Original subtitles

(dramatic music)

In the 1970s, the black market

in religious artifacts had exploded

into a multimillion-dollar industry.

The war-torn island of Cyprus was being picked clean.

This is the story of how a sophisticated ring of smugglers

ripped a sacred mosaic from the walls of a church,

then tried to hawk it on the open market.

Little did they realize that their greed

would trigger a global hunt for its recovery,

that would culminate in a daring police raid,

which uncovered $40 million of stolen artifacts,

and changed the trade in antiquities forever.

(dramatic music)

(suspenseful music)

In 1988, some packing cases

were delivered to the cargo zone of Geneva Airport.

As the boxes were pried open,

a series of mosaics were revealed.

Present were a Turkish national named Aydin Dikmen,

who claimed ownership of the artifacts,

and an American art dealer from Indianapolis

called Peg Goldberg.

She had just minutes to ascertain

if these were the legendary Kanakaria mosaics of Cyprus.

The way they smelled, the way they felt to touch,

and there was this one that had an aura.

This was the earliest surviving depiction

of Jesus as a young boy.

It was love at first sight.

She had to have them, even with a $1 million price tag.

But unbeknownst to her,

Dikmen was suspected of masterminding

one of the largest looting operations in the world,

and in the end, this deal would be the undoing of them both.

My reputation had been destroyed in the process

and people now thought I was an idiot, and a crook.

(mellow music)

The story begins in Cyprus,

a small island in the Mediterranean, 1,500 years ago.

In the church of Panaia Kanakaria,

Christian monks use semi-precious stone

and mother-of-pearl to create a dazzling mosaic.

It depicted a series of images showing Christ

and the apostles in extraordinary detail.

They're very rare.

There are very few mosaics at this stage.

It's like an impressionist painting.

You need to stand back

before the figures glow in front of you.

If you get too close,

they're just pieces of stone and glass.

Cloistered away in northern Cyprus,

the Kanakaria mosaic endured the ravages

of time, until 1974.

(guns banging)

On July 20th, the country was ripped in two

when Turkey invaded the island.

(slow dramatic music)

For centuries, the Christian majority had co-existed

in relative peace with the Muslim minority.

Now they were forcibly separated by a border

that cut the capital in two.

The northern third of Cyprus fell under Turkish control

and became Muslim.

The rest was Christian.

In the chaos that ensued,

tens of thousands of people were forced to flee

and places of worship on both sides were left unguarded.

It wasn't long before looters moved in.

It broke my heart.

I saw piles of icons burning.

It was like an aggressive atmosphere there.

I mean, it was, you know,

you dealt with people from the army,

or you dealt with people who were,

you know, robbing churches.

Dutch art dealer Michel Van Rijn

had already made his first million

smuggling orthodox icons out of the Soviet Union.

Now, he turned to Cyprus.

What was conspicuous about Michel Van Rijn

was his very good eye for the important.

There's no point operating on the looting level

without being able to sell.

And the importance of Michel Van Rijn

was that he was a dealer, he had his contacts,

he could become the middleman between the looters,

and between museums and other collectors.

(upbeat music)

In the international art world,

religious artifacts were skyrocketing in value.

A black market developed that was exploding in Cyprus.

I would be hypocrite if I would say,

you know, it's for the glory of mankind.

I was enjoying making the money,

having the action, but at the same time,

I made a tremendous private collection.

Perhaps the greatest prize,

the Kanakaria mosaic,

was lying in an abandoned church in northern Cyprus.

Sometime in 1979, two men waited for dusk to fall.

They were seen entering the church

with a long wooden step ladder, and some tools.

They knew exactly what they were looking for,

and what to do to reach the precious mosaic.

But most of all, they knew how to rip it down.

It was painted over with glue,

and covered in muslin to stop any pieces from falling.

Then they set to work,

brutally chipping out the ancient artifact.

The theft had all the hallmarks

of a professional smuggling ring.

The suspected brains behind the operation

was an alleged antiquities trafficker named Aydin Dickmen.

He profiled himself in Cyprus

as the official archeologist for the Turkish side.

And obviously, the Turks,

they were not contradicting him

because he had a very fluid network.

He paid the right people off.

(slow dramatic music)

By 1982, Dickmen's name was on a list

of suspected antiquities smugglers

wanted for questioning by the police in Cyprus.

Journalist Michael Jansen has lived on the island

for 30 years, and investigated his network.

Dickmen was a wholesaler.

He was the man who put the money up

for people to go and rob churches

and loot archeological sites.

He was the man who brought in retailers

like Michel Van Rijn, to sell his goods.

