Two Hangmen, One Scaffold Book I: Baiting the Hangman

Chapter 25

211 C Chapter 25 or the umpteenth time, Binga Jochoma sipped Coca Cola as he sat in a bedside chair and went through a Louvre prerobbery mental inventory he hatched and perfected ever since he visited the museum and saw the Mona Lisa. To relax and get accustomed to France, he would spend the first two days touring like an innocent African. He would visit the flagdraped Musée de I’Armée in the city and marvel at Charles Richefeu’s ‘Fiery Patriot’ statue of the Napoleonic grenadier. In the museum, he would test the juju to see if he would disappear. He would tour the imposing Cathedral of Chartres and go round the magnificent Palace of Versailles, the eighteenth century historic residence of Louis XIV. On the second day, he would tour the Arc de Triomphe, an impressive memorial. Throughout the tours, he would mingle unassumingly with the French and their international tourists, to see if he wasn’t attracting undue attention, or remained visible when he performed disappearing acts. If everything was favourable and his heart urged him to go for it, the third day would be the day. He would don a business suit and smuggle an empty duffle bag big enough to contain a painting seventy-nine by fifty-four centimetres. He would hire a taxi to the Eiffel Tower. Another taxi would take him to the Rue de Rivoli where he would disembark and walk across the garden section of Rue Castiglione, the northern portal of Paris’ famous Tuileries Gardens, pausing to marvel at its pond in its exquisite central boulevard, but essentially to look over his shoulder. He would exit the garden park under the Arc du Carrousel, a monumental archway with a tourist attraction of its own. From the gigantic archway, a third taxi would take him to the observatory esplanade at the periphery of the Tuileries Gardens. He planned his route to appear leisurely in case he would be under suspicion. A F 212 fourth taxi would whisk him to the Louvre. With a perimeter over four thousand eight hundred metres long, the Louvre was probably the longest building in the world. It housed over sixty-five thousand pieces of art, among them Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, its most esteemed artwork. In the second and third positions were the Venus de Milo and Winged Victory respectively. In its numerous chambers were works by international masters, proof of the thievery or procurement skills of France’s ancient noblemen and modern political leaders. The money in Paris couldn’t buy the treasures of the Louvre. If not all the money in Paris could buy the contents of the Louvre, then how did France acquire them? By hook, crook and thievery, Binga reasoned. Paradoxically, protecting loot arbitrarily acquired was a sophisticated security system consisting of armed security personnel, remote alarms, CCTV cameras, movement sensors, biometric locks and automatic steel gates that barricaded burglars inside the complex. Juju wouldn’t take care of the system. Alarms would sound. Barricades would fall and lock automatically. However, juju would make him invisible. The one-man heist would succeed. The painting would leave the Louvre. By 8:30 am, he would stand among tourists at the entrance of the horseshoe shaped façade of the famous museum as its doors opened to the public. Using the spectacular Pyramid entrance, he would descend into the visitors’ lobby of the museum and walk down a lengthy passage until he came to an elevator landing two storeys below the Denon Wing. An elevator would take him to the wing, a series of interconnected galleries, one of which was the Grand Gallery in which was the chamber called the Salle des Etats. The Mona Lisa was a solitary, famed masterpiece in a secluded cell in the Salle des Etats. Inside the Etats, a hallmark for state of the art security he anticipated would be full of tourists; the first phase of the robbery proper would begin in earnest. Nothing would hinder him from stealing the Mona Lisa. In France’s Loire Valley, Leonardo da 213 Vinci’s relics in his tomb at Amboise Castel would turn. The French, as they did in 1911 when robbers stole the painting, would mourn openly for its return while he transacted the masterpiece in New York City. 214 ...