The Rescue Artist Part 4

Hill and Mulvihill drove to a CitiBank branch in Brussels. Hill led the way. The bank manager, who had been briefed by headquarters, scurried out.

"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Roberts. Delighted to see you."

The bank manager did his unctuous best, and Hill acted as if the fawning was merely his due. When the glad-handing had gone on long enough, it was time to brandish the checks. The bank manager produced them with a flourish, like a headwaiter presenting a rack of lamb on a silver tray. Mulvihill took the two checks in his hands, examined them closely and lovingly ("one million dollars and no cents"), and reluctantly turned them back to the bank manager.

With the preliminaries completed, Hill and Mulvihill both figured that the next meeting would be for real. Next time, Mulvihill would drive away with his money, and Hill would fly off with his paintings.

Hill and Mulvihill happily drove back to Antwerp. On the way, Hill, not paying attention, nearly missed the Antwerp exit. At the last instant, he swerved across the highway and careened across the merge lane, cutting off an eighteen-wheeler hauling a load of tomatoes. With the trucker's air horn still blaring, Mulvihill looked approvingly at Hill.

"Good work," he said. "There'll be no one following us now."

The two men, now fast friends, made final arrangements for the swap. The deal would go down at the Antwerp airport on September 1.

On the appointed day, Hill drove to the rendezvous. A Belgian undercover cop called Antoine played the role of his bodyguard. Hill knew Antoine and liked him. More important, he looked like a bodyguard. Antoine was "a hairy-a.r.s.ed, super-fit gendarme," Hill would say later. "Doesn't drink, lives on orange juice and yogurt"-Hill's tone made plain that he he would as soon live on goat urine and locusts-"and he was tooled up, not ostentatiously but obviously, so you'd be sure to know he was armed. He had real presence; he looked the part of a serious minder. And he had a briefcase with the cashier's checks in it." would as soon live on goat urine and locusts-"and he was tooled up, not ostentatiously but obviously, so you'd be sure to know he was armed. He had real presence; he looked the part of a serious minder. And he had a briefcase with the cashier's checks in it."

Antoine, a cla.s.sic-car buff, drove a vintage, lovingly maintained Mercedes. As he and Hill made their way through Antwerp and out to the airport, an elderly woman on a bicycle rattled her way across a set of tram tracks. The bell fell off her handlebars and onto the street. It was mid-morning, and traffic was heavy.

"Stop the car!" Hill barked, and then he hopped out of the Mercedes, halted traffic, retrieved the bell, and presented it to the woman on the bicycle.

"She gave me this wonderful smile of thanks," Hill recalled long afterward, "and when I got back in the car, Antoine had this 'what the f.u.c.k was that?' that?' look on his face." look on his face."

For Hill, who is in many ways akin to the small boy who imagines himself the star of the big game ("bases loaded, bottom of the ninth, all eyes on Hill as he strides to the plate"), this tiny scene was a not-to-be-missed chance to play the hero. "It was a pure Walter Raleigh moment," he recalled long afterward, basking in the memory. "That's all it was. And poor Antoine sitting there thinking, 'You ought to be concentrating on the job, not fooling about playing the gallant knight to some old biddy whose bicycle has gone bust.' "

At the airport, Hill and Antoine parked the car and walked into the small restaurant. It was noon. Hill ordered a coffee and cognac. In waltzed a dozen flight attendants, and, just behind them, Mulvihill and a crony. "You got everything?" Mulvihill asked.

"Yup," said Hill.

The trickiest, most dangerous part of any deal is the exchange itself, when money and goods finally change hands. Hill and Mulvihill had each brought an ally, for muscle and backup. While Hill sat in the restaurant with Mulvihill's man, Mulvihill and Antoine walked outside toward Antoine's car. Both men were car buffs, and the Mercedes served as an ice-breaker. Mulvihill studied the cashier's checks and a.s.sured himself that they were the ones he had seen in the bank in Brussels.

Satisfied, Mulvihill returned to the restaurant. He turned to Hill.

"Want to see the pictures?"

Hill walked out to the parking lot with Mulvihill's partner, to a rented Peugeot. The bodyguard opened the trunk. Hill saw a sports bag, about big enough to hold a tennis racquet and a pair of sneakers. Next to it sat a black plastic bag wrapped around something rectangular and several large objects hidden inside layers of wrapping paper. The plastic bag was the same size and shape as the one Hill had seen in Antwerp, when Mulvihill had shown him the Vermeer. Hill put it to one side for a moment. He unzipped the sports bag. Inside, he saw a rolled-up canvas that he recognized as Goya's Portrait of Dona Antonia Zarate Portrait of Dona Antonia Zarate. Glad as he was to see the painting-the thieves wouldn't have brought it if they were running a scam-it was horrifying to see a two-hundred-year-old oil painting rolled up like a ten-dollar poster. Hill set the sports bag down gently. Turning to the bag that he hoped contained the Vermeer, he brushed a hand across his shirtfront, as if he were sweeping away a piece of lint.

