The Rescue Artist

by Edward Dolnick

  Duddin puts down the spare rib he is holding in his surprisingly dainty hands. “You can imagine the pressure I was under, negotiating it all,” he says, as if even now he might collapse under the burden. Cyril Ritchard, playing Captain Hook, never delivered his lines with more gusto. And, he hints darkly, someone wanted to make sure there was no backing out. “In the middle of it all,” Duddin moans, “I got two phone calls threatening to shoot me missus and me little dog if I didn’t do the Rembrandt.”

  Duddin gathers himself. “Now it’s fair to say that the judge entirely disregarded that. He didn’t believe a word of it. He didn’t believe I felt threatened at all.” Duddin’s speech has grown slow and sad, as if he were dismayed by the cynicism of some people.

  In the end, the police trap worked perfectly. While Duddin counted the £106,000 the “drug dealers” had paid him (they had negotiated a price of £70,000 for the Rembrandt, with £3000 to Duddin for his pains), the police swarmed in. “I had bags full of stuff,” Duddin recalls, “ivory and swords and whatever else, and then a van pulled in the drive to collect it and about ten policemen piled out. There were people on the roof of the garage, which is where me office is, there were people jumping over fences, and God knows where.”

  He looks fondly at Mary. “You were back at the house, then, Mary, weren’t you?”

  Mary, for once given a turn in the spotlight, gleefully fills in the picture. “I’d helped you to count the money, and I came back here and sat on the sofa, doing a crossword. And I looked out, and there were all these horrible men in the back garden, so I rushed to the front door, and there was this man there with a video camera and this horrible, scruffy, dirty woman, and she said, ‘Mrs. Duddin, you’re under arrest.’ “

  Mary was released after two days. “I remember at the end,” she says, “the diamond dealer, Robert—it was Robert who told us about the Rembrandt in the first place—he turned to me and he said, ‘I thought it was too easy’ “

  Cackling with laughter, Duddin and Mary signal to the waiter for another drink. For Duddin, the story had only one sad element, though admittedly it was the most important one. Duddin ended up before a judge who, for unfathomable reasons, decided to make an example of him and sentenced him to nine years in prison. (He was released after four and a half.)

  Even today, his time served, Duddin is indignant. His beef is not with the conviction but with his sentence. This is a game played with rules, and the judge violated the code out of spite.

  30

  Traffic Stop

  MAY 6, 1994

  Charley Hill had run out of patience. He had spent the early afternoon visiting galleries around Oslo with Einar-Tore Ulving, a man he had disliked from the moment they met. The point of the excursion, Hill hoped, was to kill time while Ulving’s colleague, Tor Johnsen, plotted strategy with the thieves who held The Scream. A few hours in Ulving’s company hadn’t done anything to improve Hill’s mood.

  Then Ulving had wandered off, too, leaving Hill alone and more restless than ever. The phone finally rang. It was Ulving. Could they meet at Fornebu, the old airport south of the city?

  Hill found Walker, and the two men briefed John Butler, in his command post, and set off for Fornebu. The two cops waited an hour, and then an hour and a half. Not a thing stirring. Afternoon gave way to evening. At last, Ulving turned up, ashen-faced and trembling. “The traffic police stopped me,” he said, “and they searched my car.”

  Walker and Hill avoided looking at one another, but their hearts sank. What a thing to do!

  The police had pulled Ulving over, they told him, for a random safety inspection. Did he have one of the triangular warning signs you put out on the road in case of an accident? It sounded farfetched, and, more unsettling still, the police seemed to be marking time, or perhaps waiting for instructions. Johnsen was in the car, too, and he was badly upset.

  After fifteen minutes, Ulving had asked the policemen if they would be done soon.

  “Yes, everything seems to be in order. But tell me, aren’t you an art dealer?”

  Ulving said he was. The police asked if they could check his car. For forty-five minutes they searched but found nothing. They flipped through the box of art prints in the back of Ulving’s Mercedes, but somehow they missed the woodcuts of The Scream.

  When the police finally finished, Johnsen told Ulving to go on to meet Hill and Walker without him. The way the Norwegian cops kept turning up had to be more than just coincidence.

