WHO ARE OUVOLPO?
As Munich is rocked by the latest in a series of daring heists, The Troubadour looks back at the origins of the world’s most famous art thieves.
It all started with a man who broke his nose on his own reflection.
On the morning of June 4, 1968, authorities were called to Le Musée des Antiquités Internationales in Paris, France. Inside, they found a maze consisting of more than sixty mirrors had appeared in the museum’s west gallery overnight. At the center of this maze they found night security guard Georges Durand, unconscious, his bloody nose stanched by a silk handkerchief. What they did not find was the museum’s prized sculpture of the Roman god Janus; the piece had recently been the subject of a court case, as the Italian government alleges it was stolen from a private collection in Milan over a century ago. Now it was missing.
Though it was first assumed that a violent robbery had taken place, Durand eventually admitted that he had walked face-first into one of the mirrors and knocked himself out. He had not seen the makers of the maze, and both he and the police were baffled as to how the thieves had assembled it in the short time between Durand’s patrols of the area.
A week later, the curator of La Sphère, a design museum, unlocked the front door to find her gallery had been transformed into what she called “an abattoir for bicycles.” Crime-scene photographs show the bikes’ frames hanging from the ceiling like skeletons, their wheels and chains torn off, tires slit open, and inner tubes removed. The curator was reportedly quite shaken by the display, and in its aftermath founded the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Bicycles, which today boasts over fourteen members. A pen-and-ink sketch by the famous architect Adélard Archambault had been taken from the museum. It later emerged that Archambault had based this sketch—along with several other of his most famous designs—on work done by his apprentice, passing it off as his own.
Barely a week later, an octopus made of papier-mâché spread its tentacles through several rooms of Le Musée des Arts Asiatiques. When authorities went to dismantle it, they found the octopus’s bulbous head was filled with over a thousand fountain pen ink cartridges. A Japanese woodblock print was missing from the collection.
Several papers compared this group of daring art thieves to the legendary Arsène Lupin, Maurice Leblanc’s fictional gentleman thief, as they tripped no alarms, left no damage, and harmed no one (Georges Durand’s broken nose being generally blamed on Georges Durand). But when one paper dared to coin the term “Lupinettes,” the group publicly announced their name with a banner hung over the Louvre: “We declare ourselves l’Ouvroir de vol potentiel ” (“the workshop of potential theft”). That was a bit of a mouthful, so the papers went with the headline: NOUS SOMMES OUVOLPO.
The public admired the thieves’ daring, their theatricality, their panache—and, after all, weren’t they only stealing work that had been stolen already? Three months after it was taken, the original Italian owners of the Janus reported that their property had been returned to them in a gift box with a bow tied round it. The sketch was posted back to the famous—and now-disgraced—architect, along with a long essay on plagiarism. The woodblock print was sent back to the small temple in Kyoto from which a European tourist had pilfered it some two hundred years before.
Today, Ouvolpo are arguably the most prolific and successful gang of art thieves in the world. No member of the collective has ever been caught, let alone convicted. Whether their actions are right or wrong is a subject of moral debate, but they are certainly illegal; Interpol have been actively investigating the group for the past several decades, and
The rest of the article was obscured by a mysterious, probably chemical stain, but Shenanigan had gotten the gist of it. She handed it back to Phenomena.
“Well, at least we were robbed by celebrities,” she said with a yawn.
“The article is a few years old,” said Phenomena. “I had to dig it out of my files on criminal behavior.” She slid the clipping between the pages of her notebook. “But I doubt they’ve changed their modus operandi, though.”
“Modus…?”
“Operandi. Mode of operating. It’s the specific habits and methods criminals use.”
“Right.”
“As you read, Ouvolpo are known for stealing art that’s already been stolen,” said Phenomena, “so why did they take A Clown Laments His Lot in Life?”
“Maybe the Martinets hired them.”
“They can’t be hired. They must genuinely believe we stole the painting, or— Shenanigan, are you listening?”
