Flawless

by Scott Selby

  They were still for a long moment, listening intently for any faint echoes of pounding footsteps from the floors above. Nothing happened. The thieves realized that they were still safe and went back to work, this time with the Styrofoam panel and its handle. The handle was from a glorified dust mop of comic proportions, used to clean cobwebs from the distant corners of vaulted ceilings. The dust mop part had been discarded long ago; now its telescoping handle was attached to the Styrofoam.

  Holding the panel before him toward the motion detector, one of the men crept into the safe room like a hunter wielding a spear at a lion. Even though the motion detector had been masked with the aerosol spray to reduce its ability to detect the infrared energy of their body heat, he reduced his movements to slow motion. The movement of the panel would have triggered the sensor’s microwave radar as it was inched forward, but the alarm wouldn’t sound unless the infrared detector also went off. They both had to be triggered simultaneously for the alarm to go off.

  The panel fit perfectly over the small white device. A few dollars’ worth of expanded polystyrene foam, a ten-dollar duster, a scrap of metal, some strips of black tape, and a can of aerosol spray had neutralized the Diamond Center’s alarms. The total spent on these materials was less than it would cost for all the thieves to have lunch at one of the restaurants on the nearby plaza.

  Notarbartolo called Tavano at 12:33 a.m. to report that they were inside the vault. From what Tavano could tell of the police radio chatter, the thieves were still undetected.

  Before the thieves got down to the untested business of opening the safe deposit boxes, there was one more task. During his many trips to the vault, Notarbartolo had noticed a mass of wires running above the ceiling slats just inside the door of the vault and was worried that they led to some other alarm that was too well hidden to notice.

  They dismantled part of the ceiling and took a look. The bundle of multicolored wires was pulled partially out of the ceiling, and, as Peys later said, “tampered with.” The thieves spent little time with them, however, perhaps quickly discerning what the detectives would later learn from the building staff and the security company: that the wires were not part of the alarm system. In fact, during the investigation, no one could remember what they were for.

  “We asked everybody what the meaning of that was and nobody knew,” Peys explained. “Nobody could tell us. That tampering had no use at all, it had nothing with the alarm, nothing with the light, nothing with any detector.” Satisfied that the wires posed no threat, the thieves left the wires hanging loose and didn’t bother replacing the ceiling slat.

  Time was ticking away and the bulk of their effort was still ahead of them. They carried their heavy bags from the foyer into the vault and began unpacking their supplies. Soon, the floor was scattered with duffel bags, backpacks, water bottles, and all manner of tools.

  Since each box required a key and a combination to open, the thieves had long ago rejected the subtle approach; there was simply no way to crack the code and pick the locks on almost two hundred individual safes in just a few hours. Drilling would be time consuming and risk creating vibrations that could be sensed by the seismic detector. Just in case their device didn’t work, however, they also had the power inverter, the heavy battery, drills, and an arc welder to cut through the safe deposit box doors. But their invented tool was their best bet.

  In the middle of the vault floor, they assembled their specially designed pulling device. The device consisted of a long square aluminum rod about a foot long, which was fitted with two rectangular metal legs each about four or five inches long. When placed on the ground, this frame looked like a crude toy bridge.

  Through a slot in the center of the bridge between the two legs, the thieves inserted a long steel bolt with a flat metal tip on the end with a hole through it. Then another piece of metal shaped like a clamp was attached to the flat end of the bolt with a hinge that allowed the clamp to rotate independently on the end of the bolt.

  To the other end of the bolt—the part that protruded through the top of the bridge—they screwed a stout metal plug about the size and shape of a large flashlight battery. On opposite sides of this, they attached two slim metal tubes parallel to the bridge. These tubes created a handle; twisted to the right, the clamp attached to the bolt was pushed away from the bridge, and twisted to the left, the clamp was pulled toward it. The final attachment was a steel prong with a small lip that was inserted into the clamp. The prong was modeled after Notarbartolo’s safe deposit box key and worked as a hook that would pull the door open.

