Free Twice a Spy by Keith Thomson

and goatee that matched his thick hair. He had on designer chinos and a crisp oxford shirt.
    “Hey,” he said, as if happy to see Stanley. “How are you?”
    “Fine. Thank you.”
    Stanley followed Falzone through the vaulted foyer to a family room that had three walls of built-in faux-teak shelves all loaded with athletic trophies and diplomas along with framed photos of the pilot, his wife, and five children, all of whom had the misfortune of inheriting his eyes.
    “Sorry my wife isn’t here,” he said. “She does a lot of volunteer stuff at our church.” Which didn’t necessarily mean she was at the church now. “Can I get you a Coke or something, single-malt Scotch maybe?”
    “I’m good, thanks,” Stanley said.
    The pilot issued an outsized smile. Calmly—maybe too calmly, given the circumstances—he lowered himself into a leather lounge chair and gestured Stanley into a seat on the matching cream-colored sofa. “So how can I be of assistance?”
    “Do you recognize this man?” Stanley handed over an eight-by-ten photograph labeled “Charles Clark.” He could have flashed half a dozen images of Charlie using his BlackBerry, but blowups, printed on thick card stock, added gravity.
    It was obvious Falzone recognized Charlie at first glance. Yet he made an appearance of studying the photo. “Yeah, I think so. He gave me a different name.”
    “That figures. He’s a federally wanted fugitive.”
    “Holy shit.” Falzone did a poor job of acting surprised.
    Stanley saw no reason to go through the motions. “Mr. Falzone, how much extra did you get paid to list his associate as the copilot?”
    Falzone lowered his head in an appearance of penitence. “Listen, man, please, if I’d’a had any idea—”
    “Would you like immunity?”
    Falzone opened his eyes altar-boy wide. “Sure, but mostly I want to do whatever I can to help.”
    Stanley swallowed a laugh. “Where are they?”
    “Far as I know, Innsbruck, Austria.” The statement was perhaps Falzone’s first devoid of artifice since Stanley’s arrival.
    “Good. How did they come to you?”
    “There’s a thousand ways I get clients. I chose ‘Absolute’ for the company’s name so I’d be at the top of the listings—that’s one of the best ways, believe it or not.”
    Falzone might still give up the name of the person who referred the Clarks and Rutherford to him, Stanley thought. If the pilot didn’t know, he would have said so to begin with.
    Stanley sighed. “Look, I’m trying to help you out here. You pocketed a few extra bucks at Christmastime for fudging a manifest. I know, I know, everybody does it. But you’re the one who stands to lose everything.” With a wave, he indicated the lavish home. “Maybe even do time.”
    Perspiration darkened Falzone’s sideburns. “If I give you a name, we’re good?”
    “It depends a lot on what name you give me.”
    “Is there a way you can work it that the person doesn’t find out I told you?”
    “Sounds exactly like the kind of person I’m looking for. And yes.”
    Falzone dug at a cuticle, saying nothing.
    “I’ve never met him,” he said finally, at a whisper. “I’d never even heard of him until he called me that night, the twenty-ninth.”
    “Good.” Stanley meant to coax him.
    “The girl, April, her company had used him in the Caribbean—Martinique, I think. He does air charter down there under the name J. T. Bream.”

“That volcano erupted, killing all of the town’s thirty thousand inhabitants but one,” Drummond said, extracting Charlie from much-needed slumber.
    “
Volcano?
” Charlie blinked the sleep from his eyes. He could do nothing about the whiskey-induced headache.
    The interior of the jet, like the sky, was copper in the setting sun. Drummond stabbed an index finger against Charlie’s window, pointing at what appeared to be a greenish cloud rising from the ocean.
    “You think that’s a volcano?” Charlie said.
    Drummond chewed it over. Or he