The Rescue Artist (20 page)

PART IV
The Undercover Game

23
Crook or Clown?

APRIL-MAY 1994

T
he Norwegian police didn’t know what kind of crooks they were up against. While Charley Hill negotiated with Ulving and Johnsen, the police continued to work their own leads, to little avail. Looked at from one angle, the thieves—whoever they were—seemed professional. They had vanished at once, which showed planning, and then had stayed out of sight, which showed discipline. The police had squeezed their informants hard and come up empty. No booze-fueled bragging, no rumored deals, nothing. Weeks had stretched into months, and still the only clues the police had turned up, most notably the piece of
The Scream’s
frame, had been handed to them.

But viewed from a different angle, the same facts made the thieves look amateurish. True, they had been quick, but they had made climbing a ladder seem a feat on a par with walking on stilts. They had indeed kept silent, but was that silence a ploy designed to increase the pressure on the police or just a sign of befuddlement? Perhaps the thieves, now that they were in possession of their trophy, were in the predicament of the dog in the cartoon who has, to his astonishment, actually caught the car he was chasing.
Now what?

And what was the moral of the theft’s timing? Horning in on the publicity generated by the Olympics was a coup—and a thumb in the eye of the police—but did the thieves’ audacity show that they were pros who knew exactly what they were doing? That was the media’s theory, based on the idea that the thieves were showing off for their fellow crooks. But maybe the real audience was the great, sensation-loving public. In that case, the theft of
The Scream
was not a mark of professionalism but an amateur’s “Hey, look at me” bid for attention.

And uncertainty about the thieves was only the first link in a murky chain. If the thieves who stole
The Scream
in the first place had since bartered or sold it to someone else, then any theories about who had originally done what, and why, were all beside the point.

Once they had sorted through the false leads of the anti-abortion activists and a slew of time-consuming but fruitless tips, the Norwegian police focused on Oslo’s small criminal community. In comparison with London or New York, Oslo was cozy and safe—the city’s population hovered at around half a million—but serious crime, much of it heroin-related, had encroached even on Norway. At the center of the criminal scene in the 1990s was a group called the Tveita Gang, which was about 200 strong and closely linked with criminals outside Norway. At the center of the gang was a raffish young crook named Pål Enger.

Enger, who was twenty-six when
The Scream
was stolen, had been well-known in Norway since his late teens. He wasn’t handsome—he had a big, bent nose and his ears stuck out—but he had a disarming grin and a friendly manner. No one would cast Enger as a movie’s romantic lead, but he would do nicely as a charmingly ne’er-do-well best friend. Enger had been a professional soccer player for Valerenga, one of Norway’s top teams, and had gone on to become perhaps Norway’s best-known criminal. “I was not one of the best [at soccer],” he once told the BBC, “but I was one of the best in the criminal world, and I thought it would be more fun to play on the team where I was best.”

In February 1988 Enger and an accomplice stole a Munch painting,
The Vampire
, from the Munch Museum in Oslo. The police launched an all-out investigation. Within a few days they announced they were close to cracking the case. They weren’t.

The months dragged on. Growing desperate, the police at one point even sought help from a psychic. Finally, a break: two men on a train had been spotted carrying
The Vampire
. The police raided their apartment. They spotted the supposed masterpiece at once and groaned in dismay. The painting that an excited tipster had identified as the work of one of the twentieth century’s greatest and most tormented artists was nothing of the sort. It was, the police soon learned, a spoof that someone had painted in a couple of hours as a prank, for a bachelor party.

Six months after the theft of
The Vampire
, the police arrested Enger and a second man. He had stolen the painting, Enger said, in the vague hope that “maybe some Arabs would be interested” and he could sell it for a fortune. Enger and his accomplice were convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.

That failed theft hardly seemed the work of a master criminal, but Enger did have at least one genuine skill beyond soccer. He had a gift for publicity, a talent for engaging the police in what amounted to street theater, with the ex-athlete himself in the starring role.

In Enger’s glory days, he had featured regularly in newspapers and on television. Now, with his soccer career in the past, it took more ingenuity to gain notice. Enger had developed an array of tricks. One of his favorites was to phone the police anonymously and warn them that Enger was up to something shady: Pål Enger had been seen, Enger would whisper, with what looked to be stolen goods. If the police showed up, Enger would howl that he was being harassed. Then he would report the mistreatment to his lawyer, the lawyer would call in the media, and, if all went well, the ex-con would wake to find his name—and, better, his face—splashed across Norway’s newsstands and television screens.

