The Boat Heist

Stockholm, 22 December 2000. Fifteen minutes before the Nationalmuseum closes for the Christmas holiday, two car bombs go off in central Stockholm. Six hundred metres from the museum at one location, a kilometre away at another. They are not large bombs. They cause significant property damage. There are no fatalities. They are, by the planners' subsequent admission, diversions. While fifty Stockholm officers are diverted across central Stockholm to respond, three men in masks walk into the Nationalmuseum through the front entrance with handguns visible. They order staff and visitors to lie face-down. They walk up the marble staircase. They go directly to a small gallery on the second floor. They take three paintings. Renoir, "Conversation with the Gardener". Renoir, "Young Parisian". Rembrandt, "Self-Portrait", 1630. Total time inside the gallery: three minutes. They leave through a service door at the rear. Onto a small dock on the harbour. A motorboat is waiting with the engine running. They climb in. The boat pulls away. By the time the Stockholm marine unit can get on the water, they are gone. The convictions came in 2001. The paintings did not. Recovery took five years and two FBI sting operations on two continents. The Renoir came back in 2001. The Rembrandt was recovered in a Copenhagen hotel room in 2005. The second Renoir in Los Angeles, also 2005. All three are home. Maren and Ellis on the cleanest exit strategy in the history of European art theft — a small boat at a back dock, on a harbour, in a city built on water.