Flawless by Scott Selby & Greg Campbell

Author:Scott Selby & Greg Campbell
Language: eng
Format: epub

Flawless

Chapter Ten

BEEN CAUGHT STEALING

“If you want to steal, steal a little cleverly, in a nice way. Only if you steal so much as to become rich overnight, you will be caught.”

—Mobutu Sésé Seko, president of Zaire

While Belgian police ran their names, photos, and criminal histories through Interpol, the School of Turin congratulated themselves on pulling off the perfect caper, one that they were certain would leave investigators baffled for years.

After a long but uneventful escape through Europe, they gathered again on Monday, February 17, 2003, immediately upon their return to Italy. The meeting was not in Turin, but instead at a rendezvous point that they had agreed upon in advance. Investigators have never disclosed the exact location of the meeting point, but based on mobile phone records obtained later, they believe it was a villa in the Lake District northeast of Milan, near Lake Iseo, a slender finger of water surrounded by steep rocky hills and with a stunning Alpine backdrop.

Red-tiled villas and mansions sprinkled the lake’s shores, the rooftop landscape punctuated generously with brick church bell towers. The lake itself was dotted with islands that were home to Gothic castles and Baroque mansions accessible only by boat. In the summer, wealthy vacationers overran the place, with even a few Hollywood stars escaping to the seclusion of its craggy foothills; in the winter, it was virtually deserted. Instead of swarms of tourists, a handful of locals remained in town to live in the picturesque snow and ice of a summer town in the heart of winter.

It was a perfect remote location in which to divide their loot in luxury. They could certainly have afforded to rent the most expensive villa available, even without an off-season discount. It was here that the School of Turin had their first chance to truly relax and bask in the glory of a job that made them all richer than they could have imagined.

The men ate, drank, and relived the heist instant by instant while the money was sorted and the diamonds admired.

Notarbartolo now had enough to buy any model sports car he wished, and he could devote as much time as he liked to designing a private line of custom jewelry. He certainly had no shortage of material. But most important, his children—and his children’s children—could live in financial security for the rest of their lives.

All of the men had reason to celebrate. They toasted themselves for having gotten away with the heist of the century. None of them knew that Gust Van Camp had made a discovery that same morning that put them squarely in detectives’ sights.

They spent Monday night there and when they left Lake Iseo on Tuesday, Elio D’Onorio headed south toward his home in Latina, outside of Rome. Finotto and Tavano headed back to Turin. Notarbartolo headed toward Turin as well, but he didn’t follow the thieves’ protocol of destroying the cell phone and SIM card he had used to communicate with the others on the closed telephone network established for the heist.

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