Dickmen claims

that as an official archeologist,

his role was to rescue artifacts

from obliteration in the war,

and he was authorized to do so.

Dickmen had said that he had recovered them

from the rubble, from a church which blown to pieces.

It was a known fact that he had them in the trade.

(slow dramatic music)

Whether Dickmen himself ordered

the theft of the mosaics wasn't clear,

but some of them ended up in his apartment in Germany,

where Van Rijn first saw them.

They were revealed to me just piece-by-piece,

and it was like seeing the Mona Lisa of Byzantinite.

You know, sparkling, they were alive.

And you can see that they cut it out in pieces.

There's still a scrap of the mosaic left

in the arch here.

And the rest has all been just ripped off the wall.

And I think it's maybe even more shocking

now that I see it in real life.

All I can say it's an abomination.

For a dealer in religious icons,

it was an opportunity too good to pass up.

Back in Dickmen's apartment in Munich,

Van Rijn seized his chance.

The mosaics were, you could say,

long forgotten by everybody,

so we thought it was safe to deal.

And if they came from the rubble, we didn't know,

but I must tell you honestly also

that we went for the deal.

He took out an option with Dickmen

on the ancient artifacts and went in search of a buyer.

But who would touch them?

His first stop was the antiquities capital of the world.

(upbeat orchestral music)

His question was, "Could these be sold

"on the London market?"

My answer's rather simple,

that they were completely unsaleable,

I thought, in any market,

since any specialist would instantly identify

these extremely rare mosaics.

Across the world in Indianapolis, Indiana,

Peg Goldberg had recently given up a career

in local politics to become an art dealer.

I really wanted to work for myself.

And I figured that way, if I succeeded,

I got the credit, emotionally.

And if I failed, I had nobody to blame but myself.

(slow dramatic music)

Goldberg was a small-time dealer,

but she had some big-time connections.

Early in 1988, she got a call from a wealthy Japanese client

looking to spend $3 million on a painting

by the Italian artist Modigliani.

It was the break Peg had been waiting for.

In the 80s, you know, a million-dollar painting

or two or $5 million painting was big sale.

By coincidence, she was contacted

shortly thereafter by a fellow dealer named Bob Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald was a well-known figure

on the Indianapolis art scene, who was friends

with a certain Michel Van Rijn.

I met Peg through Robert Fitzgerald,

Robert Jones, Robert Evans,

they're all aliases of him.

Bob Fitzgerald is actually a local guy

of multiple attributes, and erstwhile careers.

When I developed as a dealer, he was always out there.

Somehow we were in contact, we were friends.

They had mutually reinforcing styles

of attaching themselves to people with money

who might wanna spend it on works of art or such.

He said, you know,

"Are you looking for anything in particular?"

And then I said, "Well, as a matter of fact,

"I got a call from somebody, and they're serious."

And he said, "Let me think about it."

Once Fitzgerald found out

that Peg had several million dollars to spend,

he knew exactly who to turn to.

We decided that this was a great opportunity.

I had a painting which by Modigliani

from one of the top dealers in Amsterdam.

After talking to Van Rijn,

Fitzgerald phoned Peg to tell her

a painting had been located.

I knew Bob had lived in the Netherlands

for quite a time also, so when he called me,

that wasn't a big surprise.

And then he said, "I think I've got one for you."

Goldberg wasted no time.

She called her Japanese client,

and just as importantly, an old friend

who was the head of one of Indiana's largest banks.

She needed him to loan her the $3 million for the painting,

until she could sell it on to her client, he agreed.

At the end of June, Peg Goldberg flew to Holland.

She came with a letter of credit

of a couple of million to buy this Modigliani.

Peg met Fitzgerald

and the owner of the Modigliani.

He showed her the rare painting

and invited her to examine it.

There are only four surviving,

very large nudes that Modigliani did,

so this would be the fifth,

or the sixth, as the case may be,

and all the others were identical size,

except this one was a hair smaller.

She had her doubts,

so she asked Fitzgerald for a photographic transparency

to send to a friend for verification, he refused.

So I said to him, "Well, no transparency,

"we're not going any further with this."

I'd already shown him a letter of credit from my bank,

and Bob said don't be ridiculous, and I said,

"I'm sorry, I'm leaving."

So I started walking back to the hotel,

and a few minutes later, Bob caught up with me

and he had the transparency.

But when she sent the transparency

to the United States to be authenticated,

there was a problem.

Then we had to check, then double-check

and triple-check, and it didn't work out.

Modigliani turned out to be a forgery.

Peg was ready to go home with her $3 million.

Fitzgerald and Van Rijn could not let that happen.

