Long Buried Secrets: James Dieter Book 4

by Francis Joseph Smith

  Lana was still sitting in her motel room, the curtains pulled to one side, eyeing the Dieter room. “It been relatively quiet here,” she replied.

  “I should be there in fifteen minutes or so, unless he makes another stop.”

  “That’s strange,” Lana said interrupting him. “All of a sudden we have some activity.”

  What type of activity?”

  “They just moved two black duffel bags from one room to the Dieters room,” she paused for several seconds. “Now I see luggage being moved to the Dieters room. It looks like they are checking out of their rooms and consolidating into the Dieters room.”

  “They obviously won’t do anything until nighttime,” said Yuri confidently. “But start packing just in case. Also, go pay the front desk. I want to be ready to depart as soon as they do.”

  “I have the strange feeling we are about to be rich,” said Lana, the excitement in her voice building. “I can feel it.”

  “Yes, we are,” replied Yuri before repeating it once again. “Yes, we are.”

  CHAPTER 60

  Bern 12:15am

  The moon was approaching its quarter mark, providing minimum low level light. Intermittent rain showers kept down the chance meeting any nosey pedestrians, and with it being midweek, no midnight revelers.

  As far as law enforcement, with the Swiss being the Swiss, the police patrol had driven by at precisely 12:08am, and would return on their patrol at 2:19am.

  Everything was perfect for a robbery.

  Jim, Nora, Summer, and Eian sat in their rented white Transit van parked on a side street, 20 meters from the museum. Each of them looked ready for the mission, having donned a black ensemble from head to toe before they had left the Motel.

  Minutes earlier they had dropped off Rahm and Chuck by the manhole identified as having the wires that supplied power to the Museum. Nevertheless, before they did, for the fifth time in an hour, Jim had queried Chuck if he was positive he had drained every ounce of diesel from the generator.

  Traffic was light. A mix of cars and vans were parked on the street providing them with a decent cover if a police vehicle happened to reappear, off schedule.

  Nora looked out the passenger side window with a pair of night vision infrared binoculars they had purchased at a military surplus store outside of Zurich. She focused on the museums office employee section, a corridor containing offices that separated the museums main collection from the Gurlitt collection. Old-fashioned window cages covered each of the six ground-floor windows, an inside facing padlock on each for additional security.

  Two days earlier, Chuck identified one of the windows in the office corridor that looked to be the most accessible to make their entrance. He thought it might actually be slightly ajar. Chuck said bolt cutters would do the trick on the lock. He also managed to buy a similar lock in-town to replace the one they would be cutting. Everything had to look undisturbed when they departed.

  “The window is still ajar,” said Nora confidently, handing the binoculars to Jim for confirmation. He took a quick look before nodding to Nora.

  It was time.

  NORA DIALED RAHM’s cell phone. “Okay,” she said when he answered, “We are in position. Go for it. But remember to activate the gas at least 20 seconds or so before you cut the power.”

  “Will do,” he replied before hastily hanging up. He motioned to Chuck to open the sewer cover. “It’s go time.”

  Rahm helped Chuck pry up the solid steel lid with a common crow bar. Rahm heaved up the 75-pound manhole cover, rolled it to the holes side, and gently laid it down.

  “In the US, this close to a museum, this manhole cover would have been welded at four points so we couldn’t do what we just did,” said Chuck. “You have to love the peace-loving neutral Swiss.”

  Chuck removed a large can of woman’s aerosol hairspray from his black duffel bag of goodies as he called them. “Do you know how hard it is to find this anymore?” he said to Rahm. “In the long hair days of the eighties and nineties it was everywhere.” He then pulled out a long, candle length, lighter, laying it beside the can of hair spray. Next, a handful of bare copper wire strips, each about two inches long, laying them beside the can and the lighter.

  “Ready to make some trouble?” said Chuck, a wide grin on his face. He grabbed the can of hair spray and lighter, and then he laid flat on the street so he could better reach the bundle of wiring two and a half feet below the street level. He was ready. Chuck looked up at Rahm awaiting his signal.

