on their wedding night and eager to put it toward their hotel bill before it was lost or stolen. In the ensuing three days, Herr and Frau Traynor rarely left their mountain-view suite if at all, the
Bitte Nicht Stören
hanger fixed on their doorknob. Again, hardly unusual for honeymooners, according to Albrecht.
The rest of the staff had altogether forgotten the Traynors, although only a little over a week had passed since the couple checked out.
Stanley might have forgotten them too. But a 6:52 A.M . departure on December 29, 2009, would have allowed the Clarks and Alice Rutherford to bolt the United States shortly after blowing up much of the Cavalry and its Manhattan headquarters.
When a thorough search yielded no record of the Traynors’ departure from Austria, Stanley felt his pulse quicken. Sure, they might be legitimate Americans on an extended honeymoon in Innsbruck. Or they might have left the city, taken a cozy room in a country bed-and-breakfast, and were now currently playing gin rummy by the fire. There were oddities, though. First, records showed that Absolute Air’s proprietor and pilot, Richard Falzone, flew back from Austria to Newark, solo, the same day he’d deposited the Traynors. His copilot, sixty-seven-year-old Alvin Landsman of Jersey City, New Jersey, had remained in Innsbruck. Which might easily be explained. Or might not. Landsman’s pilot’s license had expired. Probably because a July 2008 traffic accident had left him an institutionalized quadriplegic.
The names Roger Norton Traynor and April Gail Hellinger Traynor proved equally bogus.
Stanley guessed that “Roger Traynor” had paid cash for the Hotel Europa honeymoon suite upon check-in, gone up with Alice Rutherford, and torn up the rooms so it would appear they’d enjoyed three days of romantic wildness. Then, or at least early the next morning, the couple had covertly departed the hotel. At some juncture they were joined by Drummond Clark, perhaps with a car rented under yet another alias. All three probably fled Austria after destroying their false documents, bringing Stanley’s trail to a dead end.
Unless Richard Falzone knew something.
Stanley could call the charter pilot and identify himself as a CIA officer. That could spook him, which might lead him to alert Alice and the Clarks. On the other hand, if Stanley phoned and said he was anything other than law enforcement, he impeded his chances of an immediate meeting. Posing as a Homeland Security agent, for example, he stood to gain access right away and, better, leverage. An offer to cut Falzone some slack in exchange for information ought to do the trick. However, it was illegal for a CIA officer to impersonate a law enforcement official. Even pretending to be a parking cop could mean the loss of his pension.
But Stanley was permitted to pose as a Treasury official. The title encompassed coin press workers in the mint, yet carried as much clout with civilians as did Homeland Security, maybe more, as everyone who watched prime-time television knew that Treasury also encompassed the Secret Service.
Stanley thought little of the three-and-a-half-hour drive through sleet and rain. The thrill of the hunt made him feel twenty years younger. He sang along with the oldies on the radio, something he hadn’t done since they were released on LP.
He stopped his rental car across the street from Falzone’s Teaneck, New Jersey, home, a recently constructed four-thousand-square-foot Tudor crammed into a quarter-acre suburban lot. Parked prominently in front was a candy-apple-red late-sixties Corvette that had been restored to look newer than it did the day it rolled out of the plant.
Falzone, whose greatest recorded transgression was a 1994 citation for failure to heed a stop sign, opened the castle-style front door seconds after Stanley pressed the bell. The charter pilot was a boyish fifty-three in spite of a lineman’s body, dark bags under owlish eyes, and a gray mustache
Bitte Nicht Stören
hanger fixed on their doorknob. Again, hardly unusual for honeymooners, according to Albrecht.
The rest of the staff had altogether forgotten the Traynors, although only a little over a week had passed since the couple checked out.
Stanley might have forgotten them too. But a 6:52 A.M . departure on December 29, 2009, would have allowed the Clarks and Alice Rutherford to bolt the United States shortly after blowing up much of the Cavalry and its Manhattan headquarters.
When a thorough search yielded no record of the Traynors’ departure from Austria, Stanley felt his pulse quicken. Sure, they might be legitimate Americans on an extended honeymoon in Innsbruck. Or they might have left the city, taken a cozy room in a country bed-and-breakfast, and were now currently playing gin rummy by the fire. There were oddities, though. First, records showed that Absolute Air’s proprietor and pilot, Richard Falzone, flew back from Austria to Newark, solo, the same day he’d deposited the Traynors. His copilot, sixty-seven-year-old Alvin Landsman of Jersey City, New Jersey, had remained in Innsbruck. Which might easily be explained. Or might not. Landsman’s pilot’s license had expired. Probably because a July 2008 traffic accident had left him an institutionalized quadriplegic.
The names Roger Norton Traynor and April Gail Hellinger Traynor proved equally bogus.
Stanley guessed that “Roger Traynor” had paid cash for the Hotel Europa honeymoon suite upon check-in, gone up with Alice Rutherford, and torn up the rooms so it would appear they’d enjoyed three days of romantic wildness. Then, or at least early the next morning, the couple had covertly departed the hotel. At some juncture they were joined by Drummond Clark, perhaps with a car rented under yet another alias. All three probably fled Austria after destroying their false documents, bringing Stanley’s trail to a dead end.
Unless Richard Falzone knew something.
Stanley could call the charter pilot and identify himself as a CIA officer. That could spook him, which might lead him to alert Alice and the Clarks. On the other hand, if Stanley phoned and said he was anything other than law enforcement, he impeded his chances of an immediate meeting. Posing as a Homeland Security agent, for example, he stood to gain access right away and, better, leverage. An offer to cut Falzone some slack in exchange for information ought to do the trick. However, it was illegal for a CIA officer to impersonate a law enforcement official. Even pretending to be a parking cop could mean the loss of his pension.
But Stanley was permitted to pose as a Treasury official. The title encompassed coin press workers in the mint, yet carried as much clout with civilians as did Homeland Security, maybe more, as everyone who watched prime-time television knew that Treasury also encompassed the Secret Service.
Stanley thought little of the three-and-a-half-hour drive through sleet and rain. The thrill of the hunt made him feel twenty years younger. He sang along with the oldies on the radio, something he hadn’t done since they were released on LP.
He stopped his rental car across the street from Falzone’s Teaneck, New Jersey, home, a recently constructed four-thousand-square-foot Tudor crammed into a quarter-acre suburban lot. Parked prominently in front was a candy-apple-red late-sixties Corvette that had been restored to look newer than it did the day it rolled out of the plant.
Falzone, whose greatest recorded transgression was a 1994 citation for failure to heed a stop sign, opened the castle-style front door seconds after Stanley pressed the bell. The charter pilot was a boyish fifty-three in spite of a lineman’s body, dark bags under owlish eyes, and a gray mustache
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