On a busy Sunday in February 1997, Stéphane Breitwieser and his girlfriend, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, enter Antwerp’s Rubens House as ordinary visitors. Breitwieser has scouted an ivory Adam and Eve by Georg Petel and noted a weakness: the plexiglass cover is secured by two reachable screws. He also times the lunch-hour guard rotation, when seated watchfulness shifts to intermittent patrols.

Anne-Catherine stations herself at the doorway as lookout while Breitwieser adopts practiced art-gazing poses. When the gallery clears, he vaults the cordon and uses a Swiss Army knife screwdriver to work on the screws, stopping each time Anne-Catherine coughs to warn of approaching people. The first screw takes ten tense minutes; the second follows amid tourist interruptions and repeated guard passes. Aware a fourth patrol is imminent—and drawing on his experience as a former guard—he decides to act immediately.

Seeing a group absorbed in audio guides, Breitwieser lifts the plexiglass cover aside, slides the ten-inch ivory into the waistband at the small of his back under his roomy overcoat, and leaves the cover off to save time. He exits through a scouted employee door into the courtyard, reenters near the entrance, and walks out past the front desk without haste to avoid suspicion.

Outside, he meets Anne-Catherine and they reach their parked Opel Tigra. After placing the ivory in the trunk, they drive slowly out of the city to avoid drawing attention, then accelerate on the highway, euphoric at their clean escape.