FBI

The FBI’s pursuit of a cameo recovered at Ground Zero turns a murder investigation into a race to trace a valuable and disputed object. The Bureau follows the jewel through competing ownership claims, a covertly monitored sale in Kansas City, and an attempted nationwide search for Ramondo Cardoso; its delayed response allows him to disappear, while the cameo’s later counterfeit versions complicate what the investigation can establish.

The Cameo Becomes an Investigative Lead

The FBI’s interest in the jewel grows out of two connected reports. Ron Gilbert, a friend of murdered firefighter Jim Browning, gives police a description of the killer and a detailed account of the cameo found at Ground Zero. That information makes the object more than a possible clue to Browning’s murder: it offers a way to identify whoever has taken possession of it and attempted to sell it.

The ownership question is immediately difficult. The New York authorities discover two claims, supported by similar photographs, for a cameo matching Gilbert’s description. One comes from France, the other from Canada, and both are made in the names of people who might have been victims of the September 11 attacks but do not appear on the list of dead or missing. The parallel claims create uncertainty about who is entitled to the object even before the Bureau has recovered it.

The claimants are subsequently identified as Georges D’Anjou, a Quebec Superior Court judge, and Charles de C..., a prosperous French wine producer. Their standing makes the claims credible, but does not resolve the contradiction: both appear to have a serious basis for identifying the same jewel. Georges D’Anjou has also sent a genetic profile for his son-in-law, Roger Bolduc, whom he believes may have been caught in the attacks. The authorities consider informing both claimants that the cameo has been found, but a Ground Zero operations official argues that notification should wait until the object is back in their hands and its recovery is secure.

Surveillance and the Kansas City Search

The FBI tries to anticipate where the thief might turn the jewel into cash. Federal police alert small secondhand and antique businesses across the United States, reasoning that Tim Jones, the suspected seller, may try to dispose of it through such shops. The strategy is intended to make the network of small businesses a means of detection as well as a likely route to a buyer.

In Kansas City, agents have secretly installed an electronic listening device behind the shelves of Ramondo Cardoso’s shop. During a visit two months earlier, one agent asked Cardoso whether he had recently bought precious stones while another examined the merchandise and placed the device without his knowledge. Cardoso does not know that the FBI is monitoring him when he negotiates with Tim Jones. The camera records the transaction, but the images are not acted on promptly, and the device stops functioning soon after.

Cardoso’s own response to the sale is shaped by fear as well as profit. He thinks of his mother in Cárdenas and of the money the deal might bring, but the prospect of trouble attached to the jewel soon weighs on him. Remembering an earlier FBI visit, he becomes wary of the cameo and hastily leaves his shop with cash, other valuables, and the stone in his pocket. He makes his departure appear calm, then heads toward a taxi stand where he knows the drivers, including a friend who came to the United States during the 1980 Mariel exodus.

John Robbart’s Failed Pursuit

At the FBI’s Summit Street office, an employee reviewing the surveillance recordings notices the transaction more than an hour after it has taken place. Agents are dispatched through congested Kansas City streets, but by the time they reach Cardoso’s shop, its metal shutter is down. John Robbart, the inspector leading the operation, finds the shop in disarray, its cash drawer empty and merchandise scattered. Cardoso has already gone.

Robbart treats Cardoso, rather than Jones, as the urgent target. Jones is described as a comparatively minor criminal whom the police expect eventually to catch; Cardoso, by contrast, has the cameo and is believed to be in flight. Robbart orders Cardoso’s description sent across the country to border posts, railway stations, and airports. The scale of the alert reflects both the value attributed to the jewel and the immediate consequence of the failed shop surveillance: the local operation has become a national search.

The narrative also makes the failure personal for Robbart. He fears that the missed opportunity will damage the Kansas City office’s standing and jeopardize his hoped-for promotion. He recognizes that the agents waited too long to check the miniature camera’s recording and to notice that it had stopped operating shortly after the transaction. The recording’s interruption leaves a gap in the account of Cardoso’s departure; the device itself is later found buried amid the shop’s disorder. Robbart wonders whether someone inside the service might have warned Cardoso or acted for personal gain, since a jewel said to be worth a million dollars or more could attract corrupt employees as well as outside thieves. This remains his suspicion, not a proven explanation.

Unresolved Claims and Counterfeit Evidence

The FBI’s pursuit does not settle the cameo’s identity or establish who ultimately possesses the genuine stone. Years later, Charles de C... examines photographs of a cameo that he says he received from New York in 2003 and compares them with photographs sent by the D’Anjou family. The marks on the pictured stones appear to match, but closer inspection suggests that the familiar scratch on the onyx has been imitated. Charles concludes that both families may have received counterfeit versions, and reasons that someone in New York must have substituted copies for the original.

That later discovery exposes the limits of the earlier identification and alert process. A photograph can support a claim that two people are referring to the same-looking object without proving that either holds the original. Nor does the subsequent evidence show that the FBI itself carried out the substitution: the suspected fraud remains Charles’s explanation of how the claimants received matching fakes. The FBI’s role in the novel is therefore defined by pursuit without conclusive recovery. Its surveillance identifies the sale too late, its nationwide warning follows Cardoso’s escape, and the competing claims and counterfeit images leave the jewel’s chain of custody uncertain.