  The tool resembled an oversized corkscrew, and it worked on the same principle. Once fully assembled, it was aligned over one of the safe deposit box doors, with the legs bracing it above and below the door. Although the doors were different heights, the legs were adjustable, meaning the device would be able to open the tall safes as easily as the letterbox-sized ones. The prong was inserted into the keyhole and twisted so that the lip rotated inside the keyway behind the plug. The handle was turned to the left and the bolt slowly drew back the clamp holding the prong, causing it to pull outward on the key plug. Once it bound tightly against the key plug and the handle became more and more difficult to turn, the tension was enough that they could let go of the contraption and it stayed attached to the door, with the “bridge” design now perpendicular to the floor. At that point, it was just a matter of applying enough force to the handle to bend the deadbolt as the door was pulled outward.

  Since he was by far the most muscular of the men, Finotto was the likely choice to crank on the handle, twisting it mightily as if he were tightening rusty lug nuts on a car. The door didn’t warp, but it began opening, pulled by the steel pin inserted into the plug. There was the sound of wrenching metal as the deadbolt bent and scraped against its housing. Then came the loud crack of plastic from inside the box as the faceplate gave way.

  Finally—BANG. The box popped open with the sound of a firecracker, but they did not worry too much about the noise. The seismic sensors wouldn’t be triggered by isolated thumps, otherwise they would go off every time someone dropped a gold bar. And Jacques’ apartment was six stories up from the vault level and in a different building, so it was impossible for him to hear. Although Jorge Dias De Sousa was off duty, there was a chance he was in his own apartment, but his was four stories from where the heist was taking place, on the second floor of B Block.

  The group of eager thieves crowded forward to see what the box contained. After lovingly unfolding white diamond papers, the School of Turin finally held diamonds in their gloved hands. The polished ones refracted the dull white light of the vault into a disco ball –like assortment of rainbow colors.

  As they forced open each new box, the loot began to pile up. One box contained seventeen stones, all of them just under two carats except for a larger one that was closer to three carats. The same box also held a small container with a white gold chain, a silk Chinese bag containing old heirloom jewelry, a bracelet, a few ladies’ watches, a pair of diamond earrings, two Bulgari watches (both a man’s and a woman’s), a diamond-studded bracelet in a plastic bag, and another bag with a variety of white and yellow gold rings studded with diamonds. Finally, it contained a wad of U.S. currency totaling $8,000.

  They moved the tool to another box and broke it open with another loud bang. There they found a brooch with marquise-cut diamonds, a brick of pure gold, a gold medallion inscribed with the name “Frans,” gold earrings, gold cufflinks, and a gold men’s Rolex. There were also two other gold watches (one decorated with twenty diamonds), gold pendants embedded with amethyst and pearls, and gold coins, some imprinted with the seal of Baudouin of Belgium, the king from 1951 to 1993. This box also contained a treasure of gemstones, many in their certification blister packs from the HRD and the GIA. Carefully wrapped diamond papers contained dozens of loose stones as well, in marquise, heart, pear, and brilliant cuts, ranging in size from a half carat to more than four carats. Part of
this collection included a rare hexagonal one-carat black diamond as well as numerous industrial diamonds.

  The thieves quickly settled into a well-organized routine. One of them opened the safe deposit boxes as quickly as he could while the others sorted the loot, their work punctuated by the loud popping of the doors springing open. Diamonds were thrown together into the same bag; watches, jewelry, and cash went into their own bags. They knew they had to be selective, so Notarbartolo took on the role of impromptu gem evaluator, deciding quickly which stones to take and which to discard. There was no point in wasting space with industrial diamonds when they had their pick of the far more precious gemstones.

  If the adrenaline had waned in the time it took them to get down to the business of opening the boxes, it was now surely surging again. For the School of Turin, this was the Christmas morning of a lifetime, each newly opened box investigated with held breath and wide eyes.

