Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History (17 page)

On subsequent trips to the vault, he examined the masked motion detector in addition to checking the magnets. He was relatively confident that it would go undetected, since neither the concierges nor the guards actually came into the vault, and the tenants were focused only on what was inside their safe deposit boxes. Still, he needed to be certain no one had noticed the film and scrubbed it off.

Additionally, most diamantaires had other things on their minds that week. Valentine’s Day was the biggest romantic holiday of the year and retailers around the world had spent months marketing diamonds as the perfect gift to demonstrate one’s love. Although the wholesalers in the Diamond Square Mile were no busier that week than usual—retailers stocked up on diamonds and diamond jewelry starting in October for both Christmas and Valentine’s Day—the industry took the occasion of the holiday to showcase Antwerp as the center of the diamond trading world.

Between the Proximus tennis tournament, Peter Meeus’s wedding reception at the Beurs voor Diamanthandel, and the early winter start to Friday prayers for the district’s substantial Jewish population—not to mention the fact that it was Valentine’s Day, meaning that anyone with a significant other would have plans—the Diamond Center would be all but deserted for the last few hours of the workweek.

While Antwerp’s diamantaires used Valentine’s Day to celebrate the Diamond District’s place in the world of diamonds, Notarbartolo, D’Onorio, and the others spent that Friday preparing to pull the rug out from under it the next evening.

For at least one of the thieves, Friday couldn’t come soon enough. Ferdinando Finotto remained holed up in Notarbartolo’s small apartment practically from the moment he arrived. Even though the attempted bank robbery charge for the 1997 failed KBC job in Antwerp had been settled as far as the courts in Italy were concerned, it was still a problem in Belgium. In fact, he’d been convicted in Belgium in absentia, and should he get caught anywhere in the country, he would go immediately to prison to begin serving his sentence. So he stayed inside, running over details, pacing the floor, and losing his patience.

Finally, on Thursday, Finotto decided that if he couldn’t assist in the reconnaissance he could at least cook his colleagues a proper Italian meal before their big night. He thought it worth the risk to go to the Delhaize grocery store around the corner on Plantin en Moretuslei.

Delhaize, a spacious and modern store, was about a ten-minute walk away. Once there, Finotto took his time wandering its aisles and filling his cart with mozzarella cheese, tomatoes, packages of pre-tossed salad, pasta, loaves of bread, and Italian meats. He also grabbed a bottle of wine and some beer. His early afternoon shopping trip cost just over
53; he paid with a 100-euro note. As trained as he was to notice security features, he couldn’t have failed to note the video camera that recorded customers as they entered the store.

If anyone was upset that Finotto went out in public, the anger couldn’t have lasted long considering the spread he prepared. With at least four people shoehorned inside an apartment made for one for the better part of the week, Finotto’s meal was one of the few times they could relax and enjoy themselves while indulging in the tastes of home.

The School of Turin sprawled out on the low black vinyl sofas or at the tiny dining table. As in Italy, the food was laid out on plates and spread out on the coffee table buffet style; the wine was poured and beer bottles opened. It was a few moments of enjoyment before they inevitably scrounged for space to sleep, whether on the floor in sleeping bags or curled uncomfortably on the small sofas; only one of them enjoyed the relative comfort of the apartment’s single narrow bed.

The next day, Friday, would be their last chance at surveillance before the heist. They needed as much rest as they could get.

Perhaps because the hardware store was located twenty minutes away, in Mechelen, or perhaps because his foray to the grocery store hadn’t resulted in police sirens and handcuffs, Finotto was confident enough to again venture out of the apartment in order to accompany D’Onorio on a supply run late Friday afternoon. They pulled into the parking lot of Brico, a well-stocked home improvement chain store, and made their way slowly through the tight aisles, equipped with a detailed list of provisions. They loaded the cart with tool sets, a two-foot-long crowbar, an emergency battery similar in size to one that would fit in a car or a boat, an AC/DC power inverter for running power tools off the battery, drills, a pipe wrench, bolt cutters, and other tools. In the insulation section, they found several different-sized Styrofoam panels, and in the cleaning section, they found a dust mop on a long telescoping handle designed to reach cobwebs high in the corners of a vaulted ceiling.

