“Did you introduce Roozemond to Dikmen, or did Roozemond purchase his inventory directly from you? How did it work?”
Van Rijn says, “Look, we all work together, Tazulaah. I admit to it, the others don’t.”
“Why did you fall out with Roozemond?” I ask.
“I like you, Tazulaah. You can’t expect me to keep feeding you crumbs from my table without receiving some nourishment,” he says, rubbing his fingers together.
I order him another espresso and myself a cappuccino.
“We could make a lot of money together. I’ll make you my protégée.”
Van Rijn actually believes he’s giving me a compliment.
I shake my head in disbelief and laugh. “You don’t get it, do you? When war takes everything from you—your home, your memories, your dreams—all you have left is your faith. You dealers steal our faith when you trade our religious symbols all in the name of greed. Do you get it now?”
He remains silent, studying me. “I can see that this issue goes much deeper for you, Tazulaah. I do care about these artifacts, which is why I want to help you recover them.”
“Then why are you turning on the other dealers?”
“Simple. I take my enemies out before they take me. When you make the first move you control the game. I give you fair warning, my dear . . . If you don’t have someone like me leading the way for you, these people will swallow you whole.”
“Why not come clean about it all?”
“Information is power, and in this case it translates to money as well.”
“Van Rijn, in our next lesson, prepare to give me all the information you have on the De Wijenburgh exhibition and maybe the Cypriots will look at you in another light.”
Van Rijn puts out his cigarette. “You know nothing about your beloved government. Take my word, you will never find these artifacts without me.” His mood shifts to a darker side. “Is that why your government is taking its time? Does Kyprianou think he can do this without me?” Van Rijn does not wait for a reply. “Then they misjudge this situation just as they did the war,” he says, his face darkening.
I have witnessed this quick change in demeanor before. Once he is angered, he loses all reason.
“Keep in touch, Van Rijn,” I say as I pay for our coffees.
“My offer will not be on the table forever, Tazulaah. I suggest you try harder to convince your government to take action.”
On April 26, I write to the director general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the importance of Mr. Papageorgiou’s trip to the Netherlands to view the slides, and I request confirmation of his travel dates.2 My every waking moment is consumed trying to put the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle together.
What is becoming more and more apparent to me is that the Netherlands is a hotbed for art traffickers, a painful irony, as this is the same country that provided me with a safe haven after the war. I’m struggling to assimilate into the Dutch culture, feeling guilty that I’m cheating on my Cypriot culture in doing so, and this realization holds me back from learning Dutch or identifying as completely Dutch. As I delve deeper into the world of illicit art in search of looted Cypriot treasures, emotional wounds I buried with the war begin to surface. I keep racking my brain trying to figure out how to get Van Rijn to reveal all he knows without my government having to pay a penny for the information. And then I get the idea to hire an investigator. Hiring a private detective posing as a potential buyer would give us the opportunity to approach Van Rijn and buy Cypriot artifacts.
With renewed vigor I set out to interview a few candidates. I am impressed by Mr. T. Thies, a freelance agent, who knows of Van Rijn but has never had any dealings with him.3 I fax Michael Kyprianou and request the government’s approval to hire Mr. Thies. A meeting between the Beker CS Advocaten law firm, Kyprianou, and me is scheduled for the beginning of July.4
The president of Cyprus is expected in the Netherlands any day now for his official visit. I am running back and forth to the palace to meet with the queen’s staff, arranging everything from the kind of cigars he likes to his hotel accommodations. From the time he arrives at the airport until he departs, every minute is planned.
Cypriot President George Vasiliou arrives in the Netherlands on June 12, 1990 and my son Andreas’s christening is scheduled for two days later. During a briefing with Agathocleous, ambassador from Brussels, I have Andreas in my arms, and he asks, “When did you get married, and why wasn’t I invited?”
“We had just a small civil wedding, but next year when I have my ‘big fat Greek wedding,’ I will invite you,” I say.
His face goes pale as he nearly chokes on the cigar he is smoking.
