“Oh god,” Nat said, turning pale.
“It’s not pretty, but at least it looks like it was quick,” Itold her. It didn’t look anything of the sort—trains will pretty much mangle whatever’s in their path—but Nat could be squeamish where animals were concerned.
“How long are we going to be here?” Mary Alice asked.
I shrugged. “They have to clear the tracks and apparently one of the goats is wedged under the engine. Or a piece of horse is. Like I said, the words are similar.”
“Couldn’t you tell?”
“Well, there wasn’t much left,” I told Mary Alice as Natalie horked quietly. “But we’ll be here for a few minutes at least, and it looks like the entire train has emptied out to stretch their legs and look at the carnage.” The Boy Scouts had seemed particularly keen.
I didn’t have to spell it out further for Mary Alice. This was our best chance to find Galina and Tamara and the painting. With the passengers outside rubbernecking and walking the kinks out of travel-stiffened legs, there was no need to be discreet while we searched. We could do the whole train in a matter of minutes, far less time than it would take them to dismember the livestock under the train and clear the track.
We split up, Helen and Nat going forward again while Mary Alice and I headed back. The rest of the compartments were empty, doors left wide open or enough ajar that we could sweep them at a glance. We checked the Serbian compartment with its upright seats, but it was completely empty—those passengers were probably the first ones off, and I didn’t blame them. Fourteen hours sitting up was a lot to ask. Any chance to move around freely was probably welcome. I openedthe door of the compartment where we’d left the dead man and took a quick peek in. Still dead and right where we’d left him up in the third berth.
We passed only one closed door in the sleeper carriage. I tapped and a gruff voice called out a response in Spanish. “Ocupado!”
“Perdona,” I called back.
“No es importa.”
We went back the way we came, meeting up with Helen and Nat outside our sleeper.
“No sign,” Helen said.
“Oh, we found her,” I replied.
Mary Alice blinked. “We did?”
I grinned. “Galina Dashkova went to boarding school in the Pyrenees. The Spanish part.”
Mary Alice let loose a stream of profanity that had even Natalie staring at her in admiration.
“How do we get her to open the door?” Helen asked. “Half the locks don’t work, but Galina and Tamara will have barricaded themselves inside.”
“Smoke?” Mary Alice suggested.
“On it,” I said, grabbing a bag of Nat’s snacks.
“What’s to stop them going out the window with the painting?” Helen asked.
“I’ll go around and cover it,” Nat said. “Give me a head start and take care of Nula,” she added, thrusting her chicken at Mary Alice before she headed out.
“I am not babysitting a goddamned chicken,” Mary Alice said, shoving the bird at me. It squawked a bit and I backed up.
“Not it,” I said.
Helen sighed. “Give her to me.” She took the chicken and opened one of the sleeper berths, tossing the bird inside. She slammed the berth closed and dusted off her hands. “Problem solved.” I could hear the chicken fussing which was a good sign.
“Natalie is going tokillyou if anything happens to that chicken,” Mary Alice said.
Helen shrugged. “That’s a later problem. The now problem is how to smoke Galina and Tamara out of that compartment.”
I waved the bag of snacks I’d purloined from Nat. “I told you, I’m on it.”
They followed me to the compartment where we’d heard the Spanish reply. There was a slim chance that there actually were Spanish tourists on the train which is why I didn’t just set fire to the door itself. (That, and it was Soviet-era steel.) Instead, I knelt in front of the door and studied the space between the door and the floor. When the compartment was built, it would have fit snugly, but after five or six decades of hard wear, a gap of a good half an inch had opened—plenty for my purposes.
I opened a bag of tortilla chips and took out my lighter.