Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History

by Ben Mezrich

  Powder in a keypad, Phase One—it really was James Bond kind of shit. But still, he knew that he hadn’t yet crossed any real line; he hadn’t yet done anything that he couldn’t turn back from. Powder on a keypad, a dozen e-mails with a potential buyer—it was still little more than a mental game. But Thad also knew that within forty-eight hours, this would all change. Because he was determined now; the plan was in motion.

  Phase One was complete. Which meant it was time for Phase Two.

  Seven. Six. Five …

  …

  Orb,

  I’ll handle this for Axel. He’s explained to me a good bit about what we’re doing and the need for caution and discretion. It seems to me that you and I are going to have to make arrangements to meet somewhere to make sure we’re getting what we think we are. This is a rare opportunity and calls for us to be very careful. When and where are we going to be able to get together? I travel a good bit but will certainly make arrangements to see the merchandise wherever it might be necessary. I understand you are in Tampa, Florida. I certainly wouldn’t mind taking a trip to Florida. I look forward to hearing from you.

  Lynn.

  A throbbing burst of high-octane Christian rock exploded out of the dashboard speakers of Thad’s dilapidated, bright green Toyota as he navigated through the South Houston rush-hour traffic. He had one hand on the wheel while the other leafed through the stack of printed-out e-mails that took up much of the empty passenger seat next to him. The Christian rock was more than a little annoying—and by no means his first choice—but the Toyota had made the acoustic decision for him, as its pathetic excuse for a radio had frozen on the one channel Thad would have eagerly tried to avoid. But at the moment, stuck as he was in traffic on his way to Phase Two of the Plan in Motion, anything was preferable to silence. Silent, Thad couldn’t think past the bolts of nervous energy that were playing havoc with his internal organs—and at this stage of the game, he needed to be able to focus entirely on the preparation at hand.

  At the next red light, he used the few seconds of nonmotion to leaf past the top e-mail on the pile—which happened to be the first real message he’d gotten from the sister-in-law of the Belgian rock collector, Lynn Briley—to the more recent e-mail he’d received from Gordon. Just as Thad had done with Emmermann, he’d asked his Utah buddy—he wondered if the word accomplice was now more fitting—to check out the Belgian’s American relative, to make sure she was who she said she was. Gordon hadn’t found much, but there was at least evidence that the woman existed—and confirmation of a few details of her story:

  Hey, Orb.

  Here is the only thing I found on Lynn Briley. She is a publisher in Glenside, Pennsylvania, it seems, and then there’s the Web site address. Nothing else for now.

  Fractal.

  Thad found it slightly amusing that Gordon had begun referring to him by the nickname Gordon himself had created—Orb. Thad thought Gordon’s own handle was much more indicative of his pothead friend’s disjointed character: Fractal. But it was certainly better and safer to use the nicknames than to use their real names—Thad just wished he could have devised the handles on his own. He didn’t like that any element of the scheme—even something as simple as code names—was not of his making. Even worse, the face-to-face meeting with this Lynn Briley—and the exchange of money for moon rocks—was now going to have to take place in Florida, because for some inexplicable reason that’s where Gordon had set his fictitious Orb Robinson.

  Then again, Florida wasn’t the worst choice in the world—it was far enough away from Houston to allay some of Thad’s fears, but it was still reachable by car. Thad had no intention of trying to get on an airplane carrying the contraband that he’d soon have in his possession.

  Contraband. It was still hard to think of it that way, such a loaded term, like he was going to be dealing in drugs or some other dirty, underworld substance. He knew that the thing he was after was much more precious—even if NASA had labeled it trash. It was the most valuable thing in the world, actually, and even if he was only going to get $100,000 from the woman, it was going to be a heist of historic proportions. And as he engaged in Phase Two of the preparation, Thad had every right to think of himself in historic terms.

