The brazenness of the criminals was matched only by their competence. That they were skilled was beyond question. But what the police admired most about their opponents was their iron discipline. There were no leaks, no signs of internal intrigue, and not a single demand for ransom—at least not a real one. The thieves stole often but selectively, never taking more than a single painting at a time. These were not amateurs looking for quick scores or organized crime figures looking for a source of underworld cash. These were art thieves in the purest sense. One weary detective predicted that in all likelihood the paintings taken that long, hot summer would be missing for years, if not decades. In fact, he added morosely, chances were extremely good they would find their way into the Museum of the Missing and never be seen by the public again.

Even the police marveled at the variety of the thieves’ game. It was a bit like watching a great tennis player who could win on clay one week and grass the next. In June, the thieves recruited a disgruntled security guard at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and carried out an overnight theft of Caravaggio’s David with the Head of Goliath. In July, they opted for a daring commando-style raid in Barcelona and relieved the Museu Picasso of Portrait of Señora Canals. Just one week later, the lovely Maisons à Fenouillet vanished so quietly from the walls of the Matisse Museum in Nice that bewildered French police wondered whether it had grown a pair of legs and walked out on its own. And then, on the last day of August, there was the textbook smash-and-grab job at the Courtauld Gallery in London that netted Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear by Vincent van Gogh. Total time of the operation was a stunning ninety-seven seconds—even more impressive given the fact that one of the thieves had paused on the way out a second-floor window to make an obscene gesture toward Modigliani’s luscious Female Nude. By that evening, the surveillance video was required viewing on the Internet. It was, said the Courtauld’s distraught director, a fitting end to a perfectly dreadful summer.