Silently, two large BMWs alerted by Hill's signal sped into place, one in front of the Peugeot, one behind. Each car was "four up," with a driver and three men. This was the Belgian SWAT squad, big guys with Dirty Harry specials. They shouted commands in Flemish, presumably to drop everything and lie down. In case they had been misunderstood, the cops helped Hill and Mulvihill's bodyguard to the ground.

Shoved facedown onto the asphalt, Hill and his companion were handcuffed and searched and then hustled into a car and whisked off to a local police station. Mulvihill was taken into custody, too, and so was Antoine. To Charley Hill's great delight, the commotion had drawn the attention of everyone in the coffee shop, and the whole scene played out to a satisfying chorus of shrieks from the gawking flight attendants.

Once arrived at the police station, Hill and Antoine, the gendarme-c.u.m-bodyguard, were freed from their handcuffs, congratulated, and left to celebrate. Mulvihill was charged with handling stolen goods, but, as the Irish Examiner Irish Examiner later reported, "he miraculously managed to escape prosecution." later reported, "he miraculously managed to escape prosecution."

The miracle was, in fact, mundane enough, though it did demonstrate that no one took art crime too seriously. A Belgian court dropped the charges against Mulvihill on the grounds that the robbery had taken place in Ireland, outside Belgian jurisdiction.

The trash bag did indeed contain the Vermeer. In all, the Belgian police recovered four of the Russborough House paintings (as well as three fake Pica.s.sos): the Vermeer, the Goya, an Antoine Vestier portrait, and Gabriel Metsu's Man Writing a Letter Man Writing a Letter. The Metsu was a companion piece to the same artist's Woman Reading a Letter Woman Reading a Letter, the painting that police had found in Istanbul, where thieves were trying to barter it for heroin. The two works are considered Metsu's masterpieces.

Today, all but two of the eighteen paintings stolen from Russborough House in 1986 have been recovered. The missing works are Venetian scenes painted by Francesco Guardi, which some rumors have placed in Florida.

Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid hangs safely in Dublin's National Gallery, serene still, despite all she has seen. hangs safely in Dublin's National Gallery, serene still, despite all she has seen.

Martin Cahill, the engineer of the Russborough House theft, was killed in August 1994, shot through the driver's window of his car by a gunman dressed as a Dublin city worker. Cahill had slowed to a halt at a stop sign; a man with a clipboard approached the driver's window to ask a few questions about traffic.

In January 2003 Niall Mulvihill was shot in a gangland attack in Dublin. Mulvihill took four bullets but managed to drive two miles toward the nearest hospital. He crashed just short of the hospital, causing a four-car pileup. No one was charged with his murder.

12.

Munch MARCH 1994.

For five months after the Russborough House recovery, Christopher Charles Roberts did not exist. Then, with The Scream The Scream stolen, Roberts was back, reincarnated this time as the Man from the Getty. stolen, Roberts was back, reincarnated this time as the Man from the Getty.

Charley Hill's first task in preparing for this new role was to learn about Edvard Munch. Studying up on artists was one of his favorite parts of the job. Hill's love of art ran deep, though he was a buff rather than a scholar. In his spare time, in whatever city he found himself, he visited museums and looked in on old friends in the collection. In Prague, it was a Durer self-portrait; at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Rembrandt's Sacrifice of Isaac Sacrifice of Isaac ("the angel arresting Abraham's hand is extraordinary, even though it doesn't quite work"); at the National Gallery in London a long list, perhaps headed by Leonardo's ("the angel arresting Abraham's hand is extraordinary, even though it doesn't quite work"); at the National Gallery in London a long list, perhaps headed by Leonardo's Madonna of the Rocks Madonna of the Rocks.

In Washington, D.C., Hill always made time for a particular favorite, Gilbert Stuart's Skater (Portrait of William Grant) Skater (Portrait of William Grant). The striking work, an action painting in what was typically a stiff and earnest genre, thrust Stuart to fame. It depicts a tall figure in an elegant black coat and hat, carving a graceful turn on the ice on the Serpentine, in London's Hyde Park. (The story has it that Grant told Stuart that "the day was better suited for skating than sitting for one's portrait.") For Hill, the skating Scot embodies an idealized self-image, "the way I would have liked to have seen myself in that time."