  Restacking the e-mails on the passenger seat, he took a right at the next intersection, then navigated his way through a patchwork of suburban streets until he came to a driveway he recognized from a handful of previous visits. As he had arranged, the purpose of his visit was parked right next to the curb, leaving just enough room for him to get by; a moment later, he’d parked his Toyota halfway down the driveway. He retrieved the e-mails, shuffling them into a manila folder that was wedged between the two front seats. Taking the folder with him, he stepped out of the Toyota just in time to see Chip come out the front door of the small suburban house. Chip gave the Toyota one look, then rolled his eyes.

  “Oh, yeah, this is a great deal. No wonder you couldn’t find anyone closer to campus to help you out.”

  Thad laughed as he tossed Chip his car keys. Then he started toward the Jeep Cherokee that was parked along the curb. It was just as Thad remembered it from the Galveston ferry: almost as scuffed and aged as the Toyota, with mud etched into the tires and a spiderweb of tiny cracks in a corner of the front windshield. But the thing was almost twice as big as the Toyota, and with the backseat down, it was going to be perfect for what he had in mind. Even more important, Thad could easily make out the NASA parking sticker affixed to one of the side windows.

  “I promise to return it in just as good condition as it is right now. And it’s only for the weekend. We should have my friend moved into her place by Sunday night, at the latest.”

  “Take as long as you need,” Chip said as he turned back toward his house. “The keys are in the ignition. But I want dibs on the skydiving excursion you’ve got planned for next month.”

  “I promise, you’ll be the first one out of the plane. Heck, I’ll pack your parachute myself.”

  Thad slid into the front seat of the Jeep, twisted the key, and grinned as the ignition turned over. Again, this felt almost too easy. Chip hadn’t suspected anything at all—and why should he? Helping a friend move apartments was a perfectly good reason to need a car as big as the Cherokee. There was only one more component to Phase Two—and then Thad would be able to call the girls to let them know he was moving on to the final phase of the preparation.

  It took about ten minutes of driving for Thad to find what he needed next. As he pulled a sharp left into a strip-mall parking lot, he glanced about to make sure there weren’t any signs of security or parking-lot cameras. Then he pulled the Jeep to a stop between a pair of American-made cars, near the very back of the lot.

  He got out of the Jeep, then quickly crossed to the back of the closer car—a Buick that looked to be at least fifteen years old. Thad bent down behind the rear bumper like he was about to tie his shoe—and then, in one quick motion, slid a small screwdriver out from where it was taped within his sock. Of course, he could have carried the screwdriver in his pocket—but that would have felt much less James Bond.

  He rapidly went to work on the Buick’s license plate. The first screw gave him a little bit of trouble, and he was sweating by the time he got it free—but the other screws went much easier. Within a few minutes, he had the license plate off and moved back behind the Cherokee. Another five minutes, and he’d removed the Jeep’s license plate and replaced it with the Buick’s. He tossed Chip’s license plate into the rear of the Jeep, then jumped back into the driver’s seat. As he reentered traffic, he realized that his heart was beating fast. He still hadn’t crossed any real lines—but now he was driving the getaway vehicle. A Jeep that wasn’t associated with him, that had a NASA sticker affixed to a window and a stranger’s license plate above its rear bumper.

  Four. Three. Two. One …

  …

  Almost five hours later, Thad was really breathing hard, putting all of his weight into his
shoulders, straining the muscles in both legs as he shoved the motel bed, inch by inch, across the vomit-colored carpet. He hadn’t expected the damned thing to be so heavy; everything else in the pathetic little motel bedroom looked flimsy as hell, from the color TV bolted to the fake-wood bureau by the door to the light fixtures that hung from the chipped plaster walls. Rebecca had picked the motel, and it was obvious she had chosen it right out of the yellow pages. But despite the horrid decor—of which the vomit rug was only the centerpiece, highlighted by a pair of cheap-looking paintings of hunting dogs above where the bed used to be—the motel was ideal for a couple of reasons. First, it was right off the highway, which meant it wasn’t too close to the JSC campus, but it wasn’t so far away that they would have to spend hours in transit. And second, the place looked nearly vacant; Thad had counted only three other cars in the parking lot, and he had made sure to pick a room on the first floor, surrounded on one side by the ice machine and on the other by what appeared to be a janitor’s closet. With any luck, there would be nobody nearby when they arrived after the heist.

