The Medici Conspiracy (33 page)

Without speaking, she turned on her heel and led them into the study. And there, in the middle of the room, was a desk, and in the middle of the desk, just sitting there, for all to see, was a plain, buff-colored folder. Inside, when they opened it, was a manuscript, its pages handwritten on lined legal-size paper, on plain paper, and on graph paper. The pages were covered in rows of untidy handwriting that, upon closer examination, the Carabinieri could see was in English. There and then they couldn't understand it, but flipping through the pages, they saw a number of names, abbreviations, and initials they recognized—Vulci, Montalto di Castro, R. Symes, Euphr., “G.M.”

This was it
.

The rumors had been true, the gossip on the grapevine had been accurate, Savoca and Guarini had been telling the truth. Hecht
had
written a memoir and now—at last, at long last—they had it.

The memoir was seized but, of course, it was seized on the authority of the
French
police. It would be some time before the Italians could get their
hands on it. Meanwhile, realizing how serious the raid was turning out to be, from her husband's point of view, Elisabeth Hecht now called him, in New York. She spoke to him, and he said he would leave for Paris immediately. He was, he said, anxious to speak to the law-enforcement authorities.

A day or so later, while the Carabinieri were still in Paris, seeing to the paperwork necessary if the objects and documentation found in the raid were to be transferred to Italy, Hecht got in touch. He had flown in from New York, he said, and was anxious to see the Carabinieri, not the French police. He asked for a meeting.

Ferri authorized a brief meeting, and one of his men met with Hecht the following day. Hecht chose the meeting place, in front of Notre Dame, the great cathedral of Paris, on the Ile de la Cité. Hecht said he would be there, at four o'clock in the afternoon, “on the left-hand corner as you look at the church.”

At four o'clock it was raining hard. But Hecht was on time, wearing a fawn coat, but with no hat and no umbrella. The lieutenant almost felt sorry for him. Hecht led the way to a nearby café, where the meeting lasted barely twenty minutes. Hecht wanted to know what had happened during the raid, why he had been targeted, what they thought they had found. The lieutenant was under strict instructions from Ferri to give nothing away. All he did say was to advise Hecht to “get a lawyer.”

It may have been a short meeting and next to nothing may have been said, but it had been important, Ferri felt. Hecht had asked for the rendezvous, and during it he had asked all the questions. Despite everything that had happened, it appeared that he had not been expecting the raid, and now—and for the first time, so far as Hecht was concerned—the boot was on the other foot. Hecht wasn't frightened exactly, but he was certainly nervous. That hadn't happened before.

Ferri planned an interrogation of Hecht, but before that, he needed to
get his hands on the memoir in Italian. Ferri speaks some English but not enough to cope easily with a long, handwritten document in a scrawl that isn't always easy to decipher even for a native English speaker.

The French provided the memoir quickly enough, but when they did, for evidential reasons (that is, to prevent pages from being deleted or new ones added), when the document arrived in Rome it was held together by a special binder—a hole had been pierced through each page and they had been laced together with twine—and the pages were numbered. This was all reasonable, except for the fact that the Italians quickly found that the pages were not in the right order—they didn't all read on from one page to the next. Whatever had happened after the raid in Paris, the pages had been jumbled. Therefore they had to be photocopied and rearranged in their proper sequential order, and only then translated. All of which took time.

But eventually it was done, and at last Ferri and the others could read what Hecht had written.

Written in English, the memoir was eighty-eight pages long and appeared to have been compiled over several months and years. There are one or two idiosyncracies in the text—for example, instead of “with,” Hecht usually writes “
c
” or “
,” shorthand for the Italian (or Latin)
con;
“C.C.” is the common Italian abbreviation for Carabinieri; “Æ” is silver; “Au” is gold, and so on. There are many references to food and drink, tennis and his family, but none at all to his gambling. The tone is self-confident, even self-righteous throughout, cocky in places. The narrative, which ranges from the 1950s to 2001, is divided into eight sections. It begins with the early years—the 1950s and the 1960s—in Italy, Turkey, and Greece. It gives—perhaps significantly, and certainly most interestingly—
two
versions of the Euphronios krater affair. There is a section devoted to the acquisition by the Getty of the Euphronios-Onesimos kylix, followed by a more theoretical section in which Hecht argues that his activities have benefited archaeology and in which he defends himself against the charge that he and his kind have desecrated the archaeological heritage of several civilizations.