This expedition cost
570. Again the men paid with big bills, a 500-euro note and a 100-euro note. The receipt showed that they paid at exactly 5:30 p.m.

Meanwhile, back in Antwerp, Notarbartolo was at the Diamond Center, one of just a handful of people still working that late in the day. Jewish Sabbath services had begun and the Shabbat prayers had started at the Sephardic Synagogue on Hoveniersstraat. Notarbartolo sat in his office and ran through everything in his mind, visualizing the plot over and over. He waited as the building emptied of the last few tenants who were finishing business ahead of a romantic night on the town.

Around half past six, Notarbartolo stood and looked around. The room was as empty as the day he had rented it. There wasn’t a single trace of what he’d plotted there over the past two years. He grabbed his attaché case, locked the door, and headed for the elevator, where he pushed the button for the bottom level.

By now, his third time there that day, he’d grown accustomed to the cavernous hush of the vault and its bright white walls. He stepped to the day gate, eyeing the magnetic lock intently for any sign that D’Onorio’s modifications had been detected. As far as he could tell, they hadn’t. When the day gate buzzed open, he walked the few familiar steps to his safe deposit box and opened it. It too was as empty as ever of anything valuable, but he lingered over it, noting once again the features of its locking mechanism. He turned to look at the motion detector; it was still covered with a thin filmy crust of dried aerosol spray. Nothing had been discovered.

The video cameras recorded him as the last tenant in the vault that day. After he made his final inspection, he then exited the building at 6:44 p.m., just sixteen minutes before the staff locked up the building for the weekend. If the concierges followed the same patterns as they had for the past two years, once they closed the vault, they wouldn’t even think about it until it needed to be opened sixty hours later.

As Notarbartolo walked to his apartment that night, he passed diamantaires headed in the other direction, toward the reception at the Beurs voor Diamanthandel and one of the weekend’s many displays of lavish excess. Only Notarbartolo knew that the biggest show of all would take place far from the public’s eye, two levels underground.

If ever any place looked like a den of thieves, it was Notarbartolo’s living room on Saturday, February 15, 2003. The floor was covered with tools and equipment laid out in orderly rows so that everything could be accounted for, checked, and double-checked. The bolt cutters, the pipe wrench, the power inverter, the emergency battery, and the big crowbar were arranged in a group. Scattered about were numerous pairs of rubber gloves, plastic water bottles, rolls of duct tape, electronic gadgets, power cords, and duffel bags. They had fake keys, lock-picking tools, fabricated aluminum parts, headlamps, spare batteries, and small bags of nuts and screws.

It was a lot to keep track of, and one way the men stayed organized was by fastidiously throwing away what wasn’t needed in order to reduce clutter. In the kitchen, the household trash was already bursting with everyday waste. Added to that were boxes, packaging material, receipts, shopping bags, price tags, and other material stuffed into numerous garbage bags, as if parents had been cleaning up after their children’s Christmas Day gift-opening frenzy.

The late hours of the afternoon were for sleeping and for completing whatever personal pre-heist ritual the men might have had. History is rife with examples of strange superstitions held by criminals, from the Highland bandits of Central India who would pour a little liquor on the ground before committing a crime to appease the demons of mischief to nineteenth-century European thieves who believed the hand of a dead man was an invaluably lucky talisman. Professional British burglars were said to carry pieces of coal or chalk in their pockets for good luck, and a study of two hundred Italian murderers done in 1892 found every one of them to be a devoutly religious person who considered the practice of his faith to be a potent source of good luck. In more modern times, thieves in Turin have been known to snort cocaine before a big job to give them stamina and courage.

For those fitfully trying to rest in Notarbartolo’s apartment, rituals probably consisted of a few quiet prayers and maybe a vaguely worded phone call to a loved one. Calls were placed on specific cell phones; each man carried two—a personal phone used to conduct legitimate business or to call his wife or girlfriend, and one used only to call the other members of the job. This closed-circuit phone network was a trademark of Italian gangs like the School of Turin. For each job, the men bought prepaid cell phones with new SIM cards and limited their calls only to each other. When the job was over, they destroyed the phones and the cards.