Marie Antoinette's Watch: Adultery, Larceny, & Perpetual Motion

by John Biggs

  In 1982, when they launched the brand, they sold out the initial run of seventy thousand pieces in fifteen days. In 1983, the group sold one million watches, and by 1986 they had sold twelve million units. Collectors often bought two, one to wear and one to keep in its original package, and fans camped overnight outside of stores before new releases. Some rare Swatches, such as an oddly shaped fish-themed watch called the Andrew Logan Jellyfish, now sell for in excess of $20,000, not a bad return on an original $30 investment.

  Although Swatches proved a fad, it was a lasting one, and their success sustained the Swatch Group’s collection of older firms, including Breguet, through the quartz crisis. “I needed to keep my people in jobs at my ninety factories,” Hayek explained later. “And to have work, you needed volume, and volume was only achievable with watches like Swatch.”

  Once he had stabilized the Swiss industry, Hayek turned his attention to his prestige brands. Although he knew little about Breguet prior to purchase (“It was just a name to me,” he said), as his oldest and most prestigious brand it was the jewel in his crown. The company made only four thousand watches a year, posting an unimpressive annual profit of one million Swiss francs. The company hadn’t had a hit in years.

  When Hayek took over, Breguet’s factories were in run-down buildings in Brassus and Le Sentier. After he purchased the company in 1999 from Bahraini investors for $175 million, he moved the headquarters to l’Abbaye, closer to the traditional heart of watchmaking, to simplify transportation of parts among different factories. Watchmakers were born, lived, and died in the Vallée de Joux, and there was a “Vallée mentality,” as Hayek saw it, a method for doing one thing one way and never deviating from the path. It was his goal to shake things up, to create new movements, complications, cases, and watches that had never been seen before but still had a strong link to Breguet’s earlier, best-known work. He mined the company’s records for odd watches to reproduce in miniature, and the same Middle Eastern potentates who had once owned Breguet came knocking on Hayek’s door, asking for new watches from the company.

  At the new Breguet headquarters,which consisted mostly of offices where the marketing and design teams met and worked, Hayek would roll through every few weeks like an itinerant preacher. When he was in the office, his door was never closed, and waves of supplicants arrived to pay homage, get his signature, or ask his sage advice on a watch face or business move.

  Over the years, he assembled a substantial collection of original Breguet watches, including the Number 5, which had moon phase, power reserve, and large date indicators, and which Hayek had bought for $1.1 million. According to Hayek, in 2001 one of Breguet’s rich customers, a sultan, called asking to buy the watch. Hayek demurred, saying it wasn’t for sale. “Then he came back, he said, ‘Okay then make me one,’” Hayek recalled. Two weeks later, the sultan thought better of it, called Hayek again, and upped his order to five. Ultimately, the Sultan ordered ten of the watches — five automatic and five manual.

  Deconstructing the original No. 5, the Breguet team created a new movement small enough to fit inside a wristwatch case without sacrificing any of the complications. After making ten for the sultan, in 2002 the company offered the watch for sale in its catalog, dubbing it the Classique and pricing it at $32,000.

  The success of the Number 5 wristwatch project led Hayek to dream bigger. When the Marie-Antoinette had disappeared in 1983, Hayek was distraught. Now, he felt confident that he could re-create the watch, which he knew would make a splash on the watch scene. He ordered it rebuilt and gave a small group of master watchmakers a large workshop and unlimited resources.

  The project manager was known only by the one-name sobriquet Francois, lest rival factories try to poach him. He looked more like a starving artist than a watchmaker, but his skinny, nicotine-stained fingers could coax magic from steel and gold. He spent his days in the workshop and his weekends at the Genevan watch markets, buying parts that had become obsolete decades — if not centuries — before. For the Marie-Antoinette project, he saw to it that the entire team was unhindered by the rules and strictures imposed on the factory’s other watchmakers.

