Priceless (23 page)

Carneiro wanted a letter from Hall promising he wouldn’t be prosecuted. “Done,” Hall said.

Carneiro stood. “I let you know tomorrow. I call you in the morning.”

Late that evening, Hall and I wandered out to the water’s edge on Ipanema. We lit Cuban cigars. The stars of the Southern constellations crowded the night sky. We puffed in silence for a few moments.

Hall turned to me. “Well?”

“He’s looking for a way out,” I said. “Gotta save face, get the tax man off his back, not get killed financially.”

“Right, so what do you think?”

I lifted my cigar. “We’re playing a hot hand.”

O
N
F
RIDAY MORNING
, Carneiro called Gary Zaugg, the Brazil-based FBI agent, and accepted the deal. He invited us to pick up the paintings at his school in Teresópolis, sixty miles to the north.

On the two-hour ride out of Rio, we passed mile after mile of shantytowns—open sewers, barefoot children in ragged clothes, corrugated huts that stretched to the horizon—poverty only intensified by its proximity to the opulence of Ipanema. Beyond the city limits, the road wound up into the beauty and mountains of Serra dos Órgãos National Park, a lush land of peaks, rivers, and waterfalls three thousand feet above sea level. We arrived at Carneiro’s school, a stucco storefront on the main street in Teresopólis, shortly before noon.

We confirmed Brown & Bigelow’s $100,000 wire transfer and Carneiro’s assistants brought out the paintings. He shook our hands vigorously, clearly pleased. He insisted that we pose with him for pictures with the paintings. In the photo, Hall and Zaugg stood in front of
The Spirit of ’76
and
So Much Concern
. Hall had a smile on his face now, his frown from the beach a few days before long forgotten. I held up the much smaller painting,
Hasty Retreat
.

Carneiro urged us to examine the paintings closely before we
left. “I have kept them in excellent condition, you see.” We saw that he had.

To consummate the deal, we appeared before a local magistrate for a quick hearing conducted in Portuguese. Zaugg translated. Hall and I had trouble following the proceedings. We smiled and nodded a lot. Ten minutes later, we were out the door with the paintings, headed back to Rio.

“Let’s make our own hasty retreat,” Zaugg said as we moved to the car. “Let’s grab your gear at the hotel and find the first flight out.” On the ride back, he called colleagues at the embassy and made the arrangements.

At Galeão International Airport, Zaugg used his diplomatic credentials to whisk us through security and customs with our three oversized packages. At the Jetway, I discreetly approached a Delta stewardess, careful not to spook anyone. Three months after 9/11 most American passengers and crews were still jittery, especially on long-haul flights.

I showed her my FBI badge and explained the situation. “We have to carry these onboard. They can’t go in the hold, and we can’t stuff them in the overhead racks.”

“No problem. We’ve got a closet between first class and the cockpit. You put them there. They’ll be safe.”

“Great, thanks. Really appreciate it. But, um, it’s a ten-hour flight, and I’ve got to keep the paintings in sight at all times. Our seats are in coach.”

The stewardess looked down at her folded passenger manifest. I could see from her list that first class was only half full. “Official FBI business, right?”

“Official business.”

“Well, then I’ll guess we’ll have to find you seats in first class.”

A
FEW DAYS
later, the new U.S. attorney in Philadelphia, the ambitious Patrick L. Meehan, convened his press conference. I watched
from the back of the room as Meehan stood in front of the paintings before a bank of television cameras and a room jammed with reporters.

“Norman Rockwell was that most American of artists,” Meehan said. “Here is a guy who has really caught the character of the United States, especially in times of crisis. This is an important case for the American psyche at this time.”

The next morning, a photograph of the U.S. attorney pointing to the twin towers in the background of
The Spirit of ’76
ran in newspapers across the country. Hall saw it in the Washington papers. He’d reported to duty at the Pentagon the day after we returned.

We’d proved we could take our art crime show overseas. Now it was time to raise the stakes and try it undercover.

Madrid, 2002
.

T
HE BRIEFING WAS SCHEDULED FOR 7 P.M., A CONCESSION
to the broiling June sun.

We filed into a sterile, windowless conference room inside the American embassy—four FBI agents and four
comisarios
, or supervisors, from the national police force, the Cuerpo Nacional de Policía. The Americans slid into seats on one side of an oblong conference table; the Spanish team sat on the other side.

