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Just about everything went wrong. The contact man who was to meet him on a beach 50 miles south of Bombay was not there, and the plane's nose wheel collapsed on landing, bending the propellers in the sand. Undismayed, Walcott coolly ordered the local police to guard the plane while he and the co-pilot caught a bus to Bombay, taking along two suitcases full of watches. In Bombay, Walcott apparently quietly disposed of the watches and picked up the second pilot. Then all three men bluffed their way into the line of debarking passengers at Bombay's International Airport. In that way, they were able to get their passports stamped as new arrivals. As legal travelers, nothing could stop them from making a fast exit, which is just what they did on the next plane to Karachi.
It was none too soon. At the site of the nosed-in plane, police found a hastily buried box. What that box contained the police refused to say, but whatever it was prompted India's Central Bureau of Investigation to assign a team of topflight investigators to try and track down Walcott. His trail led first to Europe again, then doubled back to Pakistan, where he showed up with a converted B-26 bomber shortly before last autumn's border war. The Pakistanis suspected that he was air-dropping watches and gold into India, but before they could interrogate him, Walcott skipped off, leaving the plane behind.
Taped-On Diamonds. It was a routine police check that finally caught Walcott. Using a British passport in the name of Barry Phillips Charles Comyn, Walcott and an accomplice apparently went to India last month by sea and rail from Ceylon and registered at a fashionable Bombay hotel. A detective questioning the hotel staff about foreign guests learned that the two men often made person-to-person calls to Colombo. The name they asked for, remembered the detective, belonged to Walcott's contact man there.
After calling up reinforcements, police rapped on "Comyn's" door. When it opened, there was Walcott. A search revealed diamonds taped to the sole of his foot with a Band-Aid and other stones in a sock, which all together were valued at $32,500. For six hours of nonstop grilling, Walcott refused to admit his true identity. Then, according to the police, he broke down and began to tell all. Acting on his information, police have already pulled in several suspects and some smuggling gear, including a jacket with specially constructed pockets for carrying gold bars. Many Bombay gold traders were anxious, for rumor had it that Walcott had been mixed up with a gang that had smuggled no less than $150 million in gold and diamonds into India during the past four years.