  The team began by doing research. Obviously, the original 160 wasn’t available to take apart, and most of Breguet’s firsthand notes had been lost in the French Revolution, but the team found a valuable resource in The Art of Breguet. Most helpfully, the book featured Daniels’ close photographs of the Marie-Antoinette. The Daniels’ book described Breguet’s habits and the different techniques used by his watchmakers. Most important, Daniels had also made a detailed drawing of the Marie-Antoinette and taken close-up photographs of it.

  The team examined other complex watches made by Breguet, including the Number 5 and the Duc de Praslin watch, at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris. The Praslin had a perpetual calendar and a readout for the equation of time on multiple retrograde dials. Like the Marie-Antoinette, it was staid and understated, with a white face, Breguet numerals, and a playful back displaying a moon phase in a field of engraved clouds.

  Using the photographs, drawings, and surviving Breguet watches, the watchmakers were able to divine the shape of some of the 160’s parts, and the engineers were then able to match different parts to different complications. They had initially been stumped by a set of gears that seemed to be connected to the seconds hand, but after digging through other Breguet watches, the watchmakers discovered that the seconds hand was a dead-beat complication that made the seconds hand tick once per second like a modern quartz watch.

  The watchmakers then scanned in the photographs and began building CAD/CAM models of the watch around the depicted movement. In this way, they were able to measure each piece individually and assess its depth inside the watch. Because each part had to fit with others with a minuscule degree of tolerance, the watchmakers had to geometrically divine the position of each of the 823 pieces. The re-creation of the Marie-Antoinette took two years to build and consisted of 823 minuscule parts.

  Nicolas Hayek would unveil the watch at the prestigious 2008 Baselworld Expo in Switzerland. Experts valued the new watch, called the 1160, at over $11 million, briefly making it the most expensive watch in the world. It came in an inlaid wood box taken from a tree that had been felled by blight on the grounds of the Petit Trianon. The design on the top represented a scene from a painting by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun of a young Marie-Antoinette in blue, her hand holding a beautiful, rich white rose. A secret button on the side of the box unlatched the case, which opened with a pneumatic whisper to reveal the watch within, along with one of its white enameled faces.

  Even before its public debut, however, the reconstructed 160 had been upstaged by a startling series of events. As his team was working on the re-creation, Hayek received an anonymous email from someone in France claiming to be in possession of the real, stolen Marie-Antoinette. As Hayek recalled later: “It said ‘Mr. Hayek, I have the watch. I purchased it from the people who stole it, and I live near Jerusalem. I am ready to sell it to you, but I paid $120,000, and I want more money.’” The e-mailer informed Hayek that he would travel to Switzerland to close the deal.

  Over the years, Hayek had fielded, and dismissed, many offers from people who claimed to have seen or owned the watch and requested a king’s ransom in return. He was weary of false leads and skittish collectors who implied they had a connection to the missing masterpiece. He promptly informed the Swiss police about the latest offer.

  “I did not want to have it,” Hayek said later, “Because, look, it was a watch that had been stolen and it was probably in very bad shape. Now that I have rebuilt it, I have it. I have a much better one than that is perfect. What is the difference? If you have a woman that you love, whether she is 250 years old or 18 years old. Mine is 18 years old, and I let them have the one that was 250 years old.”

  Something about the mysterious e-mail left him with a hunch that the watch would soon resurface. Then, as he was playing a game of pool at his house
one summer day in 2006, a report came on the radio. The Marie-Antoinette, it said, was back in Jerusalem.

  Chapter 16

  Tel Aviv

  On August 16, 2006, after Zion Yakubov had met the mysterious pregnant lawyer and first held the Marie-Antoinette in his hands, the old jeweler made a call to Rachel Hasson at the Mayer Museum. Hasson and Yakubov had met two years before, when the art dealer brought a friend to see the items he had donated to the collection. Now, he explained the situation, told Hasson about the lawyer, and said, “Rachel, I just want to see if I saw your stuff.” She invited him to the museum and they met in the library, a small, cool room that offered a respite from the day’s oppressive heat.

