Priceless (30 page)

Late that night, the Swedish police called to report that Lindgren had returned to the Kadhums’ apartment across the border in Stockholm. The lights stayed on late, they reported.

The next morning, the Swedes called to say that Lindgren and the Kadhum brothers, Baha and Dieya, were on the move. Dieya, the youngest, carried a shopping bag with a large square object inside.

Over and over, I reminded everyone to stay cool, so as not to spook the targets. I knew this was especially tough for the Swedish police. Their agents were following men they believed to be carrying a stolen Swedish national treasure, and they were supposed to watch these guys just slip out of the country with it.

When the train crossed the border into Denmark, which meant they would arrive at the hotel within the hour, I began last-minute preparations. I made my quick call to Donna in Pennsylvania, my silent reminder not to get too caught up in the mission. The Rembrandt might be priceless, but it wasn’t worth my life.

I cleared my head and went through a mental checklist of how things were supposed to go down: Kostov meets a Kadhum brother in the lobby, brings him and the painting to my room. We meet, I leave to get the cash, return, and let him count it. Kadhum shows me the painting, brings it back without Kostov. I authenticate it, Danish SWAT officers burst in.

I thought about that last detail, the SWAT team. I went to check in with the commander next door and repeated the go-code—“We have a done deal.” Almost as an afterthought, I decided to test the duplicate electronic key card the commander planned to use to
enter my room. I stuck the key in my door and it didn’t work. I tried again and again. Unbelievable. Exasperated, I ran down to the lobby to get a new set of keys, sweating by the time I returned. This was always the way. Despite all the support staff and backup, the undercover operative knows he is truly on his own. I left the new key with the SWAT commander. He was munching on a sandwich.

A
T 6:17 P.M
., an FBI colleague called me from the Danish command center to report the Kadhum brothers’ arrival in the lobby. Baha Kadhum, empty-handed, was headed up with Kostov, he said. Dieya Kadhum was staying in the lobby, holding the package.

Damn, I thought. We were just getting started and already the plan was changing.

I heard a soft rap at my door.

I told the FBI agent, “Look, buddy, talk to you later.” I hung up the phone and moved to the door.

I let Kostov and Baha Kadhum inside.

Kadhum was all business. “You have money?”

“There’s no money here,” I said. “Not yet. It’s in another room. I have to go get it.”

Kadhum cocked his head, confused. I played the patient but experienced mobster. “If I lose the money,” I said, pointing a finger at my head, pulling an imaginary trigger, “boom—they shoot me dead.” Kadhum smiled. I smiled back.

I raised my hands, palms up. The Iraqi understood. I was a fellow criminal and needed to pat him down, to make sure he wasn’t armed or an undercover cop wearing a hidden microphone.

I went through the motions, patting Kadhum’s ribs, even lifting his shirt slightly, pretending to check for a wire, but I stopped short of a full search, hoping to gain a bit more of his trust. “I don’t worry about you,” I lied.

He smiled, and I said, “Just sit back and I’ll get the money.” The
moment I entered the hallway, I exhaled. At the end of the stairway, I moved up a flight of stairs to a safe room where FBI agents Calarco and Ives waited. Ives handed me the black bag with a quarter of a million dollars, cash.

On the grainy surveillance video, we could see Kadhum sitting on the bed, fidgeting with his cell phone, checking text messages. Kostov tried to chat him up in Arabic, but Kadhum seemed annoyed, distracted. He focused on his phone and gave the older man curt answers.

I returned and plopped the black leather valise on the bed. Kadhum quickly dug his hands in. I looked over at the TV, and pointed at the variety show on the screen. “I like this,” I said, and laughed. Kadhum, eyes on the money, ignored me.

That’s when I knew we had him. Kadhum had
the look
, the one most criminals get when they believe they’re going to get away with it, when they think their plan is going to work. Kadhum wouldn’t back out now. He was too close. He was holding $245,000 cash in his hands.

Kadhum put one stack on the bed and pulled out another one. He flipped through the bills to make sure each one was real. He placed that stack on the bed and grabbed the next one.

I said, “Is it all there?”

He grunted and kept counting. Kostov stood silently by the door.

When Kadhum finished, I said, “You bring a bag?”

