gaze studying Eve’s face. “She’s going for it. She only wants us to tell her the best way to do it.”
“Wrong. I want to tell you how I’m going to do it,” Eve said. “When you leave here, I’m going to start on the reconstruction of the six-year-old girl who’s next on my list. I’ll get as much done as possible today and tonight before you give me the Varak skull. I hope to get past the measuring to the initial sculpting. At that stage, a layman can’t tell how much is being accomplished. Then I’ll start work on Varak. That will be slower; depending on condition, it may take me up to three days. If I’m interrupted or have to leave the museum for any reason, I’ll hide Varak away and put the six-year-old on the dais in his place.”
“Only three days?” Jill leaned forward, tense. “Are you certain?”
“No, not if the damage from the explosion is more extensive than I think. But they would have had to have found some kind of basic bone structure to even begin to identify Varak and start to search for DNA. You said there were five passengers on that helicopter?”
“Including the pilot,” Novak said. “But according to my interrogation of Varak’s men we captured after the explosion, Varak was wearing a leather jacket that day. There was melted leather in the rubble near the remains of the body.” He grimaced. “Which was basically the skull.”
“And the jacket led you to the right victim,” Eve said. “How convenient that they didn’t have to waste time beginning their search for the DNA. Particularly since the whole world was so very eager to know that Varak was dead.”
“Do you think that didn’t occur to me?” Novak asked. “But the French forces had made the kill and were in charge of the investigation. The U.N. told us to back off. Why do you think I even listened to Jill when she came to me with that story about Hadfeld?”
“Because you’re not an idiot,” Jill said. “Though you should have—” She broke off and turned back to Eve. “If the skull isn’t too degraded, it will only be three days. That would be enough time. Novak said that the safe is only opened for a visual check every five days.”
“Only? You appear to like that word. I’m glad you think it’s going to be so easy,” Eve said dryly. “It doesn’t seem like that much time to me to do the reconstruction, determine if it’s Varak, then erase all signs I’d even done the work so that you can slip it back into the safe as if it had never been touched.” She added grimly, “And, if it’s not Varak, then everything will probably blow up in my face.”
“Our faces,” Jill said quietly. “You’re not alone in this. Anything that happens to you happens to me from now on.” She smiled faintly. “If you get tossed into jail, they’ll have to give me the next cell.”
“I’d prefer to avoid that possibility,” Eve said. “I have a son to raise, and I don’t want to leave it up to Joe.” She glanced at Novak. “Which brings me to what I have to do to keep Joe from going ballistic about this. Joe told me that you’d met him. Did you actually think you could keep him out of it?”
“I was hopeful. But I was considering options. Unfortunately, developments are escalating.”
“You mean because I was poisoned yesterday? You mean because no one told me what had happened to Jill before she drew me into this nightmare? Yes, I think either one of those events might have caused Joe to believe the situation here had escalated out of control.” She added, “And I haven’t told Joe any of the details about either one, but I’m going to have to do it. Jill gave me your name to reassure Joe, but he’s not going to be reassured by the fact that I almost died and you can’t find the chef who was responsible for the poison. Has that changed?”
“No, Gaillon hasn’t shown up back at the hotel. I suspect he might have taken a bribe and skipped the country, or he might have proved embarrassing to whoever hired him and was taken out. I’m exploring both possibilities. I’ll let you know as soon as I know.”
Eve was shaken for a moment by Novak’s coolness and complete lack of expression. But then she should have expected it. Jill had told her he