  Now Hill and Walker had a shaken Ulving to calm down. Hill guessed at what had happened—when he and Walker had told John Butler about the planned rendezvous at the old airport, the Norwegian police who were with Butler in his improvised headquarters had notified their bosses. They had immediately leapt to the conclusion that Ulving was headed toward Hill and Walker to show them The Scream. Following orders, the local cops had pulled Ulving over. When they failed to find the missing painting, they had sent him on his way.

  Hill hid his exasperation with his Norwegian colleagues and tried to convince Ulving to laugh the whole thing off. The Getty wanted The Scream; it had no interest in running around the countryside playing cops and robbers.

  “Well, it’s not your lucky day,” Hill told Ulving, “but it’s nothing whatever to do with us. First of all, I’d never be stupid enough to get involved with the police. And, second, it’s not my style of doing business.”

  It wasn’t much of an argument, but apparently it didn’t have to be. Ulving wanted reassurance that Hill and Walker weren’t in cahoots with the cops, and Hill batted the suggestion away with convincing indignation.

  Then, mission not accomplished, everyone headed irritably back to the hotel. (Hill and Walker could only guess what the airport meeting had been intended to accomplish.) Ulving went off to meet up with Johnsen, and Hill and Walker settled in for yet another debriefing with John Butler.

  “Whatever you do,” Hill asked Butler, “can you call off the surveillance? They’re really causing us problems. I’m going to run out of excuses soon, to explain away that we’re nothing to do with all this.”

  Butler, every bit as frustrated as Hill and Walker but not as free to act on his own, promised he’d do what he could. But there were limits. “It’s not our operation, it’s a Norwegian police operation,” Butler said. “They can do what they want. We’re just helping them.”

  Hill retreated to his room, waiting for the phone to ring. The afternoon’s false start hadn’t dispelled his confidence. Johnsen had ogled the cash in Walker’s bag. He’d be back.

  Hill flopped down on his bed, fully dressed except for his shoes, staring at the ceiling. It was nearly midnight. The phone rang. Ulving.

  “We’re downstairs. We need you to meet us.”

  “Why can’t it wait ‘til morning?”

  “It’s got to be done now.”

  “Go fuck yourself! I’ll talk to you in the morning.” Hill slammed down the phone.

  Hill’s anger was fake. Crooks always made unreasonable demands. Assholes act like assholes. Do it their way, they’d say, or they’d burn the painting or cut it into pieces. And they might. The first thing was to persuade them not to act on their threats. Then, once they were done with that crap, you imposed your personality on them. You’re the guy who’s going to provide them with the money they want.

  In negotiating with crooks, Hill had found that belligerence was key. Accommodation was always a mistake. “The minute you start agreeing with people, you’re finished,” Hill once observed, “because you can’t be credible then. That’s the way life works. Life is built around creative tension.”

  It is difficult to know if Hill was talking about life in general or life in one dark corner of the world. He may not know himself. “Thieves and gangsters all hate each other, they screw each other, they betray each other,” he insists. “That’s the world they live in. And if you suddenly appear in it and agree to everything they say and do everything they want, then you’re just not credible.
If you act agreeable, it’s not a sign you’re close to a deal. It’s a sign they should push harder. They’ll take you for some complete asshole.”

  Hill sat on his bed, certain his phone would ring again in a minute or two. He didn’t phone Butler because he wanted to keep the line free. The phone rang.

  “I’m serious,” Ulving said. “We need to get this done now.” “I’ve talked to you and Johnsen all day, off and on,” Hill said. “What more can anyone say?”

  “No. It’s something else.”

  “Okay. Do you want to meet in the coffee bar? But it may be closed by now.”

  “No, no, not there. Outside, in the car.”

  “Listen, I’m in bed,” Hill said. “The light’s out. Just give me a minute to throw some water on my face and get dressed. I’ll be down in ten minutes.” Hill phoned Butler, waking him up. “They’re downstairs,” he said. “Don’t go down there!”