“No, I didn’t.”

I laughed, and offered him mine. I unzipped a side pocket and took out my tiny art tools and put them on the table. It was all part of the show.

Kadhum took his eyes off the money. “Can I see?”

I took out the tools, one by one. “This is a black light…. This I use to measure…. This is a microscope. See the light on it? This is the flashlight I use in case I have to look at something dark.”

Kadhum quickly lost interest and turned silent. His mobile phone chirped; he checked a text message and frowned. He studied my face. Something seemed wrong.

He was deep in thought and at this point I didn’t want him to think. I just wanted him to finish the deal. What was he up to? Why the delay? Did he really have the painting? Or was this a shakedown, a robbery? I tried to move things along. “You want to go down and get the painting?”

“OK.”

Another text message arrived and he looked annoyed, confused.

I tried to retake control. I said, “I’ll put the money back, and then what happens is we’ll go down, we’ll go get the painting and bring it back up and if it’s good, I’ll get the money and you can have the bag.”

Kadhum had his own plan. He wanted to show me the painting downstairs, and then return to the room for the money. I didn’t like that. I wanted everything to happen in the hotel room, where it would be videotaped, where no one else could get hurt, where I could control the environment, where armed Danish police could storm the room at a moment’s notice.

I said, “I’ll wait here for you, OK?”

“It’s up to you,” Kadhum said.

At 6:29 p.m., he left with Kostov.

I counted silently to thirty, then grabbed the bag with the money and bolted into the hallway. I burst into the stairwell, raced up one flight, and handed the bag to Calarco.

I went back to the hotel room and waited. After a few minutes, I checked in with Bennett, the FBI agent stationed in the Danish police command center. He was keeping in touch with the police watching the man in the lobby who was holding the bag with the painting. We were expecting him to hand Kadhum the bag.

He had bad news. “Subjects just ran from the hotel…. Headed down the street toward the train station…. Stand by….”

Shit. I started pacing, anxious. Where were they headed? Did they know it was a sting? If so, how? Was it something I said? Something
Kostov said? I slumped on the bed. Would the Danes move in now? Would they try to grab the package the Kadhum brother ferried from Stockholm?

Just then, my borrowed Danish cell phone lit up. It was Bennett. “Hold tight. Subjects went to a second hotel and came out with another package. They’re on their way back.”

A second hotel, a second package. Smart, I thought. The first was a decoy, designed to test the Swedish police during the train ride. They’d sent the painting ahead with a fourth man.

At 6:49 p.m., I heard two knocks at the door.

It was Kadhum—and Kostov. I was furious to see Kostov, but tried not to show it. My unpredictable cooperator was violating my explicit instructions to get lost when the painting arrived. He knew I did not want an extra body in that tight space during the handoff, the most critical time, but he’d come anyway.

I was uncharacteristically blunt. “We don’t need you here. You’re welcome to stand in the hallway.” He lingered anyway.

Kadhum handed me the shopping bag and offered to be frisked again.

I knew he’d been under surveillance the entire time he’d been gone. “I don’t have to worry about that,” I said. I did eye the bag with suspicion. If this were a robbery, it might be booby-trapped.

I looked at the package. “You wanna take it out for me?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to touch it.”

I knelt on the bed and pulled a package from the bag. It was about the size of the stolen Rembrandt, and wrapped tightly in black velvet cloth with string. I struggled to get it open. I laughed as if this was no big deal, but it wasn’t funny. I pressed my knees on the bed to give myself more leverage, but the damn thing wouldn’t come undone. “I don’t know how to untie it.”

Kostov wandered over, trying to be helpful. He stood between the hidden camera and me, blocking the agents’ view.

“Sit down,” I whispered to Kostov. “You make me nervous.”

“I don’t make you nervous,” Kostov said loudly. “Don’t worry.”

Kadhum got curious. “You know each other long time?”

Kostov, again helpful: “We know each other from Los Angeles.”

I cut him off. “Nah, I don’t know him too well. I’m an art dealer.”

Kostov nodded. “He’s an art dealer in Los Angeles.” The guy could not keep his trap shut. He was going to blow it. He was breaking the cardinal rule—needlessly spouting lies we couldn’t back up. I didn’t know L.A. well enough to cover us. It was as dumb as my mistake of telling the backflap smugglers I was a lawyer.