  Hasson had dealt with fakers before, and would normally have assumed that this was another one. But “sightings” of the collection were by now fairly uncommon. Hucksters had moved on to newer cons. So, she spoke briefly about the collection and then brought out the book Watches & Clocks in the Sir David Salomons Collection, the complete description of the collection written in 1980. Yakubov opened the book to a random page, thumbed through a few more, and pointed. On page 267, looking like a tin can with neat holes punched through it, was a gilt metal thermometer made by Thomas Jones in London, an odd eighteenth century instrument that had piqued Salomons’ fancy when he bought it at the turn of the century.

  “Yes,” Yakubov said now. “I saw this in the lawyer’s collection.”

  Hasson was breathless, “hysterical” almost, according to Eli Kahan, the museum chairman.

  “Did you see the Queen?” she asked.

  “I think so,” the jeweler said, explaining that he hadn’t seen enough to be sure. Why he chose such an unusual item to identify – a tiny thermometer that was not commonly known to be part of the Salomon’s collection — remains open to conjecture, but to be too familiar with the stolen collection would have suggested complicity in the theft, something Yakubov couldn’t afford.

  He described three dirty, broken boxes full of a rat’s nest of newspaper and patched with yellowing tape. The watches he saw were in good condition and mostly intact, although he did see a few broken pieces. But it was the prospect of reacquiring the Queen that stirred in Hasson the most excitement. As a young assistant curator she had seen it disappear in the night. Now, as mysteriously as it had gone, it might be back, stuck in a lawyer’s office in torrid Tel Aviv.

  It was settled: Yakubov would bow out of the deal and pressure the lawyer to approach the museum directly. All Rachel Hasson had to do was wait for the call.

  It came on August 20, a Sunday. Efron-Gabai repeated her story: She was representing an overseas client who owned some items that had belonged to her deceased husband. They included clocks that had come from the L.A. Mayer Museum. Would Hasson be interested in meeting?

  The museum now faced a major problem. In many art theft cases, the victimized institution does not actually want to see its former possession again. Once stolen, a piece of art or historical artifact becomes more valuable to its previous owner if it’s never recovered. Why? Because once the insurance companies make their payout, the cash usually is plowed back into the museum. If the stolen items are later recovered, the cash must be returned to the insurance company, resulting in a dismal quarter – or quarters – especially for a non-profit. In short, theft, at least on a small scale, is good for a museum.

  One auctioneer I talked to described a fascinating exchange with Cartier. The luxury jeweler had lost a few watches to theft some decades before and the watches were well-known enough to be noticed when they appeared on the open market. The auctioneer, making his normal rounds of watch shops in New York, stumbled upon these watches and called his contact at Cartier to report them.

  “I know where they are,” the auctioneer said and the Cartier representative said they were missing and no longer existed.

  The contact explained that Cartier had removed the watches from its catalogs. They were no longer part of the official Cartier collection, and so they no longer existed to Cartier’s theft and fraud department. Rather than go through the rigmarole of accepting the relatively inexpensive watches back into the fold, they preferred to simply sweep them under the rug. They could never be sold as original ever again.

  Rachel Hasson, at the Mayer Museum, was now in a similar situation. But this was on a different scale. The items in those dirty boxes were the heart of the museum and chairman Eli Kahan himself admitted that even the truncated collection currently on display in the family gallery was a bigger draw than the Islamic art that was the museum’s focus.

  Kahan is a quiet, reserved man with piercing blue eyes and a retiree’s easy demeanor. After retiring from the Foreign Trade Bank in Jerusalem, he joined a number of philanthropic organizations – his “babies,” as he calls them – to spend his later years on something worthwhile. His role as chairman of the Mayer’s board was to maintain the museum’s finances and to negotiate business on behalf of the Swiss-based trust created by Vera Salomons to maintain the museum and two old age homes she built in Jerusalem. The trust, run by a dour man named Albert Speer doled out the money on Kahan’s recommendation. His role, along with Hasson’s, was to address Vera Salomons’ main complaint: that most Arabic culture was seen down the barrel of a gun.

