The Looters

by Harold Robbins

  The Iraqis had not been efficient about cataloging the enormous number of items in their collection. The museum held over 150,000 items, and only a small percentage of the pieces were properly cataloged and photographed. And many of the catalog records were destroyed by the looters for the express purpose of making it difficult or impossible to track pieces.

  The problem of not preserving and protecting its natural heritage wasn’t unique to Iraq—it was epidemic in third-world countries, which was why so much of their cultural heritage ended up in the rich museums of Europe, the United States, and the Far East.

  To make a significant recovery of the missing relics would be Olympic gold for Nunes, capping off his career with a big win.

  He had to consider whether Vlad was the actual source of the Mesopotamian art to the Russian mob. He could be fencing stolen items from the museum heist for the person he was describing as the “American.” Vlad was sweating a hell of a lot for a deal that went sour and his small part in it. But Nunes’s gut told him that Vlad wasn’t the source.

  The Russian ran a small-time art galley specializing in Russian icons, religious images typically painted on wood panels in Eastern Europe. Naturally, the icons were smuggled out of Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics, but it was a business that dealt in art pieces worth hundreds and thousands of dollars, not millions. Nunes had gone after him because he figured the man’s Little Odessa location would bring him into contact with other illegal art transactions.

  When Vlad had been approached by a local mafioso to find an expert to appraise contraband art being offered as collateral, Vlad had come to the FBI with the information.

  His motivation to cooperate with the feds didn’t arise from his sense of responsibility as a citizen. Because almost everything in his shop was stolen and smuggled in, he was trying to work off about a hundred years in prison by cooperating with the FBI. After his usefulness ended, he was destined to have his disappearance orchestrated by the Witness Protection Program.

  This wasn’t the first time Nunes had investigated art with a Mafia—or mafiya—connection. Many of the items that had appeared on the FBI’s Top Ten Art Crimes list had a connection to trafficking in drugs and arms because organized crime got involved somewhere along the line.

  The Bureau’s Top Ten Art Crimes list included the $300 million robbery of the Gardner Museum in Boston, a 1990 low-tech heist in which two thieves dressed as police officers conned the guards into letting them into the museum at night. The haul, which has never been recovered, included thirteen works, among them paintings by Vermeer, Manet, Degas, and Rembrandt, but the thieves, who were suspected of having Boston Mafia connections, were definitely not art connoisseurs: They took the bronzed top off a flagpole and left behind Titian’s Rape of Europa, the most valuable piece in the museum.

  None of the pieces were protected by an alarm system, and none were insured.

  Like the Gardner heist, many thefts were astonishingly low-tech. Often someone simply grabbed an item off a museum wall and walked out with it.

  Now the biggest theft of all was back in the news as another piece of Mesopotamia’s cultural history was on the investigation table: An Iraqi taxi driver was claiming that a premier museum piece had been stolen from the Iraqi museum. Nunes had already sent his partner over to question the taxi driver.

  Added to the accusation that the museum piece was part of the Iraqi loot, a hoard of Mesopotamian antiquities were used to finance an international arms deal. And there was a sudden demand for payment by the Odessa gang.

  Then over $50 million was paid for a Babylonian piece that suddenly appeared on the market out of nowhere.

  No coincidences here, Nunes thought.

  ***

  Before he got up to leave, Nunes told Vlad to stop sweating. “It makes you look guilty.”

  Grabbing his notebook computer bag, Nunes left the bar. The four-lane street running down Brighton Beach’s several block-long business district was mostly covered by elevated subway tracks. He took a train to Coney Island where his partner, Steiner, was waiting with an unmarked Agency car.

  “Did you talk to the camel jockey?” Nunes asked.

  “It’s not politically correct to call an immigrant taxi driver a camel jockey. The proper expression is ‘towel head.’ And yes, I talked to him. His name is Abdullah Hussein. Iraqi, early sixties, filed a political amnesty claim. Says he was a curator at the Iraqi museum in Baghdad. Lives with his daughter in Jamaica Plains. She has political amnesty. Her husband was a newspaperman killed by Saddam’s goons.”

