The Rescue Artist

30

Traffic Stop

MAY 6, 1994

Charley Hill had run out of patience. He had spent the early afternoon visiting galleries around Oslo with Einar-Tore Ulving, a man he had disliked from the moment they met. The point of the excursion, Hill hoped, was to kill time while Ulving’s colleague, Tor Johnsen, plotted strategy with the thieves who held The Scream. A few hours in Ulving’s company hadn’t done anything to improve Hill’s mood.

Then Ulving had wandered off, too, leaving Hill alone and more restless than ever. The phone finally rang. It was Ulving. Could they meet at Fornebu, the old airport south of the city?

Hill found Walker, and the two men briefed John Butler, in his command post, and set off for Fornebu. The two cops waited an hour, and then an hour and a half. Not a thing stirring. Afternoon gave way to evening. At last, Ulving turned up, ashen-faced and trembling. “The traffic police stopped me,” he said, “and they searched my car.”

Walker and Hill avoided looking at one another, but their hearts sank. What a thing to do!

The police had pulled Ulving over, they told him, for a random safety inspection. Did he have one of the triangular warning signs you put out on the road in case of an accident? It sounded farfetched, and, more unsettling still, the police seemed to be marking time, or perhaps waiting for instructions. Johnsen was in the car, too, and he was badly upset.

After fifteen minutes, Ulving had asked the policemen if they would be done soon.

“Yes, everything seems to be in order. But tell me, aren’t you an art dealer?”

Ulving said he was. The police asked if they could check his car. For forty-five minutes they searched but found nothing. They flipped through the box of art prints in the back of Ulving’s Mercedes, but somehow they missed the woodcuts of The Scream.

When the police finally finished, Johnsen told Ulving to go on to meet Hill and Walker without him. The way the Norwegian cops kept turning up had to be more than just coincidence.

Now Hill and Walker had a shaken Ulving to calm down. Hill guessed at what had happened—when he and Walker had told John Butler about the planned rendezvous at the old airport, the Norwegian police who were with Butler in his improvised headquarters had notified their bosses. They had immediately leapt to the conclusion that Ulving was headed toward Hill and Walker to show them The Scream. Following orders, the local cops had pulled Ulving over. When they failed to find the missing painting, they had sent him on his way.

Hill hid his exasperation with his Norwegian colleagues and tried to convince Ulving to laugh the whole thing off. The Getty wanted The Scream; it had no interest in running around the countryside playing cops and robbers.

“Well, it’s not your lucky day,” Hill told Ulving, “but it’s nothing whatever to do with us. First of all, I’d never be stupid enough to get involved with the police. And, second, it’s not my style of doing business.”

It wasn’t much of an argument, but apparently it didn’t have to be. Ulving wanted reassurance that Hill and Walker weren’t in cahoots with the cops, and Hill batted the suggestion away with convincing indignation.

Then, mission not accomplished, everyone headed irritably back to the hotel. (Hill and Walker could only guess what the airport meeting had been intended to accomplish.) Ulving went off to meet up with Johnsen, and Hill and Walker settled in for yet another debriefing with John Butler.

“Whatever you do,” Hill asked Butler, “can you call off the surveillance? They’re really causing us problems. I’m going to run out of excuses soon, to explain away that we’re nothing to do with all this.”

Butler, every bit as frustrated as Hill and Walker but not as free to act on his own, promised he’d do what he could. But there were limits. “It’s not our operation, it’s a Norwegian police operation,” Butler said. “They can do what they want. We’re just helping them.”

Hill retreated to his room, waiting for the phone to ring. The afternoon’s false start hadn’t dispelled his confidence. Johnsen had ogled the cash in Walker’s bag. He’d be back.

Hill flopped down on his bed, fully dressed except for his shoes, staring at the ceiling. It was nearly midnight. The phone rang. Ulving.

“We’re downstairs. We need you to meet us.”

“Why can’t it wait ‘til morning?”

“It’s got to be done now.”

“Go fuck yourself! I’ll talk to you in the morning.” Hill slammed down the phone.

Hill’s anger was fake. Crooks always made unreasonable demands. Assholes act like assholes. Do it their way, they’d say, or they’d burn the painting or cut it into pieces. And they might. The first thing was to persuade them not to act on their threats. Then, once they were done with that crap, you imposed your personality on them. You’re the guy who’s going to provide them with the money they want.

In negotiating with crooks, Hill had found that belligerence was key. Accommodation was always a mistake. “The minute you start agreeing with people, you’re finished,” Hill once observed, “because you can’t be credible then. That’s the way life works. Life is built around creative tension.”

It is difficult to know if Hill was talking about life in general or life in one dark corner of the world. He may not know himself. “Thieves and gangsters all hate each other, they screw each other, they betray each other,” he insists. “That’s the world they live in. And if you suddenly appear in it and agree to everything they say and do everything they want, then you’re just not credible. If you act agreeable, it’s not a sign you’re close to a deal. It’s a sign they should push harder. They’ll take you for some complete asshole.”

Hill sat on his bed, certain his phone would ring again in a minute or two. He didn’t phone Butler because he wanted to keep the line free. The phone rang.

“I’m serious,” Ulving said. “We need to get this done now.” “I’ve talked to you and Johnsen all day, off and on,” Hill said. “What more can anyone say?”

“No. It’s something else.”

“Okay. Do you want to meet in the coffee bar? But it may be closed by now.”

“No, no, not there. Outside, in the car.”

“Listen, I’m in bed,” Hill said. “The light’s out. Just give me a minute to throw some water on my face and get dressed. I’ll be down in ten minutes.” Hill phoned Butler, waking him up. “They’re downstairs,” he said. “Don’t go down there!”

“I’ve got to. Don’t worry, I won’t go anywhere with them. I’ll just go down dressed as I am now”—Hill was in tan chinos and a blue button-down shirt, wearing loafers but no socks—”and if they want to drive me somewhere, I’ll say, ‘I don’t have my coat or my socks, I’m not going outdoors.’ “

“All right, but you can’t leave the hotel.” “Okay.”

“And that includes going outside the hotel to sit in the car.” “Fine.”

Hill went downstairs and walked outside. There it was, Ulving’s Mercedes, with Ulving and Johnsen inside. Hill climbed in the back.