Twenty-One
TESTING . . . ONE, TWO
Van Rijn surfaces three days later and the Cypriot police, who have only just landed in Cyprus, must now return to the Netherlands. We meet at the airport to pick up Van Rijn, who arrives drunk and accompanied by his friend Roger. Van Rijn is in no condition to discuss anything, so the police and I drop him off at his hotel.1
I discuss the evening’s plans with Tassos Panayiotou, one of the Cypriot policemen, of where to go to dinner with Van Rijn.
“He doesn’t trust police. He thinks that you’re going to arrest him. I think it might be best if I don’t attend tonight. It will give all you boys a chance to bond,” I say.
Being alone with the “dogs” (Van Rijn’s nickname for the police) is sure to keep Van Rijn on his best behavior. It may even keep him sober, which means he will be in better shape to discuss business tomorrow. My evening will be spent convincing my husband Michael why it is necessary for me to accompany Van Rijn and the police to Munich in the morning to plan a sting operation with the German police.
When I arrive home that evening, the expression on Michael’s face tells me he has been anticipating this conversation all day.
“Tasoula, why must you go? Let the police handle this! You have recovered a safe full of priceless artifacts. Enough is enough!”
“Michael, Van Rijn doesn’t trust the police. He will only negotiate through me. I have to be there. This is my predicament.”
“You are going to bankrupt your company and we need you with us!” he says. And Michael is right. My company is in serious trouble because I have allocated all of my time to the recovery efforts. My business needs me, my family needs me, but it will all have to hold on for another few weeks until I put Munich to rest.
“Most importantly, I’m concerned about you. You can’t keep food down, you’re pale, and you have big bags under your eyes. Does this mean so much to you that you are willing to sacrifice your health for Cyprus?”
“I will never be free unless I finish this, Michael.”
“I’m trying to understand, Tasoula. It’s not easy for me. What about my niece’s wedding coming up? You’re the matron of honor, for God’s sake.”
“I’ll plan around it,” I say, hoping to calm him.
“Do you realize it’s been five years and you haven’t been able to get pregnant because you are constantly in a state of stress!”
“Let me finish with this! I promise you I will focus on getting pregnant after Munich.”
MUNICH, SEPTEMBER 28
The police, Van Rijn, and I take a commercial flight to Munich. Van Rijn insists that I sit next to him on the airplane.2 He is petrified about landing in Germany. His entire body is quivering as he grabs my hand and he tells me about his Jewish descent.
“My mother is a Jew. The Germans must have a file on me, Tasoula. This doesn’t feel right. Promise me you won’t let them arrest me.”
“You are not going to be arrested. The German police work with us, not against.”
“Look at how Tassos stares at me. Sooner or later he’s going to come after me, too.” Van Rijn is paranoid.
“If you cooperate and give them Dikmen and the other dealers, you will be the only dealer who remains a free man.”
“No information until you secure my freedom with the Cypriots and the Germans. You must call my father now or I won’t help you.”
This is typical behavior of Van Rijn. He goes from thinking I’m the best person in the world to threatening me in ten seconds. Van Rijn’s father never approved of his lifestyle, and Van Rijn is desperate to heal their tumultuous relationship.
“Lead me to the treasures and Dikmen, and I will sing your praises to him.”
The tense lines in his face ease up. His expression softens.
“I already told my father about you. He will never believe I turned my life around until he hears it from you.”
The irony that fate has forced us to be interdependent on each other challenges us to also face our fear of trusting each other.
“I asked you to give the Church something for nothing, Van Rijn. Am I speaking to the wind?”
“I have something for you that I think you will like. You will have to wait and see, Madame Consul.”
“How much of the money I gave you actually went to Dikmen?” I ask, believing he paid a lot less for the artifacts than the half million dollars he received.
“My men and I had a lot of expenses. Plus, I’m paying them and we have been working on this for months.”
“Show me you are that reformed man you say you are.”
