Priceless (24 page)

Scandal struck in 1989. Paparazzi photographed Alicia Koplowitz’s husband dancing in the arms of the scantily clad wife of a Spanish marquis. Alicia promptly divorced her husband and fired him from FCC. When a second tabloid caught Esther Koplowitz’s husband cheating with his secretary, she too filed for divorce and expelled him from the family company. The publicity-shy sisters suddenly found themselves feminist heroes in Spain and majority owners of a $3 billion company. In 1998, Esther bought out Alicia’s stake in FCC for $800 million.

By the time I arrived in Madrid in the summer of 2002, Esther Koplowitz was principal shareholder of FCC and an accomplished businesswoman in her own right. The company’s annual revenues were approaching $6 billion and it employed ninety-two thousand
people worldwide. FCC grew so large it was now one of the thirty-five publicly traded Spanish corporations whose stock price set the Ibex index, the local equivalent of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Koplowitz had also become a noted philanthropist. A patron of the arts and the infirm, she started a foundation that contributed more than sixty-two million euros to Spanish charities. She gave fifteen million euros to create a national biomedical research center, and millions more to fund group homes and day-care centers for adults suffering from mental illness and cerebral palsy. Koplowitz and her three daughters enjoyed homes in the country, the city, and at the shore. The white, modern, two-floor penthouse from which the paintings had been stolen overlooked a lovely Madrid park.

U
NDERCOVER WORK TAKES
patience.

Criminals are rarely punctual. They may show up early to conduct countersurveillance or, more likely, arrive late to demonstrate who’s in control. Or forget where or when they were supposed to show up. They’re criminals, not bankers. Sometimes they just get there when they get there—whenever they feel like it, whenever they finish whatever it was they were just doing.

This drives most cops and agents nuts. They like to be in charge and are trained to try to control every situation. They take comfort in military precision and punctuality. They like to make a plan and follow it. I learned long ago to play it much looser.

On the morning of our sting, June 19, 2002, I locked my real wallet and passport in my hotel room safe, swapping them for my Robert Clay identification. I met Motyka and G in the lobby and we took a cab to the gleaming Meliá Castilla Hotel, where the Spanish police had reserved the suite in my name. The five-star Meliá rises in the heart of the city’s commercial center, not far from the Santiago Bernabéu soccer stadium and Paseo de la Castellana, one of Madrid’s grandest tree-lined avenues.

From my undercover suite, Motyka dialed Flores on his cell phone, at 10 a.m., right on schedule.

No one answered. Motyka tried again a half hour later and once more an hour after that. Each time, the call went straight to voice mail. At noon, Motyka dialed again.

He snapped his cell phone shut. “Negative.”

The
comisario
in the room frowned. He’d positioned perhaps one hundred officers in plainclothes wandering the lobby and streets outside the hotel. A lot of them were probably working overtime, earning time and a half. I chuckled to myself. Apparently, working a major undercover case in Spain was no different from working one in the United States—sometimes you had to work just as hard to keep your own side calm and focused as you did chasing your targets.

I broke the uneasy silence. “Hey, who’s hungry? Should we get some lunch? Walk around?”

“Good idea.”

We killed an hour wandering through the shops near the hotel, Motyka gripping his cell phone so he wouldn’t miss Flores’s call. I found a lovely hand-painted fan, black with red flowers, and bought it for my daughter, Kristin. G found a few souvenirs of his own. We slipped into one of the Museo del Jamón sandwich shops, with large hunks of ham hanging in neat rows. We ordered a couple of sandwiches and bottles of Orangina, and grabbed a standing table in the back, out of the sun.

Motyka glared at his silent cell phone. “I think the Spanish police are ready to pull the plug. What do you think?”

G said, “I don’t know. Doesn’t look good.”

I said, “I think everyone should relax. Give it time.” I held up my sandwich, trying to change the subject. “This is great, huh? Wonder if I could smuggle one on the plane for the ride back?”

“Shit,” Motyka said. “He’s not gonna call.”