“You mean, you were not married in the Orthodox Church?”
“No, we were married in Oudewater,” I reply, not understanding what he is getting at.
“This is a disaster. If you were never married in the Church, your certificate of baptism will read ‘out of marriage,’ and this is a political nightmare for the president! The headlines will read, ‘President defies church to sponsor out of marriage child of consul with the blessing of the Brussels ambassador!’”
“What can I do?” My mind is reeling.
“No christening!” he says.
“There are a hundred fifty people coming!”
“Cancel, or marry again!”
I telephone Bishop Maximos to confirm what the ambassador has told me and I call Michael.
“Darling, please pick up your parents and meet me at the Agios Nikolaos church in Rotterdam. We must get married—again—tonight.”
“Is this an order? What is going on here, Tasoula!”
“I’ll fill you in later.”
I am breast-feeding my son, so there are milk stains all over my business suit as I arrive at the church. Michael appears with both sets of parents, who were already in town to attend the Baptism and once again the big fat Greek wedding of my dreams is placed on hold as we wed privately in the Orthodox Church.
The embassy car pulls up behind the president’s as we move through the gates of the Noordeinde Palace, a former medieval farmhouse that was transformed into a vast residence by Willem van de Goudt in 1533. Escorted by the queen’s lady-in-waiting, Michael and I walk the red carpet up the steps and into the palace, where our names are called prior to meeting Queen Beatrix and her husband Prince Claus, who are standing just beyond the entrance, waiting to greet their guests. The queen has a beautiful, welcoming face and an outgoing personality.
Protocol is not to address the queen until spoken to. Wearing a dress by Dutch designer Gérard Brussé, a mustard-colored silk mermaid skirt with a marine blue top and matching ribbons in my hair, I feel like Cinderella.
“Thank you for making all of the arrangements,” says the queen with a warm smile of appreciation. “Congratulations on the birth of your son Andreas.” I am impressed with her sincerity and how well briefed she is. We enter the long Gallery Hall where we will formally dine this evening. Compared to other palaces I’ve seen in photographs, this one is quite demure and elegantly decorated. On one side of the room there are floor-to-ceiling windows surrounded by plush golden drapes. On the other side hang six-foot-tall mirrors interspersed with royal portraits that continue down the length of the room. The crown moldings and crystal chandeliers, the priceless antiques give one an impression of understated grandeur. This evening’s formal dinner is set for twenty-four people, but the dining room could easily expand to seat many more guests. This night a combination of captains of industry, Dutch personalities, the president of Cyprus, several career diplomats, Michael and I, are the privileged ones. In my wildest dreams I never thought that a girl from Famagusta would ever have the chance to dine with a queen. It was an exquisitely crafted evening, and like Cinderella, I was accompanied by my prince, Michael.
Forty-eight hours later, we are back at the Orthodox church where Michael and I were married, watching Andreas’s tiny body be submerged in holy water. The elegant godmothe
r, Androula Vassiliou, stands by holding a towel as the bishop hands Andreas to her to dry him off and dress him in a ceremonial gown. After the bishop blesses the baby, he is handed to me, damp and squalling. I kiss his face and place a pacifier in his mouth to calm him down. I turn towards Michael who whispers, “Androula is lovely as is the Christening, thank you.”
The bishop pours holy water on Andreas’s forehead, symbolic of his immersion now into the Christian Orthodox faith. President Vassiliou’s wife is standing in for the president as is Ambassador Agathocleous of Brussels, and by doing so accommodates Michael’s desire to have a more private affair. Mrs. Vassiliou has gone out of her way to stay an extra day after the official visit ended.
The queen honored us by sending her lady-in-waiting to attend the service, which added to the media wanting to cover our private event. The ceremony is traditional, and many of our Dutch friends are experiencing the ritual of a christening for the first time. Michael and I lock eyes with the knowledge of how close we came to creating an embarrassing political issue for the president. Had he stood up for a child whose parents were not legally married in the eyes of the Church, it would have been a public relations disaster. I smile watching Andreas move his hands about in excitement as if he too is applauding the fact that we managed to avoid a holy disaster. Even though I am still enjoying the glow from Andreas’s baptism, I never forget the shadows of lost lives and stolen icons.
