Marie-Antoinette's Watch: Adultery, Larceny & Perpetual Motion

Chapter 17

When Rubinstein's article on the recovery of the stolen watches appeared in Ha'aretz on November 11, 2007, the international press picked it up immediately. Hundreds of follow-up stories appeared, and watch bloggers and on-line watch forums were aflame with speculation. The tale was richly compelling: a heist, a watch worth an estimated $11 million, a mysterious widow, a taciturn lawyer. The same things that made the tale so hard for the police to follow gave it a frisson in the global media. It was an evocative detective story, suffused with intrigue. Where had the watches been all those years? Rubinstein closed his article on a note of conjecture, writing that "the identity of the thieves remains a mystery. However they are believed unlikely to have been inveterate watch collectors, but rather local operators, at least two in number."122

As calls from other reporters seeking comment came in to the Jerusalem Police, the embarrassed authorities realized they needed to dig further. The Central Investigation Unit, which normally investigated murders and major thefts, had conducted the original investigation in 1983. Now, the unit assigned the same two young detectives, Oded Shamah and Oded Janiv, to the case. Together with a team that included a muscular Russian investigator named Eddie Zharkov and two female detectives, the well-travelled Revital Zaraf and computer whiz Na'ama Mai, they began piecing together the puzzle. Their first stop was the L.A. Mayer Museum.

The group began by visiting Rachel Hasson and Eli Khan in the library. They went over the negotiations and the return of the watches. The museum staff knew almost nothing, and Hasson said very little, citing her promise to keep mum about the lawyer and her mysterious client. Janiv found Hasson's reticence frustrating. "She had none of the details of the widow," Janiv said later. "She also refused to talk to the press and would not talk to the police because that was also in the agreement."

But Yakubov, the watchmaker, produced a document found on one of the boxes, and it led the detectives to the warehouse where Efron-Gabai had stored the items. At the warehouse, in central Israel, the police found bills of lading from a woman in Los Angeles, Nili Shamrat.

Entering Shamrat's name into a police computer, Detective Mai came up with nothing. Then she performed a similar Google search. In seconds, a story by reporter Dalia Karpel appeared: "Eagle's Wings Cut," published on May 26, 2004. There in black and white, a snapshot showed a skinny man with a dark buzz cut lying in a hospital bed after being shot by the Israeli police in the 1970s. His name, according to the article, was Na'aman Diller. Arrayed around the image were four other pictures taken after this man committed a series of ingenious robberies between 1967 and the early 1980s, when he disappeared. Next to the photos was a paragraph of text:

Diller's 59-year-old wife, Nili Shamrat - who also flew in from the United States - tearfully eulogized him. Supported by a childhood friend, she spoke softly, "My darling, so gentle, noble and talented. You have returned to your roots."123

"Bingo," Mai shouted, running down the hall to her partners to show them the printout.

According to town lore, one summer morning in 1957 a North American T-6 Harvard, one of the smaller training planes in the Israeli Air Force, buzzed low and fast over the eucalyptus trees and under the low power lines of Kibbutz Ein HaHoresh, a small community about sixty kilometers north of Jerusalem. The plane, painted bright yellow and, by its markings, based at the IAF training school at Petach Tikva, "went on to skim the fish ponds at Kibbutz Maabarot, coming in so low that it knocked a farmer off his tractor." The pilot then pulled up, waggled his wings, and disappeared into the horizon and into infamy.