Part 4 (1/2)

Hill and Mulvihill drove to a CitiBank branch in Brussels. Hill led the way. The bank manager, who had been briefed by headquarters, scurried out.

”h.e.l.lo, Mr. Roberts. Delighted to see you.”

The bank manager did his unctuous best, and Hill acted as if the fawning was merely his due. When the glad-handing had gone on long enough, it was time to brandish the checks. The bank manager produced them with a flourish, like a headwaiter presenting a rack of lamb on a silver tray. Mulvihill took the two checks in his hands, examined them closely and lovingly (”one million dollars and no cents”), and reluctantly turned them back to the bank manager.

With the preliminaries completed, Hill and Mulvihill both figured that the next meeting would be for real. Next time, Mulvihill would drive away with his money, and Hill would fly off with his paintings.

Hill and Mulvihill happily drove back to Antwerp. On the way, Hill, not paying attention, nearly missed the Antwerp exit. At the last instant, he swerved across the highway and careened across the merge lane, cutting off an eighteen-wheeler hauling a load of tomatoes. With the trucker's air horn still blaring, Mulvihill looked approvingly at Hill.

”Good work,” he said. ”There'll be no one following us now.”

The two men, now fast friends, made final arrangements for the swap. The deal would go down at the Antwerp airport on September 1.

On the appointed day, Hill drove to the rendezvous. A Belgian undercover cop called Antoine played the role of his bodyguard. Hill knew Antoine and liked him. More important, he looked like a bodyguard. Antoine was ”a hairy-a.r.s.ed, super-fit gendarme,” Hill would say later. ”Doesn't drink, lives on orange juice and yogurt”-Hill's tone made plain that he he would as soon live on goat urine and locusts-”and he was tooled up, not ostentatiously but obviously, so you'd be sure to know he was armed. He had real presence; he looked the part of a serious minder. And he had a briefcase with the cas.h.i.+er's checks in it.” would as soon live on goat urine and locusts-”and he was tooled up, not ostentatiously but obviously, so you'd be sure to know he was armed. He had real presence; he looked the part of a serious minder. And he had a briefcase with the cas.h.i.+er's checks in it.”

Antoine, a cla.s.sic-car buff, drove a vintage, lovingly maintained Mercedes. As he and Hill made their way through Antwerp and out to the airport, an elderly woman on a bicycle rattled her way across a set of tram tracks. The bell fell off her handlebars and onto the street. It was mid-morning, and traffic was heavy.

”Stop the car!” Hill barked, and then he hopped out of the Mercedes, halted traffic, retrieved the bell, and presented it to the woman on the bicycle.

”She gave me this wonderful smile of thanks,” Hill recalled long afterward, ”and when I got back in the car, Antoine had this 'what the f.u.c.k was that?' that?' look on his face.” look on his face.”

For Hill, who is in many ways akin to the small boy who imagines himself the star of the big game (”bases loaded, bottom of the ninth, all eyes on Hill as he strides to the plate”), this tiny scene was a not-to-be-missed chance to play the hero. ”It was a pure Walter Raleigh moment,” he recalled long afterward, basking in the memory. ”That's all it was. And poor Antoine sitting there thinking, 'You ought to be concentrating on the job, not fooling about playing the gallant knight to some old biddy whose bicycle has gone bust.' ”

At the airport, Hill and Antoine parked the car and walked into the small restaurant. It was noon. Hill ordered a coffee and cognac. In waltzed a dozen flight attendants, and, just behind them, Mulvihill and a crony. ”You got everything?” Mulvihill asked.

”Yup,” said Hill.

The trickiest, most dangerous part of any deal is the exchange itself, when money and goods finally change hands. Hill and Mulvihill had each brought an ally, for muscle and backup. While Hill sat in the restaurant with Mulvihill's man, Mulvihill and Antoine walked outside toward Antoine's car. Both men were car buffs, and the Mercedes served as an ice-breaker. Mulvihill studied the cas.h.i.+er's checks and a.s.sured himself that they were the ones he had seen in the bank in Brussels.