For The Scream The Scream case in particular, where Hill's role was not that of an art-loving (though crooked) amateur but of a bigwig at a world-cla.s.s art museum, his research would have to be particularly thorough. There were no shortcuts. Learning about Munch was a matter of a.s.sembling a giant stack of art books and diving in. The only catch was money. Though he was preparing to play a free-spending honcho at a money-is-no-object inst.i.tution-and though he supposedly intended to ransom a $72 million painting-Hill could not afford to buy the books he needed to study. Instead, he haunted the library and a bookstore near his home, where a patient manager made allowances for the tall man in the art section who read and read but never seemed to buy. case in particular, where Hill's role was not that of an art-loving (though crooked) amateur but of a bigwig at a world-cla.s.s art museum, his research would have to be particularly thorough. There were no shortcuts. Learning about Munch was a matter of a.s.sembling a giant stack of art books and diving in. The only catch was money. Though he was preparing to play a free-spending honcho at a money-is-no-object inst.i.tution-and though he supposedly intended to ransom a $72 million painting-Hill could not afford to buy the books he needed to study. Instead, he haunted the library and a bookstore near his home, where a patient manager made allowances for the tall man in the art section who read and read but never seemed to buy.

At the start, Hill knew no more about Munch than most people do. Temperamentally too conservative to care much for the modern world, he preferred paintings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though he made exceptions for a few works as close to the present day as the nineteenth century. The Goya portrait he had looked at in a car trunk, painted in 1805, reduced him to sputtering admiration. "Anyone with even half an eye or half a wit," he says, "standing there, holding it, you can't be anything but awestruck."

He had never seen The Scream The Scream in the flesh, so to speak, and, if he failed to get it back, he might never have the chance. in the flesh, so to speak, and, if he failed to get it back, he might never have the chance.

Two men more different than Charley Hill and Edvard Munch would be difficult to find. Still, the gruff ex-paratrooper found himself sympathizing with the melancholy, high-strung artist. As haunted and unstable as his near-contemporary van Gogh, Edvard Munch had endured an upbringing that would have blighted the sunniest nature. When Munch was five, his mother died of tuberculosis, with her young son at her bedside. Nine years later, his older sister died of the same disease. His brother, too, fell ill with tuberculosis, but survived.

Insanity was another family curse. Munch's sister Laura went mad and was eventually inst.i.tutionalized. Munch's grandfather had died, mad, in an asylum, and Munch himself suffered a devastating breakdown in 1908, at age 45, that left him hospitalized for eight months. His treatment included electroshock, but he emerged more or less recovered and returned to his work.

Even at his healthiest, Munch was far from robust. Sickly throughout his childhood, he had survived tuberculosis and suffered through long bouts of bronchitis. Throughout his life he suffered from panic attacks. At the time he was working on The Scream The Scream, it took all his nerve to force himself to cross a street or look down from even the slightest height. He lived in fear of inhaling dust or germs; he shrank from drafts; he was so afraid of open s.p.a.ces that when he ventured outdoors he clung to the nearest wall.

"Disease, insanity and death were the angels which attended my cradle, and since then have followed me throughout my life," Munch wrote in his journal. "I learned early about the misery and dangers of life, and about the afterlife, about the eternal punishment which awaited the children of sin in h.e.l.l."

He learned many of those lessons from his father, a doctor who treated Oslo's poorest residents for free but who adhered to fire-and-brimstone religious views. "When anxiety did not possess him, he would joke and play with us like a child," Munch recalled. "When he punished us ... he could be almost insane in his violence. In my childhood I always felt that I was treated unjustly, without a mother, sick, and with the threat of punishment in h.e.l.l hanging over my head."

Munch grew to be a shy, lonely, hypersensitive young man, tall, thin, and good-looking (reputedly "the handsomest man in Norway"). In his twenties he fled puritanical Oslo for the guilty pleasures of Paris and the Black Piglet Cafe in Berlin. Here he drank too much, chased women and fled from them, and painted obsessively, late at night, in a shabby rented room cluttered with his own unfinished pictures.

The t.i.tles of some paintings from the 1890s, when Munch was in his early thirties and at his most productive, give some idea of his state of mind. He painted Despair Despair and and By the Deathbed By the Deathbed in 1892, in 1892, The Scream The Scream in 1893, in 1893, Anxiety Anxiety in 1894, in 1894, Death Struggle Death Struggle in 1895. in 1895.

