Priceless

agent as a witness at trial. As I understood it, the Polish police planned to keep every trace of FBI involvement quiet. Publicly, at least, Eric and I were never there, and neither was my FBI colleague from Philadelphia, John Kitzinger.

Our target was a Polish man named Marian Dabuski. On the Internet, he’d advertised for sale three Zimbabwean headrests, or mutsagos, and two Makonde helmet masks. When an honest dealer in Denver saw the offer, he tipped me. The headrests were sculpted concave pedestals, about a foot long and six inches high, and used as a sort of hard pillow during religious ceremonies: A worshiper would lie on his back, his neck supported by a headrest, close his eyes, and enter a Zen-like state in which he’d try to communicate with the dead. The headrests dated to the twelfth century, were crafted by the nomads of Zimbabwe, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, and looked a lot like the priceless artifacts I’d viewed at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris. One of the headrests Dabuski advertised online matched one stolen the previous year at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Harare. In that theft, a middle-aged white man who looked remarkably like Dabuski had walked into the museum during the day, ripped four headrests and two helmet masks from a museum wall, and run out the front door. A guard chased him into the street and cornered him, but as the two began to tussle, people in the Harare crowd mistook the black guard for the criminal and began to beat him. The white thief slipped away with his loot.

I contacted Dabuski by e-mail—I said I was an American IBM executive based in Budapest, looking to expand my collection of African artifacts. He agreed to meet me in the lobby bar of the Marriott Hotel, across the street from Warsaw’s Palace of Culture and Science. He and his wife showed up an hour late, but bearing three skull-sized boxes.

We went up to my room, which was wired for pictures and sound. The Polish SWAT team was in the room on the left, and the commanders, including Eric and John, watched via video from the room on the right. As the Dabuskis unwrapped the masks, I pretended to closely study the craftsmanship, but I was really looking for the museum’s serial numbers, etched just beneath the underside of each mask’s chin. One had no telltale marks, but on another I noticed an odd smudge. It looked like brown shoe polish and it seemed to be concealing something. When I made out part of a number, perhaps a “3,” bleeding through the polish, I knew these were the stolen masks. I agreed to their offer, $35,000 for the two masks and three headrests, and I gave the go-code.

Given my near disaster with the failing hotel key cards in Denmark, I tried a different approach in Warsaw. A member of the SWAT team simply knocked on the door, and I acted annoyed. “Who the hell could that be?” I grumbled. When I opened the door, the Poles yanked me out, rushed in and arrested the Dabuskis, throwing them on the floor and slapping black hoods over their heads. The police, following through on their plan to erase my role in the case, then put on a big show that in all the confusion I had somehow escaped.

Two surprises followed.

At checkout, the Marriott bill for the three rooms I’d booked on my Robert Clay credit card came in $800 higher than expected. It seemed that my friends from the Polish SWAT team had helped themselves to the minibars in the rooms, cleaning out all the liquor after I made my escape. Half amused, half annoyed, I paid the bill, knowing I’d face days of extra paperwork coming up with a way to justify the expense.

The second surprise came a few weeks later, after I returned to Philadelphia and the Gardner case.

I got a call from the FBI agent stationed at the U.S. embassy in Warsaw. He said that a Polish prosecutor, a man clearly in the dark about what really went down, had called with a request.

That conversation had gone something like this:

FBI agent in Warsaw: “How can I help you?”

Warsaw prosecutor: “Well, we’ve arrested a Polish man named Dabuski at the Marriott in Warsaw for trying to sell African artifacts to an American.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes, but the American got away and we’d like your help tracking him down.”

“Sure, I can try. What’s his name?”

“Robert Clay.”

The FBI agent didn’t miss a beat. “OK,” he told the prosecutor, “I’ll get right on it.”

Chapter 24 SUSPICIOUS MINDS

Philadelphia, January 2007.

FRED, THE BOSTON SUPERVISOR, REACHED ME ON MY cell phone late on a Sunday afternoon. I was home watching the NFL playoffs with my boys.

It was two months after our Paris meeting. While things remained promising, we were still waiting for the bureaucrats to clear Laurenz’s fake passport, approve the Monaco scenario, or come up with some other plan.

I knew that Fred had been complaining about me to Eric Ives in Washington. He was angry that I’d been speaking directly with Pierre in Paris and that I’d warned every FBI official involved that if we didn’t move swiftly, we’d lose our opportunity to buy the paintings. Fred believed I was usurping his role.

On the call, I grew uneasy as I detected a trace of satisfaction in Fred’s voice. Then he said, “We’re hearing that Sunny thinks you’re a cop. So this changes everything, Wittman. We’re gonna have to ease you out of this— insert one of my guys or the French UC.”

Fred was quick to presume his tip was accurate. “How do you know Sunny thinks I’m a cop?” I asked.

“From the French,” he said. Presumably from their wiretaps.

“Whoa, hold on a sec, Fred,” I said. “This doesn’t make sense. I spoke with Laurenz last night and he and Sunny are still in. I’m not surprised to hear Sunny worrying that I might be a cop. Hell, he might be talking about it on the phone to see if we react—just to test me and see if his phone was tapped. He’s paranoid about everything. Remember the triangle he drew?” Criminals are always probing each other to figure out if this guy or that guy might be a snitch or an undercover agent. It’s normal. I’d heard such talk during most of my long-term undercover cases. I’d heard it in Santa Fe, Madrid, and Copenhagen. Yet in the end, each time the criminal had succumbed to greed and followed through with the deal.

Fred made it clear he hadn’t called to debate. He’d called to give me marching orders: I was on my way out.

“From now on,” he said, “the French are going to deal directly with Laurenz. They’ll use their guy in Paris”—Andre, the undercover cop—“to deal directly with Laurenz.”

“Wait, I can’t talk to Laurenz?”

“Right now, no.”

“Fred, how’s that supposed to work? He’s gonna call me. What do I tell him?”

“We’re working that out, gonna have some meetings.”

I called Eric Ives in Washington. I told him about Fred’s call and my new marching orders.

“That’s ridiculous, Bob,” he said. “Let me see what I can do.”

I knew it wouldn’t be easy for Eric. To overturn anything Fred had done, he’d need support from his bosses in Washington, who’d have to be willing to confront Fred’s bosses in Boston. Unfortunately, supervisors in Washington are typically reluctant to confront supervisors in the field. They don’t like to make waves, especially when it pits a veteran supervisor like Fred against a younger man like Eric. The FBI is very much an old-boys network.

Street agents have a saying that explains this mentality: Mind over matter. The bosses don’t mind and the agents don’t matter.

* * *

OF COURSE, LAURENZ called me the next morning.

I told him I might have to fade out from the deal for a while. A family medical emergency, I said. I kept it vague. I told him I might introduce him to a colleague.

Laurenz exploded. “Bob, what the fuck are you talking about? The deal, it is with the three of us. You, me, Sunny. You can’t drop out. You have $30 million parked in the bank. I’m yelling at Sunny, telling him it is costing you