  Thad felt a thrill move through him, even as he continued to struggle with the unusually heavy bed, as he repeated the word under his breath. Heist. It sounded so cool in his ears. The heist of the century. The heist of the millennium. The great moon rock heist.

  He laughed out loud, and with a final burst of energy managed to shove the bed the last few feet so that it was finally right up against the wall. Then he stepped back, working the cricks out of his shoulders as he surveyed the room. Now there was plenty of space for what might be necessary.

  He crossed to the bureau and retrieved the oversized duffel bag that he’d placed next to the TV. He unzipped the duffel, and first pulled out a pair of folded-up tarplike sheets, which he spread out over the nausea-inducing carpet. Then he returned to the duffel and, one by one, laid out the tools he’d purchased from Home Depot along with the tarp—a pretty wide variety, because he wasn’t certain what he was going to need. After the tools, he retrieved a large fishing-tackle box, three pairs of rubber gloves, a notebook, and a folded-up mailing box.

  After he’d laid everything out, he stood back, smiling. It was a nice-looking staging area. The tools themselves weren’t exactly high-tech; the most sophisticated of them were basically a saw and a handful of industrial-strength blades. But he had been working off a limited budget. And he was proud that he was planning to do this with such meager supplies. It was one thing to pull off a heist like this with the best supplies that money could buy. But to succeed the way Thad intended to succeed—that was going to be something truly amazing.

  He grabbed the duffel, which was still fairly heavy, then pulled out his cell phone and dialed Rebecca’s number. She answered on the first ring.

  “Is it as bad as it looked in the yellow pages?” she asked, by way of a greeting.

  Thad glanced back over his shoulder as he reached the door. Bed up against the wall, tarp laid out across the floor, bristling with shiny new tools.

  “Actually, Rebecca, it looks fucking beautiful.”

  Phase Three was complete.

  Houston, we have liftoff …

  28

  “I don’t think anyone else is going to show up.”

  Thad drummed his fingers against the steering wheel as he peered up through the windshield. Even with the wipers at full blast, he couldn’t see much through the swirl of fierce rain that enveloped the entire parking area. The tiny cone of orange light from the Jeep Cherokee’s headlights was no match for what had now become a torrential downpour.

  “Of course nobody is going to show up. It’s a goddamn hurricane out there.”

  He turned to look at Rebecca, who was sitting in the passenger seat next to him. She was hunched forward over the dash, rubbing a hand against the condensation that was slowly spreading across the inside of the windshield. He could see that her pale hand was trembling and there was a little bit of sweat forming on her upper lip.

  “It’s freaking tropical, that’s for sure,” Sandra butted in from over Thad’s shoulder. “I mean if anyone else was going to show up, they’d turn right around as soon as we got to the observatory. Superman couldn’t see the stars through this mess.”

  Thad exhaled, adding to the condensation on the window, then gave Sandra a look in the rearview mirror. She was right up against the back of his seat, sitting Indian style on the flat surface they had created in the back of the Cherokee by lowering the second row of seats. She looked almost as nervous as Rebecca, though her voice didn’t betray nearly as much tension. Behind her, Thad could make out the bulky form of the duffel, and the jutting metallic shape of a much larger object, which they had picked up on the way to the rendezvous point. The heavy metal thing had cost more than all the other tools combined—and the funny thing was, Thad was actually hoping they wouldn’t ever need to use it. But as always, he lived for the details, and at this point, he wasn’t taking any chances. Like the staging area in the cheap motel, preparation was all about planning for the things you didn’t see coming. Like an unexpected tropical storm, exploding out of nowhere, screwing up their carefully planned alibi.

