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
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.
THE 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 cafe and lit Cuban cigars. He ordered a round of beers and I took one, my first in fifteen years.
THE REMBRANDT 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.
OPERATION MASTERPIECE