Here, we have this mountain of a woman,

she's huge, with this mountain of a letter of credit

of a check, so, well.

And then I started thinking,

"What do I have, what do I know?"

(slow dramatic music)

A few days later, on July 1st,

Bob Fitzgerald took Peg Goldberg out to lunch

and invited Michel Van Rijn.

He showed up with a packet of photos

that he wanted to hawk.

And Fitzgerald knew about my extreme interest

in Judeo-Christian antiquities.

But Van Rijn was springing were these Byzantine,

you know, endless Madonnas, blood and gore,

very stylized photos.

Three quarters away through the stack,

here came these photos.

And I did an immediate double take.

And I remember spreading them out

and looking at them, trying to make some sense of them.

You know, how big could they have been.

They were completely different

than anything else he was showing me.

And I'd already figured out

that two of the photographs were Matthew and James,

from the inscriptions on them.

The third one was a child

with basically a scroll in its hand.

And so I asked him several questions about that piece,

and was hurtling through my brain about,

you know, how early could this have been

and I asked him when he thought they were created.

I brought everything, I brought the books

where they were published.

I brought the photographs.

I brought the whole enchilada, so she saw everything.

Then Rijn could see Goldberg

was getting hooked.

He told her the mosaics were owned

by a Turkish art dealer living in Munich.

He talked about that the church was in ruins,

and after the partition of Cyprus,

basically no longer existed.

And that Dickmen was a very important antiques,

antiquities collector and dealer.

She asked, of course,

"Why haven't these pieces been sold before?"

So, I mean, let's say we were all players.

We were all out there

to see to make this work.

(slow dramatic music)

Dickmen was very ill,

and needed an infusion of immediate capital

for his ship salvage business in Turkey.

He'd offered them to Van Rijn.

Van Rijn had his own financial problems,

had no money to acquire them.

This woman from the Midwest,

who was lured into a deal,

she was out there to make a mark and to make money.

Goldberg asked how much for all four pieces.

I mean, in my mind,

I was going 30, 40, 50, 60,000, maybe $100,000.

His price was $3 million, by coincidence,

the exact amount she was going to pay for the painting.

I just laughed.

And so I said, "Well there's no way."

Desperate to make the sale,

Van Rijn dropped the price, all the way down to $1 million.

For Peg, it was an opportunity too good to pass up,

but it was also the biggest gamble of her career.

This was a huge risk, just a huge risk about

was I gonna be wrong and they weren't gonna be real

in a business littered with fakes.

The question was, would I miss-guess

my ability to resell them for X amount of money.

And I thought that with luck

I might be able to double my money.

So, in other words, if I paid a million, with luck,

I would be able to resell them for $2 million.

And if I guessed wrong, I'd be on the hook.

(upbeat music)

The intoxication and exhilaration,

and the lure of this chance to suddenly transcend

the quotidian realities of being a middle-tier art dealer

in Indianapolis, Indiana,

to suddenly plane on this scale, on this stage.

(dramatic music)

But she saw her chance and she jumped at it.

The next day, Peg was instructed

to fly to Geneva where the deal would be done.

From her hotel room on the lake,

she made a series of phone calls to reassure herself

that she was making a safe purchase.

The mosaics had never been reported stolen or missing

to Interpol, FBI, customs in any country,

so this was very reassuring to me.

Also, by this time, Fitzgerald and Van Rijn's attorney

from L.A. had showed up, and you know,

he had given me reassurances, he had talked

to Vic, my attorney.

They'd gone over the potential contract,

we'd negotiated terms, so I was very comfortable.

On July 5th, Goldberg went alone

to the cargo zone of Geneva Airport

to meet the man she assumed was Dikmen.

I've been told that Dikmen was terminally ill

with liver cancer.

This man was jaundiced, sweating profusely,

essentially non-communicative.

For the first time,

Goldberg was able to see if the mosaics

lived up to the promise of the photos.

There was this one that had an aura,

and immediately stole my eye.

It was his eyes, it was his gaze,

the whole countenance, the utter simplicity,

it was unlike any others that I'd seen,

and I'd seen thousands.

Inside the crates were fragments

of a young Christ, Matthew, James, and the Archangel

that had so captivated her.

They were in even worse shape

than I had expected them to be, you know.

I started to touch a piece

and it kind of crumbled in my hand.

(suspenseful music)

Got down on my knees, I smelled them,

and eyeballed them trying to figure out, you know,

how they had looked on the wall.

I mean, it's all very stupid things

that most dealers would make fun of,

but for me, it's how I sensed things.

She had just a few minutes

to verify the authenticity of the piece

before sealing the deal.