  It was Rebecca who had come up with the idea of putting together the observatory run the night before they planned to pull off the heist. And Thad had easily gotten more than a dozen commitments from people—mostly co-ops and interns, but even a few older scientists who had heard him talk about his popular Utah Star Parties—who were excited by the idea of spending Saturday night gazing at the stars.

  Thad and the girls had loaded up the Jeep Cherokee, bought the final piece of equipment at a specialty store Thad had found online in downtown Houston, and then headed over to the meeting point, arriving a little early so they could be there when the other cars arrived. When, by nine-thirty, it had begun to drizzle, none of them had been all that concerned. In Houston, the weather came and went so quickly the meteorologists were basically throwing darts at a map. But by nine forty-five, the drizzle had become a storm, drops the size of lizard eggs crashing against the windshield and the fiberglass top of the Jeep like they were sitting in the midst of a goddamn meteor shower.

  The tension inside the Jeep seemed even more explosive. Even though the heist itself wasn’t going to take place until tomorrow, they had all agreed that the Saturday-night excursion was going to make for a perfect beginning to their alibi.

  The alibi was ruined, but Thad didn’t feel discouraged at all; in fact, the rain splattering against the windshield, as well as the obvious tension taking hold of his two young and pretty accomplices, was giving him a palpable thrill. Even the word alibi excited him as he added it to the list. Alibi, accomplices, heist.

  As the excitement reached a peak—the rain slamming down above his head, the perfumes of his two accomplices mixing with the scent of adrenaline—Thad had a sudden thought, which he immediately put into words.

  “Why don’t we do it now?”

  The question echoed through the interior of the Jeep, for a brief moment drowning out the sound of the rain. Thad glanced over at Rebecca. She was staring at him, her hands clenched against the dashboard in front of her. God, she was beautiful. Even in the dark, broken only by the dim light from the headlights and the few blinking diodes from the dashboard—she was truly beautiful. The wash of love he felt when he looked at her filled him with strength, tripled his determination.

  Sure, he had only known her a few weeks, but she was giving him an almost inhuman power, pushing him to do the impossible. But it wasn’t Rebecca who broke the silence; it was Sandra.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Think about it,” Thad said, his voice now a whisper. “We’ve got all the equipment with us. We’ve got the hotel room. And it’s almost ten o’clock on a Saturday night. That’s even better than a Sunday. Nobody’s going to be there.”

  He was still looking at Rebecca—and then he saw a flash of brightness form behind her eyes.

  “The rain is a perfect
cover,” she whispered. “Nobody can get a good look at the Jeep. The exterior cameras will be pretty much useless. It’s kind of perfect.”

  Thad reached out and put his hand on top of hers. He could feel that her entire body was trembling. He started to tremble too, but not because he was afraid.

  He looked into the rearview mirror, matching Sandra’s gaze. Slowly, she nodded.

  “Holy shit,” Thad said. “We’re really going to do this, aren’t we?”

  And then he reached for the ignition.

  …

  Rebecca was right; the rain was a perfect cover. Thad’s heart was beating in tune with the oversized drops as he pulled the Jeep to a stop in front of the security kiosk at the outer gate of the JSC campus—but almost immediately, he realized that neither of the two burly guards inside was going to stick even a limb out of their warm, cozy nest. They certainly weren’t going to come outside in the downpour to inspect a vehicle with a NASA sticker emblazoned on the side window.

  In fact, the closest guard didn’t even shine his flashlight in Thad’s direction as Thad dutifully held his ID card out his half-open car window. Thad knew from experience that the guards never really looked at the pictures on the IDs, but the rain was added security. There was no way anyone inside the kiosk would be able to tell that there were three people in the Jeep; nor would they notice the large, bulky metal object in the back. And even if one of the cameras affixed to the kiosk roof, or the camera attached to the gate—which was already in the process of swinging up to let them through—managed to get a shot of the Jeep’s license plate, it wouldn’t make any difference. The plate wouldn’t match anyone who worked at NASA, and if the authorities one day questioned the poor dude who had parked in the back corner of a strip mall the day before, they’d never connect him to Thad or his accomplices.