Priceless

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. Senor 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 Senor Candela. Age: thirty-eight. Senor 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. Senor 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.”

“Si. 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 Espana. For Senor Clay, we have reserved a suite on the eleventh floor of the Melia 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 Jose Gutierrez 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.