“No,” Shenanigan said honestly. Her battered suitcase—an heirloom of Cook’s—leaned against her shin as they lingered on the driveway in front of the House, the day slowly waking up around them. The distant hills were already hazy with evaporating dew. Shenanigan hadn’t slept much, but she could feel her tiredness evaporating too, one drop at a time. She was going. She was really going.
“Passports?” called Cook.
“Check.”
“Umbrellas?”
“Check.”
“Matches?”
“Check.”
“Make sure you have some paper and a pencil in a waterproof pouch,” advised Aunt Schadenfreude. “You never know when you’ll need to write a final note to your loved ones. You’ve both updated your Last Will and Testaments, yes?”
“Yes, Auntie,” chorused the girls, rolling their eyes. The previous day had been a daze of packing, unpacking, repacking, and arguing over whether it was appropriate to stow a sword in one’s suitcase. They were ready.
A red postal van slowed to a stop and disgorged an excited border terrier from the window. The dog leapt into Shenanigan’s arms, and she spun him round, making nonsense noises. John the Cat, who had come out to see the travelers off, watched this display with disdain, cleaning himself vigorously, as if the mere sight of a dog enfilthed him.
“All right, Swifts?”
A bearded face appeared in the window of the van. Suleiman was a cheerful, wiry man in his late forties, dedicated to the postie’s uniform of short-sleeved shirt and shorts, whatever the weather. His elbow was several shades darker than the rest of him, owing to his habit of resting it in the open window while driving.
Shenanigan giggled as the dog shoved his wet nose against her chin.
“Stamp!” admonished Suleiman. “Stop licking her. She’s not a bone.”
“Yet,” said Shenanigan. “Cook, can you add an addendum to my Will so I leave my skeleton to Stamp?”
“I’ll ask your aunt.”
“Now all we need is your uncle,” said Fauna, stifling a yawn.
“Here!”
With a grunt, Maelstrom appeared in the doorway, a huge canvas rucksack slung over his shoulder. He had also donned a long, sleeveless coat in rich purple leather that flowed out behind him as he walked. Shenanigan, who had never cared about clothes in her life, felt a surge of envy. Maelstrom cut a broad, heroic figure, dramatic and somehow more real than she had ever seen him. He no longer simply walked. He swept.
“Oh, good Lord,” muttered Cook, shaking her head with fond exasperation.
“I thought you’d got rid of that old thing?” said Aunt Schadenfreude.
“My coat of arms? Never!” Maelstrom grinned. “I wore this when I out-sailed the authorities in Nassau. And when I was almost shipwrecked off Cape Horn. And when I bought that winning lottery ticket in California. This coat is lucky!”
“It’s very flash,” said Suleiman. “Makes you look like a bit like a pirate.”
Maelstrom winked, and Suleiman, who had been happily married for twenty years, looked flustered.
As Maelstrom and Phenomena piled into the car, Shenanigan took a last long look at the House. The sun had risen, barely, and peered sleepily into the windows of the top floor. It didn’t yet touch the trapdoor on the roof above Shenanigan’s room, where the chance meeting of a wall and a chimney formed a small courtyard. There, Shenanigan had hidden her map of the House, in a biscuit tin, under a loose brick.
It felt odd, not having it on her person. Her hand kept moving to her pocket of its own accord, and her stomach swooped every time when she found it empty. She stared at her beloved haphazard House, with its clumsy architecture and hundred hidden hideaways—it looked oddly forlorn now that she was leaving it. Shenanigan suddenly worried that it wouldn’t be there when she returned.
“I’ll be back soon,” she said. “Try not to cause any problems for Cook and Fauna and Aunt Schadenfreude while I’m gone. Now is not the time for that weird stain in the dining room to spread, okay?”
She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she felt the House agree.
“Shenanigan?” called Phenomena impatiently.
“Coming!”
“Who were you even talking— Ow! Don’t clamber over me. That’s my leg!”
They were off.
The map Shenanigan used to navigate the House ended at its borders, so once they passed beyond the rusting gates of the Swift estate she was in uncharted territory. The whole world felt brighter, sharper, cleaner, and whether it was the July sun outlining everything in light or simply the glow of a new experience Shenanigan neither knew nor cared.
