Free Master Thieves by Stephen Kurkjian Page A

heavier, with chubby cheeks. He also sported a mustache.
    â€œThat’s awful!” Abath blurted out when the police showed him the artist’s composite drawing based on the description he’d provided. In the ensuing years all he could remember was that one of the men looked like Colonel Klink from the popular late ‘60s television show Hogan’s Heroes.
    But sitting there handcuffed, helpless while the intruders were doing God knows what, all Abath could do was cycle through his mind, wondering if he had ever seen either of the pair before. Maybe he’d spoken to them in a bar or some other chance encounter and told the thieves about the museum’s miserable security system. Or maybe it was because so many people had worked the night shift over the years and knew the terrible secret that there was only one alarm to alert the outside world of a problem inside the museum and that the next shift didn’t start until 6:30 the next morning, so there was no one to check on things once Abath and Hestand had been subdued.
    The FBI and Boston police artist drew sketches of the two robbers following the heist using recollections of the two night watchmen who were on duty. However, more recently the security officer who spent the most time with the thieves dismissed the accuracy of the images.

    It could have been anybody, Abath thought. How many times had he and his roommates—several of whom also worked security at the Gardner—complained to each other about the lousy security the museum had in place?
    Abath had probably made such claims in his own house, which was less than two blocks away from an antiques store run by a suspicious character with mob ties. William Youngworth, the store owner, was a friend of several members of the Rossetti gang, and would draw much attention to himself in 1997 by claiming he could facilitate the return of the stolen artwork. Had Abath’s complaints—which suddenly seemed to him to be very conspicuous, and perhaps even a threat to his life—somehow been overheard by Youngworth? Or perhaps Abath shot off his mouth about the museum’s security lapses at the Channel, a rock club Abath remembers visiting, or one of the seedier ones where Ukiah played in Brighton orother Boston neighborhoods, some of which had mob connections of varying degrees.
    All these thoughts tumbled through Abath’s mind as he lay handcuffed and covered in duct tape in the museum basement.
    It had taken the thieves about fifteen minutes to subdue Abath and Hestand. It was 1:35 a.m. While Abath sat imagining these conspiracies, the thieves were on their way, moving among the Gardner’s hallowed galleries.
    Strangely, their first footsteps weren’t picked up on the museum’s motion detector until they made their way to the Dutch Room on the second floor at 1:48. The pair may have waited to make sure their presence inside the museum hadn’t been detected and that no emergency calls had been made to the Boston PD. Most important, they made sure no cruisers had been sent to investigate.
    Surely they also had knowledge about the museum’s security system and layout. They knew they had to get Abath away from the panic button located within his reach at the security desk. They knew how to get to the museum’s basement and where to hold Abath and Hestand. Now they knew police had no way of knowing that the heist was under way.
    The Gardner was theirs. They could have spent the entire night inside.
    â€œSomeone is in the Dutch Room. Investigate immediately.” At 1:51 a.m. the motion detector on the first floor typed out that message, but of course no one was there to see it. The two intruders had made their way up the Gardner’s marble steps to the second floor and had entered the gallery where some of Mrs. Gardner’s richest treasures were kept: three large Rembrandts and Vermeer’s The Concert.
    The Storm on the Sea of Galilee was the most