Part 60

Brown said that he would explain the whole thing to him when they met. He added, “I have the suitcase here now and I’m supposed to give it to you.”

They agreed to meet in a restaurant in Chinatown. Li Sheung was waiting for Brown when he arrived at the restaurant. Customs agents had placed themselves at strategic points outside the restaurant, and one was seated at a table in the rear of the room when the two men sat down together.

Li Sheung kept referring to the fact that Brown would not give him the suitcase in Los Angeles. He said he could not understand why the delivery had not been made.

Brown said, “That time you came to my house, I thought there was something hidden in the suitcase but I didn’t know what it was. Now I know, and I want some money for my trouble.”

Li Sheung agreed to go with Brown to the bus station to pick up the heroin and to pay him $100. They left the restaurant and got into a cab.

Customs agents, keeping contact with each other by radio, trailed the cab from the restaurant to the bus station, where other agents waited, lounging about the place as though they were travellers. They were watching as Brown went to a baggage locker, took out the bag, and handed it to Li Sheung. The Chinese then counted out $100 and handed it to the seaman. At this point Samaduroff and the other agents moved in and arrested Li Sheung. He was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.

And Mr. Chu--the amiable, friendly little man in Hong Kong? The British were lenient with him because he was, after all, only the dupe, and he had cooperated in rounding up the smuggling gang. By now, he may have returned to his old job of being helpful to touring Americans.

The Customs files are fat with such cases, in which smuggling rings and individual smugglers have used innocent victims to help them bring jewels, heroin, watch parts, and other small but valuable items into the United States.

One of the innocents in such a plot was dark-eyed, attractive Countess Kyra Kapnist, who arrived in the United States aboard the SS Champlain on September 2, 1937, to join the exclusive fashion house of Marcel Rochas, Inc., of New York City as a model and saleswoman.

Before she left Paris, an official of the firm had informed her that two trunks and a hat box would be added to her baggage when it was delivered to the liner. It was nothing she was to worry about. She would be met on the pier in New York by Mr. Guy Fonte-Joyeuse, vice president of the firm and manager of its New York branch. He would take care of her customs declaration and the baggage inspection. All the countess had to do was to be her charming self and not worry her pretty head about such small details.

And so the countess arrived in New York. On the pier, she was met by Fonte-Joyeuse, a distinguished-looking man accompanied by a fashionably dressed woman. Everything seemed to go as she had been told it would in Paris. Fonte-Joyeuse was extremely solicitous about his new employee. “Give me your customs declaration,” he said, “and I’ll take care of everything.”

He hurried away to find an inspector to examine her baggage. Within a matter of minutes an inspector appeared and peeked into one piece of the countess’ luggage. Then he stamped all the baggage for clearance and the countess was whisked from the pier with her friends. Fonte-Joyeuse seemed unduly elated over her arrival.

Fonte-Joyeuse would not have been so happy had he known that a member of his own firm was an informer for the U.S. Customs Service--and that a letter was even then on its way to the Service advising them that Countess Kapnist’s luggage included two trunks and a hat box containing seventy original gowns and hats valued at approximately $40,000.

Agents opened an investigation and found that Countess Kapnist’s declaration made no mention of dutiable imports. They questioned the inspector who had handled the examination and found that--for a price--he had agreed to feign an examination of trunks and luggage brought into the country by the models and employees designated by Fonte-Joyeuse.

When agents confronted the countess, she willingly told them the whole story. She told them of the instructions given her in Paris, of being met by Fonte-Joyeuse on the pier in New York, and of her surprise when an inspector took the trouble to look at only one small suitcase among all the luggage which she carried with her.

Agents found in the house of Marcel Rochas 104 gowns of French origin, valued at about $60,000, which had been smuggled into the United States by models and others employed by the firm.

Fonte-Joyeuse was indicted on two charges of smuggling and conspiracy. He was sentenced to one year and a day in prison and fined $1,000. He served six months of his sentence and then was released on parole and deported to France. The Parisian fashions seized from the house of Marcel Rochas were sold at auction. They brought about $9,000 into the U.S. Treasury--of which $2,250 was paid to the Paris informer.

THE STORMY WORLD OF ART

The Korean War was still raging in April, 1951, when Sgt. Elverne Giltner left the American Army’s Tenth Corps Headquarters for a stroll about the war-battered streets of Seoul. Four times in less than one year fighting had washed through the city as the United Nations forces battled the North Korean and Chinese Communist troops across the mountains and through the valleys of this unhappy land. Sergeant Giltner was only one of thousands of American soldiers in Seoul at this time.

Like most Americans overseas, the sergeant was a collector of souvenirs. Whenever he had the chance to get away from headquarters, he enjoyed poking about in the little shops in Seoul, searching for interesting knickknacks to send back to his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Hugh V. Giltner, in Pueblo, Colorado.

Not far from the parliament building--a gaunt structure bearing the scars of war--Sergeant Giltner halted to examine the wares of a street peddler. “I have nice rug you will like,” the peddler said. He pulled back the edge of a bundle, revealing part of a leopard skin. “This rug was made from leopard skins. It is very valuable,” the peddler said.

“How big is the rug?” the sergeant asked.

The peddler replied, “Very big.” He indicated by stepping off several paces that the rug was probably 18 feet long by 8 feet wide. “In your country,” the peddler said, “this rug would be worth several hundred dollars.”

The peddler unrolled the bundle to give the sergeant a better look at this bargain he was offering. Giltner saw that it was, indeed, a large rug of leopard skins. It appeared to him as though it were not in the best of condition, but he liked the idea of surprising his folks in Pueblo with a genuine leopard-skin rug. “How much do you want?”

The peddler said he would sell the rug for 150,000 won, the equivalent at that time of about $25 in U.S. money. Then the peddler tugged at Giltner’s sleeve and whispered, “This rug is from the old queen’s palace. She was the last queen of Korea. It is worth $2,000 in United States.”

Sergeant Giltner was impressed. He agreed to pay 150,000 won. He picked up his new souvenir and lugged it back to the barracks, where he tossed it into a corner. He would send it home later by mail, as he had such gifts as a black lacquer chest, a lamp fashioned from a beer can, and other souvenirs of his stay in Korea.

But Giltner’s plans for shipping the rug were postponed. A lieutenant took a fancy to the rug and, pulling rank, persuaded the reluctant sergeant to part with his souvenir for the purchase price. That same evening, the lieutenant lost the rug in a poker game to Lieutenant No. 2, who sold it to Lieutenant No. 3 for $50. Lieutenant No. 3 was going to send the rug to his parents, but then he decided it was too much trouble. He sold it to Sergeant Giltner for $25.

The sergeant stuffed the rug into a carton and mailed it home. He wrote a note to his mother: “... I figure you won’t have much use for this rug even after it gets there. But you can always sell it.... The rug like I said before is made of leopard skin--the real thing, and is mounted on red felt or something.... Just where you would put it beats me....”