The van sped through country lanes, taking corners with a confidence that made Shenanigan whoop and Phenomena close her eyes. Hedges whipped by in a green blur. Shenanigan regretted sitting in the middle; she would have loved to stick her head out of the window and feel the wind against her face, even happily swallowing a few insects in the process. The van smelled of envelopes, air freshener, and Stamp. The dog’s back paws were steady on Shenanigan’s knees, his front paws propped on the dash, and his little body moved comfortably with the curves in the road.
“Looking forward to your holiday, then?” asked Suleiman.
“It’s not really a holiday—more of an investigation.” Shenanigan paused. “I think there might be mild peril.”
“All the same, it’s good to get out of the house,” said Suleiman agreeably, swerving to avoid a pheasant with a death wish. “Travel’s good for you. You learn all sorts of new things about yourself.”
“That’s true,” said Phenomena faintly. “I’m learning I get carsick.”
They reached the coast by mid-morning. Suleiman deposited them by a marina and sluiced his van down with a bucket of seawater—Phenomena had thrown up out of the window about an hour into the drive. He gave them each a bag of boiled sweets that had melted in the heat and stuck together again, which they accepted gratefully. Then he screeched off.
Shenanigan stared about her hungrily. They were in a small, hunched town, with barely more than a spit of land and a dribble of rocks between it and the sea. Shenanigan had never seen the sea, but looking at the rolling gray-blue, she felt as though she had known it all her life. It was a great, playful creature: panting, licking, wet-faced, and curious, as happy roaring into cliffs as it was fetching up debris on the rocky shore. It might, in a good mood, allow her to ride on it—so long as she understood that at any moment its mood could shift, and it might rise and shake the boats from its back like a dog shaking off fleas.
“We must be getting a ferry,” said Phenomena, recovering her deductive skills as Maelstrom headed into a small gray-white building. “Thank goodness. I don’t know how well I could stomach flying.”
After a few minutes, Maelstrom reappeared, clapping the back of a short man in a frayed jacket.
“Right, my girls,” he said cheerfully. “This gentleman has looked after something precious for me for many years. Isn’t that right, Dave?”
Dave grunted and shifted nervously from one foot to the other. He led them towards a little corner of the marina, to an aged, water-stained tarpaulin that had once been red but was now a rather embarrassed shade of pink.
“I had to sell my old boat when I last came over from Trinidad,” said Maelstrom, “but I bought this in Calais to make the crossing to England. Gave it to Dave here, on the condition I could take it back whenever I needed it. Isn’t that right, Dave?”
Dave grunted again, his eyes darting side to side as if he was looking for an escape.
“Phenomena, Shenanigan, this…is the Sand Flea!”
With a flourish, Maelstrom pulled back the tarpaulin.
Underneath was an old fishing sloop, and Shenanigan’s first thought was that it couldn’t possibly be seaworthy. Any metal that could rust had rusted; any paint that could peel had peeled. There were mysterious black stains streaking below the bolts and rivets, and the thing creaked like a rheumatic cat. Shenanigan could just make out TH SA D FLE in aged letters on the bow.
“Hmm,” said Maelstrom, rubbing his beard. “Looks a bit worse for wear.”
Something broke off the boat with an ominous clunk, and into the sea with an even more ominous splash.
Maelstrom hoisted his bag higher up his shoulder. “Come on, girls! Let’s see what she’s like inside.”
He stepped onto the deck. Phenomena and Shenanigan shared a wary look and followed.
“Lick of paint and she’ll be fine!” declared Maelstrom, slapping the starboard side. The wood splintered. “Well, perhaps the damp got to that a bit. Let’s try down the— ARGH!”
He had tried to step down into the hold, and his foot had gone through the top stair. He lingered for a second, frowning at his foot as if he couldn’t figure out what had happened, then jumped down into the cabin. “Stay there, girls,” he said, still jovial. “There are shady goods in here!”
“There are?” cried Shenanigan, delighted. She squinted into the gloom, looking for boxes of cigars, or the person-sized barrels of rum she’d seen in books.
“What do you think of these, hmm?”