The paintings are as bleak as the t.i.tles suggest. In comparison with Munch's portraits of isolation and woe, Edward Hopper's depictions of near-empty diners seem cheerful. The Sick Child The Sick Child, for example, shows Munch's sister Sophie, in bed and dying, attended by her despairing mother. Sophie is wan and weak, but-and this is characteristic of Munch-the dying girl seems less anguished than the mother she will leave behind. The mother's pain is more than she can bear; she holds her daughter's hand, but she is past the point where she could offer any spoken consolation.

Even paintings with seemingly inviting subjects, like the 1892 street scene called Spring Evening on Karl Johan Street Spring Evening on Karl Johan Street, are heavy-laden with grief. In Munch's version of a spring evening, a stream of men in black top hats and women in dark dresses advance zombie-like toward the viewer, their eyes wide and staring and their heads barely more than skulls. A lone figure, depicting Munch himself, walks unnoticed in the opposite direction.

Munch's aim in such paintings, he wrote, was to find a way to represent human "suffering and emotion, rather than to paint external nature." The painter's task was "to depict his deepest emotions, his soul, his sorrows and joys." An artist was a psychologist with a paintbrush.

Freud and Munch were almost exact contemporaries. Though neither man ever mentioned the other in print, the two were engaged in the same quest. In the age of anxiety, if Freud was the great explorer, Munch was his mapmaker. Far more directly than most artists, Munch served up a kind of autobiography on canvas. His paintings put his private torments on public view.

His relations with women, for example, could scarcely have been more fraught. "His father had prayed late at night to save his son from the sinful attractions of women, flesh, and free love," one art historian writes, "but the diabolic allures of alcohol and a bohemian life overpowered his prayers." In 1889, when Munch was twenty-six, his father died. One of the father's last acts was to mail his well-thumbed Bible to Munch, in Paris, in the hope that the directionless young man could yet be saved.

Women were temptresses intent on destroying men, and Munch had trouble resisting temptation. He fell in love for the first time at age twenty-two, with a married woman two years older than he was. "Was it because she took my first kiss that she took the sweetness of life from me?" he wrote later. "Was it because she lied, deceived, that one day she took the scales from my eyes so that I saw Medusa's head, saw life as a great horror?"

Later relationships proved even more disastrous. For three years, the penniless artist carried on a tumultuous affair with a beautiful and vain woman named Tulla La.r.s.en, a wealthy member of one of Copenhagen's leading families. After their breakup, she lured Munch to her room by enlisting friends to tell him that she had fallen deathly ill and yearned for one final conversation. Munch arrived, and Tulla sat up in her deathbed flourishing a gun. She was not sick, she admitted, but she would kill herself if Munch refused to take her back. Munch reached for the gun, Tulla grabbed it back, and it fired. The bullet took off the top joint of the middle finger of Munch's left hand. (Munch painted with his right hand.) Munch later included Tulla La.r.s.en in several works, notably in a portrait called Hatred Hatred and in another ent.i.tled and in another ent.i.tled Still Life (The Murderess) Still Life (The Murderess). "I have painted a still life as good as any Cezanne," he wrote, describing the latter work, "except that in the background I have painted a murderess and her victim."

In between stints with Munch, Hill pored over the Getty Museum catalogue. One of the prizes in the collection, he learned, is a strange work by James Ensor called Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889 Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889. The huge painting, about eight feet by fourteen feet, is an angry satire depicting the chaos that would greet Christ if he returned to the modern world. Jesus (who is depicted with Ensor's features) is nearly swallowed up in a tumultuous crowd; political banners and advertising slogans ("Coleman's mustard") wave overhead; the mayor preens as if the parade were in his his honor. Ensor's masterpiece, Hill read, was one of the great forerunners of expressionism and a key step on the path that led Munch to honor. Ensor's masterpiece, Hill read, was one of the great forerunners of expressionism and a key step on the path that led Munch to The Scream The Scream.

Hill lit up. The Ensor painting, he figured, would be the key to his patter. The reason the Getty would pay the ransom, he'd say, is that the curators wanted to put The Scream The Scream on exhibition with Ensor's painting. For Hill, seeing Ensor was the Aha! moment when his Getty story fell into place. on exhibition with Ensor's painting. For Hill, seeing Ensor was the Aha! moment when his Getty story fell into place.