  “What’s Abdullah’s story?”

  “He considered the Semiramis his personal baby. Says his father died protecting it, that he also almost got killed when he tried to stop looters from taking it.” Steiner gave Nunes a look full of meaning. “Get this. American troops were working with Saddam’s boys to clean out the place.”

  “That’s his story? Americans looted the museum?”

  “American uniforms, the word ‘SEAL’ on the hat of a guy who almost killed him.”

  “SEAL. That’s Navy stuff. What evidence does he have to prove the mask was stolen from the museum?”

  “He claims he’s getting the proof. Wouldn’t tell me what, though.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s suspicious of any authority. Saddam’s Iraq was a police state. The American military in Iraq have a police state. The museum looters were American.” Steiner glanced at Nunes. “Funny, isn’t it? This guy comes to us for asylum from the bad guys back home and thinks we’re also the bad guys.”

  “It’s a complicated world. When I was a kid, we always knew who wore the black hat. And we always knew they would get their punishment at the end. What about this Piedmont curator who bought the Semiramis, Madison Dupre?”

  “No record. Small-time antiquities expert for the Met until she got the job at the Piedmont. The museum specializes in Mesopotamian art. From news archives on the Internet, she’s managed to pick up a number of pieces that could have come out of the museum in Baghdad.”

  “‘Could have,’ that’s as big a word as ‘if’ and ‘maybe.’”

  “Sorry, I’d be more specific if the bastards hadn’t destroyed the catalog records to cover their trail. You think this Dupre woman is involved in your art-for-arms deal?”

  Nunes thought over the question. “I don’t know. She could have sat down with the Odessa gang and planned it out. It’s more probable she’s like those bank employees we bust occasionally. They spend their lives counting other people’s money. One day the devil whispers in their ears and tells them that if they launder a little money, they will have some of the green stuff themselves. They have a fascination with money, it goes with the territory, but they’ve never had a big wad of their own.”

  “Temptation?”

  “Exactly. Dupre herself may be in it over her head or she might be just looking the other way in order to grab up pieces for her museum. Either way, she’s receiving stolen property. Take me to the Piedmont Museum. I have a couple questions for the woman.”

  CONTRABAND AT THE MET AND GETTY

  In February 2006, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the world’s largest and most important museums, announced it was returning 20 pieces of contraband art to Italy. The museum pieces smuggled out of Italy and sold to the Met had been found by tomb robbers.

  Among the items was the 2500-year-old Euphronios Krater, one of the most beautiful pieces of ancient art ever found. Excavated at Cerveteri, near Rome, the krater (a vessel used to mix water and wine) depicts the Greek god Hermes directing Sleep and Death as they carry the son of Zeus for burial.

  In November 2005, the Getty, one of the richest museums on Earth, announced that it was returning a number of contraband items to Italy, including a 2300-year-old vase. At the time of the announcement, a Getty curator and a well-known art dealer were on trial in Italy. The allegation made by the Italian government was that the two knowingly purchased stolen artifacts. The defe
ndants denied the charges.

  Italian authorities claim they have traced more than 100 artifacts looted by tombaroli, tomb robbers, to the Met, the Getty, and other major museums and collections in the United States and Europe.

  Chapter 19

  Manhattan

  As I walked through the museum the next morning, I realized that overnight I had gone from prima donna to pariah. The Untouchables of India had nothing on me as I made my way to my office. The guards who used to smile now looked like they were wondering if they should do a body cavity search for stolen antiquities.

  Okay, maybe it was only my imagination, but I wasn’t feeling good about myself this morning. My mind and body roiled with attacks of guilt, doubt, confusion, and just plain fear.

  A note on my desk said that Eric was meeting with Hiram that morning and would see me later. I didn’t need a crystal ball to know what Hiram and Eric would be talking about, but why wasn’t I invited? Had I already been tried and convicted—and sentenced?