The hold was lined with huge, square-bottomed glass bottles, some the size of a bread loaf, some the size of a dog, and the biggest the size of the rum barrels Shenanigan had hoped for. They were all sealed with cork and wax, but weren’t filled with rum, unless rum was thick and dark, and came in a rainbow of colors.
Uncle Maelstrom took out his penknife, cut through the wax of the nearest bottle, and levered out the cork with a small pop. Then he opened the fountain pen attachment, dipped the nib into the bottle, and tapped it to his tongue. He rolled it round in his mouth for a few moments, assessing.
“Hmm. Koizumi’s Atlantean Navy! Still good!”
He scrawled Maelstrom Was Here on the peeling wall, and grinned—his teeth were stained blue.
“Ink?” asked Shenanigan, astonished.
“Ink!” said Maelstrom proudly. “The finest the world has to offer! India ink, Chinese ink sticks, squid ink, red ink made from crushed beetles—I’ve even got invisible ink. Somewhere.”
“You were an ink smuggler?” This was the best day of Shenanigan’s life.
“Trader,” he corrected. “Maelstrom Swift, freelance courier of inks and dyes. The authorities used to call me Bluetongue, but I was just making an honest living. It’s not my fault some people saw it as smuggling. There are no borders on the sea, girls.”
“I think, in fact, there are, Uncle,” said Phenomena. “That might be what got you into trouble.”
But Maelstrom wasn’t listening. He had found a chest at the back of the hold.
“My sample case!” he cried, delighted. When he opened the lid, several tiers of shelves extended outwards, each filled with small glass bottles. It was like a portable shopkeeper’s counter, or Phenomena’s chemistry set. “This was what I used to show buyers the merchandise,” he said proudly. “I can’t believe I left it here!”
“Uncle,” tried Phenomena as the floor gave another unsettling creak. “I don’t think this boat is very safe.”
“Ah, she’ll be fine. She’s just waking her old bones.”
But Shenanigan could feel something under her feet, a sort of shifting, as if the sea was getting ready for a good scratch.
“Uncle,” said Phenomena, an edge to her voice. “We can’t cross the Channel in this.”
Maelstrom sighed. He closed his sample case, looking mournfully at the peeling timbers of his boat.
“I know,” he said quietly.
Then, as if all that had been keeping the vessel together was the strength of Maelstrom’s faith, the first gout of water bubbled through the floor of the hold. Shenanigan saw her uncle hesitate. Contrary to popular belief, it can actually take quite some time for a boat to sink, and for a moment Maelstrom stood among his bottles as if he was trying to decide on a crew member to save.
Then the floor began to crack, and water gushed in.
“Uncle M! Come on!”
Maelstrom grabbed his sample case and, with a grunt that seemed to come from the very heart of him, hoisted it into his arms. He staggered up the cracking steps of the hold after Shenanigan and half ran, half fell onto the pier, where they sprawled on the comparatively sturdy boards and watched the Sand Flea dissolve in the water like a discarded bread roll.
“Do you know,” Maelstrom said faintly as they watched a few scraps of timber float past, “I think the engine block was missing. And the rudder. And the toilet. Hey, Dave, what happened to the—”
The man in the jacket had conveniently vanished. The sign in his booth had been flipped from Open to Closed.
“I suppose we shall have to find alternative transportation,” said Phenomena.
There was a gurgling sound, and they all pointedly did not say that the water looked a little bluer than before.
In the end, they got the ferry. Uncle Maelstrom tried to be good-humored about it, but refused to leave the deck and stood as close to the prow as they would let him. Every now and then he’d mutter something like “Borders! Ha!” or “Can’t even feel the sea under my feet!” In fact, the ferry did rock, and it was a new sensation Shenanigan wanted to remember. She found she moved naturally with the pitch and roll, faint as it was, and Maelstrom laughed and ruffled her hair, and told her she had a spirit level in her bones, just like him.
“Where’s Phenomena?” he asked after they had stood for a while, squinting at the horizon together.
“At the back of the boat.”
“Shenanigan, remember to use proper nautical terms,” Maelstrom said sternly.
“Sorry. Anyway, she’s throwing up again. She said she didn’t want an audience.”
