Chapter 15

In a Swiss regional police office, inspector Alexandre Von der Mühll studies grainy surveillance from the Alexis Forel Museum: a well-dressed couple methodically remove thirty screws to take a serving platter in broad daylight. Seeing a pattern in recent Swiss thefts, Von der Mühll notes their tidy precision and the thieves’ apparent confidence.

He catalogs shared traits—daytime operations, preference for late Renaissance works with a Flemish bent, and targeting lesser-known masterpieces that are easier to move. Convinced the culprits are art-savvy and emboldened by a lack of witnesses or traces, he believes such cockiness invites a slip. The hidden camera, whose placement he keeps secret, may provide the needed break.

Context frames the stakes: art theft is a lucrative global trade. An anecdote recalls Pablo Picasso’s brush with the law and his earlier commissioning of stolen Iberian figurines, and a 1976 mass theft of Picassos in Avignon that was solved through undercover work. These cases helped spur specialized art-crime units across Europe and beyond.

By summer 1996, as Von der Mühll builds his Swiss case, France’s OCBC deputy Bernard Darties circulates a memo linking fourteen related thefts. With Swiss and French investigations converging, Breitwieser and Anne-Catherine become active targets across borders, raising the pressure and narrowing their margin for error.