Picture this: on trial for the biggest bank heist in history, you hand the judge a coded document, leap out the window onto a parked car, hop a waiting motorcycle, and vanish. Then you mail the car's owner a check to cover the dent. Every detail is true.

This episode is a character study of Albert 'Bert' Spaggiari, the mastermind behind the July 1976 break-in at a Societe Generale vault in Nice. We trace how a paratrooper, militant operative, and small-town photographer assembled the skills and network to dig into a fortress, and how myth and reality blur around a man who wanted to be remembered as a gentleman thief.

• How military training and the OAS network gave Spaggiari a master class in compartmentalization, explosives, and underground logistics
• The two-month operation digging a 26-foot tunnel from the city sewers, co ...