Chap­ter 18 of The Art Thief con­tin­ues to build the ten­sion sur­round­ing the crim­i­nal exploits of Bre­itwieser and Anne-Cather­ine. As their string of thefts grows longer, their actions begin to draw the atten­tion of the local press. Though the author­i­ties still lack the hard evi­dence need­ed to arrest them, the media begins to open­ly con­nect the cou­ple to the recent art crimes. This grow­ing media fren­zy rais­es their stress lev­els, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the press mis­rep­re­sents Bre­itwieser, describ­ing him as much old­er than he is, which caus­es him a strange mix of amuse­ment and anx­i­ety. Despite this mount­ing pres­sure, he con­tin­ues with his thefts, using the medi­a’s obses­sion with him as fuel to car­ry out more dar­ing heists. In a fur­ther dis­play of his audac­i­ty, Bre­itwieser delib­er­ate­ly leaves behind emp­ty frames as a sig­na­ture move, turn­ing his thefts into per­son­al chal­lenges rather than just illic­it acts, cre­at­ing a game-like atmos­phere with the author­i­ties.

As the pres­sure from the media inten­si­fies, the cou­ple begins to think through the pos­si­ble meth­ods that law enforce­ment might use to track stolen art. One com­mon tac­tic used by author­i­ties is the sale of stolen art through dis­hon­est deal­ers at prices much low­er than the pieces’ actu­al worth, enabling the thieves to quick­ly con­vert the items into cash while avoid­ing imme­di­ate detec­tion. Anoth­er method involves a prac­tice known as “art-nap­ping,” where stolen works are held for ran­som and returned to their own­ers or muse­ums after a ran­som is paid, often facil­i­tat­ed by inter­me­di­aries or crim­i­nal bro­kers. These ran­som schemes are deeply embed­ded in the his­to­ry of art crime and offer a prac­ti­cal, albeit ille­gal, means of obtain­ing a sig­nif­i­cant pay­out while threat­en­ing to ruin the rep­u­ta­tions of art col­lec­tors or muse­ums. Addi­tion­al­ly, some stolen works enter the under­ground mar­ket, where they are trad­ed as valu­able com­modi­ties among crim­i­nals, mak­ing their recov­ery even more dif­fi­cult for law enforce­ment. These crim­i­nal prac­tices reflect the mul­ti­fac­eted nature of art theft and demon­strate the seri­ous chal­lenges faced by author­i­ties who aim to recov­er stolen trea­sures while nav­i­gat­ing the com­plex­i­ties of inter­na­tion­al crime net­works.

The chap­ter also brings atten­tion to the infa­mous theft of Edvard Munch’s The Scream in 1994, dur­ing the Win­ter Olympics, high­light­ing the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in art secu­ri­ty. This case empha­sizes the lengths to which art thieves will go to tar­get valu­able works of art, as well as the dif­fi­cul­ties faced by inves­ti­ga­tors in track­ing down these price­less pieces. Charley Hill, a renowned art detec­tive, shares his insights into the under­cov­er oper­a­tions involved in recov­er­ing The Scream, pro­vid­ing an insider’s look at the often high-stakes, dan­ger­ous nature of art crime inves­ti­ga­tions. Hill’s recount­ing paints a pic­ture of the dra­mat­ic and the­atri­cal ele­ments involved in under­cov­er art crime recov­ery, offer­ing a stark con­trast to the por­tray­als of art thieves in main­stream media. The real-life world of art theft is far from the glam­orous, risk-free heists often depict­ed in films. In fact, the oper­a­tions are fraught with dan­ger, secre­cy, and con­stant risks that demand a lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and brav­ery that few in the pub­lic eye are tru­ly aware of.

The nar­ra­tive makes an impor­tant dis­tinc­tion between the fic­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions of art thieves and the real­i­ty of their actions. Many real-life art thieves, like Bre­itwieser, are not sophis­ti­cat­ed art col­lec­tors with deep knowl­edge of the works they steal; instead, they view their crim­i­nal activ­i­ties more as a com­pul­sion or a chal­lenge, rather than a means to appre­ci­ate art. The con­trast is par­tic­u­lar­ly evi­dent with char­ac­ters like Alexan­dre Von der Müh­ll, who injects a bit of humor into the oth­er­wise seri­ous world of art crime inves­ti­ga­tions by point­ing out the absur­di­ties of the fic­tion­al por­tray­als. Thieves like Bre­itwieser, dri­ven more by the thrill of the theft than any inter­est in the art­work itself, are more con­cerned with the act of steal­ing and the rush it pro­vides. He con­tin­ues to believe that his cun­ning and abil­i­ty to avoid cap­ture will keep him free, even as he com­mits fur­ther crimes in coun­tries like France and Ger­many. Despite their grow­ing crim­i­nal net­work, law enforce­ment strug­gles to con­nect the dots, giv­ing Bre­itwieser a false sense of secu­ri­ty. This sense of invin­ci­bil­i­ty push­es him fur­ther into a dan­ger­ous cycle of crime, where each suc­cess­ful heist only increas­es his dri­ve to con­tin­ue his ille­gal activ­i­ties. The chap­ter thus por­trays not only the excite­ment of the thefts but also the dark and com­pul­sive nature of Breitwieser’s obses­sion with art and his increas­ing detach­ment from the con­se­quences of his actions.