Satisfied, Mulvihill returned to the restaurant. He turned to Hill.

”Want to see the pictures?”

Hill walked out to the parking lot with Mulvihill's partner, to a rented Peugeot. The bodyguard opened the trunk. Hill saw a sports bag, about big enough to hold a tennis racquet and a pair of sneakers. Next to it sat a black plastic bag wrapped around something rectangular and several large objects hidden inside layers of wrapping paper. The plastic bag was the same size and shape as the one Hill had seen in Antwerp, when Mulvihill had shown him the Vermeer. Hill put it to one side for a moment. He unzipped the sports bag. Inside, he saw a rolled-up canvas that he recognized as Goya's Portrait of Dona Antonia Zarate Portrait of Dona Antonia Zarate. Glad as he was to see the painting-the thieves wouldn't have brought it if they were running a scam-it was horrifying to see a two-hundred-year-old oil painting rolled up like a ten-dollar poster. Hill set the sports bag down gently. Turning to the bag that he hoped contained the Vermeer, he brushed a hand across his s.h.i.+rtfront, as if he were sweeping away a piece of lint.

Silently, two large BMWs alerted by Hill's signal sped into place, one in front of the Peugeot, one behind. Each car was ”four up,” with a driver and three men. This was the Belgian SWAT squad, big guys with Dirty Harry specials. They shouted commands in Flemish, presumably to drop everything and lie down. In case they had been misunderstood, the cops helped Hill and Mulvihill's bodyguard to the ground.

Shoved facedown onto the asphalt, Hill and his companion were handcuffed and searched and then hustled into a car and whisked off to a local police station. Mulvihill was taken into custody, too, and so was Antoine. To Charley Hill's great delight, the commotion had drawn the attention of everyone in the coffee shop, and the whole scene played out to a satisfying chorus of shrieks from the gawking flight attendants.

Once arrived at the police station, Hill and Antoine, the gendarme-c.u.m-bodyguard, were freed from their handcuffs, congratulated, and left to celebrate. Mulvihill was charged with handling stolen goods, but, as the Irish Examiner Irish Examiner later reported, ”he miraculously managed to escape prosecution.” later reported, ”he miraculously managed to escape prosecution.”

The miracle was, in fact, mundane enough, though it did demonstrate that no one took art crime too seriously. A Belgian court dropped the charges against Mulvihill on the grounds that the robbery had taken place in Ireland, outside Belgian jurisdiction.

The trash bag did indeed contain the Vermeer. In all, the Belgian police recovered four of the Russborough House paintings (as well as three fake Pica.s.sos): the Vermeer, the Goya, an Antoine Vestier portrait, and Gabriel Metsu's Man Writing a Letter Man Writing a Letter. The Metsu was a companion piece to the same artist's Woman Reading a Letter Woman Reading a Letter, the painting that police had found in Istanbul, where thieves were trying to barter it for heroin. The two works are considered Metsu's masterpieces.

Today, all but two of the eighteen paintings stolen from Russborough House in 1986 have been recovered. The missing works are Venetian scenes painted by Francesco Guardi, which some rumors have placed in Florida.

Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid hangs safely in Dublin's National Gallery, serene still, despite all she has seen. hangs safely in Dublin's National Gallery, serene still, despite all she has seen.

Martin Cahill, the engineer of the Russborough House theft, was killed in August 1994, shot through the driver's window of his car by a gunman dressed as a Dublin city worker. Cahill had slowed to a halt at a stop sign; a man with a clipboard approached the driver's window to ask a few questions about traffic.

In January 2003 Niall Mulvihill was shot in a gangland attack in Dublin. Mulvihill took four bullets but managed to drive two miles toward the nearest hospital. He crashed just short of the hospital, causing a four-car pileup. No one was charged with his murder.

12.

Munch MARCH 1994.