I masked my growing irritation with a laugh. “And New York and Philadelphia. Everywhere.” I tried to change the subject to the matter at hand, the string. “It’s not coming off.”

Kostov leaned closer, crowding me. I dug my nails into the knots, bit with my teeth and then, finally, the string came undone. I peeled away the velvet cloth and lifted the frame. I checked the back. All six back clips were still in place, two slightly skewed, just like in the museum photographs.

I looked up. “The frame is correct. You never took it out of the frame, huh?”

Kadhum was incredulous. “We wouldn’t dare. It’s a Rembrandt.”

I kept a straight face. “Are you an art lover?”

“No, I just want the money.”

I stood up and grabbed my tools, ready to inspect the painting. “I need to go in a dark room. I can’t see it in the light.”

Kostov mumbled something. I couldn’t understand him, but I played along anyway. “Could be,” I said. “But the varnish is a little thick.”

Kostov, still the fool: “Yes, the varnish, it’s very fresh. You can see for yourself.”

Gently, I lifted the painting and carried it toward the bathroom. I motioned to Kadhum to follow me. I pulled a tiny ultraviolet scope from my pocket, and flipped the lights off in the bathroom. I squinted as I raked the ultraviolet light across the painting, about an inch from the surface. An untouched, original work carries the same uniform dull glow throughout the surface. If the painting has
been retouched, then the paint fluoresces unevenly. The test is simple, but it can catch the most frequent frauds—usually sloppy attempts by sellers who try to fake a signature or a date. So far, so good. If this was not the real thing, it was a great fake.

With Kadhum over my shoulder, I put the scope by the sink and took out a thirty-power magnifier and a ten-power jeweler’s loupe. Every painting has a fingerprint: the crackling that forms over the years as the varnish dries, creating a random and distinct pattern. From enlargements of museum photographs, I had studied the right-hand corner of
Self-Portrait
, just above Rembrandt’s ear, and memorized the pattern. It matched, but I didn’t let on. I pretended to keep studying the painting, waiting for the Iraqi to grow bored and walk away. When the sting went down, I wanted to be alone in the bathroom. In a firefight, it would be the safest place. Bathroom doors lock. Most have tubs made of steel or some other hard composite capable of slowing bullets.

A few seconds later, Kadhum’s cell phone buzzed and he drifted into the bedroom to check a text message.

I gave the signal to the SWAT team. “OK,” I said loudly. “This is good. We’ve got a done deal.”

I heard footsteps in the hallway and leaned out of the bathroom to check the door.

The key-card clicked, the handle turned, and then—the door jammed.

Shit.

Kadhum whirled and our eyes locked.

We started to race for the door and heard the key-card click again. This time, it banged open violently. Six large Danes with bulletproof vests dashed past me, gang-tackling Kadhum and Kostov onto the bed.

I raced out, the Rembrandt pressed to my chest, down the hall, to the stairwell, where I found Calarco and Ives.

*    *    *

T
HE NEXT DAY
we met the U.S. ambassador and Copenhagen police chief for a round of atta-boys. We posed for trophy photographs with the cash and the Rembrandt. I stood in the background, doing my best to keep my face out of the pictures.

That afternoon, I took a stroll into Tivoli Gardens with one of the FBI agents from California. We found a table in a café and lit Cuban cigars. He ordered a round of beers and I took one, my first in fifteen years.

T
HE
R
EMBRANDT CASE
garnered headlines worldwide, raising the Art Crime Team’s profile to new heights, inside and outside the FBI. Within weeks, our tiny squad would have trouble keeping up with all the attention.

On the flight home, I thought about all I’d accomplished in a little less than a decade. I’d gone undercover a dozen times, solved cases on three continents, and recovered art and antiquities worth more than $200 million. At this point in my career, I felt prepared to overcome almost any obstacle any case might present, foreign or domestic.

Indeed, just nine months later, I embarked on the most challenging case of my career: I would go undercover to try to solve the most spectacular art crime in American history, the $500 million theft from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

It is a story that begins with an auction in Paris in 1892.