Operation Report: Handle With Care Part 1 - Operation JOYRIDE

 

Las Vegas, Nevada. March 15, 2005.

 

 Agent JACE receives a hidden invitation to a meeting in a motel in Henderson. That evening, JACE convenes with Agent BERNARD, who promotes him to cell leader of J-Cell now that JUNE is gone. He explains he will also have to establish contact with the leaders of I-Cell and K-Cell, who have recently cut off contact. It is a trying time for the group, and A-Cell is on the lookout for agents they can rely on. Before that comes the mission. BERNARD briefs JACE on the details: recently, art collector Winston Munroe purchased six extremely valuable items at the auction of the Krauss family estate. In transport to his residence in Las Vegas, the van carrying the items was stolen. Traffic Cameras show that a ghostly figure veiled in red was present for the robbery, but no witnesses report its presence. The Agents are to investigate the appearance of the mysterious figure and determine if it is Unnatural, as well as identify any links to Munroe's artifacts. BERNARD gives JACE about an hour of security tapes to look through, before concluding the meeting.

 

JACE contacts the other Agents and they gather for a briefing in a soundproofed room of the Crimson Reef casino. They go over the details BERNARD shared with JACE then decide to watch the tape together. The security camera overlooks an intersection. For the first few minutes of the recording, nothing happens. Then, a crowd of people enters the frame from the left, and two newlyweds pose for pictures. Two more wedding entourages enter from the right a little later, and confusion breaks out. At this point, a feminine figure entirely wrapped in a red veil seems to appear out of nowhere. Around the height where the eyes should be, two splotches of darker red can be seen on the veil: it appears to be dried blood. Then, a van, marked with a fountain logo that reads "Fountainhead: Fine Art Logistics", stops at the intersection. The van is surrounded by four masked men, armed with handguns. The driver and a security guard are threatened and exit the vehicle. The four men then commandeer the van and drive off. At this point of the recording, the red-veiled woman disappears.

JACKAL notices that the four robbers seem quite young, perhaps in their late teens or early twenties. Additionally, all but one appear inexperienced, with one not even holding the gun properly. The man who looks to be their leader has a strange tattoo on his arm, but lighting conditions and the recording's resolution make it hard to decipher. JACE also looks over the tape again, and determines there was no tampering of any kind. 

Las Vegas, Nevada. March 16, 2005.

The following day the team splits up: JACE goes to question the wedding hosts and guests, JACKAL interviews the Fountainhead driver and security guard, JACK tries to get a hold of his mob contacts to see if they know anything about a theft of this scale, and Dr. Fincher, due to his "background in fine arts" (he is an amateur painter and a small-time collector).

JACE spends most of the day tracking down the newlywed couples and their guests and questioning them for any clues. Apparently, the robbers talked to each other in Spanish, though JACE couldn't find a witness that understood their conversation. JACE also obtains a vague description of the leader's tattoo, which he recognizes as belonging to the Henderson Hermanos, a small youth gang that seems to have formed recently.

JACKAL gets much of the same information from his interviews, but Axeley and Hernandez, the Fountainhead employees, speak Spanish and were able to understand most of the robbers' conversation. They were talking about retrieving a specific item, and decided to take the entire van and "dump the rest later". The nature of the desired object was not discussed during the robbery, however. JACKAL also discovers that the LVMPD has located the stolen, discarded a couple miles southeast of the robbery. J-Cell decides not to go to the scene to avoid scrutiny from actual law enforcement.

In the meantime JACK has organized a meeting with his mob contact, Giuseppe Vella, and is heading into the man's office for a chat. Giuseppe claims he doesn't know anything about the recent art robbery, nor about anyone who might be involved. JACK then asks about the Hermanos, which Giuseppe readily dismisses as a small-time gang who would have no interest in something this high-profile. 'You can't really sell a million-dollar painting at a pawn shop in Henderson, can you?' The leadership of the gang, if it can even be called that, has been off-grid for the past month, however. JACK has a hint of doubt about the truth of Vella's statements, but he fails to get more out of him, and decides to let it go for the time being.

Dr. Fincher's investigation is perhaps the most productive out of the lot. While not an art historian, he has been at a few auctions before, and manages to dig up some information on the lots and buyers. The auction was held by Sylvia Krauss, who after her father's death donated part of her grandfather's collection to various museums and sold the rest at various auctions. Henry Krauss, the patriarch, acquired his fortune from a chain of supermarkets he founded in Pennsylvania in the 1910s. At the March 2005 auction, Sylvia sold a total of 37 items, most of which went to Swiss collector Jean-Luc Rochat and Winston Munroe himself. Other notable buyers and bidders include the Canadian writer Graziano Henke, the Japanese entrepreneur Onishi Nori and Vanessa Casavecchia, an American heiress.