“Whoa,” I cautioned. “These things happen on their own timetable. We gotta give it some time. Don’t worry about what the
comisarios
are saying—that this isn’t going to work out.” I lowered my voice. “Look, buddy, you’ve got to remember that the Spanish police have their own agenda here. They can’t be too crazy about us being here, after working a case for six months, getting nowhere. What’s it going to look like if the FBI waltzes in here and solves it in a few days? Now, they couldn’t refuse our offer to help—that would look bad—but they’re probably going to be pretty quick to shut us down. That way they can say they gave the FBI plan a fair shake. You can’t worry about that. What you’ve got to do is stay positive.”

“I don’t know.”

“Give them a couple of days,” I said. “We’re offering ten million. They’ll call.”

Motyka looked glum. “Hmmm.”

“Look,” I said, “we finish our sandwiches. We walk back. We call again. If Flores doesn’t answer, we call back in a few hours. It’s all we can do.”

“I don’t know.” He was beginning to repeat himself.

But back at the hotel, Motyka couldn’t keep his itchy finger off the redial button—3 p.m., 5 p.m., 6 p.m., and 9 p.m. I began worrying about the repeated calls. Only cops and fools pushed that hard. We had the money. They wanted it. We held the upper hand. The calls made us look desperate. Like amateurs, or worse, cops.

I let Motyka know. He shrugged off my advice.

When yet another call failed—this time around midnight—the
comisario
finally stepped forward.

“I’m sorry, but it’s late,” he said. “My men have been waiting a long time.”

Motyka reluctantly nodded. Suddenly, everyone seemed to be giving up. Some of the FBI agents even started talking about arrangements to fly home. It seemed premature, but I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t my call. As I left for the night, Motyka was still huddling with an FBI agent from the embassy.

I went back to my hotel to call home and say good night to Donna and give my love to the kids, and then grab some sleep.

M
Y PHONE BUZZED
in the early morning darkness.

“Bob?” It was Motyka.

“Yeah, what’s up?” I groggily asked, blinking at the alarm clock. It was 6 a.m. What the hell?

He could barely contain his excitement. “I talked to Flores! I tried him one more time after everybody left. And he answered! We got cut off but we spoke three times. He says he’s got the paintings. It’s on!”

I sat up wide awake. “Dude!”

“Yeah, I know.”

I wanted details. “So what was the deal? Why wasn’t he answering his phone?”

“Some bullshit. Said he had to go out of town. He says he’ll be back this afternoon, and to call at 5 p.m. But bottom line: We’re on.”

I asked about backup. “The
comisarios?”

“Sanchez got ’em to agree to give us one more day.”

“Great news. I love good news. Nice work, buddy.”

We met again in my suite at the Meliá that afternoon. At 5 p.m., we gathered around as Motyka dialed Flores.

No answer.

Motyka tried five more times over the next four hours. At 9 p.m., the
comisario
stepped in and shut down the operation. It appeared, he said, that the Flores gang was toying with the great FBI. These were very good criminals, the
comisario
said, with very good sources. Perhaps they’d gotten wise to the sting. Perhaps they were bluffing all along. Tell you what, he said. We feel bad about this and we’ve arranged to take you out to dinner tonight. Our treat.

The consolation dinner at the hotel restaurant was grim. What was there to say? We’d be returning empty-handed. The FBI director
would receive a full report. We’d wasted a lot of time and money. I still couldn’t believe we were giving up so soon. But, keenly aware of the political realities, I didn’t say a word.

By dessert, we’d run out of small talk and fell into silence. G poked at the half-eaten flan on his plate. Motyka stared blankly into a full glass of sangria. The
comisario
chiseled a thick wedge of chocolate cake with a spoon. I stole a glance at the newspaper by G’s elbow, headlines from the international edition of
USA Today
. “Housing starts soar, lifting economy. Gov. Ventura drops out of the race. Fires rage in the West. Senate tells baseball: Test for steroids….”

Motyka’s phone rang, startling us out of our listlessness.

He spoke in French.
“Oui? … Oui? Bon, bon. Pas de problème.”
Motyka broke into a smile.
“Vingt minutes? Um, uh, l’entrée du Hotel Meliá Castilla? … Mmmm … OK, à bientôt.”

He snapped the phone shut. “We’re on again. The lobby. Twenty minutes.”

W
E WAITED FOR
the targets in richly upholstered high-backed crimson chairs in the lobby. A pair of Asian blue and white vases, probably cheap knockoffs, stood behind us. A set of antique locks lined the shelves of a hutch against the far wall. Those, I could see, were real.

