Never Say Die by Tess Gerritsen

ride!"
    She heard the squeak of wheels, the wheeze of an out-of-breath driver. Now Oliver's uncles had joined the procession.
    "Go away," she said. "I don't want a ride."
    "Sun very hot, very strong today. Maybe you faint. Once I see Russian lady faint." Oliver shook his head at the memory. "It was very bad sight."
    "Go
away
!"
    Undaunted, Oliver turned to Guy. "How about you, Daddy?"
    Guy slapped a few bills into Oliver's grubby hand. "There's a thousand. Now scram."
    Oliver vanished. Unfortunately, Guy wasn't so easily brushed off. He followed Willy into the town marketplace, past stands piled high with melons and mangoes, past counters where freshly butchered meat gathered flies.
    "I was going to tell you about your father," Guy said. "I just wasn't sure how you'd take it."
    "I'm not afraid of the truth."
    "Sure you are! You're trying to protect him. That's why you keep ignoring the evidence."
    "He wasn't a traitor!"
    "You still love him, don't you?"
    She turned sharply and walked away. Guy was right beside her. "What's wrong?" he said. "Did I hit a nerve?"
    "Why should I care about him? He walked out on us."
    "And you still feel guilty about it."
    "Guilty?" She stopped. "Me?"
    "That's right. Somewhere in that little-girl head of yours, you still blame yourself for his leaving. Maybe you had a fight, the way kids and dads always do, and you said something you shouldn't have. But before you had the chance to make up, he took off. And his plane went down. And here you are, twenty years later, still trying to make it up to him."
    "Practicing psychiatry without a license now?"
    "It doesn't take a shrink to know what goes on in a kid's head. I was fourteen when
my
old man walked out. I never got over being abandoned, either. Now I worry about my own kid. And it hurts."
    She stared at him, astonished. "You have a child?"
    "In a manner of speaking." He looked down. "The boy's mother and I, we weren't married. It's not something I'm particularly proud of."
    "Oh."
    "Yeah."
    You walked out on them,
she thought.
Your father left you. You left your son. The world never changes.
    "He wasn't a traitor," she insisted, returning to the matter at hand. "He was a lot of things—irresponsible, careless, insensitive. But he wouldn't turn against his own country."
    "But he's on that list of suspects. If he's not Friar Tuck himself, he's probably connected somehow. And it's got to be a dangerous link. That's why someone's trying to stop you. That's why you're hitting brick walls wherever you turn. That's why, with every step you take, you're being followed."
    "What!" In reflex, she turned to scan the crowd.
    "Don't be so obvious." Guy grabbed her arm and dragged her to a pharmacy window. "Man at two o'clock," he murmured, nodding at a reflection in the glass. "Blue shirt, black trousers."
    "Are you sure?"
    "Absolutely. I just don't know who he's working for."
    "He looks Vietnamese."
    "But he could be working for the Russians. Or the Chinese. They both have a stake in this country."
    Even as she stared at the reflection, the man in the blue shirt melted into the crowd. She knew he was still lingering nearby; she could feel his gaze on her back.
    "What do I do, Guy?" she whispered. "How do I get rid of him?"
    "You can't. Just keep in mind he's there. That you're probably under constant surveillance. In fact, we seem to be under the surveillance of a whole damn army." At least a dozen faces were now reflected there, all of them crowded close and peering curiously at the two foreigners. In the back, a familiar figure kept bouncing up and down, waving at them in the glass.
    "Hello, Daddy!" came a yell.
    Guy sighed. "We can't even get rid of
him.
"
    Willy stared hard at Guy's reflection. And she thought,
But I can get rid of you.
     
    Major Nathan Donnell of the Casualty Resolution team had shocking red hair, a booming voice and a cigar that stank to high heaven. Guy didn't know which was worse—the stench of that cigar or the odor of decay