The plane touches down on German soil. Peter Kitschler, who is in charge of the Bavarian police, is waiting just outside of the customs area. Looking through the glass doors into the waiting area, Van Rijn says, “That tall man, he’s your German dog.”
His innate radar can spot the police in a crowd. Kitschler escorts us to cars waiting to transport us. Tassos and I will be staying at one hotel with Van Rijn and Marios (the other Cypriot police officer) at another.3
At the last minute, as soon as the two Cypriot policemen get into their car, Van Rijn pulls me into the car that is transporting him and Kitschler. This leaves the Cypriot police in a bit of a panic, because they are supposed to be protecting me. Van Rijn and I are dropped off at his hotel. The Cypriot police are dropped off at my hotel and arrive a half hour later, embarrassed that Van Rijn managed to put one over on them.
The champagne is flowing into Van Rijn’s glass as he stands next to a grand piano in the lobby singing off-key and dedicating love songs to me. I’m surprised how quickly he becomes inebriated.
There is a bit of a Madonna complex in his view of me, I worry what the police must think. This professing of love is a new gimmick, and I don’t buy it for a second. He’s putting on a show for these gentlemen to undermine me in their eyes so he can set himself up to manipulate them. I can spot one of his schemes from miles. For now, though, he still needs me.
Van Rijn is too drunk to find his room so the police and I determine that Marios will stay in the room next to Van Rijn with a connecting door for easy access should he need it. I stay at a different hotel with Tassos, and we agree to meet for breakfast the next morning.
The next day is like a bad dream from which I can’t awaken.
I’m asleep when the phone rings.
“Good morning, trouble for breakfast,” Tassos says. “Van Rijn is missing from his hotel room.”
Without a chance to wake up to a sip of coffee, I jump in a taxi with Tassos and head for Van Rijn’s hotel, where Marios is waiting anxiously for us to arrive.
“When I put him to bed last night he was ossified. I had to lock him in his room for his own safety.”
“You had the adjoining room. You didn’t hear anything?” I ask.
“Not a peep! The front desk said he phoned them at around three A.M. and asked for someone from reception to come up and unlock his door. He advanced himself three thousand Deutsche marks from the credit card that secured the room.”
“What! He took three thousand DM ($1600) from my credit card! I’m the one paying for this!”
We try to speculate about what could have happened to Van Rijn. Did he commit suicide due to the pressure? Did he hurt himself in an accident because he was so drunk when he fled?
We return to Van Rijn’s room and find his luggage is there. We are even more worried now. It is nine A.M. and Tassos and I continue on to meet with Kitschler at police headquarters. We leave Marios behind in case Van Rijn returns.
The Polizeipräsidium München is a series of connecting buildings built in 1975, and the headquarters of the 7,100-person Bavarian police force. Peter Kitschler quickly leads us into a private room to begin our talks.
“Peter, Van Rijn has disappeared. His luggage is still in the room.”
“The beer festival is going on in Munich. Let me send my men there. He probably fell asleep in a ditch, given how smashed he was last night,”
Kitchler says.
“We need Van Rijn here, so let’s focus on finding him,” says Tassos.
“We are aware of Dikmen,” says Kitschler.
“So you know he trades in the illicit arts?” I ask.
“Van Rijn’s book says that, but when we checked a few years back we found nothing in Dikmen’s apartment.”
“You did a search already?” asks Tassos.
“We followed the Kanakaria case in America and our Central Tax Office taxed Dikmen on the sale of the mosaics. We catalogued his assets to auction them to pay his bill but we found no significant art in his apartment,” says Kitschler.
“Peter, they tax him for what he sells, but you don’t prosecute him for selling looted art?”
“Neither the Cyprus government nor the United States authorities asked to extradite him for prosecution,” says Kitschler.
Kitschler follows us back to Van Rijn’s hotel room where we are joined by Siemandel, Kitschler’s number-two man.
“What will we do with his luggage?” I ask.
