Sarah Hall - The Wolf Border

In the morning the sky is mackerel-dappled and serene. She checks the airport website — there are no delays. She receives a text message from the transport company — Vargis — the driver has been dispatched and is on his way to the airport. She showers, dresses. She leaves the top button of her jeans undone.

The coffee in the breakfast room gives her heartburn as usual. At the buffet she selects oily eggs from a metal tin, and larvic tomatoes, which scald the inside of her mouth. She eats as much toast and jam as she can. The wonders of a returning appetite. She checks out, puts her bag in the back of the Saab. In the boot is a kit with extra sedative darts, though only a delay or extreme stress will warrant using them, and the transport company is also equipped. At 7.30 she calls Stephan in Romania. He shouts into the hands-free.

Bună ziua? Bună ziua?

She can hear the engine of his truck, and the radio blaring; he is already driving back to the centre, through the alpine meadows.

I wonder if you can help me, she says, I’m looking for two missing wolves.

Rachel, he shouts. I have sent them to you with my greatest love!

Are they OK?

Yes, yes, he says. Being rocked in arms of Morpheus. Let me tell you — next time I’m flying wolf-class too. They’ve got it the best. Like celebrities. They’re going to be a great pair.

I know. I can’t wait to see them.

You have to come visit us soon, he says. You won’t recognise the place — we’re getting very high-tech now! It was a generous donation your employer made to us.

Good — he can afford to be generous. And you must come and see them here.

Of course!

They finish speaking and hang up. She texts Huib with an update, sets the GPS, and drives the rest of the way to the airport. Rush-hour traffic eases. She follows signs for British Airways World Cargo. She is early, but the flight is also scheduled to arrive early. On the link road an Airbus roars overhead, tilting and straightening, its wheels locked, its undercarriage close enough to see scratches in the paint. If everything goes to plan they will be back in Annerdale by the early afternoon. The sedation is strong enough that they will not have been disturbed by the flight and the transit north, but she does not want them under for too long.

It does not seem long ago she was arriving at the same airport: her inglorious return home. She parks at the side of the cargo terminal. There are various haulers and transport companies. The Vargis men are waiting in reception, dressed formally in company jackets, carrying cases in which are plastic suits and masks. She too is equipped with a quarantine suit. She greets them and they exchange a few words. They are polite, professional — ex-military, she suspects. She spends twenty minutes with the airport officials. The paperwork is all in order — waybill, licences, CITES, and veterinary documentation. Payment is made. The crates, IATA standard, have been inspected in Romania, but will be inspected again by UK staff, for correct ventilation, bedding; the wolves are not harnessed inside: if they woke under restraint, they would damage themselves trying to get free. While the flight’s cargo is being cleared, she waits in a small lounge. Other consignees are waiting too, for what freight, it is impossible to guess. Mammals, plants, alien matter. Or the prosaic family pet.

Soon she is called through. She changes into the suit and goes into the disinfected unloading zone. The crates are brought in, the two Vargis men wheeling them slowly, unfazed by the contents of the covered structures. In bold print the labels read: LIVE ANIMALS — DO NOT TIP . The blue transport van is being reversed into the secondary loading bay, the back doors opened. Rachel gently lifts the overlay on the first crate and opens the small viewing hatch. She shines a torch. The female. Darkness, portions of a hind leg, long, crescent-shaped claws. Her breath sounds are even. Thomas has suggested not naming them until they arrive, almost superstitiously, like a father with newborns. Let’s see what their personalities are . But Rachel has already christened her, after seeing the photographs sent by Stephan and noticing an uncanny resemblance to a particular starlet. The thin nose, tilted eyes, and lupine brows; a face from Hollywood past — Merle Oberon. Merle. She pulls the cover back down. She moves to the second crate and checks the male. He is big — bigger than she anticipated — pale fur, with long black guard hairs. He was lucky to make it out of the trap alive, lucky there was no infection in the bone. She listens, then briefly shines the torch inside. The glimmer of a slit eye, atypical blue. The Rayleigh effect. Somehow it is harder, even than with humans, to remember there is no real colour. He is not alert. There’s enough meat and water. She takes the docket out of the waterproof shield, scans and signs it.

They are brought out to the truck and loaded carefully. The Vargis men keep the crates level, moving swiftly but carefully. The transport company is top of the range. Bullet-proof glass, armoured siding. She would not be surprised if they were equipped to carry nuclear arms, presidents. The crates are secured to the bed of the van and the doors shut.

On the way out of the airport she follows at a safe distance. The van keeps to sixty-five miles per hour. She checks her mirrors with tense regularity, for idiotic drivers, problems, the police. The journey could not be more regulated, but it still feels like a bank robbery, a crime — like the van is filled with explosives. As they drive, her mind flashes through worst-case scenarios. She imagines a crash: the van tipping, its doors swinging open, and the crates smashing on the verge; the wolves limping into the road, horns blaring as they shake their heads, cut through the wreckage, and lope off. They could be halfway up the country in forty-eight hours, disappearing like ghosts.

The van brakes moderately, keeps its distance from the traffic in front. In some part of their brain, even drowsing, they will comprehend motion. Through the seals in the van doors they will detect traces of passing substances: clays, flints, grasslands, under diesel and bitumen, exhaust fumes. And humans nearby — perspiration, hormones. They are intelligent analysts. In those in captivity, she’s witnessed incredible responses to human conditions: aggression towards drunks, defence of pregnant staff if a threat is perceived. If they are starting to rouse, they will be communicating with each other, low-toned, almost whistling. But the sedation has been finely administered and should last.

Warning signs flash overhead. Roadworks around Birmingham — long delays. She follows the Vargis van onto the M6 toll road, which is glossy and empty. They pass through the Midlands. Black Country residue. Towns bleeding together along the river basin. It would have been easy to have taken them from visitor centres in Norfolk or Reading, but they must be unhabituated. They must understand range, be able to hunt, or the project will not work.

She sips water from a bottle, not much — she does not want to have to stop at a service station. Neither does the driver of the van pull over for a break — probably they have helpful devices to relieve themselves. The country rolls by. She indulges in a dark daydream, imagines the Vargis men stopping in a layby, stepping into the nearby bushes to urinate. When they return the vehicle is gone, opportunistically stolen. Miles away in a lock-up its doors are pried open. She imagines the shock of these particular spoils — the thieves recoiling. What the hell? Is that a . . Then incremental bravado, goading the animals with a stick or a piece of pipe through the crate hatches — bragging and phone calls. Either they’d be kept by some thug on a chain in an outbuilding, or dumped in the fly-tipped hinterlands of England amid old washing machines and corrosives. Worse: they’d be pitted against some trained brute of a dog in a gore-smeared ring. A mastiff. A cross-hound. Such things do occur. She’s seen appalling Spanish footage of a wolf matched against a Presa Canario, the most hellish of breeds, 160 pounds of thick-packed muscle, its ears illegally cropped. The fight was brief. A torrent of snarling, spittle flying, eyes filling with red — both of them up on their hindlegs, heaving against each other like boxers, their heads shaking. Within seconds the dog’s brindle was muddied with blood, its jowls torn, and the wolf’s side rent open. The onlookers cheering and exchanging bets, chanting the name of the dog, Rafa, Rafa, Rafa , which would, given the extent of its injuries, still have had to be shot. People look at her with surprise when she says that hunting is at least an honest sport.