“Understandable.” Maelstrom fiddled with something by his ear, then cursed. Shenanigan caught a glint of gold.
“What are you doing?”
Maelstrom held out his hand. In it was a thick gold hoop. Shenanigan could have worn it as a ring, but it looked too small for her uncle’s fingers.
“Trying to put my earring back in,” he said. “But it’s been so long I think the piercing has closed up.”
“Let me have a go?”
Maelstrom passed her the earring, and she inspected his earlobe.
“The piercing’s still there,” she said. “I can push the earring through, if you want? It might pinch.”
“Go on.” Maelstrom pretended to brace himself, screwing his eyes shut. Shenanigan pushed once, hard, and then snapped the hoop closed. Her uncle barely flinched.
“There,” she said.
Maelstrom checked his reflection in a cabin window.
“Like I never took it out,” he murmured. He flicked the hoop; it gleamed.
“You should pierce my ears,” said Shenanigan. “I bet it doesn’t even hurt as much as tattoos, and Cook says they hardly hurt at all.”
“Cook is a liar.” Maelstrom chuckled. His eyes were bright. “There’s something I wanted to show you, Skipper.”
He gestured to the buttons on his coat. They were all gold, or at least a metal that was gold in color. Embossed on each one was some sort of bird, squat and almost cartoonish.
“This is a martlet, from heraldic tradition,” Maelstrom said. “You know heraldry?”
Shenanigan, who at one time had been interested in becoming a knight until she’d heard about the whole “code of chivalry” nonsense, did.
“It’s what you put on your family crest,” she said. “Like a logo, kind of. There’s loads of animals and patterns, and they all mean something.”
“Exactly. Like a leopard is the symbol of a valiant warrior, while an ostrich means knowledge and understanding. The martlet, though, is particularly interesting. You see their legs?”
Shenanigan looked. They didn’t really look like legs. They looked like flared fluffy trousers with no feet at the end.
“A martlet is a heraldic symbol based on a swift,” said Maelstrom. “People used to believe swifts didn’t have feet. Thought they never landed, simply lived their entire lives on the wing as they traveled back and forth across the globe. In heraldry, the martlet is supposed to symbolize someone who ‘lives on the wings of virtue,’ whatever that means, but I think a better meaning is someone who is always on the move, never staying in one place too long.”
Shenanigan inspected the strange bird.
“Martlet. Like Martinet?”
“Yes. From the Latin. English and French have Latin in common, and many other things besides. We use the Old English swift rather than the Latin martinet, but both words refer to the same bird. The thing about swifts is that because they travel so widely, there are names for them all over the world…”
Maelstrom continued to talk, but Shenanigan was thinking about the little bird on his coat buttons, the one that was always moving, and about her uncle’s own restlessness. How long had he been at Swift House?
“Uncle,” she said very seriously, “do swifts have feet?”
Maelstrom laughed. “Aye, Skipper, they do. Little ones, but they’re there. It’s true that they hardly ever land, though. Usually only for one reason.”
“What’s that?”
“To raise a family.”
He rubbed the gold hoop with a thumb. It was strange, Shenanigan thought. The earring made him look roguish, and much more piratical. She didn’t really know this Maelstrom, the one who had smuggled ink and worn a coat of arms. He was a stranger to her.
Perhaps Maelstrom was having a similar thought, because an expression crossed his face, like wind over water, causing ripples of disquiet.
“Uncle, are you all right?”
“Hmm? Oh, aye! Chipper as can be, Skipper. But, like Phenomena, I think I’d rather not have an audience right now.”
It took less than two hours to cross the Channel. Shenanigan stayed on deck the entire time, squinting through the haze until France materialized on the horizon.
Once the ferry docked, it was like the world rushed in, and Shenanigan was swept away. They were in Calais, and then they were in a taxi, and then they were on a train—another new experience, but less exciting than the car or the boat; Phenomena even had a nap. Shenanigan didn’t. Shenanigan sat with her nose to the window, facing the onrushing promise of soon until the world slowed down around them and welcomed the train to the steady, strolling now, and they were in Paris.