With his conviction for stealing
The Vampire
, Enger was a natural suspect when
The Scream
vanished. He had an alibi for the time of the theft, though, and the police had no evidence against him. Enger thrived on the attention. At the National Gallery, he posed for photographers by the spot where
The Scream
had hung, next to the poster and the handwritten “Stolen” notice that had replaced it. “I didn’t steal
The Scream,”
he insisted. “I had nothing to do with the theft.”

But as the police scanned tapes from the National Gallery’s security

cameras, they noticed a familiar figure in the swirling crowd of visitors to the Munch exhibit. Five days before the theft, there was Enger
.

Perfectly true, the thief happily agreed, when the police brought him in for questioning. Why shouldn’t he visit an exhibit that was the biggest thing to hit Oslo in years? He was, after all, on record as an admirer of Munch
.

The cops sighed wearily. Sooner or later, they had learned, Enger was sure to do his best to thrust his way into any case that was likely to draw attention. Like the parents of an incorrigible toddler, the Norwegian police had grown to tolerate what they could not seem to prevent
.

Over the years Leif Lier, the detective in charge of the Norwegian end of the
Scream
case, had come to know Enger well. A patient man whose forbearance would be remarkable even if he were not a cop, Lier shrugged off Enger’s antics. “Enger was a pain in the neck from time to time,” Lier acknowledged, “but he was funny, too.”

On April 12, two months after the theft of
The Scream
,
Enger’s wife gave birth to a baby boy. The proud father placed a notice in
Dagbladet
.
The baby had arrived, the birth announcement declared, “With a Scream!”

24
Prop Trap

MAY 6, 1994

C
harley Hill had more pressing problems to deal with than Pål Enger’s games with the Norwegian police. Hill’s primary goal was to retrieve
The Scream
. Everything else, including finding someone to arrest, was less important. That was Hill’s approach to all his art cases. The question that truly engaged him was
whereisit
, not
whodunit
. His Art Squad colleagues tended to agree, but many cops did not. Hill’s focus on pieces of canvas rather than on criminals, they insisted, amounted to condoning theft. Even a hint of that argument launched Hill into a tirade on “bureaucrats in blue” and police shortsightedness.

Life would be easy if you could recover the painting
and
arrest the thieves. But it didn’t usually work like that. Which do you want, Hill would shout, a hubcap thief thrown in prison for six months or a Bruegel back on the wall where the world can admire it?

Just how the art dealer and his arsonist companion had come to be involved with
The Scream
in the first place was something Hill could sort out another day. For now, Hill’s job was to get things back on track. His first meetings with Johnsen and Ulving had gone well enough, he figured, and Johnsen had certainly swallowed hard when Walker showed him the money. But what had the Norwegian duo made of the police convention at the hotel and the plainclothes cop in the bulletproof vest?

Johnsen had left the Plaza in a hurry, saying he would return in midafternoon, leaving Hill to twiddle his thumbs. Hill hoped the Norwegian crook was busy with his partners, whoever they were, sorting out the logistics of handing over
The Scream
. If the deal was still on, that is. The fiasco with the police convention had certainly spooked Johnsen, and it might have scared him away altogether.

Hill tried to look at things from Johnsen’s point of view. On the one hand, the money. On the other, a hotel crawling with cops and a deal put together by two strangers. Who
were
Roberts and Walker?

With time to kill before Johnsen reappeared, Ulving suggested that he show Hill around town. Before they set out, the art dealer gestured to Hill to join him at the back of his Mercedes station wagon. Ulving opened a big box full of prints, including some woodcuts of
The Scream
. Hill couldn’t tell if they were genuine, but they looked good. Then the two men headed off for a bit of gallery-hopping. Ulving, in his element, bounced along proudly. He was a “slimeball,” Hill thought, cocky as hell and oblivious to the sneers and scowls directed his way by his fellow dealers as he sauntered through Oslo’s galleries.

At two o’clock in the afternoon, Ulving and Hill returned to the hotel to see if Johnsen had showed up. They met Walker and settled in at the coffee bar to wait. About 15 minutes later, Johnsen stormed in.

“There’s cops all around the building,” he snapped, “and police cars parked outside. Two of ‘em, at least.”

Johnsen was furious, spitting out his words. Hill hadn’t known about the Norwegians’ plan to keep an eye on things, but he was as soothing and unruffled as Johnsen was indignant. “Let’s go up to my room,” Hill said. “I’ve got a bottle of Canadian Club up there, and we can talk.”