On my first undercover mission overseas, I’d traveled to Spain to try to solve the nation’s greatest art crime—the theft of eighteen paintings worth $50 million, stolen from the home of a Madrid billionaire, a construction tycoon with close ties to King Juan Carlos. The case also carried geopolitical ramifications. It was one year after 9/11 and the FBI was aggressively courting allies against al-Qaeda. With this in mind, FBI director Robert Mueller III had personally reviewed and approved our op plan.

At the embassy, the
comisario
began his briefing in the clinical tone of the cop on the beat, a just-the-facts style that masked the political pressure he surely felt.

“On 8 August 2001, three unknown men broke a window at the
private residence of Esther Koplowitz located at Paseo de la Habana 71, Madrid. This lured the lone security guard outside and they overpowered him. The suspects used his passkey to gain entrance to the second floor. The victim was away and because the residence was being renovated, the paintings were stacked together against two walls. Eighteen paintings were stolen. They are by Goya, Foujita, Brueghel, Pissarro, and others.”

The
comisario
flipped the page in his briefing book. “We determined that the guard was involved and that his role was to give information to Juan Manuel Candela Sapiehia, the mastermind. Señor Candela is well known to us. He is a member of a criminal organization run by Angel Flores. They call themselves Casper and specialize in bank robberies and high-end property theft. We have been investigating this gang for eleven years.”

I already knew the details of the Casper gang and as the
comisario
droned on, my mind drifted to my son Kevin’s high school graduation two weeks earlier. I couldn’t believe I’d soon have a kid in college. Donna was thinking about going back to college herself, eager to finish the last credits she needed for her degree. Jeff was a sophomore, Kristin an eighth-grader. Maybe I’d bring one of them to Madrid next time….

The
comisario
held aloft an ugly mug shot and I snapped back to attention. The man in the photo was bald and bug-eyed, buck-toothed with long black eyebrows. He didn’t look like much of an art buff. More like a stone-cold criminal.

“This is Señor Candela. Age: thirty-eight. Señor Candela has been arrested seven times. Drug trafficking, falsifying official records, armed robbery.”

The
comisario
held up a second mug shot. This man was bald too, but heavier, with a scruffy goatee and hard brown eyes. “Angel Flores. Age: forty-two. Señor Flores has been arrested five times. Drug trafficking, possession of stolen goods, and armed robbery. His last arrest was 22 June 1999 for homicide—not convicted.” I did a double-take. Homicide? I knew Flores had a long rap sheet
and that he’d bragged about supposed influence with Spanish judges and police, that charges against him seemed to suddenly vanish, but no one had mentioned a murder charge. I jotted this down.

“On 4 December 2001, we searched their homes and the homes of four known associates. We found”—he turned to an aide—“
commo pruebas circunstanciales?”

“Circumstantial evidence.”

“Sí
. We found circumstantial evidence but no paintings. In February this year, we were contacted by our American friends.”

The FBI agent sitting next to me took the cue and stood. Konrad Motyka was a towering figure with bulging forearms, a thin goatee, and a crew cut. He was assigned to a Eurasian organized crime squad in New York.

“OK,” he said, “here’s what we know: In February, an extraterritorial source”—a foreign FBI informant who lived overseas—“called me to report that Angel Flores had approached him about buying the stolen Koplowitz paintings for twenty million dollars. Flores called my source because the source has extensive organized crime contacts in the former Soviet Union. My source reported that Flores was growing desperate, was short of cash and worried about paying for chemotherapy treatments for his mother, who has cancer.

“All right,” the FBI agent continued, “at our direction, my source told Flores that he’s located a potential buyer, a wealthy Russian who works with a corrupt American art expert. After many phone calls and a visit here with the source, Flores has agreed to sell the paintings for $10 million, once the art expert authenticates the paintings.”

Motyka pointed to me. “This is Special Agent Robert Wittman. He has an extensive background in art and has worked undercover on many occasions. He will use his undercover name, Robert Clay. Flores will expect him to bring bodyguards when he inspects the paintings. I will play one of the bodyguards. The other will be Special Agent Geraldo Mora-Flores, sitting here next to Agent Wittman. We call him
G
.

“Angel Flores is expecting us to deliver one million euros in cash
and transfer the rest by wire to his bank. Flores may demand routing numbers to verify that we have the funds in place. We have placed nine million U.S. in a foreign bank account.”