  “Go,” said Rahm.

  Chuck snapped on the lighter but nothing happened. He did it several more times to no avail. “You have got to be kidding me,” he said. “It worked fine just this afternoon.” He tried it several more times.

  Rahm used his cell phone’s flashlight app to shine its beam on the lighter in order to aid Chuck.

  Chuck was cursing loudly by now.

  “You have to keep your voice down,” said Rahm, “you might attract attention.”

  After five minutes, Jim called Rahm’s cell phone. “What’s going on?” he said. “Power should be out by now.”

  “We are having trouble with the lighter,” Rahm replied. “Gives us another minute or so.” He hung up with Jim. “Let me see the lighter,” he said to Chuck. He took the lighter from Chuck to examine it. After several seconds, he found the problem. “You must have hit the edge of the manhole when you leaned in. The lighter is in the off position.” He moved the black plastic piece to the ON position before handing it back to Chuck. “Go for it.”

  “Don’t I feel like the dumbass,” said Chuck sheepishly.

  He resumed his position of laying on the street, his head and arms in the manhole. Soon there was a whooshing sound with the hairspray spray igniting. The smell of burnt rubber insulation soon filled the air. “Almost through,” said Chuck. He burned off a wide section of rubber only to reveal the plastic coated cable below it. “Give me the second can from my bag,” he asked of Rahm. “Used up more than I thought I would.” Rahm handed him a second can and in seconds the whooshing sound resumed. Another 20 seconds and he extracted his upper body from the manhole. “Done,” he said, grabbing his copper strips. “Stand back,” he said, “You never know how this is going to blow.”

  “Wait a second,” said Rahm. “I have to activate my gas can. We need those security guards knocked out before the power goes out.” He dialed a number on his cell, waiting until he heard it connect. “We give the gas a little time to do its thing and then you can finish,” he said.

  Chuck stood up and extended his right hand over the uncovered manhole, directly over the now exposed wiring, awaiting Rahm’s signal.

  Rahm looked at his phones clock, patiently waiting until 20 seconds went by and the gas had time to incapacitate the guards. “Go,” he said.

  Chuck dropped his copper strips on the bare wires then quickly darted away. In seconds they heard a series of pops, followed by arcing, then the area went dark. “Done and done,” said Chuck. He walked over to replace the manhole cover. “Call Jim,” he said. “Inform him both power and the guards are out.”

  FROM HIS SIXTH FLOOR suite, Dolan sat alone staring out his floor to ceiling window, eyeing the Bern Museum, looking for anything out of place. He was soon rewarded when the lights went dark in the museum. That has to be the start of things, he thought.

  In celebration he walked over to the suites mini bar and removed a small bottle of Scotch. He poured it in a crystal glass over two pieces of ice and walked back to his seat by the window. He raised his glass in toast before sipping the drink.

  “I’m about to be very rich,” he said aloud.

  LANA SAT BEHIND THE STEERING wheel of their car, Yuri in the passenger seat. They were parked a block from where Dieter and his associates sat, parked, in their white van.

  Suddenly the lights in the museum went out. “That’s it,” said Yuri. “They are going for it.”

  Lana turned to Yuri, grabbing his hand in excitement. “W
e are about to become very rich,” she said.

  JIM PICKED UP ON the first ring. “Are we good?” he said.

  “Get going,” replied Rahm. “Chuck and I will be right behind you. We just have to replace the manhole cover.”

  Summer, Nora, Eian, and Jim exited the van as the rain started to pick up. Each carried two, six-inch wide, three-foot long cardboard tubes similar to what architects used for carrying large drawings, only these contained the reproductions. Jim also carried a standard toolbox containing box cutters, mini-flashlights, a crowbar, screwdrivers, a hammer, and tubes of glue. In his other hand a heavy duty bolt cutter. They cautiously approached a group of ground-floor office windows, each covered in a box like metal cage that Chuck had identified earlier as being their best chance to enter the museum. They were located between the older Museum and the new Gurlitt wing. They looked more like your ordinary office windows, not ones that possibly stood between them and billions of dollars in paintings.