Hill’s room was on the sixteenth floor with a knockout view of the harbor and, what was more interesting to Johnsen, a clear view of the hotel’s main entrance. Johnsen and Hill stood together at the window. They looked down, and there was no missing the cops. Hill groaned to himself. The fuckers were in unmarked cars, lounging around in the sun, bored out of their minds and impossible to take for anything but police surveillance officers.

Johnsen looked at the cops and then glared at Hill. “What’s that about?” he demanded.

Hill decided he’d stick with the same line he’d taken to explain away the cop in the bulletproof vest. If the Norwegian surveillance teams had been skilled—if they’d been well-concealed and Johnsen had managed to spot them anyway—then he would have had some explaining to do. But incompetence like this was a gift. These guys
couldn’t
be trying to hide.

“Look at those assholes down there,” Hill said. “They can’t be looking for us, because nobody could have missed us wandering all over the hotel. They’ve got to be here to protect the narcotics conference.”

Everyone sat down to a drink. Ulving begged off. Hill’s opinion of him sank even lower. Johnsen and Hill each took a serious drink, a large Canadian Club, and talked about the merits of rye whiskey compared to scotch or bourbon. Keep it relaxed, Hill told himself. Take it slow.

Hill stood up and walked into the bathroom. In the morning, he had arranged his papers and his traveling kit with all the care of a set dresser on a Broadway play. Setting out a “prop trap” was a kind of silent storytelling. Hill had stacked a few business cards near his bedside lamp: Christopher Charles Roberts, Getty Museum. He had set his plane tickets by the phone, peeking out from a torn envelope; his Getty ID lay nearby, with a photo. On the desk, a few pieces of Getty stationery. Under an ashtray, a couple of crumpled credit card receipts, signed by Christopher Roberts. On top of the receipts, half a dollar or so in change, in American coins.

Hill had taken similar care with his toiletries kit, in case Johnsen (or, much less likely, Ulving) went into the bathroom and looked through his things. Shaving cream, deodorant, toothpaste, all good American brands.

The preparation paid off. As soon as Hill shut the bathroom door behind him, Walker told him later, “Johnsen had a good ferret “round.” Though the crook had waited for Hill to leave the room, he made no attempt to disguise his snooping. For his part, Hill made a point of dawdling in the bathroom, to give Johnsen every opportunity to check him out.

Hill finally reappeared. Johnsen didn’t make any reference to the little test he’d conducted, but he seemed more at ease and began to talk again about how to carry out the
Scream
deal. It had to be done that night, he said. Hill and Walker would have to bring the money to a rendezvous. He’d let them know where.

Hill balked. “Nope!” he said. “We’re not taking the money out of the hotel until I’m assured that the painting
is
the painting and that it’s fine. We’ll do the deal after that.”

They wrangled for a bit. Johnsen left to make a phone call—he didn’t want to use the phone in Hill’s room—and came back a few minutes later, worried but still hopeful. For Hill, this wary jostling was sport. You had to stay alert and watchful, but there was no way of knowing just what you were watching
for
. In the meantime, you talked, partly to establish a bond, partly to pass the time, but mainly to amuse yourself.

Every case reached a point where the next move was up to the thieves and there was nothing the cops could do to hurry things along. Hill tried to relax and take life as it came. It took work, for though Hill was a brave man, he wasn’t a calm one. Off-duty, the moment a conversation lost its hold on him—and that moment was rarely slow in coming—Hill would start jiggling his keys, or twirling his glasses, or scanning the room in search of a book to pick up or a television to turn on or a magazine to skim.

Undercover, Hill’s fidgeting vanished. If the bad guys asked a question, you went along, looking to see if you could come up with something new. A drink or two helped. The fog—not knowing the rules of the game, or if there
were
rules, or just who you were dealing with—was part of the undercover challenge. Spinning a story for high stakes was a chance to exercise one’s powers. When it worked, it was enjoyable in the same way that it was enjoyable for a sprinter to run or a skier to carve a line through a turn.

Ulving asked Hill about the Getty and about his responsibilities there. Hill made it up as he went along. He hadn’t seen any of the new construction at the museum—his only visit had been twenty years before—but when he learned that Ulving hadn’t either, he laid it on thick. “When you visit the States, you have to come see us. And make sure you give me a call. If I’m not there, tell them you’re a friend of mine, and they’ll look after you.”

That kind of “lightweight bullshit banter” was Hill’s favorite. It kept the tedium at bay and sometimes it even helped move things along.

For Hill, the enemy always lurking in the wings, more formidable than any thief, was boredom. The great virtue of undercover work was that, temporarily at least, it provided a means of vanquishing his old foe.