“The honorable thing to do when offering a job is to give terms and let me decide.”
“I couldn’t take a chance. It was too important. We didn’t even have the skull, and to get it might have made you—” She stopped.
“Made me what?” Eve said impatiently.
“An accomplice.” Jill didn’t let her absorb that but went on quickly: “We wanted to switch a skull that’s being held in the vault at the U.N. headquarters in Jokan for a counterfeit so that you could do a reconstruction to verify the identity.”
Eve stared at her, openmouthed. “What?”
“I know. It’s not the kind of…You would never have done it.”
“That’s quite correct.”
“That’s why I wanted you to be here. I wanted you to see that schoolroom.” Her voice was shaking. “I wanted you to see what he’d done to this village. I wanted you to see what he’d done to this country.”
She stiffened. “He? Who are you talking about?”
“Nils Varak. You know it was his men who butchered those children.”
“Of course I do. He was a monster. What does that have to do with anything? Varak was killed right after the U.N. forces invaded Maldara. Some kind of helicopter explosion.”
Jill was shaking her head. “That’s what I thought.” Her voice was unsteady. “And, after what I’d seen while I traveled around the country writing my stories, I wanted to send up fireworks when I heard it had happened. I’d interviewed people who told hideous stories about him that I couldn’t write about, that I didn’t even want to remember.” Her voice was jerky. “Robaku wasn’t the first school he’d destroyed. He liked to kill the children. He told his men that it made their parents more likely to cave when they saw the remains of their children. Besides, it brought him a particular pleasure to take their lives before they’d barely started to live. And he didn’t want to make it quick…he liked the machetes…”
“Stop,” Eve said. Jill’s face was tense, pale, her words hoarse and feverish. Eve could see that she was reliving those stories, and she suddenly couldn’t stand for it to go on. “Okay, so he was a monster. Monsters should be destroyed, and that’s what they did. The French forces said there was absolute proof that they’d cut the head off the snake.”
Jill nodded. “Absolute. That’s what they said.”
Eve’s eyes narrowed on her face. “You’re saying it’s not true?”
“I’m saying that I hope it’s true. But I’m afraid it’s not.” She moistened her lips. “And what if it’s not true, Eve? What if he’s out there somewhere, waiting until all the smoke clears so that he can come out and start all over again? If not here, then somewhere else. Six hundred thousand people dead, and he killed a hell of a lot of them. And he’d do it again, he wouldn’t stop. He liked it too much.”
“I can’t believe this. Why do you think Varak might still be alive?” She was trying to remember all the details of the account she’d read on Google. “He was killed in a helicopter explosion in the mountains in the south Botzan area. The French blew him out of the sky as he was trying to escape. But they immediately retrieved his skull from the wreckage, and he’d been positively identified by DNA.” She went still, her eyes widening. “The skull? I can’t believe you’d want me to do a reconstruction on Varak. Are you crazy? Absolute DNA ID. Everyone knows it.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s true.”
“It means that it will be accepted in any court in the world. And any reconstruction I do would not have a chance over DNA results. Even if I showed the skull didn’t resemble Varak, it wouldn’t make a difference. DNA rules.”
“But it would insert an element of doubt with people who would go after Varak full throttle if they thought he was still alive.” She paused. “One of them is Novak. The director of the CIA accepted the proof that Varak was dead. Novak would have to have some credible reason for them to reopen the investigation. But regardless, he’d never stop if he was sure that Varak was still alive. He almost caught him twice while he was on the hunt for him in the mountains. He was the one who notified the French he’d be on that helicopter.”
“And he thinks that Varak slipped away?”
“He doesn’t know, but he wouldn’t put it past Varak. But he has to be sure. When I came to him, he promised