“You can turn it over to us. You can also press charges against Van Rijn for taking the advance on your credit card,” says Kitschler.
“If I hand over his belongings and press charges against him, we can forget about him collaborating with the police. The bags have to stay with me.”
“Fine,” says Kitschler.
“If I am to take this luggage back to Holland, I want to know what’s in it,” I say. “Let me open it in front of you. God only knows what he has in there.”
Opening Van Rijn’s luggage gives me a sad insight. There are clothes, packed not so neatly, tiny little presents for his kids, and lots of photographs I’ve seen before of stolen artifacts that he says are in Dikmen’s possession.
The Cypriot police and I split at the airport. They return to Cyprus, I head for the Netherlands. My final humiliation is having to pay for Van Rijn’s overweight luggage.
I soon learn of his whereabouts when he calls me from Curaçao. On the one hand I’m angry because of what he just put me through, but I am also relieved that he is alive.
“I’m in a bad state, Tazulaah. I can’t go through with this until I am detoxified.”
“Time’s almost out. It’s now or never for us both. Jan Fred van Wijnen and Channel Four are calling daily. We have a drama but no story.”
“I’ll call you from London,” says Van Rijn.
I’m completely disgusted and wondering why I don’t walk away from the whole situation. My tolerance for Van Rijn’s antics is running out. Another week passes before Van Rijn’s friend Roger leaves a contact number for me to reach Van Rijn. After several attempts Roger answers the line but he is drunk and vulgar and I hang up on him. Minutes later Van Rijn calls, apologizing.
“I’m sorry. You are a gracious lady and I never intended for you to hear all that,” he says.
“Your behavior is unacceptable. Munich offended me. It just isn’t right,” I say.
“I’m sorry, Tazulaah, but when I woke up and found my hotel door locked I thought that the Cypriot police were in the process of arresting me. I had to flee.”
“And the three thousand Deutsche marks ($1600) on my credit card? How dare you do that!”
“I’ll give it back to you, I swear, Tazulaah. The Cypriot police scare me. I don’t trust them.”
“Van Rijn, If you can’t trust me, then we can’t go on.”
“It’s not you. It’s your people that I don’t trust. My intermediaries and I have to be guaranteed immunity from Cyprus, Germany, and the Church. I want it in writing, signed by lawyers, and it has to be ironclad; otherwise I will not do this. Do you understand?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Give me time to clear my head, Tazulaah. When I come back to you next, be ready to go. I’m sorry for what I did back in Munich. You didn’t deserve that. I need you to take care of the immunity. I have to know that my men and I will not be prosecuted.”
“You’d better take measures to sober up, Van Rijn. I have Jan Fred van Wijnen and Peter Watson breathing down my neck ready to release the story because my extension is almost up. Do you want it to be a story of a hero or a fiasco?”
“Tazulaah, one other favor to ask, please, call my father now?”
“No, absolutely not, Van Rijn. A deal is a deal. You come through with your part of the bargain and I’ll come through with mine. You might think about spending some time with your father instead of pouring your energy into the bottle.”
A few days later, he calls. “I’m ready,” he says.
This is my best and I fear last chance to recover a large quantity of stolen artifacts from Cyprus and expose the illicit dealers to the world. As I head into uncharted territory, I make peace with myself knowing I do what I do for Cyprus with pure intentions. As exhaustion leads me to slumber, I pray: please let this be the finish line for me. I don’t want to dance with this devil anymore.
Twenty-Two
CAPTURING THE GOLD
And now, dear reader, you know the story of how this all began. I return you to the day of the sting, October 8, 1997, when seventy Bavarian police are in the midst of raiding Aydin Dikmen’s apartment in Munich. The intermediaries acting on Van Rijn’s behalf are in the process of fleeing Munich (with the exception of Lazlo). Van Rijn is screaming at the police, and I am feeling like a complete failure because the stolen inventory I thought was in Dikmen’s possession is nowhere to be found. Even the artifacts presented to the intermediaries just moments before the police burst onto the scene are missing. Aydin Dikmen, in true magician style, somehow managed to make the stolen inventory disappear. But this is not the end of my story. It is the beginning of another.
