Heist: The Case of the Stolen Rembrandt (page 2 of 3)

Images from this article

Photo-illustration by Andrew Brusso

Inset, Rembrandt's painting, courtesy of the National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden/The Bridgeman Art Library.

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National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden/The Bridgeman Art Library.

Jeune Parisienne, recovered in Los Angeles.

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National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden/The Bridgeman Art Library.

The other stolen Renoir, La Conversation.

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National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden/The Bridgeman Art Library.

Jeune Parisienne, recovered in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles. March 25, 2005, 3 p.m. Officers from the local organized-crime squad arrest a suspected member of a Eurasian crime syndicate while looking for drugs.

They don't find any dope this time. Instead they find a painting, a portrait of a woman with a soft bow at her neck. To find out who she is, they call on a local curator, as well as Bob Wittman and his FBI Art Crime Team. After photographs are scanned and databases checked, the painting is identified as the other Renoir, Jeune Parisienne, stolen nearly five years ago in Sweden.

When task force agents interrogate one of the thieves nabbed with the Renoir, he tells them the whereabouts of the other, far more valuable painting snatched from the National museum: the Rembrandt. He also reveals the names and contact information of the people holding Self Portrait.

With phone numbers in hand, Wittman and his Swedish counterpart, Detective Magnus Osvald of the Stockholm police, concoct a sting operation to bring the Rembrandt back.

"I played an undercover art expert for a European organized crime group in America," Wittman explains. "I flew to Copenhagen, then got into contact with the people in Stockholm who were holding the painting."

The Scandic hotel, Copenhagen. September 15, 2005, 10 a.m. Wittman waits in his room for a phone call. He is used to living out of suitcases. Some months, he spends more time on his cell phone than he does at home with his three kids and wife of 23 years. Besides the United States, he has worked in Brazil, Ecuador, France-18 countries in total. There are times when he wakes up and can't remember what city he's in.

Today, as usual, he has checked into a hotel under a false name, using false travel documents. Pretending to be someone else is a big part of his job. It helps that he has one of those faces that are easy to forget. No distinguishing features, no scars, no cauliflower ears. Average height, average build. A regular-looking guy. Put him in a crowded room and he would blend into the background, like a camouflaged moth on a tree trunk.

Sometimes that can be a problem. Three years ago, in a Madrid hotel, he had to throw himself on the floor as a Spanish SWAT team burst into the room to arrest Angel Suarez Flores, the head of a crime syndicate. Flores had offered Wittman one of the gems of medieval Flemish art, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. It had been stolen from the penthouse of Spain's richest woman, along with paintings by Goya, Pissarro, and Japanese painter Foujita-a $50 million haul. When the cops tore into the room, Wittman was worried they wouldn't know he was on their side. He got out alive by diving behind a bed, shouting, "Don't shoot! Bueno hombre! Good guy!"

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