  One box contained nothing but diamonds—one hundred and forty of them. They were poured into the canvas tote bag like gravel into a sandbag. Another box was stuffed with fat bundles of dollars and euros, twenty Napoleonic gold coins, a matching set of men’s and women’s gold watches and bracelets, several gold chains with gold pendants, a long string of pearls, and three heavy bars of solid gold. A third box held stock certificates, gold European Currency Units—the predecessor to the euro—a gold tie pin, a brooch with rubies, a brooch with diamonds, a diamond armband, and a matching diamond bracelet and earring set. There were gold necklaces, bracelets, and rings in several small boxes. There was also an envelope with the name “Estelle” printed on the outside that contained several gold pieces.

  The thieves emptied this envelope and tossed it on the floor in the middle of the room, as they did with all the other containers found inside the safe deposit boxes, from cardboard cigar boxes to expensive velvet jewelry cases. The vault was soon littered with empty silk bags, felt-covered ring boxes, metal fireproof drawers, leather handbags, canvas shoulder bags, briefcases, and even Tupperware containers. To this growing pile, the thieves added pictures, letters, business invoices, transaction ledgers, company documents, cheap jewelry, personal items, credit cards, at least one passport and even a load of bullets. Though valuable enough to the tenant to store in a subterranean vault, these items were of little value to the thieves when compared to the diamonds and cash they were gathering.

  Unless the safe deposit boxes contained business information, the thieves didn’t know from whom they were stealing. Their victims included individuals as well as large companies. They stole a gold cigarette box, a wedding ring, a tourmaline clip with embedded emeralds, and a cache of diamonds weighing about ten carats, among other items, from a box owned by Fay Vidal, the IDH Diamonds employee who was nearing retirement. They even plundered the box owned by Julie Boost, the building’s manager, who stored valuable jewelry, including a white gold watch with diamonds, gold necklaces, three diamond rings, and a gold brooch.

  As frequently as the School of Turin hit upon personal boxes, they also cracked those belonging to the big diamond companies. These were virtually spilling over with glittering, dazzling stones, which often represented the entire assets of the company that owned them. The thieves stole every carat.

  One such box held one hundred and twelve huge rough diamonds, the size of skipping stones. They were the De Beers specials from the most recent Sight, found in a box belonging to Pluczenik Diamond Company, one of the biggest De Beers Sightholders. Exclusive Diamonds lost three hundred and eighty-one carats’ worth of loose stones while another company, Emrusadiam, lost nearly three thousand carats. The thieves stole from Diabel a package of nine diamonds worth $31,000, another box of seventeen diamonds worth $68,000, and a cornucopia of loose colored stones known as fancies, ranging from brown cognacs to yellow canaries. Capital Diamonds later estimated it lost more than a half-million dollars’ worth of diamonds. The bags in which the thieves poured these diamonds began filling quickly because many of the polished stones were in their blister packs, which took up space but which were valuable because they proved authenticity.

  Just as the thieves could guess when they were stealing from a wholesaler, it was also obvious when they opened a box owned by a jewelry firm, as these overflowed with gleaming rings, necklaces, and bracelets. One box produced a 100-gram gold Cartier bracelet that, in the value of the gold alone, was worth about $10,000; a gold necklace with a pendant spelling “Sony”; and a ring with the initials “J.H.” In another box, they found a custom diamond-studded cigarette lighter, a gold Star of David, and a package of Israeli bonds. Another box stored a stash of about a million U.S. dollars.

  The School of Turin opened forty boxes, then fifty, then sixty. The thieves stopped only to switch off the duty of cranking the boxes open with the pulling tool, which required a lot of exertion. They drank bottled water they had brought with them, throwing the empties on the pile of discarded bags and boxes. Their work surely raised the temperature in the vault, but, so long as the Styrofoam stayed in place on the motion detector to mask their movement, they didn’t worry about setting off the alarm. Regular phone calls to their colleagues on the outside confirmed that the streets of Antwerp were as quiet and sleepy as ever. No one had any idea what they were up to in the subterranean vault.