I went back through my list of questions,

what else had I failed to think of

because I certainly didn't come from money,

and this represented essentially my net worth

that I was putting up for grabs.

And I was satisfied.

And so, I said, "We'll do the deal."

(dramatic music)

On July 7th, Goldberg packed $1,080,000

into two suitcases.

She handed them over to Bob Fitzgerald at the airport

and flew back to America with the mosaics.

Fitzgerald, meanwhile, took the money to Amsterdam

for Van Rijn to divvy up.

I paid the Turk, I paid Aydin Dikmen 350,000.

I might have nibbled them down

because that's the way it works.

Afterwards, a little bit more.

And I split the rest with Fitzgerald, he's my partner.

Safely back in Indianapolis,

Peg could examine her purchase in earnest.

I did some more research,

got a couple of my friends in the field of religion,

started putting things together,

discovered, and verified, at least to my satisfaction

and everybody else's, that this was the earliest

surviving depiction of Jesus as a young boy.

And they were one of only, I believe, four mosaics

or frescoes any place in the world

that had survived total destruction.

Goldberg was ready to put the mosaics

on the market, but first, she needed to send

the ancient relics to a local restorer.

He stabilized the artifacts, which means

he did enough to prevent them from falling apart.

I mean, these are crumbling old mosaics,

and they're moving around a lot.

Even though I think that they were well-packed,

any kind of movement, any kind of stress,

is ultimately gonna be bad for these pieces.

Because they come from arches and, you know, from walls,

she saw probably as a picture of lithograph dealer

that they would be more valuable if they would be complete,

so she had them flattened, straightened out,

which takes also part of the beauty away.

The time had come

to get one of the apostles valued.

Goldberg was in for a shock.

I had a transparency shot

and sent it to Sotheby's in London.

And to my absolute disbelief,

the next thing I know, they're on the phone to me

going, "This would be the most important antiquity

"to come on the market in the 20th century."

You know, "We will give you a written guarantee

"of the equivalent of $4 million."

Well I was really staggered.

Sotheby's soon had second thoughts

and withdrew their offer.

But Goldberg calculated that if one apostle

was valued at $4 million,

then all four might be worth 20 million.

If you do the simple math, you know,

four times four is 16, and Jesus and Mary,

if you wanna look at it crassly,

it was twice the size of the others,

and that's where the figure 20 million came up from.

What was I supposed to do, if Sotheby's said,

"You know, you'll get $20 million."

Go, gosh, I really only want 1 1/2?

But Goldberg wanted more than just money.

She wanted to ensure that the mosaics

remained in the United States.

I thought, "Wouldn't it be better

"to sell them to someone so I could visit them?"

That way, the world could appreciate them.

One of Goldberg's intermediaries

contacted the Getty Museum in Los Angeles

to offer its curator, Marion True, the mosaics.

It was to prove a tactical error.

I heard that she offered them

to the Getty Museum from Fitzgerald.

And I knew there was going to be problems in paradise now.

These Kanakaria mosaics were too hot

for anybody to handle.

And she might have got away with it

if it hadn't been for Marion True,

the Getty Museum curator.

True recognized that these were the mosaics

looted from the abandoned church.

She contacted the Republic of Cyprus and reported Goldberg.

Getty Museum itself informed us about it,

that somebody was making queries

and approaches to the museum to sell it to the museum.

(slow dramatic music)

The Kanakaria mosaics were such an important part

of Cyprus' cultural heritage.

They could not possibly allow those mosaics

to sit in an American museum or a private collection.

They had to claim them back.

Van Rijn was furious at the turn of events.

Well, we told her to sell them privately.

Well, we were not that stupid

that we couldn't think of the Getty Museum

ourselves that time, but you know, we were very wary.

They found out that Peg Goldberg was

an artist or an owner of a gallery,

a small gallery in Indiana.

And so we ran after her.

Goldberg had no idea that Cyprus

was mounting a landmark campaign

to rescue the mosaics of Kanakaria and bring them home.

But she was about to find out.

We've already had a little pre-celebration dinner,

and this woman who looks like a guard (chuckles)

comes over and asks if I'm Peg Goldberg

and I said yes, and the next thing I knew she served me.

(slow dramatic music)

I was just in shock.

I'd been sued personally, and my company had been sued.

The next thing I know is I'd glanced at the news stand

and I'm the headlines.

The city editor came up to me with a legal filing

that had been brought to him from Federal District Court

by one of our other reporters.

He handed it to me and he said,

"Should we pay attention to this?"

I looked at the front page,

saw that it was a lawsuit from Cyprus

against a local art dealer having to do

with potentially smuggled or stolen antiquities.