No one else would have thought so. Even without Ensor, the Getty scheme was far from simple. If Hill was prepared to play a rich American, why go to the trouble of involving a museum? Why not simply pose as a tyc.o.o.n bent on a.s.sembling an art collection no one else could match? Hill contemptuously brushed aside any such objections as exactly the kind of "conventional and narrow-minded" thinking he despised.

"My art," Munch wrote, "is rooted in a single reflection: Why am I not as others are? Why was there a curse on my cradle?" Painting was not merely a career, or even a calling, but a cry from the abyss. "There should be no more paintings of interiors and people reading and women knitting," Munch declared. "There should be images of living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love-I shall paint a number of such pictures-people will understand the holiness of it, and they will take off their hats as if they were in a church."

Instead, they took out rotten fruit and hurled it as if they were in a burlesque hall. It was Munch's raw, unfinished technique, not his subject matter, that inspired such scorn. The contempt directed at Munch echoed the critics' mockery when, two decades before, the impressionists had mounted their first shows.

"There is not even any proper underpainting in the picture," one Norwegian critic scolded, when he saw Munch's Portrait of the Painter Jensen-Hjell Portrait of the Painter Jensen-Hjell. "The colors have been crudely daubed on the canvas; indeed it looks as if it has been painted with the blotches of paint left over on the palette after another picture." One newspaper reported that visitors emerged from a Munch exhibition asking whether he held the paintbrush with his hands or his feet.

The abuse poured down even on paintings that would later be hailed as among Munch's greatest. At one show, Munch reported with horror, he approached The Sick Child The Sick Child and found a rowdy crowd "laughing and shouting" in front of the depiction of his sister's deathbed. Munch rushed outside, where one of his fellow artists, a then acclaimed and now forgotten figure, ran over and shouted in his face: "Humbug painter!" The critics were nearly as contemptuous. "The kindest service one can do for the painter E. Munch," one wrote, "is to pa.s.s over his pictures in silence." and found a rowdy crowd "laughing and shouting" in front of the depiction of his sister's deathbed. Munch rushed outside, where one of his fellow artists, a then acclaimed and now forgotten figure, ran over and shouted in his face: "Humbug painter!" The critics were nearly as contemptuous. "The kindest service one can do for the painter E. Munch," one wrote, "is to pa.s.s over his pictures in silence."

From the beginning, though, a few viewers did did understand what Munch was up to. In 1892, a group called the a.s.sociation of Berlin Artists put on an exhibition of Munch's work. The paintings were so controversial that they inspired a virtual civil war between an avant-garde faction of artists, who supported Munch, and a group of more conventional painters, who despised him. After only six days, the artists' a.s.sociation voted to close the show down. A riot broke out. Munch's reputation as an emblem of modernity was made. understand what Munch was up to. In 1892, a group called the a.s.sociation of Berlin Artists put on an exhibition of Munch's work. The paintings were so controversial that they inspired a virtual civil war between an avant-garde faction of artists, who supported Munch, and a group of more conventional painters, who despised him. After only six days, the artists' a.s.sociation voted to close the show down. A riot broke out. Munch's reputation as an emblem of modernity was made.

The Scream appeared the following year. Most viewers hated it. The impression it gave, according to one French newspaper, was that Munch had dipped a finger in excrement and smeared it around. appeared the following year. Most viewers hated it. The impression it gave, according to one French newspaper, was that Munch had dipped a finger in excrement and smeared it around.

The painting grew out of an actual experience, though scholars quarreled over its date. Munch had set out for an evening stroll along the water, near Oslo. "I was walking along the road with two friends," he recalled years afterward. "The sun set. I felt a tinge of melancholy. Suddenly the sky became a b.l.o.o.d.y red."

For years, Munch grappled with the memory of that sunset and labored to capture it in paint. The date of his evening walk has lately stirred a debate-1883 and 1886 and 1891 all have their partisans-because it now seems likely that poor Munch, his nerves already aflame, happened to witness one of the astonishing meteorological sights of all time. At 10:02 in the morning on August 27, 1883, half a world away from Norway, the volcano on the island of Krakatoa erupted. The island vanished from the earth, blasting itself apart into the heavens. Six cubic miles of rock, rendered into pumice and dust, rained down; smaller particles wafted high into the atmosphere. In the months to come, those floating particles drifted around the world and created sunsets that blazed and glowed with colors of an intensity and splendor no one had ever seen. The New York Times New York Times reported, on November 28, 1883, that "soon after five o'clock the western horizon suddenly flamed into a brilliant scarlet, which crimsoned sky and clouds. People in the streets were startled at the unwonted sight and gathered in little groups on all the corners to gaze into the west.... The clouds gradually deepened to a b.l.o.o.d.y red hue, and a sanguinary flush was on the sea." reported, on November 28, 1883, that "soon after five o'clock the western horizon suddenly flamed into a brilliant scarlet, which crimsoned sky and clouds. People in the streets were startled at the unwonted sight and gathered in little groups on all the corners to gaze into the west.... The clouds gradually deepened to a b.l.o.o.d.y red hue, and a sanguinary flush was on the sea."

