter and
tobacco meet, the act of inhaling fully integrated into breath and speech
such that there is no discernible pause, only billowing smoke that seems
to be a natural by-product of a voice that booms even in the confines of
his quiet kitchen. He bears a striking resemblance to the hawk-eyed and
mustachioed tiger hunter Yuri Yankovsky, and seems to share the same
temperament: he will haul a total stranger bodily (and effortlessly)
through a doorway because it is considered bad luck to shake hands
across a threshold; a map, when he is done with it, will be scored and
pocked with holes from his emphatic pen.
While there was no question in anyone’s mind that the tigers that killed