I knew enough about that to say,

"Well, I think, potentially,

"this is a major international news story."

(somber music)

Peg Goldberg wasn't the only one in the news.

Included in the court documents was a bill of sale

bearing the name of Aydin Dikmen.

It purported to make the sale of the mosaics legitimate.

The alleged smuggler had become a household name.

We did call a phone number in Germany

listed under Aydin Dikmen's name.

(slow dramatic music)

And I personally spoke to some person who,

I said, "Aydin Dikmen, Mr. Dikmen?"

He said, "Yes, yes, what is it?

"I'm calling from the Indianapolis Star.

"We're trying to find out about your relationship

"to the Kanakaria mosaics."

He said, "What, "I don't know what you're talking about."

Blah, blah, blah.

It was a very short and aborted conversation,

lasted perhaps two minutes.

And subsequent efforts to recontact him

at that number proved futile.

Dikmen, who had been behind the scenes,

pulling strings and selling items before that case,

suddenly was a world-famous figure.

His name was now linked

with the international trade in stolen antiquities.

He blamed it on Van Rijn, which was rather unfair

because Michel did not expose Dikmen.

It was the deal that exposed them.

(dramatic music)

But he forgot that he signed himself.

Um, and he sent people out for me.

Van Rijn claimed he feared for his life,

and went on the run.

But neither he nor Dikmen had been called

to testify in Indianapolis.

Only Peg Goldberg would stand trial.

(mellow orchestral music)

The case of the Republic of Cyprus

versus Peg Goldberg was called to order.

(gavel bangs)

At stake was her reputation

and the future of the Kanakaria mosaic.

Our case all along has been that Peg Goldberg

ought to have suspected that it was smuggled out of Cyprus.

She closed her eyes, and she bought them without caring,

without making the basic preliminary examination

about these mosaics.

(suspenseful music)

My attorneys told me that absolutely,

I was not to have friends or family in there.

You know, the judge would dislike it.

It looked like one of those lopsided weddings

where everybody is a friend of the bride.

Everybody in there was Greek or Greek-Cypriot

or friends of, or attorneys having to do with.

It's pretty exciting.

We had testimony from Greek Orthodox priests

who came in full attire with a black staff

or the gold ornately carved gold head,

on the witness stand saying in deep resonant tones,

"These are our mosaics, these are our holy treasures."

And that's the sort of drama

that one often does not find in local cases.

(slow dramatic music)

The story didn't just grip Indianapolis.

Around the world, museums and galleries

were now following the trial.

Would Peg's defense that she had purchased the mosaics

in good faith, from a seemingly credible dealer,

be enough to get her acquitted?

In that part of the world,

there are hundreds of ruined monasteries

and churches, and mosques

that literally dot the landscape,

so, the fact that I was told

that the monastery and the church

were now in ruins and no longer existed,

didn't strike me as unusual at all.

At London's Courtauld Institute, Robin Cormack,

who had been offered the mosaics himself, had his doubts.

It's very, very difficult for me to imagine

that Peg Goldberg did not know the dated mosaics

and where they came from, and was not able to research that.

They were well-known mosaics.

They even appear in slide tests

for students at the Courtauld.

These are not obscure works.

These are major works of art.

The trial against Peg Goldberg

lasted for six days.

She's a woman, I think, of great strength,

and she maintained her composure

pretty much throughout the trial.

I think there were moments

where Peg's otherwise unflappable confidence got flapped.

I mean, really, I was not scared

as much as I was outraged.

I thought, "Well, when are these people gonna go away?"

I've been told by everyone I can think of,

and everyone in the government can think of,

you know, that they have no legal standing.

These pieces had been out of the country years ago.

(gavel bangs)

After deliberations on August 3rd, 1989,

Judge Nolan ruled that the mosaics

belong to the church of Cyprus, and were still.

Goldberg should have known or at least suspected

that she was dealing in plundered art.

(chuckles) It was a landslide against me.

The judge ruled that I was too intelligent

not to know that the Autocephalus Greek Orthodox Church

of Cyprus would have rights in perpetuity to any item

that had exited their church on either side of the island.

(upbeat music)

The decision sent shock waves

around the art world.

Museums that had turned a blind eye

to the origin of some of their pieces

now had to sit up and take notice.

That case, I think, was the beginning

of the transformation of the situation

on the art and antiquities market scene,

where museums, and collectors, and dealers

started watching their back.

(mellow music)

In Cyprus, journalist Steve Mannheimer

was attending a concert with the president

when the verdict was handed down.

The president gets up onstage,

interrupts the orchestra and announces in Greek,

"Great news from Indianapolis, we've won the case."

