Ch # 1- The Heist of the Century: Diamonds and Deception

Leonardo Notarbartolo walks into the jail going by room trailing a watch as if the fellow were his individual collaborator. The other convicts in this eastern Belgian jail turn to see. Notarbartolo gestures and grins faintly, the chuckle lines crinkling around his blue eyes. In spite of the fact that he's an detainee and wears the essential white detainee coat, Notarbartolo emanates a sunny Italian charm. A silver Rolex looks out from beneath his sleeve, and a vertical strip of white soul fix drops down from his lower lip like an shout mark.

In February 2003, Notarbartolo was captured for heading a ring of Italian hoodlums. They were denounced of breaking into a vault two floors underneath the Antwerp Jewel Center and making off with at slightest $100 million worth of free jewels, gold, gems, and other ruins. The vault was thought to be impervious. It was secured by 10 layers of security, counting infrared warm finders, Doppler radar, a attractive field, a seismic sensor, and a bolt with 100 million conceivable combinations. The theft was called the heist of the century, and indeed presently the police can't clarify precisely how it was done.

The plunder was never found, but based on circumstantial prove, Notarbartolo was sentenced to 10 a long time. He has continuously denied having anything to do with the wrongdoing and has denied to examine his case with writers, inclining toward to stay quiet for the past six years.

Until now.

Notarbartolo sits down over from me at one of the going by room's two dozen little rectangular tables. He has an threatening notoriety. The Italian anti-Mafia police fight he is tied to the Sicilian horde, that his cousin was tapped to be the another capo dei capi—the head of the whole organization. Notarbartolo serious to set the record straight. He puts his hands on the table. He has had six a long time to think almost what he is around to say.

"I may be a cheat and a liar," he says in bewildering Italian-accented French. "But I am going to tell you a genuine story."

It was February 16, 2003 — a clear, solidified Sunday evening in Belgium. Notarbartolo took the E19 motorway out of Antwerp. In the traveler situate, a man known as Expedient wriggled anxiously, moist with sweat. Notarbartolo punched it, and his leased Peugeot 307 sped south toward Brussels. They hadn't rested in two days.

Speedy checked the activity behind them in the side-view reflect and kept up a tense hush. Notarbartolo had worked with him for 30 years—they were childhood buddies—but he knew that his companion had a propensity of coming separated at the conclusion of a work. The others on the group hadn't needed Rapid in on this one—they said he was a obligation. Notarbartolo may see their point, but out of devotion, he protected his companion. Rapid might handle it, he said.

And he had. They had executed the arrange flawlessly: no cautions, no police, no issues. The heist wouldn't be found until watches checked the vault on Monday morning. The rest of the group was as of now driving back to Italy with the pearls. They'd meet exterior Milan to divvy it all up. There was no reason to stress. Notarbartolo and Fast fair had to burn the implicating prove sitting in a trash sack in the backseat.

They were blamed of breaking into the Antwerp Jewel Center’s supersecure vault and taking $100 million in jewels, gold and adornments. The plunder was never found, but their waste was.

Notarbartolo pulled off the interstate and turned onto a soil street that driven into a thick shrubbery. The spot wasn't obvious from the interstate, in spite of the fact that the headlights of passing cars broken through the trees. Notarbartolo told Rapid to remain put and got out to scout the area.

He passed a corroded, decrepit door that looked like it hadn't been touched since the Moment World War. It was difficult to see in the dull, but the spot appeared deserted. He chosen to burn the stuff close a shed adjacent to a little lake and headed back to the car.

When he got there, he couldn't accept what he was seeing. Fast had misplaced it. The substance of the waste pack was strewn among the trees. Expedient was stepping through the mud, heaving paper into the underbrush. Spools of tape clung to the branches like streamers on a Christmas tree. Israeli and Indian cash skittered past a half-eaten salami sandwich. The mud around the car was spotted with handfuls of modest, sparkling precious stones. It would take hours to accumulate everything up and burn it.

"I think someone's coming," Expedient said, looking panicked.

Notarbartolo glared at him. The timberland was calm but for the intermittent sound of a car or truck on the interstate. It was indeed conceivable to listen the swoon murmuring of a little stream. Expedient was breathing quick and shallow—the man was clearly in the middle of a full-blown freeze attack.

"Get back in the car," Notarbartolo requested. They were clearing out. No one would ever discover the stuff here.

The work was done.

Location along the E19 motorway north of Brussels where Rapid dumped the waste pack of prove.