Agent Out of Time

"If we were in India dealing with Bengal Tigers I would agree with your analogy, but we're not. Siberian Tigers rarely attack people and usually they have good reason to, when they do. There are only a handful of recorded incidents of them attacking anyone and usually it was, because something was wrong with the tiger physically. So perhaps, unlike you two, I at least am going to sleep well tonight."

Neither of them looked convinced though of the safety of our travel arrangements. The area we were entering now was more mountainous and I really hoped that all the reports I'd heard about its striped denizens were true. I might have to sleep with one eye open anyway.

We made slower time in the up-and-down terrain and I was unable to augment our food supply like I had wanted to. We saw red deer on several occasions and the overwhelming desire to use the rifles was a sharp urge to overcome. We might go hungry some, but if we were able to get out of here by being so careful to not alert others to our presence and get home, we could eat then to our hearts content.

We got a break with a small mountain stream we came across that had a good supply of fish in it. We stayed there by the stream for a day resting and fishing and then we moved on.

It snowed several times, but nothing that made the way impassible to us. It was still early in the season for serious winter weather, but I could feel it coming like a slowly squeezing menace in the back of my head.

Our progress over several weeks of travel was truly astounding and we were doing what few had ever done since the beginning of the Soviet era, escape from Siberia. Another two weeks of travel should see us far enough south and towards the seacoast to arrange an air pick up.

The next day my burgeoning hopes were crushed. Looking back I saw an endless wall of turbulent dark clouds massing along the horizon. True winter was coming. This wasn't going to be an early snow followed by a partial melt as before.

Nature was cruel in how it could crush one's hopes, thankfully I didn't pray to the fickelties of nature for guidance, but rather I prayed to God, who had both created and set nature in its order. Somehow we would get through. It was just going to take longer that was all. What we needed to do now was find shelter from the storm that was coming and I said as much to the others.