(church bell pealing)

And the crowd goes wild.

I mean, everybody in the auditorium,

it was difficult perhaps for me to understand

how truly important this was

to the average Cypriot citizen, Greek Cypriot citizen,

and the auditorium erupted in applause,

and the orchestra struck up Beethoven's Fifth.

♪ Duh duh duh duh ♪

I mean, it was a scene from a movie.

(bright music)

It was my happiest day in my life.

We all felt so emotional about it.

It was a very touched moment.

The Cypriot reaction to the court case in Indianapolis

was one of delight, because they suddenly felt

that someone was addressing their grievances

against partition, against the looting

of the cultural heritage in the north.

The reclaimed relic was placed

in the Byzantine Museum in Nicosia.

That seemed to be the end of the matter,

though it was anything but.

The mosaic was still incomplete.

The only people who might know

where the remaining pieces were

were locked in a bitter feud.

Van Rijn was now in hiding,

claiming that his former colleague, Dikmen,

had issued threats against him.

I was living in a hotel in The Hague that time.

I had like eight Yugoslav bodyguards

because, you know, he had all his gang there.

So, what I did is I hired the gang in Holland

so they had interest together,

but they were also in competition together,

but it was a way of getting communication

and trying to save my life.

The time had come for Van Rijn

to consider going legitimate.

I think he got himself into a situation

where he didn't see that dealing in stolen art

and antiquities was the job of the future,

let's put it that way.

I think the Kanakaria case shook him.

I think he saw that this was a turning point

in this sort of profession.

And that saving antiquities could be

as just as much fun as dealing it.

And so he changed his way of working.

(gentle music)

Van Rijn made a bold move.

He contacted the Honorary Consul of Cyprus in The Hague

to suggest an unorthodox collaboration.

I was called by Michel Van Rijn

who said he was an art dealer,

and he had some very information for me

regarding the cultural heritage of Cyprus

in the occupied area.

He said enough on the telephone to trigger my interest.

Therefore, I didn't want to let go of the possibility

that he had something useful to tell me.

With trepidation, Hadjitofi agreed

to meet Van Rijn in a public place,

a cafe in the center of The Hague.

My first impressions about him

were that he's very controversial.

There was something not right.

I will never forget the way his cool,

light-blue eyes were looking.

He made me very, very nervous.

Van Rijn made Tasoula a proposal.

He would use his connections in the underworld

to help her recover artifacts looted from Cyprus,

with one condition.

He offered to give to my country via me

two mosaics and two icons,

in return for keeping one of the mosaics

free of charge and legally.

My immediate reaction, "No way."

And as I was newly appointed,

the first thing I did is to inform my government,

who put me in contact with Mr. Kyprianou.

I disagreed totally

with having any deals whatsoever with Van Rijn.

We knew of his participation in the Kanakaria case,

and therefore, I wouldn't trust him for anything,

and I wouldn't mix with him.

Kyprianou responded by alerting

the authorities in Holland.

He sends me two police officers within 48 hours.

So that is how serious my country took it

and how important it was for us.

Accompanied by the police,

Tasoula went to confront Van Rijn.

I was very naive.

I thought, "Of course, they would arrest him

"and they will force him to give them back to me.

"That's how things work when you go through

"the legal routes," I thought.

But the reality turned out to be different.

(somber music)

They went up to a private suite

to question Van Rijn, who was waiting with his bodyguards.

The Dutch police officer who was with the Cypriots

put a tape recorder on the table and told him,

"We are going to record everything."

And they started asking him,

"Did you offer this mosaics to Mrs. Georgiou at the time?"

And he said, "No, I think she misunderstood things.

"I do not have them.

"I do not know who has them."

It became a very nasty situation.

She wanted to have me arrested at one stage.

And he asked that the tape recorder is switched off.

He requested the police to leave the room

because he wanted to have a private word with me.

It's a nasty world, and I'm exposing parts of it,

so I'm always very cautious.

And I'm no hero.

He said to me, "I thought you were

"a much more clever woman than this.

"Did you really think you will get what you want

"by bringing me the police?

"If you want to get your artifacts back,

"you will just have to do it my way.

"And this is not my way.

"I don't work with police.

"I frame police."

And that is how it begun.

To halt the trade in looted art,

they needed to work together.

Van Rijn's only stipulation

was that he would report to no one but Tasoula.

First of all, she's a woman, so that was very,

you know, I'd more trust a woman than a man somehow.

I knew she had heart for her country and for the arts.

It was like a cat and mouse

because, also, Michel Van Rijn is quite intelligent

and controversial, and he did enjoy,

I think, playing the game with me.

