Wolf by Wolf

As Yael sets out from Prague, Luka and Katsuo take an early lead. Yael is prevented from overtaking them by three Japanese riders who form a blockade to slow her progress. She eventually cuts past one of the riders, causing him to crash. When she reaches the next checkpoint at Rome that night, Yael makes a detour to request aid from her resistance contact in an obscure neighborhood far from the racecourse.

After asking her contact for intel on Luka and Felix, Yael returns to her bike only to find it being inspected by three soldiers. Fearing that they might identify her as a race contestant, Yael shapeshifts into an Italian woman who catches the soldiers unawares and subdues all three. She considers shooting the youngest of the guards but relents at the last moment, aware “from her many, many brushes with it that death was not a power to be wielded lightly. No. It was a power to fear. A power that swallowed your soul, piece by piece, until there was nothing left” (100). Instead, she pistol-whips the soldier and makes a quick escape.

By the time Yael arrives at the Rome checkpoint, her official race time is two hours behind Katsuo’s and Luka’s. At dinner that night, she strikes up a conversation with Luka. He makes comments suggesting that he isn’t entirely in agreement with the Nazi party line and even offers Yael a cigarette, which is strictly forbidden to Hitler’s followers. Yael senses there may be hidden depths to his nature. During the meal, the three soldiers whom Yael ambushed enter the dining room and demand to question any woman riding a Zündapp motorcycle. Even though Yael fears her cover has been blown, the soldiers hesitate because Yael looks like the blond Adele and not the Italian woman who attacked them.

Luka intervenes and tells them to stop harassing the racers and that Yael was on the road when the attack occurred. After the soldiers leave, Yael reassesses her first impression of Luka: “Shaggy afternoon blond—too long by Hitler Youth standards—fell around his face, hiding his expression. This boy…was…more. But what?” (109). 

That night as Yael drifts off to sleep in the Rome checkpoint barracks, she thinks about the subject of her third wolf tattoo—her sister Miriam. In the spring of 1945, Yael and Miriam are trying to carry on as best they can after their mother’s death when Yael realizes that she has some control over the changes that are occurring in her body: “Yael held other people’s faces in her mind, sewed them to her bones with sadness and rage. She could never say how she did it. The skinshifts were like walking or chewing or crying—part reflex, half conscious. All pain” (119).

One day, Yael is being examined by the camp commandant and various Nazi officials. Geyer explains that the chemicals he injects into her system are allowing her to adopt the blond-haired and blue-eyed coloring of an Aryan. He believes this technique may be useful to Nazis with impeccable pedigrees who wish to look more like the Aryan ideal. During this meeting, the camp commandant displays a picture of his eight-year-old daughter, Bernice.

Yael studies the photo and later tells Miriam about it, demonstrating how she can change her appearance to match Bernice’s. Miriam thinks this ability might be a way for Yael to escape. Her elder sister scavenges for appropriate clothing. She tells Yael how to pass for Bernice and slip out of the camp undetected, but Miriam cannot go with her. To comfort Yael, Miriam gives her the smallest nesting doll that Babushka made for her. It’s only the size of a pea, but Yael will carry it in her pocket always. Yael is heartbroken at the thought of leaving her sister behind, but she mimics Bernice’s identity and slips away into the night.

During the race, Yael finds her progress slowed as she crosses the African desert. Still desperately trying to make up the two hours she lost, Yael pushes herself and her motorcycle, but the road is treacherous. Driving through the dusk, she hits a pothole and goes flying. Although she hasn’t broken any bones, her motorcycle sustains serious damage.

At that moment, Felix drives up. He once more urges Yael to quit the race before she is injured or killed: “I know how stubborn you are, but the Double Cross isn’t worth your life. Think about the people who love you. Papa, Mama, me. Don’t we matter?” (140). Even though Yael is moved by this plea, she knows she can’t stop for the sake of the Wolfe family.

Felix and Yael make camp for the night, and Felix works into the wee hours trying to repair her bike. Yael realizes that she could take his, which is working perfectly, and leave him behind for the supply caravan to pick up. He would be disqualified, and she could continue unhampered. Before she can implement her plan, a sandstorm rises over the desert, and the two are forced to hunker down until morning.

Shortly after daybreak, Yael digs out Felix’s bike and knocks him unconscious. She takes off and overtakes both Luka and Katsuo, who have camped by the side of the road, trapped by the same sandstorm. Yael waves as she streaks past them and looks to the road ahead: “Yael’s goggles fogged with tears of joy when she saw it: the spine of rocks and solid that rose from the sand. When her wheels reached it, she shot forward. No dust clouds, no silhouettes, no well-meaning brothers” (149).

Yael reaches the Cairo checkpoint ahead of the others and waits to see how they fared. By the time Luka and Katsuo arrive, Yael has regained all her lost time and is leading the race. She is 10 minutes ahead of Luka and 13 minutes ahead of Katsuo. The latter stares at her with hatred in his eyes. Luka warns, “You’re in the crosshairs now, Fräulein. You might be able to keep yourself, but no one gets through this race alone […] Soon, very soon, you’re going to need me” (154).