Seven Wonders by Ben Mezrich Page B

centerpiece of a bizarre crime. A pair of beatnik beach bums, inspired by a Hollywood movie about jewel thieves, snuck through a bathroom window into the museum and stole two dozen irreplaceable gems, including the Star and the famous sixteen-carat Eagle Diamond, a rough, uncut gem found near the town of Eagle, Wisconsin, in the late 1800s.
    Although the hapless thieves were quickly apprehended, the brazen theft would go down in history as one of the most audacious jewel heists ever conducted. After the Star of India was recovered from a locker in the Miami bus station, it attracted even larger crowds because of its infamy. The Eagle Diamond hadn’t been so fortunate; to this day, its whereabouts remained a mystery, and most experts believed the rough mineral had been chopped up and sold off in pieces.
    To Jendari, though the robbery had been primitive to the point of being comical, the disappearance and return of the Star had given it significance; it was a reminder of how quickly something that seemed so permanent could vanish, and how even a small-minded person could accomplish something well beyond his status, given the right opportunity.
    But if Grange considered the Star of India anything beyond another gem in the museum’s collection, he wasn’t showing. In two seconds flat, he had passed the glowing gem and hurriedly unlocked another unmarked door. A moment later, they were both descending down a narrow stairway.
    The stairs ended in front of a steel door. Instead of a wave of his magnetic ID card, this time Grange punched a series of numbers into an electronic keypad attached to the door’s frame. There was a loud metallic click, and the door swung inward on automatic hinges.
    Jendari found herself being led into a small, steel-walled chamber, almost devoid of furniture. In the middle of the room stood a single wooden crate about three feet tall, nearly as wide as it was long.
    She realized immediately where they were. Grange had brought her to one of the numerous archival examination rooms set aside for receiving and documenting the literally millions of fossils, artifacts, and gemstones that arrived into the museum every year, from private collectors, archaeologists, other museums, and even foreign governments. The truth was, the vast majority of items that came through the museum never saw the light of a display cabinet. One could spend a lifetime crawling through the bowels of the museum, and still only see a fraction of what had been collected over the years.
    Grange stood in silence as Jendari let the steel door seal shut behind them.
    “I know you like to tease, Mr. Grange, but it’s not good to keep a lady waiting. Especially this lady.”
    Grange grinned, trickles of sweat framing his cubic features. As one of the American Museum’s most senior curators of antiquities, Henry Grange was an expert on many things—but pleasing women was likely not in his repertoire. Thankfully, Jendari hadn’t spent the last decade funneling money into a private Swiss bank account she had set up for the curator because of his sexual prowess. To Jendari, the mysterious crate standing in the middle of this steel chamber was more exciting than anything any man could do for her.
    “As you wish,” Grange said.
    With that, he nearly dove across the room, retrieving a heavy iron crowbar from behind the crate. He went to work on the wood, leveraging hisconsiderable weight against the oversize steel nails that held the crate together.
    “You can’t imagine the difficulty we had in getting this here,” Grange said as he struggled with the crowbar. “The paperwork involved in getting the permission to use the submersible in the first place was staggering. Then there were the payouts to the customs officers in Alexandria, at the stopover in Paris, and then again at JFK.”
    There was a loud crack as one of the wooden slats split down the middle. Grange jammed the crowbar into the opening and then twisted with both shoulders.