He was studying me as much as I was studying him.

It was like, you know, two porcupines making love,

our discussions, 'cause we were very wary

and afraid that there were second-served agendas.

So, my instructions for Cyprus were,

"Keep in contact, make sure you get

"as much information as possible,

"but give away nothing."

It was the start of an unconventional

but fruitful relationship.

Now, this icon of John the Baptist,

we retrieved from London,

after negotiations with the professor.

Over a nine-year period,

Van Rijn's tips helped Tasoula

call back over 200 artifacts

from private collections around the world.

All of these ones,

which are part of that wall,

that's how it was originally.

Now, this was in the hands of a doctor in The Hague,

and he gave it back to us after explaining to him

what happened to Cyprus.

I felt at the time that although I would have loved

to have the pieces in my private collection,

but there are pieces which are bigger

than a private collection, and somehow,

with the risk of sounding corny,

but they belong to history.

Now, this icon here,

was found in Switzerland, and the owner,

he volunteered to give it back to Cyprus

because when he bought it, he didn't know it was stolen.

This icon was bought by a Greek in an auction in London

and he thought, when he discovered that it was from Cyprus,

and it was shaded, and he gave it back to us.

The remaining pieces of the Kanakaria mosaic

were not among the recovered relics.

They were still missing.

Did Van Rijn's adversary, Dikmen,

have them stashed in Munich?

(slow dramatic music)

Finally, Tasoula got the call she was waiting for.

He said to me, "Okay, I'm going to help you now

"to make the biggest discovery of the century."

I thought, "Oh, well, perhaps this time he's serious."

Van Rijn had a plan to go after Dikmen.

He said, "Well, I need money to go and buy

"these artifacts on behalf of Cyprus."

Van Rijn wanted half a million dollars

to buy another piece of the Kanakaria mosaic from Dikmen,

and incriminate him in the process.

"You have to trust me on this one.

"You really have to trust me.

"I can only get them with money."

And I said, "Are you perhaps buying from Dikmen?"

And he says to me, "No, they're various,

"but Dikmen could be one of them."

Tasoula took his offer

straight to the archbishop of Cyprus.

He said to me, "Do you really believe

"that Van Rijn is going to deliver?"

I said, "Your beatitude, I must be honest with you.

"My logic says no, but my instinct says yes."

The Cypriots agreed to front the money

for Van Rijn to trap Dikmen.

It was the first step in an elaborate sting operation.

Without meeting Dikmen directly,

Van Rijn would pose as a Greek millionaire

who wanted to buy the mosaic

of Saint Thaddeus from Kanakaria.

It was a risky maneuver.

If Dikmen rumbled his identity,

Van Rijn feared that he might take revenge.

You go alone because in this world,

if you don't show that you have the balls,

I'm sorry I don't have another word for it,

to come along, you're not a player.

(dramatic music)

Van Rijn set out from Amsterdam

bound for Germany.

His underworld contacts had set up a buy

from one of Dikmen's gang.

I was traveling with a lot of money also,

which was my money because the church

didn't wanna pay upfront, because they thought,

"We're not gonna give Van Rijn

"a couple of hundred thousand pounds,

"because the next day,

"he's on a nice tropical island probably."

They would meet in a casino parking lot

in Wiesbaden, Germany to do the deal, or so he hoped.

So, I saw the guy who I had

as a mutual friend between us, and I trusted enough

that he wouldn't sell me out to Dikmen,

but you never know.

The two men casually headed inside,

leaving the money and the mosaic behind

in the trunks of their cars.

They could have organized to have somebody there

to have my car burgled.

You know, they're professionals.

(suspenseful music)

After several hours,

the two men exited the casino.

If all went to plan,

Van Rijn was about to take possession

of another piece of the mosaic.

They exchanged the unopened packages.

I was concerned because, you know,

they didn't count the money,

and I didn't see the mosaic.

He headed off into the night,

checking repeatedly that he wasn't being followed.

Once safely across the Dutch border,

he pulled over to check his precious cargo.

I opened the trunk and I lifted the box,

and in the light of the stars and the moon,

it was like an explosion of stars.

It was right spot-on beautiful.

Close the car, zoop, went back.

Van Rijn drove through the night

to the ABN AMRO Bank in Rotterdam

to deliver the mosaic to Tasoula.

The first thing he said is,

"Please look at me straight in the eyes,

"and tell me, will you have me arrested?"

And I said, "Michel, I wish I could,

"but you've only got Thaddeus today,

"so, I need you, and you know it, and I know it."

(slow dramatic music)

Van Rijn had proved himself

to the Cypriot government.

Now, he needed to ensure that Dikmen was put behind bars.