  The only sign of movement at the building occurred around two in the morning when Jacques Plompteux returned to the Diamond Center with his brother-in-law after their night out drinking. As they entered, they virtually traced the School of Turin’s footsteps through the garage and through the door leading to C Block. Jacques later told police that they went straight to his apartment and then to bed while the biggest heist in history was taking place several floors below. Half an hour later, Jorge—who was not on duty and who had been having dinner at his parents’ house, followed by drinks with a friend—also returned to the Diamond Center. He later reported to the police that he didn’t see or hear anything unusual when he returned to his apartment that night.

  Down on the vault level, there was a sudden snag in the plan: the pulling tool broke with the unmistakable high-pitched ping of shearing metal. The steel prong used to pull the doors outward from the keyhole had broken in half without so much as budging the door they were attempting to pry open. It was only a momentary problem; the School of Turin wasn’t to be outdone by equipment failure, and, from one of their bags, they pulled out another metal prong. They’d had several made just in case the tool wore down and broke after enough use.

  What they didn’t know was that stressed steel had nothing to do with the prong’s wearing down. The safe deposit box on which their tool broke was one of several that locksmith Paul De Vos had upgraded over the years—this newer door did not have a plastic faceplate covering the internal lock mechanism, but a reinforced steel faceplate. Had the Diamond Center acted on De Vos’s earlier suggestion that all the safe doors be replaced with sturdier ones, the pulling tool wouldn’t have worked at all.

  For the thieves, it was a mystery. While most doors opened with relatively little resistance, a few didn’t budge at all. They discarded the prongs that snapped in half in the pile of empty boxes on the vault floor and moved on to try other safe deposit box doors. Although they were quickly amassing an enormous fortune in the bags at their feet, they had no intention of stopping until they opened every door they could before it was time to leave.

  Some of the boxes had contents worth as much as any jewelry store they’d ever robbed in Turin. Some had more. From one, they grabbed a platinum ring with more than seven carats of stones, a four-carat marquise diamond, a pearl necklace, gold bracelets, gold necklaces, an envelope with 22,000, packages of uncut diamonds weighing about two hundred carats, and a creatively designed brooch depicting a bird in its nest made of gold and diamonds.

  The vault looked like a bomb had gone off, with shrapnel made of gems and gold. Safe deposit box doors stood agape around the room. On the floor was a riot of empty bags and boxes, in additio
n to bracelets, rings, gold ingots, and loose diamonds. As their bags were crammed with ever more treasure, they needed to be selective about what they could take with them. To make room for the most valuable items, they had to sacrifice some that were worth less.

  A metal prong broke off in the keyhole for box number 25. This may well have been the last of their backups. It was shortly before dawn and they had been working hard in a state of heightened anxiety for many hours. They had broken into one hundred and nine of the Diamond Center’s one hundred and eighty-nine deposit boxes. Notarbartolo’s own safe deposit box was among those that were not breached, part of a large section of still-locked doors that the School of Turin hadn’t gotten around to breaking open.

  The thieves had been awake since whatever fitful sleep they’d been able to get Friday night. Adrenaline—and the euphoria of stealing as yet uncounted millions of dollars in diamonds—could only last so long. They were approaching the giddiness of full-blown fatigue, and there were many risks ahead. They needed to make their escape while it was still dark outside. They didn’t want to risk there being any traffic on the street or any early risers walking their dogs before church. Besides, it was best to exit while the concierges were likely to be sound asleep; neither of them was likely to get up early on a Sunday morning.

  Leaving, however, was easier said than done. They had a heavy load of tools and treasure to sneak out of the building. Some tools were sacrificed to make space for more loot; they left the crowbar, for example, amid the debris from the boxes. That was a surprising deviation from the discipline they’d honed throughout every other aspect of the heist. On a normal job, they would carry out with them everything they had brought in. The School of Turin knew that investigators would carefully examine anything left behind for clues, and its standard mode of operation was to give the police as little as possible to go on. The men had been careful to ensure that the items they planned to leave behind—such as the Styrofoam and the tape on the light detector—had been thoroughly cleaned to eliminate fingerprints or other clues.