  After consulting with the board, Kahan and Hasson decided to meet with Efron-Gabai and see the boxes. On Monday, August 21, Hasson and Kahan drove from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv and met with the lawyer at her offices. Hasson, in her diary, described the loud-spoken former public defender as “sharp and shiny” and quite intelligent. In the meeting, Efron-Gabai was all business, and she chose her words carefully. She would not reveal the name or whereabouts of her client, and she would not call the discussion a ransom negotiation. She merely had some things she was returning to the museum in “good faith,” she said, and when Hasson and Kahan saw them she was sure they would understand the need for secrecy.

  She began by explaining that there were forty pieces in a bank vault in Tel Aviv. Her client needed money, she said, and coyly noted that the reward advertised for recovery of the watches was two million shekels ($550,000). No one is certain who suggested the final number, and Efron-Gabai refuses to comment on the case. All that anyone remembers is that someone suggested a large amount, and when the pair from the museum balked, the lawyer said that about 150,000 shekels ($35,000) might suffice.

  Efron-Gabai asked the two to sign an agreement stipulating that her client — whom she called “Ms. England,” because of her supposed nationality — was not liable for the theft of the watches and clocks. Hasson and Kahan signed the nondisclosure agreement and then excused themselves, saying they would discuss the matter on the trip back to the museum. Hasson wanted the clocks returned as quickly as possible, and Efron-Gabai, too, seemed to be in a hurry. When Hasson and Kahan were halfway back to Jerusalem, the lawyer called, asking them to complete the transaction immediately.

  Kahan and Hasson demurred. They couldn’t agree to anything without input from the board. A few phone calls later and the board was assembled, a group of older Israelis who had grown up with the museum.

  Some members, including Spear in Switzerland, were outraged. “A man does not receive financial compensation when he returns property to its rightful owners,” he railed. Kahan pleaded for understanding, arguing that the payment would be a gesture, not compensation. Instead of an outright sale, the money would be given as a donation of good will, and the watches would be returned. By phrasing the transaction in this way, Efron-Gabai, her anonymous client, and the museum would not have to report the return to the police, another stipulation in the contract.

  The board also agreed to remain quiet about the exchange, at least until they could figure out a way to publicize the watches’ return without admitting what they had done. To refuse to deal with thieves proffering booty was to risk driving them farther underground. But if it became known that the museum’s leaders had negotiated with thieves, they would risk attracting other po
tential blackmailers.

  After a brief back and forth that Kahan remembers as being amicable, the board decided to offer $30,000, and no more. If things got out of hand, they agreed, they would go to the police. The next day, Hasson and Kahan met with Efron-Gabai once more and presented the board-approved offer. The lawyer again stressed the importance of her client’s privacy, and then she left the room. She returned, shortly, with a collection of boxes. One, a wine case, featured a line drawing of a cheery chef holding a bottle of cabernet sauvignon. This box was even more carelessly protected than the others. Efron-Gabai removed the pieces it held, each wrapped in crumbling paper like holiday dishes stored and forgotten.

  In a few minutes, the contents of this box and the others were arrayed before Hasson. Whatever misgivings she and Kahan had felt when they first began these murky negotiations were put to rest. As Hasson peeled back the old newspaper from item after item, the breadth of the find revealed itself. There was Breguet’s Sympathetique, with its small pocket watch and larger table clock, cunningly designed to maintain the identical time on both faces. Then came the famous “gun,” the clockwork novelty by Jaquet Droz with a small watch in the stock and a bird that popped up to sing a tune when fired.

  Many of the clocks and watches had suffered some damage, but it looked, from the way they were packed, as if they had never left the country. Hasson assumed that whoever “Ms. England” was, she had to know the provenance of these timepieces. Hasson and Kahan felt that they were close to uncovering the name of the thief, but the agreement they had signed barred them from going to the police.