And only the police could do that.

I could not duck him off because this is not my MO.

I had to do something, so,

I thought the best thing to do was a sting operation.

The sting operation would involve officers

from Munich led by Peter Kitschler,

head of the Art Theft Unit of the Bavarian Police.

(Peter speaking in foreign language)

Mr. Dikmen was on file with us,

but even though his name had come up

in connection with other questionable deals,

he himself had never been arrested.

(Peter speaking in foreign language)

(suspenseful music)

The plan was simple.

Use Van Rijn's intermediaries to get Dikmen

to reveal the objects he had hidden in his apartment.

Then, send in the police.

If all went smoothly, Dikmen's empire

was about to crumble.

(upbeat music)

Van Rijn and Tasoula Hadjitofi took up their position

at the Park Hilton.

My part was that I would be

with a team of policemen

in the hotel next to Van Rijn,

and Van Rijn would be on the telephone

with his collaborators pretending

he was this rich Greek guy.

If you do a sting operation like this,

everything can go pear-shaped in one second.

Van Rijn set to work,

luring Dikmen into the trap.

He instructed his middleman to offer him $5 million

to clean out his stock of artifacts from Cyprus.

If the ploy worked, an unsuspecting Dikmen

would reveal all to Van Rijn's henchmen.

(Peter speaking in foreign language)

In this case, it was crucial

that our informer played an active role

because otherwise, we would never have been able

to get access to the items.

On a cue from Van Rijn,

the police would send in a 30-strong SWAT team,

but not until his accomplices

had safely left Dikmen's apartment.

I say, "Look, you have to leave immediately."

Police, et cetera, they didn't ask questions,

they were out.

I didn't wanna take the risk

that they were going to be arrested.

They walked out of the apartment of Dikmen

and then Van Rijn gave the go ahead to Mr. Kitschler.

(suspenseful music)

But after weeks of meticulous planning,

the police were in for a bitter letdown.

I was back at the hotel,

waiting desperately to see

how many artifacts did they find.

And I was shocked to hear that they found none.

(dramatic music)

The police radioed in, awaiting instructions.

All seemed lost.

Then Van Rijn remembered an old smuggling trick.

Said, "Just break down the walls, break down the walls."

(suspenseful music)

10 minutes later, they were calling me and said,

"Bingo", that's it.

The walls, they came down,

and it's one Aladdin's cave, it's one treasure trove.

(dramatic music)

It was an unprecedented discovery.

Stashed behind false walls were suitcases and boxes

containing some 4,000 pieces,

from half a dozen civilizations,

with an estimated value of $40 million.

(Peter speaking in foreign language)

Here it is,

all arranged according to origin.

The vases are from Bulgaria.

The gourds, the coins, and icons from Cyprus.

It's all still here.

We haven't returned anything yet.

Among the artifacts was another precious piece

of the Kanakaria mosaic, Saint Thomas.

(Peter speaking in foreign language)

When we first confiscated it,

we realized it was an ancient piece,

but none of us knew its exact value.

Included in the haul

were some extraordinary photographs.

They detailed the looters at work

and revealed the ruthless efficiency

of the plan behind it.

(Peter speaking in foreign language)

We were wondering

why someone would have photos of looting.

But we assumed that they took them

to prove where the pieces came from.

(suspenseful music)

10 years later, the treasures found

in Aydin Dikmen's apartment remain here in Munich.

Dikmen himself was arrested on suspicion

of possession and attempted sale of stolen goods.

He was held in custody for a year,

then released without charge.

The police could not prove precisely

where and when the artifacts were obtained.

Dikmen was in the clear.

The historic pieces themselves

are still being fought over in the courts.

In July 2004, a judge in Munich ruled

that some 200 relics must be returned to Cyprus,

including Saint Thomas of Kanakaria.

But Dikmen is appealing the decision.

The central witness in the case,

Michel Van Rijn, has since moved to London.

He refused to testify against Dikmen,

claiming he had been the victim of a death threat.

I still get messages

from the underbelly of the art world,

from informants, that he is sleeping on it,

that it's not gone for me.

(mellow music)

The three remaining apostles

plundered from the church of Kanakaria

have never been found.

So for now, like the island of Cyprus itself,

the ancient mosaic remains divided,

and Tasoula must continue her quest.

I was very naive.

I thought I would pack them

and take them back to Cyprus.

That was the whole idea.

I convinced the archbishop

to take this calculated risk, but a risk,

and there were so many people pulled together,

whole team, German police, Cypriot police,

and I realized that the world doesn't work like that.

Money shouldn't be allowed to buy everything.

(dramatic music)