  “I’ve got to. Don’t worry, I won’t go anywhere with them. I’ll just go down dressed as I am now”—Hill was in tan chinos and a blue button-down shirt, wearing loafers but no socks—”and if they want to drive me somewhere, I’ll say, ‘I don’t have my coat or my socks, I’m not going outdoors.’ “

  “All right, but you can’t leave the hotel.” “Okay.”

  “And that includes going outside the hotel to sit in the car.” “Fine.”

  Hill went downstairs and walked outside. There it was, Ulving’s Mercedes, with Ulving and Johnsen inside. Hill climbed in the back.

  PART V

  In the Basement

  31

  A Stranger

  MIDNIGHT, MAY 6, 1994

  Hill climbed in the back seat of Ulving’s Mercedes, but he made a point of leaving his door open. “I’m happy to listen to what you’ve got to say,” he announced, “but I’m not going anywhere with you.” Ulving was in the driver’s seat, with Johnsen next to him. Hill sat behind Johnsen, half in the car and half out, with his right foot on the ground. Johnsen was in a foul mood, cursing Ulving and the Norwegian cops and life in general. Evidently he had been going on for a while. Ulving slumped meekly in his seat.

  Johnsen gestured toward a black van parked nearby, its windows dark and its roof festooned with antennas. “I checked it out,” he snarled. “It’s police surveillance.”

  “Did you speak to ‘em?” asked Hill. The Norwegians again, trying to help.

  “No, there’s nobody in it. I rocked it back and forth, just to be sure. But I know it’s a surveillance van.”

  “Then where the hell are they?” Hill asked. “Where’re the goddamned

  cops?”

  Johnsen pointed to a club next to the hotel. Blaring music poured into the night. The police were making a night of it.

  Hill tried to calm Johnsen down. Flattery was usually a good bet. “The cops must be watching you because they know you’re a jailbird.” At least for a moment, Johnsen quit his bitching. “Ah, vanity,” Hill told himself. In any case, better for Johnsen to think that the cops were keeping an eye on him than to think they were in league with Roberts and Walker.

  Suddenly someone yanked open the back door across from Hill. The stranger slid into the car and directed an angry stare at Hill, who braced for trouble. Something about the newcomer’s eyes was wrong, almost crazy. He was a big, physically imposing man, dressed entirely in black, with a cap pulled low on his forehead and a scarf and gloves. For Hill’s benefit he spoke in English. Hill couldn’t place the accent. Where was this hopped-up fuckhead from? France?

  Johnsen seemed to know the new man, but Ulving didn’t. “We’ve got to go meet a friend of mine,” the stranger said. He gestured toward Hill. “You’ll be able to see the painting.”

  Then he gave Ulving, in the driver’s seat, a shove. “Now!”

  “Horseshit!” Hill said. “It can wait ‘til morning. I’m not going anywhere now.”

  The newcomer turned toward Hill. “Why is that door open? Close it.” “I’m not closing the door.” The stranger again. “Close it!”

  “Listen, if one of you guys pulls out a .38 and points it at me, I want to cause you some problems. If you’re going to get me, you’re going to have to be quick.”

  It was a standoff, but the crooks seemed to like the tough-guy talk. The stranger was a thug and Johnsen was a bully, and Hill had responded in a way they understood. Rash though he could be, Hill had been serious about not going anywhere. A drive in the dark to a destination he didn’t know, on his own, in a foreign country—he’d have to be nuts. Hill looked at the black-clad, bug-eyed crook trying to cajole him into this dubious excursion, and an image of the wolf and Little Red Riding Hood flashed into his mind. Who’s for a walk in the woods?

  “I’m not going to sit here forever,” Hill said. “It’s cold, and I’ve got no socks on.” Johnsen and the stranger craned around for a look. This was Norway, in winter. The tension ratcheted down a notch.

  “I’ll be happy to travel anywhere you want me to in the morning,” Hill said.

  Ulving chimed in. “Let’s do it now.”

  The others ignored him. Hill turned to Johnsen. “If you want to keep an eye on me, why don’t you stay in the hotel overnight? Let’s book you a room.”