The Royal Doors continued to haunt me, so I decided to visit Roozemond’s gallery to check on them. Much time has passed and the government still has not taken action. Call it intuition or coincidence; when I arrive at the gallery the doors are nowhere in sight. I approach the receptionist.
“Is Mr. Roozemond in?” I ask.
“Who may I say is calling?” the attractive young girl inquires.
Ignoring her question, I get right to the point. “I was wondering about the Royal Doors.”
Roozemond appears within minutes.
“What a surprise to see you, Consul!” he says.
“Where are the doors?”
“Those doors didn’t belong to me. The owner placed them here on consignment.”
“The possessor, you mean? The Church of Cyprus is the owner. So you must mean the possessor. I’d like to have their name.”
“Under Dutch privacy laws I have to protect the anonymity of my clients.”
“You know from the letter of Papageorgiou that these Royal Doors are from Cyprus. Did you tell your client that?” I ask.
“It’s not my responsibility to repatriate your icons,” he says. “I did tell you and your government that if you make that database available, these types of issues would not occur. Good luck with the Goldberg appeal. Too bad the laws in Holland are so different.”
There is no love lost between the two of us.
A month comes and goes and still no decision from the Cypriot government regarding my request to hire Mr. Thies, the private detective I interviewed months ago, is on the phone.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Thies. I haven’t a reply from my government yet, but we haven’t forgotten you.”
“I just received a tip that Van Rijn is on his way to Japan to make a mosaic sale. I wanted you to have the information regardless of whether or not we work together.”
I send a fax to the minister of foreign affairs via the director general and ask for his guidance in what action to take and how to reach Kyprianou with this new information.5
The minister of communication requests that I provide a status report to the director general of my involvement in the recovery of stolen artifacts, summarizing our legal position and where we are in relationship to Van Rijn and Roozemond. Yet despite my requests for action, I receive no response. Nevertheless, I write the memo and send it within the hour.6
I wrestle with the fact that honorary consul is a voluntary position, compounded by the fact that I am young and new at the job, all of which seem to be stumping the hierarchy. The government sees the repatriation of the artifacts as being secondary to the Cyprus reunification issue. If I were able to act on Thies’s information immediately without bureaucratic obstacles, I would be able to keep on top of the dealers. By the time the government responds to my memo, the mosaics will be lost—perhaps forever. Knowing how limited the government’s resources are, it is unlikely that they will agree to hire Mr. Thies. I give up on the concept, but my frustration only grows.
Arriving home later that day in Wassenaar, I look past the gardens and the view of the lake that I normally find so comforting, I divert more and more of my energy and resources from Octagon to recovering the stolen artifacts, and each time I gather a piece of information or a lead that may bring me closer to recovery, I feel thwarted by the government’s lethargy.
Andreas’s room is cheerfully painted with brightly colored animals, musical instruments, kites, and numbers, in direct contrast to the events of my day. After I smother him with kisses and we dance to one song, I hurry to prepare dinner before Michael arrives.
Moments later, I hear Michael check on Andreas. The sound of him bonding with our little boy softens me.
“Smells delicious,” he says, entering the kitchen.
Seeing my expression, he pours us each a glass of wine, and over dinner I unload my troubles. Michael listens attentively, letting me speak without interruption, which is exactly what I need. He patiently waits until I am all talked out and then weighs in on the subject.
“I understand your frustration, darling, and there is no doubt in my mind that you are capable of handling more than you have the power to at the moment, but realize the government has limited resources and different priorities.”
“I understand, Michael. The problem is that the traffickers know this and use it to their advantage. It’s been eight months since Middendorp uncovered the information about De Wijenburgh exhibit. All I know is that stolen sacred artifacts from Cyprus are being sold under my nose, and legally there is nothing I can do about it! I feel as if I am at war all over again. This is my identity. Each artifact tells the story of every Cypriot refugee.”
