No James Bonds Here

The Hollywood version would feature Pierce Brosnan or Catherine Zeta-Jones clad entirely in black, dangling precariously from a wire while straining to execute moves requiring the most painstaking precision. What would have been the world's biggest-ever jewel heist was carried out with a lot less finesse. On Tuesday morning four men on a bulldozer plowed through the surrounding fence and exterior wall of London's Millennium Dome, the British capital's already beleaguered tourist attraction. The target of this less-than-elegant operation was the priceless 203-carat De Beers Millennium Star and 11 rare blue diamonds, with a total estimated value of more than $500 million.

But while the would-be thieves' mastery of James Bond techniques fell somewhat short, Scotland Yard was right on script. According to Detective Superintendent Jon Shatford, who led the 100-strong team of foilers, the authorities had been tipped off far in advance. The day of the heist, dozens of officers posing as cleaners took up stations around the interior of the east London landmark. When the building came under attack shortly after 9 a.m., 64 visitors were inside but no diamonds. They had all been replaced with glass fakes.

After crashing through the wall with the bulldozer the four men donned gas masks and broke into the vault. There they set upon the protective display case with sledgehammers and nail guns, releasing a smoke bomb to thwart resistance. But the police, anticipating the move, put on gas masks of their own, surrounded the vault and nabbed the burglars. Outside, officers collared an alleged accomplice monitoring police radio and another waiting to pilot a getaway speedboat down the Thames in true James Bond style. Later police arrested six more suspects in the London outskirts. By midafternoon the front loader, still parked outside the cordoned-off De Beers display, was one of the few visible reminders of the spectacularly unsuccessful great millennium diamond caper. Just how the gang had planned to profit from their escapade remained unclear. Selling such recognizable gems intact would have been tricky, and converting the loot into cash could have been accomplished only by cutting up the stones.

The botched heist could help the Millennium Dome slated to close by year's end go out with almost as much publicity as it generated when it opened in a New Year's Eve spectacular that featured the Queen and Tony Blair holding hands for a sing-along version of Auld Lang Syne. The immense Millennium Star was a centerpiece of that event, a laser refracting through it to cast shards of light around the darkened pavilion. But after that glittering debut the site struggled to draw visitors. In recent weeks poor weather further reduced attendance, and Tuesday's figure some 6,000 visitors, far fewer than the daily total originally projected could hardly be blamed on the morning's widely publicized attempted crime.

Indeed, as details of the aborted heist hit the airwaves questions arose about why visitors had even been allowed inside while police lay in wait for the criminals. Pierre-Yves Gerbeau, chief executive of the company that runs the Dome, said he had "been aware of the threat for a little more than two months." But, he stressed, "it was always a potential threat. It became more specific only in the last few weeks. We were under alert a few times before." Closing the Dome each time there was an alarm would have warned the thieves that they were expected. Tuesday morning, says Gerbeau, began like "just another potential day, it could have been like the dozen times before." Despite his cooperation with Scotland Yard, he says, "the most important thing was the safety of our visitors and our staff, and the police demonstrated that they were looking at any scenario possible to make sure that this would never be jeopardized." Some eyewitnesses claimed to have heard gunfire, but police insisted that the entire operation was conducted without a shot being fired.

With so little time left for the Dome to lure crowds, the attempted heist may end up drawing visitors curious about the caper and the diamonds. The robbers may have failed to derive sufficient inspiration from the movies, but the Dome's managers might try to exploit the 007 elements to their advantage. After all, the building was featured in The World Is Not Enough. And Bond girl Sophie Marceau unveiled the De Beers collection when it first went on display last September. Gerbeau, however, prefers to put the episode behind him. "Everybody wanted me to laugh and say this is good publicity," he says. "For me, today was a very worrying day." And an even worse one for the would-be thieves, who now face the likelihood of time behind bars for what they had hoped would be the heist of the millennium.