More stolid observers than Munch lost their bearings. In Poughkeepsie, New York, a team of firemen harnessed their horses to their pump wagon and raced toward the setting sun to fight the inferno on the horizon. In Oslo, on November 30, 1883, a newspaper reported that "a strong light was seen yesterday and today to the west of the city. People believed it was a fire: but it was actually a red refraction in the hazy atmosphere after sunset."

Was this the sunset that Munch witnessed? Art historians have always attributed the appearance of the sky in The Scream The Scream to the combination of Norway's vivid sunsets and Munch's jangled nerves. (Some downplay Munch's recollection and dismiss the question of literal sunsets altogether.) Now it seems that the detective work of two physicists and a professor of English may change that conventional wisdom. to the combination of Norway's vivid sunsets and Munch's jangled nerves. (Some downplay Munch's recollection and dismiss the question of literal sunsets altogether.) Now it seems that the detective work of two physicists and a professor of English may change that conventional wisdom.*

The scene impressed Munch so profoundly that he wrote several descriptions of his evening walk. "I stopped, leaned against the railing, dead-tired," he recalled in 1892. "And I looked at the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the blue-black fjord and city. My friends walked on. I stood there, trembling with fright. And I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature."

That scream was destined to echo around the world. For Munch, it marked a personal, private terror. "For several years, I was almost mad-at that time the terrifying face of insanity reared up its twisted head," he wrote later. "You know my picture The Scream The Scream. I was being stretched to the limit-nature was screaming in my blood-I was at breaking point."

Decades later, The Scream The Scream would achieve universal fame. No longer seen as an expression of one man's torment, it was taken instead as a shriek of despair that might have come from almost anyone. Munch had felt panicky and overwhelmed. Half a century later, after the deaths of millions in two world wars and the threatened death, from atomic bombs, of everyone else, those feelings resonated across the globe. Pop trends-the rise of coffee-house existentialism, a taste for European gloom a la Bergman, rumors of the death of G.o.d-had made angst and alienation fashionable. In March of 1961, would achieve universal fame. No longer seen as an expression of one man's torment, it was taken instead as a shriek of despair that might have come from almost anyone. Munch had felt panicky and overwhelmed. Half a century later, after the deaths of millions in two world wars and the threatened death, from atomic bombs, of everyone else, those feelings resonated across the globe. Pop trends-the rise of coffee-house existentialism, a taste for European gloom a la Bergman, rumors of the death of G.o.d-had made angst and alienation fashionable. In March of 1961, Time Time magazine hailed the new mood with a cover story ent.i.tled "Guilt and Anxiety." The cover ill.u.s.tration? magazine hailed the new mood with a cover story ent.i.tled "Guilt and Anxiety." The cover ill.u.s.tration? The Scream The Scream.

The Scream was everywhere, reproduced endlessly in posters and also in such austere settings as psychology textbooks. This first round of fame was more or less straightforward, a kind of homage. But paintings and sculptures can become celebrities of a sort, famous for being famous, and when they do, we subject them to the same indignities that we inflict on other stars who have had the presumption to fly too high. We daub a mustache on the was everywhere, reproduced endlessly in posters and also in such austere settings as psychology textbooks. This first round of fame was more or less straightforward, a kind of homage. But paintings and sculptures can become celebrities of a sort, famous for being famous, and when they do, we subject them to the same indignities that we inflict on other stars who have had the presumption to fly too high. We daub a mustache on the Mona Lisa Mona Lisa, dress Michelangelo's David David in boxer shorts, transform the heartland figures of Grant Woods's in boxer shorts, transform the heartland figures of Grant Woods's American Gothic American Gothic into pitchmen for breakfast cereal. into pitchmen for breakfast cereal.

For Edvard Munch, who was not a wry fellow, the fate of The Scream The Scream would have been a joke cruel beyond imagining. He had begun painting in the hope that his audiences would "understand the holiness" of his images. In time, the most famous of those images would adorn key rings and Halloween masks and, in Macaulay Culkin's version, serve as the emblem for one of Hollywood's biggest hits. The central figure of would have been a joke cruel beyond imagining. He had begun painting in the hope that his audiences would "understand the holiness" of his images. In time, the most famous of those images would adorn key rings and Halloween masks and, in Macaulay Culkin's version, serve as the emblem for one of Hollywood's biggest hits. The central figure of The Scream The Scream, one art historian proclaims, is now "the counterpart to the familiar smiley face."