Motyka spotted Flores and Candela in the foyer and met them with firm handshakes. They lingered for a few minutes and the FBI agent brought Candela to meet me and G in our seats. Flores stayed about twenty feet away, standing, arms crossed.

To my surprise, Candela spoke English.

He seemed thrilled to meet an American art expert and I seized on this, turning to a technique I call “the decoy.” With the decoy, you create a bond by finding a common interest, one that doesn’t have anything to do with the case at hand. If I pulled it off, the target would be lulled into thinking he was teaching me something I
didn’t know. It was the same technique I’d used when I got Joshua Baer to teach me about Indian artifacts, when I got Dennis Garcia to send me magazines about the backflap, when I got Tom Marciano to mail me a copy of the law that says selling eagle feathers is a crime.

I offered my opening gambit to Candela. “Hey, do you like antiques?”

“Sí.”

“Come here, I want to show you something I really like.” I led him by the arm to the far wall and to the display case of antique locks. For a few moments, we talked about craftsmanship and history.

“They’re from Seville,” he said. “These locks are famous there.”

“Really?” I said, feigning interest.

“If you like, I’ll take you to Seville sometime and show you.”

“Sure, I’d like that. You could show me which are the best to buy.”

We moved back to the red chairs to talk about the paintings. I nodded at Motyka and said, “My friend takes care of the money. I take care of the paintings.” Candela smiled at that.

I told him I’d want to see the Brueghel first for verification. He agreed, but just to be sure we understood each other, I took out my stack of pictures of the stolen paintings.

“Brueghel,” I said, flipping to the page with the painting.
“The Temptation of St. Anthony.”

He looked at me quizzically.

“Brueghel,” I said again.

Candela studied the paper printout. “That’s from the FBI,” he said. “This list, from the FBI.”

I caught my breath. Candela was better than I thought. The pictures were indeed from the FBI’s public website. I’d cut them out and pasted them on blank pages, figuring they were just pictures of paintings. But Candela instantly recognized the sizes and formats from the bureau website. Apparently, he’d been busy researching his robbery.

Concealing my terror, I stuck close to the truth. I smiled and said, “You recognize that, huh? The FBI site, yes. Only place I could find all the pictures.”

Candela let out a hearty laugh. “Ah, the Internet. Yes, the FBI has best pictures.”

I laughed too, trying not to sweat. What a screwup. What a save.

Candela took the stack of images and began thumbing through them, putting a check by the paintings still for sale, an
X
by the ones he’d already sold.

When he finished, I said, “You’ve sold seven already?”

“For eight million.”

I didn’t know whether to believe him. “Nice,” I said.

“How about I show the Foujita? It’s smaller. Fits in a suitcase.”

“No, no,” I insisted. “The Brueghel.”

“OK, let’s go,” he said, standing. “I take you to the painting.”

We weren’t prepared for a rolling surveillance, and I worried the Spanish might move in and ruin everything if we started walking toward the door.

“Whoa, I’m not going anywhere,” I said, trying to look as terrified as possible. “You bring me art, I’ll look at it. I’m an art professor, not in your business.”

Candela smiled, knowingly. He turned to Motyka. “Ah, that’s right, he’s not a professional like us. He’s afraid.”

Candela stood. “Tomorrow afternoon, then.” We shook hands.

Motyka walked with him to Flores, still standing about twenty feet away. I couldn’t hear them, but I presumed they were making the arrangements.

I looked at my watch. It was nearly 1 a.m.

T
HE NEXT AFTERNOON
, in the minutes before Candela arrived in our suite, I dozed off, slouched in a chair.

I woke to the Spanish undercover agent staring at me. “How can you sleep? Aren’t you nervous?”

I could understand why
he
was nervous. He was guarding 500,000 euros with a tiny five-shot pistol, toting it to and from a bank vault each day, putting his career on the line each time he took the cash. I said, “Nah, I’m not nervous. Jet-lagged, hot.” It was 6 a.m. in Philadelphia; the air-conditioning in our five-star suite was broken. It was 90 degrees, inside and outside.

I wandered over to the window and opened it, hoping to catch a breeze. I stuck my head out. I looked down and jumped back inside. “Yo, G! Check this out!” I motioned out the window with my eyebrows. G ran to look.