For five months after the Russborough House recovery, Christopher Charles Roberts did not exist. Then, with The Scream The Scream stolen, Roberts was back, reincarnated this time as the Man from the Getty. stolen, Roberts was back, reincarnated this time as the Man from the Getty.

Charley Hill's first task in preparing for this new role was to learn about Edvard Munch. Studying up on artists was one of his favorite parts of the job. Hill's love of art ran deep, though he was a buff rather than a scholar. In his spare time, in whatever city he found himself, he visited museums and looked in on old friends in the collection. In Prague, it was a Durer self-portrait; at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Rembrandt's Sacrifice of Isaac Sacrifice of Isaac (”the angel arresting Abraham's hand is extraordinary, even though it doesn't quite work”); at the National Gallery in London a long list, perhaps headed by Leonardo's (”the angel arresting Abraham's hand is extraordinary, even though it doesn't quite work”); at the National Gallery in London a long list, perhaps headed by Leonardo's Madonna of the Rocks Madonna of the Rocks.

In Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., Hill always made time for a particular favorite, Gilbert Stuart's Skater (Portrait of William Grant) Skater (Portrait of William Grant). The striking work, an action painting in what was typically a stiff and earnest genre, thrust Stuart to fame. It depicts a tall figure in an elegant black coat and hat, carving a graceful turn on the ice on the Serpentine, in London's Hyde Park. (The story has it that Grant told Stuart that ”the day was better suited for skating than sitting for one's portrait.”) For Hill, the skating Scot embodies an idealized self-image, ”the way I would have liked to have seen myself in that time.”

For The Scream The Scream case in particular, where Hill's role was not that of an art-loving (though crooked) amateur but of a bigwig at a world-cla.s.s art museum, his research would have to be particularly thorough. There were no shortcuts. Learning about Munch was a matter of a.s.sembling a giant stack of art books and diving in. The only catch was money. Though he was preparing to play a free-spending honcho at a money-is-no-object inst.i.tution-and though he supposedly intended to ransom a $72 million painting-Hill could not afford to buy the books he needed to study. Instead, he haunted the library and a bookstore near his home, where a patient manager made allowances for the tall man in the art section who read and read but never seemed to buy. case in particular, where Hill's role was not that of an art-loving (though crooked) amateur but of a bigwig at a world-cla.s.s art museum, his research would have to be particularly thorough. There were no shortcuts. Learning about Munch was a matter of a.s.sembling a giant stack of art books and diving in. The only catch was money. Though he was preparing to play a free-spending honcho at a money-is-no-object inst.i.tution-and though he supposedly intended to ransom a $72 million painting-Hill could not afford to buy the books he needed to study. Instead, he haunted the library and a bookstore near his home, where a patient manager made allowances for the tall man in the art section who read and read but never seemed to buy.

At the start, Hill knew no more about Munch than most people do. Temperamentally too conservative to care much for the modern world, he preferred paintings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though he made exceptions for a few works as close to the present day as the nineteenth century. The Goya portrait he had looked at in a car trunk, painted in 1805, reduced him to sputtering admiration. ”Anyone with even half an eye or half a wit,” he says, ”standing there, holding it, you can't be anything but awestruck.”

He had never seen The Scream The Scream in the flesh, so to speak, and, if he failed to get it back, he might never have the chance. in the flesh, so to speak, and, if he failed to get it back, he might never have the chance.

Two men more different than Charley Hill and Edvard Munch would be difficult to find. Still, the gruff ex-paratrooper found himself sympathizing with the melancholy, high-strung artist. As haunted and unstable as his near-contemporary van Gogh, Edvard Munch had endured an upbringing that would have blighted the sunniest nature. When Munch was five, his mother died of tuberculosis, with her young son at her bedside. Nine years later, his older sister died of the same disease. His brother, too, fell ill with tuberculosis, but survived.