The Scream was intended as one in a sequence of some two dozen paintings called was intended as one in a sequence of some two dozen paintings called The Frieze of Life The Frieze of Life. (The count is not exact because Munch worked on the project for more than three decades, and dropped, added, and revised various paintings along the way.) All the paintings dealt in some way with Munch's favorite topics-s.e.x, death, and alienation-but The Scream The Scream stands out from its fellows. In both emotion and technique, it is Munch's rawest work. stands out from its fellows. In both emotion and technique, it is Munch's rawest work.

All the other paintings that make up The Frieze of Life The Frieze of Life are painted in oil on canvas. are painted in oil on canvas. The Scream The Scream combines tempera, in essence poster paint, with pastel and chalk, and is painted not on canvas but on a sheet of ordinary, untreated cardboard. Munch worked and reworked the themes he took up in combines tempera, in essence poster paint, with pastel and chalk, and is painted not on canvas but on a sheet of ordinary, untreated cardboard. Munch worked and reworked the themes he took up in The Scream The Scream-the harrowing red-and-yellow sky and the other landscape features are nearly identical in his 1892 oil painting Despair Despair, for example-but The Scream The Scream has an urgency that is almost painful. The famous central figure was sketched so hastily that we can see the cardboard peeking through the face. has an urgency that is almost painful. The famous central figure was sketched so hastily that we can see the cardboard peeking through the face.

For Charley Hill, such details were crucial. Recovering The Scream The Scream, if he could manage it, would be another tremendous coup, a triumph to savor for a lifetime. On the other hand, faked masterpieces were everywhere, and falling for one would be a career-killing blunder. Hill's very first undercover case had turned on a fake old master, and he feared fraudsters more than thieves-fraudsters were smart and greedy, he believed, while thieves were merely greedy.

Hill needed to be familiar with all the standard questions that art historians mull over because he might find himself dealing with nasty characters, or with experts in their pay, who would not react well if they found that the Getty's man seemed curiously ill-informed about art. This was detective work of a sort, and Hill enjoyed sifting through the expert opinions: is the central figure screaming, as it appears, or hearing hearing a scream, as Munch's description seems to indicate? Was he (she? it?) indeed modeled on an Incan mummy that Munch saw displayed in a natural history museum in Paris? What is the significance of the vertical red stripe at the painting's right edge? a scream, as Munch's description seems to indicate? Was he (she? it?) indeed modeled on an Incan mummy that Munch saw displayed in a natural history museum in Paris? What is the significance of the vertical red stripe at the painting's right edge?

But more important than such hard-to-resolve issues were nuts-and-bolts questions about the condition of the painting that would help Hill determine whether he was dealing with the real thing. In one of the red bands along the sky, for instance, someone had taken a pencil and written, "This must have been painted by a madman." The handwriting is not Munch's. Perhaps a visitor at some early exhibition scribbled the comment. No one knows, but the message is a crucial test of authenticity.

Munch seems to have had second thoughts about the red vertical stripe, to cite another example. Midway along the painting's right edge, he took a sharp knife to the stripe as if to cut it out, but then changed his mind and covered over the knife slit with a band of dark green paint.

Many of these identifying marks derived from Munch's working habits, which were as strange as every other aspect of his life. (Terrified by a scream that he heard piercing nature, he was equally terrified by silence. He always kept the radio on while he painted, though he often left it between stations, hissing static.) If a painting wasn't going well, Munch sometimes took a whip and beat it. He called the punishment "horse treatment" and believed that it improved the painting's character.

In other ways, too, Munch treated his paintings as living creatures. He was not jealous of other painters, Munch maintained, but his paintings were jealous of other paintings and could not be exhibited near the work of other artists. He called his paintings his children and could hardly bear to sell them. But he was a capricious parent who was sometimes astonishingly careless with his own work. He built an open-air studio so that he could paint outdoors, summer and winter, and he left his paintings hanging exposed to the elements for years. "He would casually throw [his paintings] on the floor and trample all over them," one art historian marvels, "or lay them like lids on a boiling pot of soup."