 
Munroe bought six items, and JACK pays Grace Pinner, a Stanford art history and theology professor visiting Vegas, to collaborate with Fincher in putting together an extensive file on each item's history (and the possibility that one or more are Unnatural, though that part is of course a responsibility of Fincher alone). The items are the following:

•  A 1st century Roman statuette of the Egyptian goddess Isis, about 10cm tall. Believed to have been used in initiation rituals to the mysteries of Isis, private traditions and cults of roman nobles who had 'adopted' worship of the deity from Ptolemaic Egypt.
•  A  manuscript copy of the Philosophumena (also known as the Refutation Of All Heresies), a 3rd century theological work by an unknown author, speculated to be Hyppolitus of Rome. It is one of the earliest non-biblical works of christian faith, and it describes 33 variations of the faith considered heretical, most of them some form Gnostic worldview like the Naassene faith, centered on the belief that the serpent of Eden was a benevolent entity come to free mankind from the prison of matter crafted by the Demiurge.
•  A 1403 manuscript of an early Italian translation of Giovanni Boccaccio's De Mulieribus Claris (1362), a collection of biographies of famous historical women, originally in Latin. The book also describes several goddesses, like Isis or Juno, and mythological characters, like Eve or Helen of Troy, as if they were real people. The 1403 translation by Tommaso del Neri is notable in that it greatly expands these early chapters.
• An extremely rare copy of the first printing of the Divine Comedy (titled only La Comedia = The Comedy). Among the first books ever printed in Italian in 1472, it is the most valuable item in the collection sold for 3.1 million dollars.
• A 16th century Armillary Sphere, about 30 centimeters in diameter. It shows the heavens as rings around the Earth, documented with astrological knowledge of the era. Unusually, it also shows the names and sigils of angels and demons associated with the celestial bodies represented.
• A 1623 oil painting by Battista Cesari (1588-1624), student of Caravaggio. It's a very well executed representation the Flagellation of Christ, if very derivative from Caravaggio's own interpretation of the scene. It differs from it only in the gore and anguish expressed, which has been commended as very realistic. It's also a common rumor that Cesari mixed a murder victim's blood with the paint. 

The Agents gather once again in soundproofed room at the Crimson Reef, and share the information with each other. They decide that the next day JACK and Fincher will attempt to arrange meetings with Munroe and Krauss, as well as try to continue deeper research into the artifacts, while JACE and JACKAL will work on hunting down the Hermanos and recovering the stolen items.

Las Vegas, Nevada. March 17, 2005. 

JACE and JACKAL spend most of the day grilling petty criminals and informants about the Hermanos, finding little more than scraps. Apparently, there has been some lapse in gang activity over the past few months, with them going completely missing during the past month (as JACK's contact said). The two finally find a drug dealer with the Hermanos tattoo, but JACE's fails to convince him to give up any information about the gang. JACKAL tries a different method of coercion. The kid ends up with a broken arm, but he reveals that the gang stores drugs and weapons in an abandoned house somewhere in Henderson, and gives up an address. He also says that a kind of leader figure for the gang, Tommy Rosales, has been off grid for the past month.

Fincher and JACK spend their morning sweet-talking secretaries, lawyers and media managers for the two estates. The Agents manage to convince Munroe that they are experts and may have some idea as to his property's theft, so the man is quick to schedule an appointment for that very evening. Krauss, already in damage control mode, has greater things to worry about and says she'll be available in a few days at best. JACK also pushes Pinner, his new source, to research historical sightings of red-veiled spirits and ghosts, as well as their significance and symbolism.

 The other two agents are headed to the Hermanos' alleged hiding place to stake it out and see what's going on. They immediately notice movement inside, and JACE tries to sneak closer to the house to better understand what's going on while JACKAL stays in his car and keeps watch from afar. He sees about four people coming and going and the Flagellation, now unpacked. He is immediately noticed by one of the gang members, and the Agents are chased off with gunshots, fortunately escaping unscathed. JACE hasn't had enough and tries to see how the situation develops, hiding in a nearby building and watching from the windows, while JACKAL distances himself from the scene and makes sure they cannot follow his car.

JACE notices that one of the young men appears to be calling someone on a flip phone. After the call ends, he yells at the others to get ready and pours gas over the painting. Then, he flicks open a zippo lighter. Millions of dollars go up in flames.
  
IMAGE CREDITS:
1-Still from Las Vegas Freeways by Night, video by CosmoPhotography on Youtube
2- First century Roman statuette of Isis from the Galleria Borghese in Rome.