HILTON HOTEL, MUNICH
Van Rijn is screaming at Peter Kitschler over the phone.
“I know the Turk! The artifacts are hidden in plain sight! Break open the floors. There must be double ceilings and false walls! Come on! You are the police, for Christ sakes!”
What the hell is going on? Is Van Rijn lying, or are the police incompetent? I run to my purse and take a drink of my antacid medication, wondering if it’s possible for the pain in my stomach to worsen. Everything is riding on securing these artifacts.
“Listen,” says Van Rijn, “I’m coming there to look.” He turns to me and says, “These policemen are fucking useless!” Luckily, I catch the phone he throws in midair. He kicks the chair as if it were a soccer ball. Kitschler is firm. “Tasoula,” he shouts into the phone. “Control him. He can’t come to Dikmen’s apartment. Keep him in your sights.”
“Idiot dogs! Couldn’t find a bone if it was stuck up their ass!” says Van Rijn.
His face is bright red. He’s going to have a heart attack. He turns to me apologetically.
“Excuse the language, Tazulaah,” he says, still trying to pretend he’s a gentleman.
Then, like the sound of birds singing after a summer storm passes, Peter Kitschler interrupts Van Rijn’s rant with the sweetest words.
“We got it.”
The police break through one wall to find a false wall, and behind that they find cartons of priceless artifacts. Another group of officers is pulling up planks of floor boards and finds artifacts stashed underneath. The police poke the ceiling and listen for hollow sounds. They pull a tile down, and there is an artifact hidden in that location. One by one, the police pass the cartons of artifacts they find in the apartment down to a line of waiting officers who carefully store them. Some of these priceless sacred pieces of art are wrapped in newspaper and others in pieces of fabric.
There is no question that Aydin Dikmen is who we believe him to be, as the police find photographs showing how Cypriot church walls were stripped and diagrams showing the location of where the mosaics were to be cut. Van Rijn and I are both on separate phone extensions listening as Peter describes the discovery process. Unfortunately, there is no picture of Aydin Dikmen extracting any of the frescoes and mosaics. There are no faces in the photographs
to prove who is stripping the churches. This alone limits us to accusing him of selling looted art, because we don’t have evidence that he has looted the art. Van Rijn is still screaming at the police over the phone.
“He has another apartment! Check the basement! Look for keys!”
He turns to me, looking really excited now.
“It’s Christmas, woman. We did it!” He roars like a lion and grabs me to kiss me on the cheek. He is so proud of himself and thrilled to have found the artifacts. He turns his attention back to the police on the phone.
“There is another flat and a shed. Did you look in there? Dikmen probably has goods stashed all over Munich in different locations. We have to get to his supply before his people do.”
“Tasoula, tell him to calm down. We have it covered.”
“Peter, fantastic job! Thank you, on behalf of the church and the government but especially the people of Cyprus.”
“We went in with Special Forces and no one was harmed in the process. It went better than we thought,” says Kitschler.
Before leaving for the airport to pick up the Cypriot police, who had just arrived, I write a note to the archbishop and the attorney general telling them that our mission is accomplished. I also remind them we have a media freeze until our contracts with Channel Four and Jan Fred van Wijnen are honored.
Remembering that it’s the weekend, I call the archbishop.
“Have you read the fax?” I ask.
“Amazing! But your voice sounds different; are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say, but I’m really not. The tears are running down my face. I’m so exhausted, and torn up inside from the strain and stress, I fear I might collapse.
“Tasoula, I’m worried about you. What is the point of Cyprus winning its treasures if we lose you in the process?”
Some people misinterpret my drive as a characteristic of being unfeeling, but the archbishop sees through the mask I wear to protect myself.
The Icon Hunter Page 27