Endlessly experimental, Munch painted on canvas and wood and cardboard, using brushes and palette knives and, occasionally, his fingers. He painted furiously, racing to capture the images in his head and working to exhaustion. At the end of one late-night session of working and reworking The Scream The Scream, he finally wearied and blew out the candle near his easel. The wax spattered onto the painting, and the white drips can be seen toward the bottom right corner to this day.

Munch blew out that candle in 1893. More than a century later, in the winter of 1994, Charley Hill read about that wax and beamed with delight. What was the name of the Italian scientist who had proved you can't blow out a candle the same way twice? It was "forensic science stuff," the same with wax as with blood or paint, and there was no way on G.o.d's green earth to fake it. No con man could palm off a fake Scream Scream-a.s.suming he knew about the wax at all-because the splashes of wax would serve as an impossible-to-forge signature.

At a desk in his local library piled high with art books, Hill flipped to a close-up of The Scream The Scream. Then he set out to memorize the exact arrangement of the waxy drips.

PART III.

The Man from the Getty

13.

"Watch the Papers!"

APRIL 1994.

Charley Hill was now steeped in the details of Edvard Munch's life. With the Getty's cooperation lined up, Hill was eager to bring Chris Roberts on stage. The problem was that no one had heard from the thieves.

It was mid-April, and The Scream The Scream had been gone two months. It was time, Scotland Yard decided, to coax the crooks out from hiding. d.i.c.k Ellis knew a dubious art dealer in Paris and prevailed on him to spread the word that the Getty was eager to work a deal for had been gone two months. It was time, Scotland Yard decided, to coax the crooks out from hiding. d.i.c.k Ellis knew a dubious art dealer in Paris and prevailed on him to spread the word that the Getty was eager to work a deal for The Scream The Scream. There was nothing special about Paris in this case, except that it wasn't London, so there would be no reason to suspect that Scotland Yard was involved.

In order to clear the way for the real thieves, Hill had to get rid of the pretenders. The first order of business was to dismiss Billy Harwood, the English criminal who had served time in a Norwegian prison and claimed to know the thieves who had The Scream The Scream. Harwood, the British cops had decided, was a scam artist.

Hill phoned Harwood. He was Chris Roberts, he said, the man from the Getty, working with Norway's National Gallery to recover The Scream The Scream. For this conversation, all Hill's newly acquired opinions on such matters as Munch's use of bold colors to convey emotional turmoil were beside the point. Hayward was a waste of time, and Hill was a man in a hurry.

One appealing aspect of undercover work, Hill liked to say, was that it gave him a chance "to call on certain of my less attractive character traits-arrogance, bullying, self-importance-it's a long list, but you get the idea." He spoke lightly, as if he were joking, but, fittingly for an undercover man, Hill liked to hide in plain sight. Many of his jokes were simply unpalatable truths.

For undercover cops, who operate more or less on their own, bullying and self-importance are are perennial temptations. Grandiosity is an occupational hazard. "The undercover stuff can get to you," Hill once remarked. "You start believing your own bulls.h.i.t, thinking you're completely immune to having to address anything that smacks of the difference between right and wrong." perennial temptations. Grandiosity is an occupational hazard. "The undercover stuff can get to you," Hill once remarked. "You start believing your own bulls.h.i.t, thinking you're completely immune to having to address anything that smacks of the difference between right and wrong."

Despite his scholarly tastes, Hill had a menacing, domineering way about him, and he used it to his advantage. Skinny when he was young, he had grown into a burly man. In a good mood, Hill had a teddy bear look, but the softness was deceptive. Like anyone with a bad temper, he felt a certain pleasure in giving way to his anger. During his days as a beat cop, Hill had pounded more than one mugger to the ground, and the memory of blows delivered (and caught) still pleased him years later. There was a code involved, and Hill would never pick on a little guy. But he believed in frontier justice, and he liked to quote a pa.s.sage from Elmer Gantry Elmer Gantry. "He was," Sinclair Lewis wrote of his t.i.tle character, who had started a brawl, "in that most blissful condition to which a powerful young man can attain-unrighteous violence in a righteous cause."

Hill was that rare creature, a bully with a taste for literature, and it was typical of him not only to see bliss in a beating but also to quote an author in support of his view. Now, as Chris Roberts, he shoved Billy Harwood out of his way.

The message wasn't subtle. In almost so many words, Hill told Harwood to go to h.e.l.l. He was asking too much, he was an a.s.shole, and n.o.body was going to have any dealings with him. Harwood stammered in dismay and repeated his eagerness to help the authorities. "Mr. Helpful Citizen," Hill scoffed, once Harwood was out of the way. "And all he asked in exchange was 5 million."