Part 48

Rainey walked into Morfett’s office and stood studying the room. He and the others had gone over the place thoroughly. But somehow he had the feeling that this was the room that held the secret of the jewels--if there were a secret.

Almost without thinking, he began to measure with his hands a small safe that sat in a bulkhead cabinet. Then he realized there was a space of about two inches between the top of the safe and the shelf of the cabinet, concealed by a strip of molding.

He pried loose the molding and discovered a package. When he opened it, he saw the sparkle of diamonds.

Rainey walked to the door and as Duncan looked up he tossed the package to him. “Here are your diamonds,” he said.

Within the next few minutes, the agents found other gems tucked into envelopes in the hiding place. And then they confronted Morfett. He shrugged. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s what you have been looking for.” He lit a cigarette as calmly as though the agents had called on him to have tea.

As John Reginald Morfett was led from the Assyria, Tom Duncan looked at his watch. It was 6:56 P.M. Four minutes later the ship began to ease away from the pier.

Morfett was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in the smuggling effort.

Within a period of three days in 1951--on January 21, 22 and 23--Customs agents and inspectors seized smuggled diamonds worth more than $1 million. A traveller from Antwerp named Elijah Whiteman was discovered carrying $300,000 worth of gems in the false bottom of a suitcase. Lesser seizures totalled $200,000. And then more than $500,000 worth of diamonds were discovered in a strange scene enacted at Idlewild airport.

Over the years, many Customs inspectors develop a sixth sense for spotting travellers who are trying to conceal valuables they do not want to declare. Perhaps it is the way a man or woman walks, or the nervous manner in which a cigarette is lit. It may be slight hesitancy in answering a particular question--or nothing more than a general impression which the inspector himself cannot explain.

Inspector Joseph Koehler did not know at first what it was that drew his attention to Etta Hoffman. Koehler was a dark-haired, studious-looking, middle-aged officer who had joined the Service as a young man. He had watched travellers by the tens of thousands pass his inspection post. There was no reason why he should have paid special attention to Etta Hoffman when she approached his station along with other passengers arriving from Brussels.

Etta was a tall, neatly dressed, round-faced young woman who waited placidly in line for her baggage to be examined. A perky hat sat on her dark hair and there were touches of fur on her dark cloth coat.

Her baggage declaration showed she was alone. Her baggage consisted of a handbag and two suitcases of inexpensive make. The woman answered all of Koehler’s questions calmly and without nervousness. She gave no sign of apprehension when her bags were opened for examination. Yet Koehler simply could not shake a feeling that there was something wrong. Something about this woman triggered a small alarm in his subconscious.

Suddenly, Koehler realized what was bothering him. Etta Hoffman was too tall. Many tall women came through his inspection lane day after day. But Etta Hoffman’s tallness was unnatural. Her tallness was emphasized by the extraordinarily thick-soled shoes she was wearing. It simply wasn’t reasonable for a woman trying to look attractive to deliberately make herself unattractive.

Koehler quietly signalled a woman inspector, Mathilda Clark. Miss Hoffman was taken to a room set aside for questioning passengers. The soles of her shoes were hollow. When the inspectress pried them open, a handful of diamonds spilled out on the floor. Other gems were found in a false bottom of a suitcase. The diamonds weighed 3,377 carats, and were one of the largest diamond hauls ever made by Customs.

Etta Hoffman broke down in tears and poured out her story. She had dreamed for years (so she said) of coming to the United States and obtaining citizenship. She had come to Belgium as a refugee from Czechoslovakia and had succeeded at last in getting her name on the immigration quota.

After months of waiting and suspense, Etta received the necessary papers from the American Consulate. Then a strange man called at her apartment and offered to pay her fare to the United States and give her $100 in cash if she would smuggle the diamonds past Customs. He provided her with the trick shoes, the suitcase with the false bottom, and a plane ticket. Before she boarded the plane, he had given her a sealed envelope which he said contained the $100 which he had promised her.

Etta Hoffman handed the envelope, still sealed, to a Customs inspector. He tore it open and found that it contained only $80. She had been shortchanged by $20, and, to pile injury on insult, she was sentenced to eighteen months in prison.

Abraham Winnik was another of the more successful diamond and gold smugglers. This thin-faced Belgian was an expert procurer of carriers for an Antwerp syndicate. He arranged for diamonds to be brought into the United States, and after they were sold he engineered the smuggling of gold to Europe. The gold was carried in the false bottoms of suitcases fashioned by an expert leather worker in Brooklyn--who received $30 for each suitcase he altered.

One of those enlisted into Winnik’s ring of carriers was Mrs. Adele Meppen, a stocky Brooklyn housewife who gave Customs agents this story:

“I first met Abraham Winnik sometime in 1949 when he was visiting in Brooklyn. My husband and I became friendly with him, and whenever he visited this country he would come to see us at our home.

“Late in 1949 Marion Strokowski, a friend of Winnik’s, visited us. He asked me how I would like to make a trip to Europe. I told him I didn’t have the money. ‘Don’t worry about expenses,’ he said. ‘If you will do me a favor, I’ll pay your expenses. All you have to do is take two suitcases to a friend of mine.’

“I agreed and Mr. Strokowski bought my ticket. He brought two suitcases to my home which I packed with clothes. I left New York from Idlewild airport by KLM Airlines, sometime in May, 1950. When the plane reached Amsterdam, Mr. Winnik met me at the airport and drove me in his automobile to his home in Brussels.

“I stayed there for about three weeks. I met Mr. Winnik’s wife, Anna, and Mr. Strokowski’s wife, Janka. I brought back two suitcases they gave me, and a couple of days after I got home Mr. Strokowski called for them and took them away. He gave me my plane fare both ways and expenses....”

Five months after her return from this trip, Mrs. Meppen received a call from Winnik asking her to meet him in Montreal. He wanted her to “bring something into the country” for him. He said he would pay her expenses--and a little extra.

Mrs. Meppen flew to Montreal and went to the Laurentian Hotel, where she found Winnik and Janka Strokowski. They told her they wanted her to carry diamonds into the United States--and there would be no risk whatever.

Mrs. Meppen protested she didn’t want to get involved and, besides, she was scared. They convinced her there was no danger. Janka Strokowski helped her insert two rubber-covered packages into her anus.

This smuggling effort perhaps would have gone as smoothly as the others engineered by Winnik except that somewhere along the line an informer had tipped Canadian Customs officers that Winnik had entered Canada carrying a small fortune in diamonds.

Winnik had been searched when he arrived at the Gander airport in Newfoundland and Customs officers there had found nothing. But the Canadians continued to keep Winnik under surveillance and they notified the U.S. Customs of the information they had received. The American agents joined in the surveillance in Montreal.