I shoved the phone to the bottom of my bag, hiding it under essentials for the train. Minka had handled our papers, getting a fresh set prepped from her guy in Stockholm who met up with us in the Vienna airport for an obscene amount of money. We had minimal trip gear, just a small day bag each with the basics. Since we were traveling carry-on only, we couldn’t even bring Swiss Army knives, so when we landed in Podgorica, we split up, both to finish our shopping and to elude any potential tails. We didn’t really think Galina was still watching us—she’d broken off to take care of whatever deal was going down on the train—but we’d been trained too well to let down our guard completely. We planned to rendezvous on the train the next evening, traveling separately and ready for whatever might come.
When my bag was packed, I looked around the hotel room, a cheap single in a small hotel near the station, busy enough to be discreet, crappy enough to be overlooked. Before a hit, there’s always that moment. Whether the lodgings have been a five-star hotel with hot-and-cold running butlers or a youth hostel with shared toilets and the stink of cheap weed, there’s always a moment when you’re packed but youhaven’t walked out the door. And that’s when the thought comes. Not really a thought, just the briefest flicker of an impulse:stay. You have papers—good ones,impeccableones that would pass the scrutiny of the most zealous border guards. You have some money. Nobody will hunt you down. You could just stay there, inhabiting the personality you’ve put on like a snail shell. You could hang pictures and put down roots. You could get a real job instead of this endless loop of make-believe, this merry-go-round of cover stories and covert assignments.
But you don’t. Because the person you’re supposed to kill has been chosen for a good reason. Whatever contract exists between human beings, a contract of decency and common humanity, they’ve broken it. If life is a chessboard, they’re the players that have gone rogue, the knight riding diagonally across the board, smashing whatever is in his path, the king who refuses to stop at one space. The basic rules that apply to the rest of the world—thou shalt not kill, for starters—don’t matter to them. They do as they please, and they don’t care about the carnage they leave behind. Somebody has to put the chessboard to rights, pick up the wrecked pieces and set it back to the start. So you pick up your bag and you close the door behind you, just like you’ve closed a hundred other doors. And you know that every time you do, you’ve left another piece of you behind.
—
I didn’t meet up withthe others until we were on the train, each of us making our way solo to the compartment Minkahad booked for us. If the rolling stock had been a toy, it wouldn’t exactly have been “mint in box”—more the “played with hard and sold for a quarter in a garage sale” kind of train. Our compartment was narrow and utilitarian, the sort of accommodations Spartans would have turned down as being too luxurious, but only just. The cars were clearly holdovers from the old days, back when Yugoslavia was still a country held in Tito’s iron grip as he thumbed his nose at Moscow. Our compartment was a sleeper with berths three tiers high. The upper berths had been folded back to show some truly questionable art—landscapes of Montenegro done in a style I like to call “Nouveau Fascist,” all stylized trees and square-jawed men with equally square-jawed women in kerchiefs marching over the hills. The lower berths served as banquettes facing each other across a narrow table. A wide window was the cleanest thing in the place. Toilets were down the corridor, and we’d been warned to bring our own toilet paper. Simple and no frills.
I arrived first, dressed neatly with no remarkable labels or accessories. Whatever the Eastern European version of Chico’s is, I was wearing it. Elasticized and forgettable, which is exactly what I intended.
Helen arrived next wearing the habit of an Orthodox nun and looking distinctly rotund.
“Did you stuff your habit?” I asked as I shoved my weekender bag out of sight.
“I have it on good authority that Balkan trains are either boiling hot or freezing cold. I am gambling on the latter andcame prepared. Two layers under the habit,” she told me, lifting the skirt portion to show her woolen leggings.
“Where did you read that? The Museum briefing guide?” One of the lighter tasks of the Museum’s Provenance department was compiling guidebooks to every conceivable destination. In their spare time, they inserted updates, but some places were too far off the beaten path to merit much attention. The last time I’d logged into the archive, I’d poked around the Argentina section just for fun. The Pampas prison where I’d been held for three months was still listed as open, but I’d burned it down when I left. I’d have to tell Naomi to make a note.
Helen shook her head. “Lonely Planet. Did you know the world’s oldest olive tree is here in Montenegro? Two thousand years.”
“Maybe we’ll see it when we’re done,” I told her. But I didn’t really figure we would. This job never left much time for sightseeing.
Next came Mary Alice wearing a sweatshirt that had been decorated with vacation Bible school slogans in puff paint. She wore a scrunchie in her hair and socks with her SAS shoes.
“Not a goddamned word,” she said as she shoved her bag into the storage cubby.
I grinned. “Would you like to tell me about your close, personal relationship with Jesus?”
She flipped me the bird. “Did you know they don’t check tickets on this train? Second-class passengers grab seats infirst and nobody cares. I can’t decide if that’s democratic or annoying. Also, this is the only sleeper car. The others are Serbian seated carriages.”
“What does that mean?” Helen inquired.
“Seats arranged like Amtrak,” Mary Alice said. “Those poor bastards are going to be sitting up for the next twelve hours. And I brought snacks,” she added, holding up a bag. The plan was for us to be off the train well before the final destination in Belgrade—actually, we would be long gone before the train even crossed the Serbian frontier. We’d ditch somewhere before the Montenegrin border patrol boarded the train to check papers, and make our way on foot to the nearest town to arrange transportation back to Podgorica and catch flights from there back to Venice. With any luck, we’d be safely back in Italy before the Serbian police even figured out that something worth investigating had gone down.
“What kind of snacks?” I asked just as Natalie arrived. Whatever Mary Alice was about to say died on her lips at the sight of her. Nat was dressed as a proper Montenegrin grandma with layers of peasant skirts, three separate cardigans, and a headscarf. But what really sold it for me was the live chicken under her arm.
“Natalie, what thefuck?” Mary Alice hissed. “You cannot bring a live chicken on this train.”
“Of course I can,” Nat said calmly. “She’s very tame. Her name is Nula.”
“That just means ‘zero,’ ” I told her.
Nat cuddled her chicken closer. “I know. It’s the firstnumber I found in the phrase book. You’re a lovely chicken, aren’t you, Nula?”
“I am having a fever dream,” Mary Alice said as she flopped onto one of the banquettes. “That is the only possible explanation.”
“Oh, keep your panties on,” Nat replied. “I must have seen a hundred women dressed just like me roaming around Podgorica and every damned one of them had a chicken.”
“A hundred?” Helen pressed gently.
“Okay, maybe one. But she looked really convincing as a peasant grandmother,” Natalie said.
“She looked convincing because shewasa peasant grandmother.” Mary Alice’s teeth were gritted so hard, if she chewed coal she’d be spitting diamonds.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to say ‘peasant,’ ” Helen put in primly.
“Sorry,” Mary Alice said with a sincere stab at contrition. “Economically disadvantaged Montenegrin.”