In Chap­ter 18 of “The Art Thief,” the nar­ra­tive fol­lows Bre­itwieser and Anne-Cather­ine as they nav­i­gate the after­math of their art thefts while remain­ing acute­ly aware of police atten­tion. Local news­pa­pers hint at their crim­i­nal activ­i­ties and iden­ti­fy them as sus­pects, esca­lat­ing the cou­ple’s anx­i­ety despite the author­i­ties’ lack of con­crete evi­dence to cap­ture them. Bre­itwieser, who is under thir­ty, finds amuse­ment in reports incor­rect­ly describ­ing him as an old­er man and con­tin­ues his art theft spree, inten­tion­al­ly leav­ing behind frames as a “call­ing card.” This brazen act bor­ders on show­boat­ing, rais­ing the stakes for their illic­it endeav­ors.

As the cou­ple evades cap­ture, they con­sid­er the log­i­cal pat­terns law enforce­ment typ­i­cal­ly fol­lows post-theft: sell­ing stolen works through dis­hon­est deal­ers, extort­ing cash from muse­ums or own­ers, or using stolen art like cur­ren­cy in crim­i­nal deal­ings. The first option involves sell­ing at sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced prices, while the sec­ond method, known as art-nap­ping, might require a bro­ker to secure a ransom—a con­cept root­ed in art crime his­to­ry. The final approach sees thieves exchang­ing stolen pieces as valu­able assets with­in under­ground mar­kets. Despite the cun­ning tac­tics of crim­i­nals, law enforce­men­t’s main objec­tive is to recov­er lost art rather than pri­or­i­tize arrests.

High­light­ing a high-pro­file case, the chap­ter recounts the theft of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” dur­ing the 1994 Win­ter Olympics, which under­scores the chal­lenges faced by art crime spe­cial­ists and the under­es­ti­ma­tion of secu­ri­ty mea­sures. Charley Hill, a renowned art detec­tive, recounts his under­cov­er oper­a­tions to recov­er the art­work, show­cas­ing both the dan­ger­ous and the­atri­cal nature of under­cov­er work.

Con­trary to the glam­orous depic­tion of art thieves in fic­tion, real-life crim­i­nals often lack a true appre­ci­a­tion for art. Char­ac­ters like Alexan­dre Von der Müh­ll humor­ous­ly con­trast the absur­di­ty of fic­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions with the prag­mat­ic real­i­ty that most art thieves are unin­formed about the val­ue of what they steal. Bre­itwieser cap­i­tal­izes on this per­cep­tion by con­tin­u­ing his errat­ic thefts across mul­ti­ple coun­tries, includ­ing France and Ger­many, believ­ing that law enforcement’s efforts will ulti­mate­ly fail in cap­tur­ing them .