Free Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History by Scott Andrew Selby Page A

important soccer match, Notarbartolo could have looked down and seen the Portuguese flag flying from Jorge’s second-story balcony. Jacques’ quarters were on the fourth floor of C Block. One widely circulated rumor at the Diamond Center was that Jorge and Julie Boost were romantically involved.
    Jorge and Jacques alternated weeks in which they were required to live in the building, so Notarbartolo knew that there was always at least one person there around the clock. They both had master keys to the building’s entrances and internal doors and, most important, they were among only four people who knew the combination to the big vault door. The others were Boost and Grünberger.
    Each weekday at 7:00 a.m., the concierge on duty took the elevator to the bottom floor, turned on the lights, and inserted a huge fairy-tale-style key into the LIPS door. The key was specially designed, something the School of Turin’s lock specialists knew the moment they learned the door’s make and model. The door was at least twelve inches thick, so the key’s pipe needed to be nearly a foot long in order to reach the lock inside. Because such a thing can’t be easily toted around in one’s pocket, the key’s stamp—the piece on the end that operated the internal tumblers—was removable. It was designed this way so that the vault keeper could leave the long pipe in a convenient location near the door while keeping the important part safely in his pocket. To open the vault door, there were two mechanisms that needed to be unlocked. The key had to be inserted and turned, and a four-number combination entered with a knob just above the keyhole. There were 100 million possible numeric combinations. The concierge then turned a wheel-shaped handle to retract the anchor bolts and the vault could then be pulled open for business.
    Each weeknight at 7:00 p.m., the concierge closed the vault door and locked it by setting in place six stainless steel rods, each three inches thick, that extended from the door into the frame on the left and the right; and two more into the floor and ceiling. Then he’d flip off the lights before getting into the elevator. Until one of them opened it again, the vault remained as dark as a tomb.
    Otherwise, the concierges’ responsibilities consisted of being available to open the garage door if a tenant called and needed access to the building after hours. That happened only occasionally and usually only if a tenant needed to be at the office to conduct business with someone in a different time zone. In such cases, all tenants had a laminated business card printed with Jorge’s and Jacques’ phone numbers and a schedule of who was working which week. The dates on the calendar were color-coded in black and red to make it easy to tell who was on duty.
    Overall, it was a cushy assignment. Once the building was closed for the night, they had free reign of the Diamond Center and its three buildings, but they weren’t required to patrol the hallways, check that office doors were locked, or even watch the video monitors in the ground-floor control room. Most of their time was spent in their apartments watching television.
    Despite the undemanding nature of the job, the men were often annoyed when they were interrupted by tenants requiring access to the building, especially considering how tempting it may have been on slow nights to sneak around the corner to the plaza for a late night beer or two. Smart tenants knew to slip the concierges a few euros for the trouble of doing their job, just so they could stay on their good sides.
    Notarbartolo also became familiar with men named Andre and Kamiel, the putative daytime security guards. Andre was technically head of security, but when Notarbartolo rented his office, Andre had for six years simply performed the duties of a doorman. He spent his days in a small glass-walled security control room inside the garage, his responsibilities essentially limited to raising the arm