“We are. But not directly to Houston. When a major, early-winter storm hit the Ohio Valley last week, one to two feet of snow took out power lines and caused outages. That gives us an excuse and ability to fly them into the States through Cleveland. We have a factory-owning friend of the nation in Columbus who’s agreed to order the generators as our cover. Then we’ll truck them down to Houston.”

“I’m impressed,” said Yossi. “Those folks on the second floor know what they’re doing.”

Dafna chimed in. “Now comes the hard part. How do you get the sheets from the generators to the back of the paintings?”

“Good question. Step one is getting Alicia away from her workshop—like out of town away. Not only do we need enough time to affix the sheets, we need…how long for the epoxy to dry around the edges, Nicole?”

“Twenty-four hours.”

“And that clock starts after we put the sheets on. So we’ll need Alicia gone for a couple of days, and we’ll have to do it on a weekend so the crew isn’t around.”

“Getting Alicia gone will be a problem,” Nicole said. “Flying in the helicopter from the yacht to the Singapore airport, Alicia said she was done with travel for the time being. She’s exhausted and just wants to be home for a while.”

Dafna turned to Liora, and with her pinky sticking out, said, “We chatted in my private helicopter as we left the mega yacht, and Miss Marcos said she was simply exhausted.”

“How lovely it is to be able to fly high above all the peasantry,” Liora added, striking the same pose.

Nicole threw the balled-up wrappers from two candy bars at them. “Anyway, I don’t know how we’ll get her away for that time.”

Nir turned to Yossi. “I’ve got an idea. Use your little boat locator site and tell me where the Mayan Princess, the Manatee Baby, and the Rock-a-Little are right now.”

As Yossi typed, Nicole said, “Nir, I told you. She’s not interested in any more travel.”

“That’s unfortunate for her, because I’m going to one hundred percent guilt her into making one more trip. If it wasn’t for my brilliant idea, she’d still be one of those peasants you guys are now helicoptering over,” he said with a grin.

“Boom!” Lahav said.

“Got them,” Yossi announced. “Mayan Princess is off Trinidad. Manatee Baby is near Cyprus. And Rock-a-Little is alongside St. Martin.”

“Mushlam.” Nir slapped the table. “Gabriel Calvo, who owns the Mayan Princess, and Don Bernier, who owns the Rock-a-Little, both owe me favors for services rendered, which shall remain nameless. Nicole, I can get you ladies on both, and they’re right there in the Caribbean. Alicia will barely have to fly at all. That should give us two nights in Houston to get this done.”