  With the museum under attack, shouldn’t everyone come together to present a united front?

  For sure… unless Hiram and Eric had decided to throw me to the wolves in the hopes that would satisfy the hungry pack of newspeople and police that will be snarling at the museum door.

  If I were dealing with people of honor and courage, I wouldn’t be so damn paranoid that I was going to be stabbed in the back. But both did most of their damage with weasel moves, always ready to duck out of a situation by slipping it to someone else. The only attractive thing about Hiram was his money, and Eric even lacked that.

  I called Neal but couldn’t reach him. I was surprised and annoyed that he hadn’t called this morning to offer me comfort, since I was pretty upset when I talked to him last night.

  Too early for him to be in an auction. I hit the redial button but no answer. I hoped he was busy tracking down the enigmatic Viktor Milan. I wondered how much Neal knew about document examiners. Did he work with them? With Bensky? I wasn’t sure Neal ever bothered to hire one. He was on the other end of sales, the middleman. Of course, like all of us, he would have checked the Art Loss Register on anything he bought or sold. It was standard protocol. If an object wasn’t on it, the auction house would close their eyes and let it pass through on the grounds that it was up to the buyer to investigate the provenance; they were just going by what the seller told them.

  I tried Bensky in Pelham again. I got the answering machine.

  London was five hours ahead and I had tried calling Lipton as soon as I woke up. His assistant told me he wasn’t in the office. That was possible, but with a raging controversy about the Semiramis you’d think he’d have been on the phone to me immediately. I had to wonder why he was ducking me. The assistant’s cool tone shot up my ire. I called again an hour later before I left my apartment. And got a brush-off again.

  “I don’t give a damn if he’s not in; he’s still on the goddamn planet and can call me back.”

  She hung up on me. Bitch.

  Lipton knew what had happened last night, of course. The antiquities trade was a small, exclusive club. He probably got fifty calls since last night. But I was the one who counted.

  I was tempted to call back and tell the bitch I was going to have her and her boss arrested for peddling stolen artifacts when our receptionist knocked on the door.

  “Come in.”

  “An FBI agent is here to see you,” she said, wide-eyed as she handed me his business card.

  Richard Nunes

  Special Agent.

  ***

  I stared at it. Perfect. That’s all I needed. Neal’s warning about keeping my mouth shut loomed big in my head.

  “Are you all right, Madison?”

  “Just fine; everything’s perfect.” Except for my reputation, my career, and now my freedom, I almost blurted out. “Send him in.”

  My voice was calmer than my nerves. Normally I would have gotten up and escorted a visitor into my office, but I needed the time to think. I had never been questioned by the FBI before. The closest I ever got to a police interrogation happened when a traffic cop wanted to know if I wanted to work off a ticket by going out with him. I said yes. Didn’t get the ticket. And stood him up for the date.

  What had Neal said about dealing with the police?

  Deny, deny, deny.

  FBI agents were typically cast on television as uptight, insensitive jerks with closed minds who tried to grab the glory from hardworking local cops, and that’s what I expected.

  Special Agent Nunes came through the door. He didn’t look like someone I could tearfully tell my story to while I rested my head on his shoulder.

  I went around my desk and shook hands. “Please have a seat.”

  I directed him to a chair in my conference area. I didn’t have chairs for visitors in front of my desk. Instead, one corner of the office had a small couch and two chairs set around a glass-topped coffee table. Visible through the glass was a ninth-century stela, a block of stone with ancient Native American writing.

  Nunes stared at the artifact after he sat down.

  “My father found it in New Mexico. He was an archaeologist.” Actually, he was an art historian. And had bought the piece eons ago at a flea market in Albuquerque. My explanation sounded a little lame, even to myself. Nunes probably thought I was a smuggler of pre-Columbian artwork.

  “Belongs in a museum.”

