Wolf by Wolf

When Yael arrives at the Cairo checkpoint, still in the lead, she is eager to find her resistance contact so she can get much-needed background on Luka and Felix. Slipping out of the racer’s quarters, Yael travels through backstreets to a café where her contact has the dossiers that Henryka sent. Much to her surprise, Felix has followed Yael into the café. Her back is still turned when he confronts her, so Yael quickly shifts into the guise of an Arab woman. Shocked, Felix apologizes and leaves.

Yael races back to the barracks ahead of Felix to change her clothes so that he won’t see her wearing the same outfit as the Arab woman he just accosted. When Felix arrives after her, Yael is shocked at how badly she injured his face when she knocked him unconscious in the desert. He once again tries to persuade her to quit the race. Yael says, “‘Go home, Felix. Go back to Mama and Papa before you end up like Martin.’ Flinging the dead’s name like a weapon was a low move, but it worked. Their conversation was done” (179).

Alone later in the barracks, Yael finds another paper sculpture under her pillow. This time it is a crane. She adds it to the collection of objects in her pocket before heading for the bathroom to read the files she’s just acquired. The room is occupied by Katsuo, who has been crying. When he emerges, he’s angry that Yael has caught his vulnerability and brushes past her. She realizes he must feel the weight of the world on his shoulders by carrying the hopes of his entire nation.

Yael locks herself in the bathroom when the coast is clear and reads the files on Luka and Felix. They don’t answer any of her questions, and she discovers, “There were too many blank spaces. Luka and Felix. Neither boy was what she’d read on paper […] Things were so different face-to-face. Flesh-to-flesh. So complicated. Both were so much more” (184). 

The leg of the journey from Cairo to Baghdad consists of open desert with no towns for miles. When Yael pitches her tent for the night, she thinks she hears a noise outside and discovers footprints around her motorcycle. She quickly checks to see if the machine has been sabotaged. Fortunately, it hasn’t, but someone has slipped a sedative into her four water canteens.

Yael dreads traveling the following day because it will be a stretch of open desert, and she has no water supply. By dusk, she is parched and dizzy from dehydration and seeks out Luka’s campsite to ask for a canteen of water. He agrees but says it will cost her a favor. The two sit, chat, and smoke together. Yael infers that Luka was in love with Adele and may have let her win the race the previous year. Yael thinks:

There were so many versions of Luka Löwe […] Which version was the real one? All? None? But this Luka Löwe, the one sitting in front of her now, had loved the real Adele. Yael could see it in his eyes […] He’d loved her enough to hurt (193-94).

Yael’s story flashes back to her recollections of Aaron. He is represented by her fourth wolf tattoo. By 1952, Yael and Aaron have been separated for a few years because he has been sent to a training camp in the mountains run by a man named Vlad where resistance agents learn combat skills. Yael is delighted at Aaron’s return until she overhears an argument between Aaron and Reiniger. Aaron thinks the resistance should try another assassination attempt against Hitler, but Reiniger says they aren’t ready for such a bold move quite yet. Yael grows uneasy because she believes Aaron will try something anyway.

The following day, the news reports show a young man firing four shots at Hitler before turning the gun on himself. Hitler survives, but Aaron does not. Yael is devastated by the loss. She takes the thumbtack that used to mark Aaron’s field operative position on the resistance map and places it in her pocket. She will carry it with her always, along with Babushka’s nesting doll, to remind her of those she’s lost.

Henryka and Reiniger now feel that they have no chance of getting an assassin close to Hitler because he will tighten security after this latest attempt. They are convinced any future effort to kill Hitler will prove fruitless. This is the moment when Yael decides she is the only person able to do the job: “She showed them her greatest secret. Her greatest shame. Her change” (207-08).

At the Baghdad checkpoint, Yael takes stock of her situation. After the water-bottle tampering, she realizes that she needs someone to watch her back. Since Felix still hasn’t been eliminated from the race, she decides to make peace with him. Yael thinks that if she gives him some half-truths, she may be able to win him over to her cause. Because Felix has already heard the rumors about something bad happening at the end of the race, Yael admits that she is part of the resistance, and the plan is to kill Hitler. Felix agrees to keep her secret and help her win the race. 

While traveling the desolate stretch between Baghdad and New Delhi, Yael and Felix camp in an ancient fort. Felix probes into Yael’s motivation for helping the resistance to kill Hitler. Thinking of how Adele might answer the question, Yael says she is doing this for the Wolfe family. Felix accepts her story and agrees to back her plan. Yael finds herself falling in love with him, and the thought causes her great distress: “She’d have to tear him out herself, like the burrs on her socks. Show him who she was. What she’d done. What she was about to do. And it would hurt” (224).

Two days later, all the bikers must cross over a high mountain range. Yael and Felix catch up with Katsuo and Luka, who have paused to examine a landslide across the road. The route is now impassible. Yael believes the obstruction was deliberately created. The bikers soon find themselves surrounded by Russian guerilla troops. All the contestants are rounded up and taken away, and Yael listens to the Russians talk: “‘Let’s get them back to base,’ […]. ‘Comrade Gromov, once the rest of the racers are detained, you’re to radio Novosibirsk. Let them know the first part of our operation is complete’” (229).