The FBI agent sat and the
comisario
continued. “We have one million euros, cash, from the Banco de España. For Señor Clay, we have reserved a suite on the eleventh floor of the Meliá Castilla Hotel, downtown. We will position agents in the next suite, in the lobby, and on the streets outside the hotel. One of my officers will deliver the money to the hotel room. He will be armed. I regret that under Spanish law, foreign police officers are not permitted to carry weapons.” We knew better than to try to argue the point.

Motyka wrapped up the briefing. “Tomorrow, they’re expecting a call by cell from a man calling himself Oleg. That’ll be me.”

“You speak Spanish?”

“French,” Motyka said. “I don’t speak Spanish and from what I understand, they don’t speak English. But we all understand French.”

“Which painting will you ask to see first?”

All eyes turned to me. “The Brueghel,” I said.
“The Temptation of St. Anthony
. It’s valuable, worth $4 million. It’s probably the hardest one to fake because it’s very complex—large and filled with tiny hobgoblins, wild fires, and satanic images—and because it’s painted on wood and attached to a cradle frame.”

When I got back to the hotel, the jet lag hit me hard. Motyka, fired up but also nervous because he was about to go undercover for the first time in his career, invited me to dinner. I begged off—“I’m an old man, I need to be well rested tomorrow”—and went to my room. I changed, poured a Coke from the minibar, and flipped on the TV. I found the BBC, the only channel in English. As I drifted off, I worried how the case was shaping up.

Tomorrow, if everything went according to plan:

I’d be entering another hotel room across town.

To meet a desperate, possibly homicidal gangster eager to close a $10 million deal.

Unarmed.

Dangling a million euros cash as bait.

Working with an FBI partner in his first undercover case.

Negotiating in French, a language I didn’t understand.

Swell.

I
WOKE EARLY
the next morning and rang up room service.

Stabbing at a plate of eggs, I paged through a stack of seventeen colored prints, pictures of the stolen works I’d downloaded from the FBI’s public art crime website:
The Swing
and
The Donkey’s Fall
by the Spanish master Francisco Goya.
Girl with Hat
and
Dolls House
by the Japanese modernist Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita. An Eragny landscape by the French Impressionist Camille Pissarro.
Carnival Scene
by the Madrid intellectual José Gutiérrez Solana.

The multimillion-dollar art was as intoxicating as any I’d chased.

Yet something nagged. Something felt different about this case.

It was the victim.

For the first time in my career, I wouldn’t be risking my life to return works of art to a museum or public institution. I’d be trying to rescue art stolen from a private home. For a lady I’d never met.

Who was she?

I pulled a dossier from my suitcase and opened it.

Esther Koplowitz was an heiress, a tycoon, a philanthropist, and a recluse.

A raven-haired beauty with chestnut eyes, Koplowitz was connected by birth and social status to Spain’s royal families. Her slightly younger sister, Alicia, was also a billionaire, and for decades they vied for the title of wealthiest woman in Spain. Together, their story was the stuff of Spanish legend. In business and charitable circles, the glamorous sisters were revered. In the tabloids that chronicled their soap-opera lives, the Koplowitzes drew comparisons to the Carringtons of the American television series
Dynasty
.

The sisters’ father was Ernesto Koplowitz, a Jew who fled Eastern Europe to Franco’s Spain before World War II and went on to
run the cement and construction company Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas, a company he aquired in the 1950s, shortly before his daughters were born. The company was a public works behemoth. Founded in 1900, FCC had laid the tar for Madrid’s first paved roads in 1910, won the first contract to collect household trash in Madrid in 1915, and rebuilt bridges and railways blown up during the Civil War in the 1930s. When Ernesto Koplowitz took over FCC in the 1950s, he expanded efforts to win government contracts, in part by hiring executives with connections to the corrupt regime, including the father-in-law of Franco’s daughter. FCC laid the first kilometers of modern highway in Spain, built a U.S. Air Force base, and modernized Madrid’s telephone exchange. Ernesto Koplowitz died unexpectedly in 1962, after he fell off his horse while riding at the chic Club de Campo in Madrid. He left FCC to his daughters, who were not yet teenagers. A caretaker executive ran the company until 1969, when, to great fanfare, Esther and Alicia Koplowitz married a pair of dashing banker cousins, Alberto Alcocer and Alberto Cortina, and installed them as top executives at FCC. For two decades, the husbands grew FCC dramatically, winning major public works contracts across Spain.