Kompromat

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

The large Amur tiger lazed in the sun on the banks of the Ussuri River. From time to time he raised his head and licked his balls. Just to check they were still there. They hadn’t seen much action recently. Female tigers on the Chinese side of the frontier seemed to be few and far between. He looked upstream, then he looked downstream, then – to be sure – he looked upstream again. The coast seemed to be clear.

The tiger got to his feet, sticking his hindquarters into the air first, then pushing up on his front paws. He ambled down to the river and sniffed at the water. At this time of year, the flow in the Ussuri was sluggish, but still it was cool and refreshing. He would enjoy the swim. And there would be more females too on the Russian side. That was obvious. It wasn’t just the grass which was greener the other side of the river.

Later that day, Jang Ling-Go, director of Forestry and Wildlife in China’s Heilongjiang Province, received a message from one of the rangers. ‘Amur tiger seen crossing Ussuri into Russia at 11a.m. today. This is visual sighting, but please check with GPS too.’

Jang Ling-Go switched on the bio-monitoring tracking system.

Within seconds he had picked up the slow-moving pulsing blip that denoted the Amur tiger 127’s progress as it left the river and headed back into the immense birch forest of Russia’s Far East.

The steady pace of the moving dot indicated that this was a tiger with a very clear idea of where he wanted to go.