  They approached where a window was slightly ajar. The same one Nora had noticed from the van. Evidently the person who occupied the office had left their window slightly open, maybe an inch, to provide some air for his or her plants, the plants laying against the window. “You have got to be kidding me,” Jim said. “Only the Swiss would do this. I guess they think the five armed guards inside would be enough of a deterrent.”

  Jim raised the bolt cutters and in one swift motion cut thought the lock. He opened the cage and next carefully pried out the screen. When he was done, he simply pushed the window the rest of the way up, cautious not to knock over any of the plants. He then carefully placed the screen in the office. “Don’t forget. We have to replace this screen when we leave,” he said back to those assembled. He then grabbed several of the plants from their spot on the windowsill, handing them back to Nora and Summer. “Wait until I get into the office, then hand them back to me,” he said.

  Jim pulled himself through the now open window and into the office. He made quick work of placing the rest of the plants on the floor. “Let’s go,” he said to Summer, Nora, and Eian. They handed him first the plants then their cardboard tubes and toolbox before he helped each of them into the small office.

  Chuck and Rahm approached just as Summer entered through the open window. She helped Chuck in, he in turn helped Rahm.

  Chuck pulled the window cage shut.

  “That was quick,” Chuck said to Summer.

  “Window was open just a crack just like you said it would be,” said Summer.

  “Same thing happened to an art museum back in Boston in the nineties. A nice $500 million job for somebody.”

  “Close the window,” Jim whispered from his position now at the closed office door. “Don’t need anyone seeing that baby wide open.” Satisfied, Jim opened the office door slightly, looking out onto the darkened hallway that separated the two galleries. They knew the guardroom was only 50 feet away directly across from where they now stood.

  Rahm walked up to Jim and whispered, “If they are in the guard room, trust me, they are out of commission. Let me go first.”

  Jim backed up. “Be my guest,” he said before handing him a pen light.

  Rahm cautiously stepped into the hallway. He first looked to see if the motion sensor lights were out. The loss of power would have also deactivated the floors weight sensors. Satisfied, he jogged the 50 feet over to the guardroom. Once there, he placed his ear to the door. Hearing nothing, he opened it slightly knowing the gas would have dissipated by now. He counted five guards all asleep, four with video game controllers still in their hands. He turned back to Jim and signaled the coast was clear by flashing his light on, then off, then on. Rahm hastily closed the door and rejoined the group.

  Jim was busy handing out tools of the trade: a box cutter, a flashlight the size of a pen, and a straight slot screwdriver to each of them. “Everybody knows which paintings they are assigned to take and replace with the reproductions. We practiced this a number of times in the motel. We take them off the walls, and pry the nails from the canvas’s. We ease the canvas off the frames, replace them with our reproductions, and tack the paintings with the original nails. You then lay each of the paintings on the floor, one on top of the other until you have your assigned number. Then roll them up in one big roll and place them in the assigned cardboard tube. Everyone good with that?”

  Each of them nodded, having heard it for the umpteenth time; first in the motel, now here.

  “All right,” Jim said as he checked his watch, “we meet back right here in under one hour. Check your iPhones, set your alarms. No more than one-hour, people. Now go!”

  IN FORTY-FIVE MINUTES, they started filtering back one-by-one. First Summer, then Chuck, Rahm, Eian, with Nora bringing up the rear, meeting back at the office were they had first entered the museum.

  “I can’t believe how exciting this is!” said Summer. “Here I am the head of one Museum breaking into another Museum!”

  “Well hopefully you don’t want to take this up as a side job,” said Chuck. “Take it from me, you wind up getting caught at one time or another.”

  “Oh this is it for me,” she replied. “I’m one and done. All of these paintings shouldn’t be on display to begin with. They deserve to be with the families that they were stolen from during the war.”

