Marie-Antoinette's Watch: Adultery, Larceny & Perpetual Motion

Chapter 16

Tel Aviv

On August 16, 2006, after Zion Yakubov had met the mysterious pregnant lawyer and first held the Marie-Antoinette in his hands, the old jeweler made a call to Rachel Hasson at the Mayer Museum. Hasson and Yakubov had met two years before, when the art dealer brought a friend to see the items he had donated to the collection. Now, he explained the situation, told Hasson about the lawyer, and said, "Rachel, I just want to see if I saw your stuff." She invited him to the museum and they met in the library, a small, cool room that offered a respite from the day's oppressive heat.

Hasson had dealt with fakers before, and would normally have assumed that this was another one. But "sightings" of the collection were by now fairly uncommon. Hucksters had moved on to newer cons. So, she spoke briefly about the collection and then brought out the book Watches & Clocks in the Sir David Salomons Collection, the complete description of the collection written in 1980. Yakubov opened the book to a random page, thumbed through a few more, and pointed. On page 267, looking like a tin can with neat holes punched through it, was a gilt metal thermometer made by Thomas Jones in London, an odd eighteenth century instrument that had piqued Salomons' fancy when he bought it at the turn of the century.

"Yes," Yakubov said now. "I saw this in the lawyer's collection."

Hasson was breathless, "hysterical" almost, according to Eli Kahan, the museum chairman.

"Did you see the Queen?" she asked.

"I think so," the jeweler said, explaining that he hadn't seen enough to be sure. Why he chose such an unusual item to identify - a tiny thermometer that was not commonly known to be part of the Salomon's collection - remains open to conjecture, but to be too familiar with the stolen collection would have suggested complicity in the theft, something Yakubov couldn't afford.

He described three dirty, broken boxes full of a rat's nest of newspaper and patched with yellowing tape. The watches he saw were in good condition and mostly intact, although he did see a few broken pieces. But it was the prospect of reacquiring the Queen that stirred in Hasson the most excitement. As a young assistant curator she had seen it disappear in the night. Now, as mysteriously as it had gone, it might be back, stuck in a lawyer's office in torrid Tel Aviv.

It was settled: Yakubov would bow out of the deal and pressure the lawyer to approach the museum directly. All Rachel Hasson had to do was wait for the call.

It came on August 20, a Sunday. Efron-Gabai repeated her story: She was representing an overseas client who owned some items that had belonged to her deceased husband. They included clocks that had come from the L.A. Mayer Museum. Would Hasson be interested in meeting?

The museum now faced a major problem. In many art theft cases, the victimized institution does not actually want to see its former possession again. Once stolen, a piece of art or historical artifact becomes more valuable to its previous owner if it's never recovered. Why? Because once the insurance companies make their payout, the cash usually is plowed back into the museum. If the stolen items are later recovered, the cash must be returned to the insurance company, resulting in a dismal quarter - or quarters - especially for a non-profit. In short, theft, at least on a small scale, is good for a museum.