There is a great deal of press about the Goldberg case in the Dutch papers; maybe it’s because Roozemond initiates, and wins, a lawsuit against the Dutch newspaper NRC, which published an article entitled “Weerloze kloosters” (“The Defenseless Monastries”), which wrongly identified him as one of the dealers involved in the Goldberg case.7 This new development makes the Cypriot government even more cautious, bringing the investigation into De Wijenburgh to a halt.
On October 24, 1990, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upholds the decision of the District Court in case No. 89-2809, the lawsuit between the Greek Orthodox Church and the Republic of Cyprus versus Goldberg and Feldman Fine Arts, Inc. This is a huge win for Cyprus, and it sends a ripple effect through the illicit art trade as the U.S. Court of Appeals affirms Judge Noland’s decision that an artifact, once proven stolen, cannot be legitimized in the United States.
It is a wonderful moment for the people of Cyprus, the Church of Cyprus, the government of Cyprus, Michael Kyprianou, the attorney representing Cyprus, Thomas Kline, and even me. Meetings with Van Rijn enabled me to secure vital information for Kyprianou and Kline to use during the trial. This little taste of success stimulates my appetite for more, and I hope will reignite the government’s desire to work with us to repatriate the icons and mosaics Van Rijn is dangling in front of us.
Now Cyprus has the right to ask for the extradition of Van Rijn and Aydin Dikmen for selling the looted artifacts to Goldberg. The Netherlands will not extradite their own subjects of their own volition, and the Cypriot government, to my disappointment, decides not to go after Aydin Dikmen, who is now living in Munich.
Romke Wybenga of Beker CS Advocaten, the attorney now handling affairs for the government of Cyprus, calls a meeting to summarize the current status of Cypriot affairs in the Netherlands.8 With no proof of who is in possession of the stolen antiquities, there is n
o legal recourse to take against Van Rijn. Romke Wybenga’s attempt to gain the public prosecutor’s support in The Hague to open an investigation into Van Rijn fails. The Dutch art crime unit is small with limited resources. They do not feel that we have sufficient information to begin an investigation to incriminate Van Rijn. The firm suggests that we not hire a private detective at this point, which eliminates the opportunity to hire Mr. Thies, with whom I had remained in contact, and sends me back to the drawing board to find another way to lure Van Rijn into revealing who is holding the stolen artifacts.
Perhaps they are in the hands of Aydin Dikmen, the Turkish dealer who sold stolen Cypriot artifacts to the de Menil Foundation and to Peg Goldberg in the Kanakaria case and the same dealer that I am trying to get Van Rijn to help access. Or maybe Roozemond and De Wijnburgh hold the key. The De Wijenburgh exhibit did take place in Holland shortly after the Turkish invasion, and Van Rijn and Roozemond did admit to working together, but unless I have proof of whom they sold the artifacts to, I have no starting point for a case. I cannot act upon my thoughts. There might be other dealers who have not yet appeared on my radar. I need to narrow down who the dealers are, so I can focus my resources.
The Beker CS Advocaten law firm concludes that Van Rijn’s exposure in the Kanakaria case, which garnered global publicity, might impede his ability to generate income. Wealthy collectors might be wary of dealing with Van Rijn because of his involvement with Dikmen. Romke Wybenga concludes that the only course of action for Cyprus to take now is for me to continue to try and obtain information from Van Rijn.
The irony of paying dealer Van Rijn for information that frames his customers goes against my personal moral code. When priceless and sacred artifacts are traded as if they are just objects, I take great offense to it. Righting this wrong and seeing these dealers of God brought to justice does not seem to be feasible according to the laws of the Netherlands. I want Van Rijn’s information, but I will not pay for it. I decide to point my compass in the direction of the De Wijenburgh materials, as I sense there is much more that lies beneath.
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