Black Balloon

Chapter 31

As one day turned into two and two turned into a week, with no sign of Lukas Schneider, word of his absence spread. Newspapers in Geneva reported on the disappearance of the well-respected professor and his star pupil. The Swiss Government, having made a huge monetary investment in Schneider, was especially concerned. Northrup had made a lunch reservation for two on the day of their disappearance but neither man ever arrived. Northrup's apartment was found exactly as he'd left it: His wallet, including cash and identification, was sitting on his bedside table. A frozen bag of hamburger meat was left defrosting in the sink as if he'd been expecting to return home within hours. Schneider's house was left similarly undisturbed, with nothing to indicate that its owner had been planning a sudden departure. None of his clothing or personal effects were taken as far as his servants could tell, and they would know. His car was parked in the driveway. Mildred and myself, along with the three full-time servants, groundskeeper, and cook, were each interrogated by the police and we all reported the same facts, what few there were: Schneider had gone to his bedroom for the night just before eleven p.m. and was never seen again. His bedroom windows remained locked the next morning. His door remained closed. Police found nothing obvious to indicate he had escaped during the night. Although, they added the caveat that it was possible he could have done so without leaving such evidence, as it was his home and was thus already thoroughly trodden with his footprints, tire tracks, fingerprints etc.

A review of Schneider's finances revealed several large donations made to a German charity in the years leading up to his disappearance. The charity, which further scrutiny revealed to be of questionable origins, claimed it received the money anonymously and had used it ethically for the organization's stated purpose, although they offered no proof to support this.

Northrup's background turned out to be as mysterious as his disappearance. Neither Swiss detectives nor the FBI were able to find anyone in the United States that had ever known him. The information and references on his student visa and college application were all dead ends; fictional people and made up places. Northrup wasn't real, and it seemed he'd disappeared back into the imagination from whence he sprang, swallowed by whatever mysterious universal force had spat him out.

Tips continued to pour in for years afterwards but none of them were fruitful. Schneider and Northrup remained missing persons until being declared dead in absentia in 1968, a decade hence with neither hide nor hair being seen of them. This decision was controversial given the mysterious manner of their disappearance, but despite several legal challenges was never overturned. Both men remain legally dead to this day.

In 1979, scuba divers located the wreckage of a single engine aircraft in Lake Maggiore near the Swiss/Italian border: a 1957 Cessna 172. The plane's tail numbers and other identifying information were not able to be traced and its origins could not be determined. Forensic analysis, or the closest thing to it available at the time, estimated the plane had been underwater for between 22 and 15 years based on the degree of deterioration. This would place it in both the relative geography and within the time frame of the Northrup/Schneider disappearance. Beyond this, however, there was no evidence connecting the two events. No bodies were found in the plane's wreckage but this could have been attributed to twenty years of nibbling fish and organic decay. Neither Northrup nor Schneider were pilots, so far as anyone knew, or had access to an airplane. The craft was only a two passenger. No local airport had record of the plane departing or even existing. No report had ever been filed on an aircraft matching the plane's description. It seemed that this was an equally perplexing but wholly different unexplained mystery.

Some unnamed "friend" in the Swiss government made sure I was taken care of. Not only was I given asylum in Switzerland, but I was granted full Swiss citizenship under my alias, Saul Giancarlo. Project Halcyon, now lacking its founder, was shuttered. Mildred was reassigned to another project in the TRPD complex and I was given a largely ceremonial job in the administrative offices. We married in 1962 and had three beautiful children: Miles, Barbara, and Frank.