In an early section, referring to 1961, he describes returning to his Rome apartment after a trip to Sicily with a miniature altar, or
arula
, that he had bought in Gela, a city founded by the Greeks in the eighth century BC. The very next morning he was raided by the Carabinieri, but they
didn't find the arula. Instead, he showed them some cheap archaeological items he kept in the apartment for just this sort of occasion, and to deflect suspicion.

At that time, the Carabinieri were carrying out one of their irregular sweeps on the antiquities trade and, by chance, stumbled on the Swiss dealer, Herbert Cahn, who was in Rome on a visit. Interviewed at Carabinieri headquarters, one of the people he admitted knowing in the Italian capital was Robert Hecht, but Cahn said that he did no business with the American expatriate because he was “a competitor.” However, he did name two Roman dealers he had bought from over the previous few years—Renzi and Pennacchi.

This was an interesting sighting of the word “contraband.”

That wasn't all. Cahn was carrying his address book on him and the Carabinieri seized it. In addition to the names and numbers of his contacts, the address book included a record of what he had bought and from whom.

Then, without warning, Hecht completely changes the subject—to George Ortiz, a man he had dealt with over the past forty years. After first describing Ortiz's background, he discusses his collecting, how he developed a passion for Greek art especially, starting with visits to museums, then using dealers on both sides of the Atlantic, buying mainly bronzes, usually of very good quality. But then, after familiarizing himself with the main dealers in Rome and Athens, Ortiz soon

In the autumn of 1961, charges were brought against the Rome dealers Renzi and Pennacchi, against Cahn, Ortiz, and Hecht, who were accused of receiving stolen property. All were acquitted. On appeal, all were found guilty. Finally, in 1976 (yes, fifteen years later), Cahn and Ortiz were found guilty and given brief suspended sentences, while Hecht was acquitted.

The memoir, which was to become of considerable importance in the subsequent criminal trials, is full of interesting tidbits about the history of tomb-robbing. For instance, Hecht records how in 1963, a Swiss dealer went so far as to equip the looters in Tarquinia (well known for its painted tombs) with electric saws, with which they could more easily strip frescoes from the walls of tombs and villas. Ironically, when the police discovered what was happening, they decided that only Americans would risk and finance such flamboyant looting techniques and Hecht's residence permit was revoked. He was expelled, as a result of which he missed the birth of his daughter.

It is known that Elia Borowsky bought several frescoes from Tarquinia at this time.

In another vignette, Hecht was shown some beautiful silver figures in Pandrossan Street in Athens. The Armenian dealer insisted on cash so Hecht prevailed on a female friend to fly in to Athens from Zurich for a short holiday—provided she brought with her forty one-thousand-dollar bills. That seems to have done the trick for, a few days later, she flew back to Switzerland—with the silver figures. These figures, Hecht says, are now in Copenhagen.
¹

Beginning in 1963, Hecht was allowed back into Italy, though at first his residence permit was for one month at a time, then three months, and finally, by 1965, it was for a year at a time. He had by now renewed a relationship with one “GZ,” George Zakos, a Greek who had grown up in
Istanbul, whom Hecht had known since 1951. After a number of small deals, mainly having to do with coins, the bigger transactions commenced.

One involved the British Museum and began when Zakos produced three silver cups with floral designs and a scene from Iphigenia among the Taurians (an episode from Homer; Tauris is today's Crimea). Hecht was in London the following weekend, ahead of a visit to Sir John and Lady Beazley at their home in Oxford. Not wanting to traipse the cups all the way to Oxford, Hecht asked Dennis Haynes, the British Museum keeper of antiquities, if he could leave the cups with him for safe keeping. Hecht's initial thought had been to sell the cups to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, because a friend of his, Cornelius Vermeule, had just been appointed curator. However, to Hecht's considerable surprise, Haynes inquired after the price of the cups. Wrong-footed for once, Hecht said he would think about it and, after he returned from his visit to the Beazleys, gave Haynes what he described as a “defensive” price of $90,000. What he meant by this was that he thought such a figure would be well beyond the British Museum. In fact, Haynes didn't turn a hair and Hecht was paid by the end of the month. In this way, Hecht identifies loot in the BM.

There are several episodes such as this one. Hecht is “brought” material, which he describes in detail, though the routes out of Italy, Greece, or Turkey are only rarely specified.