Insanity was another family curse. Munch's sister Laura went mad and was eventually inst.i.tutionalized. Munch's grandfather had died, mad, in an asylum, and Munch himself suffered a devastating breakdown in 1908, at age 45, that left him hospitalized for eight months. His treatment included electroshock, but he emerged more or less recovered and returned to his work.

Even at his healthiest, Munch was far from robust. Sickly throughout his childhood, he had survived tuberculosis and suffered through long bouts of bronchitis. Throughout his life he suffered from panic attacks. At the time he was working on The Scream The Scream, it took all his nerve to force himself to cross a street or look down from even the slightest height. He lived in fear of inhaling dust or germs; he shrank from drafts; he was so afraid of open s.p.a.ces that when he ventured outdoors he clung to the nearest wall.

”Disease, insanity and death were the angels which attended my cradle, and since then have followed me throughout my life,” Munch wrote in his journal. ”I learned early about the misery and dangers of life, and about the afterlife, about the eternal punishment which awaited the children of sin in h.e.l.l.”

He learned many of those lessons from his father, a doctor who treated Oslo's poorest residents for free but who adhered to fire-and-brimstone religious views. ”When anxiety did not possess him, he would joke and play with us like a child,” Munch recalled. ”When he punished us ... he could be almost insane in his violence. In my childhood I always felt that I was treated unjustly, without a mother, sick, and with the threat of punishment in h.e.l.l hanging over my head.”

Munch grew to be a shy, lonely, hypersensitive young man, tall, thin, and good-looking (reputedly ”the handsomest man in Norway”). In his twenties he fled puritanical Oslo for the guilty pleasures of Paris and the Black Piglet Cafe in Berlin. Here he drank too much, chased women and fled from them, and painted obsessively, late at night, in a shabby rented room cluttered with his own unfinished pictures.

The t.i.tles of some paintings from the 1890s, when Munch was in his early thirties and at his most productive, give some idea of his state of mind. He painted Despair Despair and and By the Deathbed By the Deathbed in 1892, in 1892, The Scream The Scream in 1893, in 1893, Anxiety Anxiety in 1894, in 1894, Death Struggle Death Struggle in 1895. in 1895.

The paintings are as bleak as the t.i.tles suggest. In comparison with Munch's portraits of isolation and woe, Edward Hopper's depictions of near-empty diners seem cheerful. The Sick Child The Sick Child, for example, shows Munch's sister Sophie, in bed and dying, attended by her despairing mother. Sophie is wan and weak, but-and this is characteristic of Munch-the dying girl seems less anguished than the mother she will leave behind. The mother's pain is more than she can bear; she holds her daughter's hand, but she is past the point where she could offer any spoken consolation.

Even paintings with seemingly inviting subjects, like the 1892 street scene called Spring Evening on Karl Johan Street Spring Evening on Karl Johan Street, are heavy-laden with grief. In Munch's version of a spring evening, a stream of men in black top hats and women in dark dresses advance zombie-like toward the viewer, their eyes wide and staring and their heads barely more than skulls. A lone figure, depicting Munch himself, walks unnoticed in the opposite direction.

Munch's aim in such paintings, he wrote, was to find a way to represent human ”suffering and emotion, rather than to paint external nature.” The painter's task was ”to depict his deepest emotions, his soul, his sorrows and joys.” An artist was a psychologist with a paintbrush.

Freud and Munch were almost exact contemporaries. Though neither man ever mentioned the other in print, the two were engaged in the same quest. In the age of anxiety, if Freud was the great explorer, Munch was his mapmaker. Far more directly than most artists, Munch served up a kind of autobiography on canvas. His paintings put his private torments on public view.

His relations with women, for example, could scarcely have been more fraught. ”His father had prayed late at night to save his son from the sinful attractions of women, flesh, and free love,” one art historian writes, ”but the diabolic allures of alcohol and a bohemian life overpowered his prayers.” In 1889, when Munch was twenty-six, his father died. One of the father's last acts was to mail his well-thumbed Bible to Munch, in Paris, in the hope that the directionless young man could yet be saved.