  Hill and Johnsen headed toward the hotel. Ulving stayed behind with the stranger with the manic eyes. Hill stepped up to the reception desk. “Do you have a room?” This could have been trouble. With hundreds of narcotics officers gathered for a convention, the hotel might be full. Hill hadn’t made a backup plan.

  “Yes, Mr. Roberts, of course.”

  Hill handed over his Getty credit card and signed for Johnsen’s room without asking the rate. Johnsen watched closely, noting the clerk’s obsequiousness and registering all the little flourishes that marked Hill as a man of the world. Hill was, Johnsen would say later, “a very elegant gentleman, a little too elegant, in my opinion, to be a police officer.”

  With Johnsen safely assigned to a room well away from his own, Hill hurried off to Butler’s room, to brief him. Butler was irritated that Hill had gone out of the hotel, but Hill brushed the scolding aside. It was his ass on the line; he’d make his own calls.

  But there was a problem with the next day’s plans. Ulving and Johnsen and the stranger had said something about driving out of the city.

  “You say you’re going south with these guys?” Butler asked.

  “Yeah.”

  The Scotland Yard detectives had permission to wander around Oslo as they pleased, but for reasons Hill didn’t quite follow, they had been warned to steer clear of the area south of the city.

  “John, for fuck’s sake, what are you talking about?” Hill shouted. “Are we going to get this painting back or not? What is this police bureaucracy territorial-imperative jurisdictional-hassle shit? I mean, stop it!”

  “No. You can’t do it.”

  “John, if we don’t do it this way, there’s no chance we can keep our credibility with these assholes.”

  “Fuck it, you’re not going! There are procedural problems, and you can’t do it.”

  For the first time, Sid Walker joined the argument. “Well, John,” he said quietly, “Charley’s got a point.”

  Outvoted two to one, Butler gave in. The three men made a plan, or at least agreed to proceed without a real plan. They did take steps to safeguard the fortune in kroner that Walker had flashed under Johnsen’s nose. At dawn, Walker would take his bagful of cash out of the Plaza, book a room at the Grand Hotel, and lock the money in a safe there.

  Beyond that, they would have to wing it. Come morning, Hill and Walker would go off with Johnsen to wherever it was the Norwegians had been so eager to get to the previous midnight.

  32

  On the Road

  EARLY MORNING, MAY 7, 1994

  Hill and Walker left Butler and headed off to their own rooms. It was late—Hill hadn’t gone out to Ulving’s car until midnight—and they would be underway early the next morning. (Walker, who had to switch hot
els, would be on the move even earlier than Hill.) But they had time to grab a few hours’ sleep. For Einar-Tore Ulving, on the other hand, the night of May 6, 1994, would prove the longest of his life.

  The art dealer’s ordeal began at midnight, when the stranger slipped into his car. Even with Johnsen and Hill out of the car and in the hotel, the newcomer stayed in the back seat, his eyes fixed on Ulving at the wheel. In the dark, with his cap pulled low over his eyes and his scarf pulled high over his chin, he was a large and looming shape. Afraid to speak or to turn around, Ulving sat cowering and waiting for instructions. His unwelcome guest never gave his name. The art dealer thought of him simply as “the man with the cap.”

  Finally the stranger broke the silence. “Drive,” he said, directing Ulving through the near-empty streets of a wintry Oslo night. “Right.” “Left.” “Through the tunnel.”

  Ulving obeyed. The route led out of the city, but Ulving had no idea of their destination. Soon they were on a quiet road. The houses were dark, the street deserted. No streetlights, no traffic, no pedestrians. “Stop!”

  Ulving pulled over. “Wait here.” The stranger walked to a pay phone. A minute or two later, he returned and gestured to Ulving to roll down his window. “Drive south on the E-18,” he said, “and someone will phone you.”

  Then he vanished into the gloom.

  Ulving found his way to the motorway. He knew the E-18. He drove along, expecting his cell phone to ring at any moment. It didn’t. For an hour and fifty minutes he sped along the motorway in silence. The E-18 south from Oslo, as it happened, led toward the town of TØnsberg, where Ulving lived. He decided to drive home.