War could not only redistribute art but also destroy it, the report reminded Alex. Original paintings by Joan Miró and Roy Lichtenstein were destroyed during the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001. And two generations earlier, ceremonial bells confiscated from Zen temples in Japan by the Japanese army were melted down for submarine propellers.
Clue: The Great Museum Caper-the popular board game came to mind; and she recalled the Pink Panther movies and eighties-era television, with images of sleek black-clad thieves slipping through skylights, dangling in comic splendor from grappling hooks, and avoiding alarm-triggering laser beams to snatch valuables. The images that she recalled glamorized theft and the cleverness of the crooks.
Could one hate a thief who looked like Cary Grant or George Clooney? Could a female really hate an art pilferer who had a six-pack like Brad Pitt or the sultry good looks of an Andy Garcia? But the real world of art crime, she knew, wasn’t quite that way.
She kept reading.
The thieves who had swiped Edmund Munch’s The Scream in Oslo a few years earlier were as subtle, sophisticated, and charming as a kick in the kneecap. They had held terrified museum guards at gunpoint and ripped the painting from the wall. These days, armed smash-and-grab was the technique du jour-because it worked.
Her pal Rizzo’s words echoed in her mind.
High-value small items, easily portable.
Lousy security systems.
Even if resell value were five percent, the rewards were well into six figures and the risk of apprehension low.
Looking at other notable instances of art theft worldwide, the report continued:
We see some of the same tactics used on television. In April 2003, a piece of artwork by Salvador Dalí was stolen from the Riker’s Island Correctional Facility in New York City during a fire drill and replaced with a forgery. In 2002, thieves dug an eighty-foot tunnel into the National Fine Arts Museum in Asuncion, Paraguay, escaping with a million dollars worth of paintings…
Yes, Interpol could be handy. But Alex knew this from playing Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego as a kid. The report continued:
Some objects will be stolen, protected, and stolen again. The value of an art object has a dual identity, one is a dollar figure, and one is a value that exists in the mind. Art thefts occur with motivations that range from high-minded to ludicrous. Some art thieves believe that they will appreciate the piece more than their victim, as in an unsolved case involving a Pablo Picasso drawing stolen from a yacht in Miami in August 2007, possibly related to a feud between rival collectors… High values stimulate greed, which stimulates theft. A seventeenth century cello built by Antonio Stradivari and estimated to be worth $3.5 million was stolen from the home of a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in April of this year. The thief was unable to sell the cello as police closed in and the cello was discovered leaning against a dumpster near a Korean restaurant in the same city. In 1973, Richard Nixon gave “goodwill” gifts of moon rocks encased in clear acrylic to 135 nations. Most of these rocks have been stolen, including the rock given to Malta, which was swiped in June 2007. The moon is a highly prized collectable. In 2002, some NASA student interns stole a six-hundred-pound safe containing 3.5 ounces of moon rocks worth millions of dollars and tried to sell them on eBay. Greed and possessiveness could lead to the dismantling of the moon into saleable parts. Art theft also comes in the form of fanatical obsessions and impulsiveness. A New Hampshire man was arrested last year after stealing a painting of a cat drinking out of a toilet from the bathroom of a veterinary clinic. There are framed artworks hanging unguarded in almost every restaurant bathroom in the country. An anonymous artist in Portland boasts that he has stolen dozens of rubber filters from the urinals of public bathrooms with the intent of making art from them. A Thomas Paquette painting stolen from a show at Colby College in 2001 was taken because the thief liked the painting. Paquette, quoted in the Morning Sentinel in 2001, said “It’s somewhat of a compliment for someone to risk going to jail for one of my paintings.”
Alex leaned back and sighed. Facts. She hungered for facts.
There was a harsh note in the file at the conclusion, a fact of sorts:
The “grandest” museum caper in the United States remained unsolved almost twenty years later. In 1990, thieves had stolen a dozen paintings from the Gardner Museum in Boston. The thieves were dressed as Boston police officers and swiped five works by Degas, four Vermeers, and two Rembrandts. The paintings were valued at over $100 million at the time of the theft.
Not a bad night’s work. Who said crime didn’t pay?
A reward of fifteen million dollars was posted and accomplished nothing. Almost two decades later, all the works were still missing. Not a trace of any of them had ever surfaced.
Poof! Bye, bye, baby! Into the thinnest of air they had all gone.
Here was perhaps the highest profile art theft in history. There was a massive reward and legions of investigators public and private had explored the case. Arguably, if that theft had eluded resolution, how was anyone to make any headway in the disappearance of a small stone carving from an outstanding but secondary museum in a secondary world capital?
She tried to draw conclusions and was left with only one. If one wanted to recover a piece of stolen art, the best way to recover it was not to allow it to be stolen in the first place. So many of these museums and galleys, she noted with a sigh, seemed particularly adept at locking the barn door after the horses had been stolen.
Recovering a piece?
Debatable at best.
Almost a fool’s assignment.
TWENTY-TWO
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 8, EARLY AFTERNOON
Today, Maria Gómez worked in the Metro with her usual partner, Pedro Felipe Santiago. They were working a fashionable section of the city known as Bourbon Madrid, east of the old city, observing the stations together. Tighter security now meant dayshifts.
As they strolled through the Metro stop called Antocha Renfe-after the mainline train station of Atocha, which the Metro stop served-the residents, tourists, and business people swarmed around them, briskly on and off the shiny new silver trains. Maria and Pedro stood together on the busy train platform and surveyed the crowd. Not too far away, above them at street level, less crowded at this hour, were the tree-lined blocks of the Paseo del Prado, once an idyllic meadow where the Habsburgs had built a monastery in the sixteenth century. Pedro, her partner, was more than just a peer. He was a good friend and a solid supporter at work. Thus she was surprised when he dropped a small bit of news on her when they walked the tracks that Friday from Antocha Rente to Anton Martin.
Pedro would be taking the next week off. The official reason was to visit his ailing mother in Malaga. But the real reason, he confessed to Maria, was that he was going to be spending a week with a woman he had just met and whom he was falling for in a big way.
The complication was that she, the woman he wanted to spend time with, was married to a man in Madrid, a man from a good family and who worked in the financial industry. The woman and her husband had agreed to separate, and Pedro was free to go off with her. But public appearances had to be maintained for all parties.
Hence, the charade about the ailing mother.
Maria smiled when Pedro brought her up to date on the newest developments in his life. They were, as they discussed it, in the stinky darkness beneath the Calle de Antocha, with heavy traffic rumbling overhead. The sunshine of Malaga to the extreme south was a world and a half away. But Maria wished him well, even though she suffered a small pang of envy. Then she posed the inevitable next question.