  “And that’s one of the reasons we’re here,” said Jim as he collected each of the cardboard tubes holding the paintings, each tube containing between seven to nine paintings layered one on top of the other, then rolled up to fit into the tube.

  Jim handed each in turn to Nora.

  As a final quality check, Jim asked Chuck and Summer to walk the floor and take one last look at each of the reproductions. While they walked the floors, Jim had Eian and Chuck perform an inventory check on all of their tools to make sure they were leaving with everything they brought in. He also asked Rahm to return to the security office to monitor the sleeping guards. In addition, he had to pick up his gas canister he hidden behind a cabinet. No evidence could be left behind.

  In 15 minutes, Summer and Chuck returned. “Everything looks perfect,” Chuck said. “Nobody should be able to tell the difference. At least for a while.”

  Summer concurred. “The paintings each employ a disturbance sensor for when the paintings are removed from the wall but they will automatically reset when the power comes back on.”

  Jim nodded. “So nothing should look out of place when the guards wake up or when the power comes back on? No lights flashing or alarms going off?”

  Summer smiled at him. “No, nothing like that. This museum put too much emphasis on foot patrols walking around ready to phone in any disturbance. And we all see how well that works,” pointing over to where Rahm looked in on the sleeping guards.

  “Okay,” Jim said, “I think it’s time to get the hell out of here.” He waved over to Rahm. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Rahm closed the door and ran over to where they were now starting to exit the building through the window they first entered.

  “Jim,” he said a bit out of breath from his jog. “I understand German and I just heard on the guard’s two-way radio that the power company had repaired the electrical line and were preparing to turn power back on in five minutes.”

  “The floor sensors will be activated in the office if we don’t hurry,” Jim said to everyone. “Let’s go people.”

  Nora was first out. She took the toolbox Jim handed her, then the cardboard tubes. Summer soon followed, then Chuck, Eian, and Rahm. Jim carefully placed each of the plants in their rightful spots, and then handed the screen to Rahm. “We have to try and place that screen back in after I close the window,” he said. After he exited, he then placed the last two plants in their spot on the windowsill. Jim adjusted the window down to its previous position when they first entered. Rahm then handed Jim the screen. Luckily for them, it fitted nicely back into the metal slots with no trouble.

  Suddenly power came on as he finished adju
sting the screen.

  “We are sitting ducks out here,” said Rahm anxiously.

  Jim pointed over to the truck. “Everybody head for the truck,” he said. “I’ll follow in a few.”

  Each hastily walked to the truck with their tools and cardboard tubes in tow.

  Jim hurried to extract the new lock from his pocket. He then pushed the cage back into place over the window, making sure to place the lock on the interior side of the cage. “And that’s how a successful robbery is done,” he said to himself. He then rushed back to the van, the side door held open for him by Eian.

  “Let’s get out of here before the cops make their rounds,” Eian said as Jim jumped in.

  Chuck looked to his watch. “That should be in about four minutes,” he said, having observed their schedule over the course of the past several nights. “They are both very efficient, and very predictable.”

  Two blocks away they noticed the yellow sirens of the Axpo Municipal Electric company workers trucks as they concluded their repairs on the brilliant work Chuck had performed on the wire bundles.

  In minutes, Nora maneuvered the transit van down to the main boulevard, and in a short distance they were on the highway and driving west towards France.

  Over one billion US dollars’ worth of paintings lay rolled up in card board tubes beside Summer and Chuck in the back seat.

  Eian leaned over to Rahm in the seat beside him. “Did that really happen or did I just dream it all?” He said, a grin on his face from ear-to-ear.

  Rahm looked to Eian with a hint of seriousness about him. “You enriched the lives of many people today,” he said. “Now if you are lucky enough to live another day, maybe you can collect.”

  LANA NOTICED THE POWER come on first. “I hope they get out of there quick,” she said. “That’s our money as much as theirs.”