Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History (4 page)

Dramatic heist tales circulated among diamond dealers like folklore, serving as a reminder of the dangerous world beyond the range of the CCTV cameras. One gold dealer’s experience was particularly cautionary, proving that there was no such thing as over-preparation. This man had a small fleet of unmarked armored BMW sedans with reinforced suspension that made regular runs to deliver solid gold ingots from the airport in Amsterdam, one hundred miles away, to the Diamond District in Antwerp. The cars were equipped with GPS systems and panic buttons that would broadcast their positions to a security company in the event of trouble. They would leave Antwerp empty and return positively gravid with solid gold bars filling the trunks. As a precautionary measure, the merchant frequently changed the days and times for his gold runs, in the hope of thwarting holdup attempts.

As one of these convoys was approaching the Belgian border from Amsterdam, a motorcycle cop, lights and sirens blaring, swooped in front of the lead BMW. At the same time, a dark SUV boxed it in from behind. The BMW’s suspicious passengers hit the panic button, but it was of no use; the signal worked only in Belgium and didn’t connect to anyone in the Netherlands. Instead of flooring it and risking running down what may or may not have been a cop on the motorcycle, the driver allowed himself to be led off the highway and under a bridge. As masked men surrounded the car brandishing weapons, the couriers locked themselves inside the vehicle, assuming the car’s armored windows and reinforced trunk would be enough to keep the thieves out. The thieves, of course, were prepared: they used a modified club that was capable, after many blows, of smashing in one of the car’s windows. Once a pistol was waved through the window, the passengers wisely decided to surrender and pop the trunk. Millions of dollars in gold were transferred to the SUV, the BMW was set on fire, and the driver and passengers were left hog-tied under the bridge. None of the gold was recovered.

Stories like this were sobering to diamond merchants because they served as reminders that sophisticated bands of criminals were spending a lot of time plotting to rob them. The smart merchants lived as if the next big heist was being planned against them personally. In the case of those renting offices at the Diamond Center, that was certainly true, even though the man doing the plotting walked past them as a peer while they stood under the building’s awning smoking cigarettes.

The Diamond District wasn’t originally planned as a fortress. Its streets were on the fringe of the city center that dated back to the 1200s, and, even though the diamond industry established its permanent hold in Antwerp in the 1400s, the three-block area was considered a slum until as late as the turn of the twentieth century. Modernity, in the form of CCTV cameras, vehicle barriers, and bulletproof plate glass façades, was superimposed upon the area gradually.

If old buildings couldn’t be retrofitted to accommodate impact-resistant glass and ducts for high-speed coaxial video and Internet cables, they were razed and replaced with modern structures. The result was a mishmash of new buildings alternating with old ones.

An example of this architectural schizophrenia was the archaic home of I. David, a diamond-business supply company that looked more like the den of a chronic hoarder. It was one story high and wedged between the modern brick Bank of India building and the Kneller building, home to many more modern supply houses, diamond dealers, and currency exchange offices. I. David looked like a bad tooth in an otherwise flawless set of dentistry. In contrast, just around the corner, the headquarters of the Diamond High Council was a sleek and modern glass-fronted affair.

Antwerp was filled with such architectural contradictions. Broad, stately boulevards smartly appointed with green medians and tall oaks and maples interlaced with crooked, narrow streets that were little more than glorified alleyways. The center of the city was the impressive Grote Markt, Antwerp’s cultural and aesthetic hub about a mile from the Diamond District. Around it, the wider streets and the narrow arteries connected in twisting, haphazard patterns and were crowded with pedestrian plazas, one-way streets, tramlines, and outdoor cafés that threatened to overflow the sidewalks.

Just blocks away from the city center, the seaports on the Scheldt River provided the city a rich heritage as one of Europe’s most impressive art and culture capitals. The cobbled plazas were home to ancient guild houses with their intricate stone embroidery and gilded rooftop filigree. The gothic Cathedral of Our Lady displayed paintings by Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens just a few steps away from the city’s oldest pub, which had been serving Belgium’s famous beer since the 1200s.

Across from the cathedral was the city’s iconic fountain by Jef Lambeaux, which depicted Roman soldier Silvius Brabo preparing to hurtle the amputated hand of a giant into the river. The fountain paid homage to the legend of the city’s founding, wherein the giant extorted tolls from passing ships. The captains who refused lost their hands until the giant lost his;
Antwerp
is an outgrowth of the old Flemish words for “hand throw.”

The Grote Markt and its cathedral were among the few places in Antwerp where the city’s history had been preserved for its own sake; elsewhere, old buildings remained standing only if they could be put to use as apartment buildings, banks, bus stations, or private businesses. If not, they were destroyed with wrecking balls and dynamite to make room for more practical structures. This was evident everywhere, but particularly near the Diamond District.

Only a block from the CCTV cameras and vehicle barricades was the city’s central train station, a unique melding of modern and ancient building styles that still served as the main point of arrival for most visitors. The train platforms were covered by an avant-garde glass and steel structure more evocative of an airport than a train station, but passengers were immediately faced with the old station’s original ornately carved stone edifice featuring a grand old clock that was more impressive, and just as useful for those waiting for the train, than any digital display could be.

