In the fall of 1969, after a night of heavy storms and thunder, a caretaker came rushing out of a baroque church in the old city of Palermo, on the Italian island of Sicily. In tears, the woman had just discovered that a priceless Caravaggio painting that hung over the altar had been cut from its frame and stolen.

More than half a century later, the fate of Caravaggio’s Nativity With St. Francis and St. Lawrence, painted in 1609, remains one of the art world’s greatest unsolved mysteries. Long believed to have been taken by the Italian mafia, the painting, estimated to be worth at least $20 million, is listed by the FBI among the world’s top 10 art crimes.

Now, more than 50 years after the disappearance of the master work, authorities may have their best chance in decades to recover the Caravaggio. And in a dramatic twist, it is coming in the form of a shadowy art world dealer whose own freedom is at stake. A 69-year-old Anglo-Hungarian art dealer named William Veres needs to solve one of the coldest cold cases in art crime history or face jail himself. Veres was arrested at his home in London in 2018, accused by prosecutors in Sicily of running a pan-European smuggling ring made up of tomb raiders, counterfeiters, fences, and frontmen—some of them allegedly connected to the Sicilian mob at one point or another.

But Veres, an expert on ancient coins known to those in the trade as “The Professor,” says he met with Italy’s anti-mafia police, the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia (DIA), who told him they will put in a good word with prosecutors if he can find the Caravaggio painting. And perhaps, if found guilty, he says he could be spared some 20 years in jail. (The DIA did not return a request for comment.)

“If I managed to recover something, they would speak to the prosecutors,” Veres told me.

Over the past three years, I’ve followed Veres on this unlikely quest, which is the subject of my new podcast, The Professor: The Hunt for the Mafia’s Missing Masterpiece. Together, we traveled all over Europe, meeting with mafia hit men and informants, retired police officers, and shadowy art world figures. As we followed clues to the painting’s whereabouts, we went further than Italy’s police have ever gone.

During his career, Veres has dealt with middlemen linked to the mafia at least once before, which plays an important role in the illicit art trade. Now he’s pulling on those connections to locate the Caravaggio.

“At some stage, somebody within the mafia will be making a decision on whether…to give it back, or how to give it back, under what terms to give it back,” Veres said.

Over the past half century, the Caravaggio painting has become a symbol of the mafia’s enduring power. In 1989, a mafia turncoat admitted to stealing the painting. But since then, Italian police have made scant progress in finding answers. In the podcast, we reveal for the first time how an Italian police investigation into the painting was thwarted in the 1990s. Earlier this year in a park in Naples, I spoke to Ferdinando Musella, the cop who led that probe.

In 1997, Musella’s investigation led him to interview a former mafioso whom witnesses said had tried to sell the painting in the 1970s. Around the same time, this mafioso was a bodyguard for an up-and-coming real estate developer in Milan named Silvio Berlusconi.

By 1997, Berlusconi had served his first term as prime minister, and he’d soon be back in power. Musella told me that prosecutors prevented him from pursuing his enquiries, and that part of the official report of his interview with this mafioso has been classified.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about those things,” he said, referring to that portion of his investigation.

In the end, Musella says the probe was mothballed.

Fast-forward to today, and Veres has to kick-start his own investigation. His deal with Italy’s anti-mafia police was organized in part by Arthur Brand, a self-styled “art detective” known for recovering famous stolen paintings.

They make an unlikely duo. Veres, dapper in tweed suits, essentially penniless after his arrest, has a complicated family life: During the course of my reporting one of his three sons died in a car accident after a reported battle with mental illness. Brand is a bombastic TV personality in the Netherlands, host of De Kunstdetective (The Art Detective), and an author.

Their search for the Caravaggio is a story of conmen and counterfeiters, drug dealers and corrupt politicians. In the process, my relationship with Brand is tested as he initially tries to hide from me the methods they’re using to secure the return of the stolen art—methods that some in the art recovery business say just fuel further thefts—risking putting Veres under even more scrutiny.

“There are a few fucking idiots in this field who have never recovered anything, who are just fucking jealous of me and other people and always telling these stories,” Brand told me.

But however questionable their tactics are, Veres’s quest turns up the strongest evidence yet suggesting that not only is the painting still held by the mafia, but that if they want to find it they first have to locate one of the mob’s most notorious fugitives.

The Professor: The Hunt for The Mafia’s Missing Masterpiece, a four-part podcast from Brazen and PRX, releases weekly from November 27 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.