- "Sometimes we 'amateurs' stumble across bits of information the 'professionals' have overlooked."
- ―Daan van Rooijen[src]
Daan van Rooijen was a Dutch antiquities dealer based in Istanbul, Turkey. He was obsessed with finding the Golden Fleece, and had become an expert on lore related to it, and to the Cult of Hecate.
Biography
In April 1941, Indiana Jones and Omphale Kiapos arrived in Istanbul, having escaped from the Cult of Hecate and invading Nazis in Greece. Jones looked up Daan van Rooijen who related the history of the Golden Fleece, now desecrated, and his quest to find it in Istanbul. He also explained the role of the cult of Hecate and their quest to find the Fleece, and re-consecrate it with the knife from the tomb of Atreus.
That night, Van Rooijen and Jones bribed an official at the Hall of Records, and began sifting through boxes of notes, looking for the results of a twenty-year old auction. As they found the key auction invoice that had a photograph of the Fleece, the Turkish secret police, the Emniyet arrived, firing pistols in the records room. While Jones fought them off, Van Rooijen struggled to get the roof hatch open. Hoping to escape, they leapt to a neighboring dome but slid off. Jones whipped the top of the dome and grabbed Van Rooijen. As the Emniyet men began to fire on their exposed position against the wall, Jones let go, causing both men to fall into a cart of melons.
Hiding under a bridge, Van Rooijen examined the receipt and recognized the name of the auction secretary, Mehmed Sarper. Collecting Kiapos from Van Rooijen's apartment, the adventurers went to Sarper's shop and learned that the Fleece hadn't been sold, but that Sarper, an aspiring artist in those days, had used the back of the fleece as a canvas for a portrait that no one had ever purchased. Buying the painting and returning to the apartment with Jones and Kiapos, Van Rooijen tested the canvas and determined that it was the indestructible Fleece. Opening up some champagne to celebrate, he secretly slipped a drug into Jones' and Kiapos' drinks. As his guest began to become paralyzed, van Rooijen revealed that he was taking the Fleece for himself, as a true disciple of Hecate. As Van Rooijen left with the Fleece, he was assaulted by the cult members, who strangled him with Jones' missing whip and took the Fleece.