In the 1800s, the city’s diamond industry initially located itself outside the train station, on Pelikaanstraat. Now the street was strewn with strip clubs alongside quaint cafés, and the only reminders of that former time were a slew of retail storefronts advertising their diamond jewelry with glaring neon signs. Though many tourists fell prey to the siren song, savvy visitors avoided the trap, knowing that these retailers were as much about the Diamond District as the strip clubs were about finding true love.

The Diamond Center was itself the result of old abutting new. In 1931, two buildings, numbers 9 and 11 Schupstraat, were combined into one. This structure was destroyed in 1969 by its new owner, diamond dealer Marcel Grünberger, to accommodate the Diamond Center, which became the largest office building in the district.

The new structure was more than just the storefronts facing Schupstraat. The complex comprised three interconnected buildings: blocks A, B, and C. A Block, a nine-story edifice facing Schupstraat, might have looked impressive when it was completed in 1972, but in 2000, when Notarbartolo first walked through its doors, it seemed dated and old fashioned. It was a narrow building barely forty paces wide, recognizable by its long, heavy-looking concrete awning that jutted onto Schupstraat over the front doors.

The rest of the building loomed into the sky, its face a reflection of the opposing structures in its plate glass windows. The address, 9–11 Diamond Center, was fixed to the front granite-work with plastic Helvetica letters, slightly askew and just below a large CCTV camera that recorded people coming and going through the front entrance.

B Block, the largest of the three, was situated directly behind A Block. This building was a staggered wedding-cake design, with thirteen floors above ground and two below. It was connected to A Block by a broad marble-walled corridor that ran from the elevators to the front doors which opened onto Schupstraat. Most tenants had their offices in B Block; some companies rented entire floors.

The least impressive building in the complex was C Block, a broad but low four-story structure accessible by taking a sharp right turn in the marble corridor just before the elevators for B Block. One could also enter C Block from the street that ran perpendicular to Schupstraat, Lange Herentalsestraat, through the garage doors. C Block might have been the ugly stepchild of the already less-than-stunning Diamond Center complex—several offices that faced Lange Herentalsestraat had cracked and smudged windows—but it served an important purpose for the tenants: it bypassed the vehicle barriers just a few yards away on Schupstraat, allowing tenants to park in the Diamond Center’s underground parking lot without having to hassle with retractable cylinders and police officers.

During business hours and for a few hours during the weekends, three large corrugated garage doors facing Lange Herentalsestraat were rolled up and opened. The first, the closest to the police substation on Schupstraat, opened to give security guards in a glass-walled control room a view of the street. It also allowed pedestrian traffic to enter the Diamond Center. As with the main entrance, tenants needed to badge in for the inner doors to open; visitors would have to check in with the guard if they had an appointment with a tenant. The other two garage doors were for vehicles: the middle door accessed the main parking level on the ground floor under B Block, and the third door accessed the underground lot on the -1 level below B Block. Both of the vehicle entrances had striped yellow-and-white metal arms that rose when a button was pushed by a guard in the booth. Only tenants who’d paid to rent a parking spot would have the bars raised for them.

In all, the Diamond Center was home to approximately 250 offices where diamond companies—and, to a lesser extent, gold and jewelry companies—did business. It was by far the largest office building in the Diamond District. From an aerial view, its footprint formed a backward L that hugged the Lens Building next door and the Andimo Building, outside of which the police substation was located, on the corner of Schupstraat and Lange Herentalsestraat.

If one could ignore the fact that the Diamond Center was completely tone-deaf to the architectural standards of Antwerp’s historical buildings showcased within just a few blocks, it was easy to be impressed with the building—not because of its looks, but because of its sheer size and, of course, by the volume of diamonds that coursed through its threadbare hallways.

Notarbartolo didn’t pay much attention to the building’s aesthetic deficiencies as he approached it that first morning. He wasn’t there to critique the place, but to steal from it. His attention was on more practical matters, such as counting cameras as he approached the main entrance on Schupstraat.

One camera, on the corner of the awning, looked toward the vehicle barriers. There was a cluster of three across the street from the front doors covering a 180-degree arc. Two more cameras were positioned farther down where Schupstraat intersected with Hoveniersstraat looking toward the Diamond Center. Another was placed to the right of the doors and trained directly on them. Under the crooked address sign was a small fish-eye–lens camera embedded in an after-hours intercom equipped with a keypad for buzzing the concierges. Notarbartolo would have assumed there were more cameras that he couldn’t see.

Notarbartolo pushed open the plate glass doors and entered the building. Inside the glass-walled booth on the right beyond the foyer, the guard, in civilian clothes, didn’t seem to be paying particular attention to the foot traffic outside his booth. On the right side of the foyer was a bank of mailboxes. Straight ahead were the waist-high turnstiles, each with an electronic card reader for the badges. Tenants had to badge through the turnstiles both coming and going.

Notarbartolo swiped his badge-card through an electronic reader that unlocked the turnstile arm so he could enter the building. Every time he badged in or out of the building like that, an electronic record was made. As he entered, he noted the security control room on the left. It was fronted with a huge glass window, allowing tenants a glance inside at the monitors displaying images from twenty-four internal cameras watching practically every corner of the building. Notarbartolo counted two more cameras as he walked to the elevators along the broad main hallway. This corridor was the nicest in the building, with dark marbled walls, a tiled floor, and smart cherrywood slats overhead with wide Art Deco circles cut out to accommodate recessed lighting. The hall dead-ended at a bank of elevators. Notarbartolo stepped inside and pressed the button for the fifth floor.