  “Well, that’s where it’s at. What can I do for you, Agent Nunes?”

  He locked eyes with me. My eyeballs wanted to leap out of the sockets and run. But I smiled and kept from jumping up and screaming my innocence.

  “There’s been an accusation that the mask called Semiramis was stolen during the looting of the Iraqi museum.”

  I nodded automatically. “Yes, that’s true. A man who is obviously irrational caused a disturbance in the museum last night during a reception.”

  “Are you aware that thousands of items were looted from the museum?”

  “He snuck in.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The man. Abdullah. He snuck into the museum.”

  “Are you aware that—”

  “I believe everyone in the art world is aware of the Iraqi museum problem. Do you have some proof that the mask was stolen from Baghdad?”

  “The matter is still under investigation. I’d like to see it, the Semiramis.”

  “What does that mean? ‘Under investigation’?”

  “It means we are conducting an investigation.”

  I smiled. “That’s enlightening. Let’s get down to basics. We paid fifty-five million dollars for an art object at a reputable auction. We are not thieves.”

  “Really. And why do you think… that I think… you are thieves?”

  Shit. He had kicked my holier-than-thou platform out from under me.

  “What can I do to help you, Agent Nunes?”

  “Like I said, I’d like to see the mask.”

  “Of course.”

  “A crime scene tech will also need to examine it. Take some pictures. We’ll let you know after the visual examination if more definitive tests will be necessary.”

  “You’ll have to make those arrangements with my boss, Eric Vanderhof. He’s the director of the museum. He’ll be in later. I’ll have him call you.” If he has any sense, he’ll make you get a warrant, I thought.

  “Okay. I also need to see your provenance on the Semiramis. I’ll need a copy of it.”

  “As it happens, I have a copy right here.” I handed him the copy I’d left in my top drawer. Another copy was in my purse, along with the examiner’s report. My knees were shaking. “The provenance was commissioned by the owner of the piece, a London art dealer, one of the premier dealers in the world. We relied upon it, of course.”

  As Nunes read the history, my mind convulsed with ideas and impulses. I wanted to leap up, show him Bensky’s damning report, and shout, I’m being framed!

  I didn’t dare open my mouth. How co
uld I prove that I had never seen the document examiner’s report? It was in my file. If I showed Nunes the report, he would arrest me on the spot. He would have to. My word against a written report was a noose around my neck. I still needed to talk to Bensky and make sure he’d be on my side.

  Nunes read the ownership information and then looked up from the papers. “Interesting.”

  I didn’t know what he found interesting. It was a standard provenance, boring to anyone not involved in a sale of the item. What was really interesting was the document examiner’s report I didn’t show Nunes.

  I asked him what he found interesting.

  “I always find Lebanon an interesting point of origin for Middle Eastern antiquities. For centuries, it was part of an empire that no longer exists and left behind no records. For the past three or four decades, it’s been a war zone, not a country. The most powerful force in the place is terrorists who hate America’s guts. That makes it impossible for American police agencies to check out fraudulent provenances.”

  I tried to look sympathetic. “That’s all very true, and the same holds true for most of the countries in the Middle East. I’m sure you realize that the most significant factor about dealing with Middle Eastern antiquities is that at some point most of the provenances will originate in… a Middle Eastern country. Last time I heard, Americans were not loved anywhere in the region… and I’m sure none would put out a welcome mat for the FBI.”

  “I understand it was the most violent civil war in modern history.”

  He was referring to the civil war in Lebanon. I guess he was pretending that he didn’t hear me. Or maybe what I said just didn’t count.

  He studied the report again before looking up. “It appears the family that allegedly owned the mask died out more than seventy years ago. That, of course, adds to the difficulty of checking out the provenance. Dead people can’t confirm it, can they?”

  He was intimating that someone had deliberately chosen a family that wouldn’t have someone around to remember the past. Even I realized it wasn’t a difficult task. Death records could be checked for the selected time period in Beirut to see who died with no next of kin.