Tess Gerritsen - Double Impact

“Let me go.”

“Not until you hear me out.”

“Why should I believe anything you say?”

“Look, I admit it. I knew about Friar Tuck. About the reward. And-”

“And you knew my father was on their list.”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“I would have. I was going to.”

“It was all worked out from the beginning, wasn’t it? Use me to track down my father.”

“I thought about it. At first.”

“Oh, you’re low, Guy. You’re really scraping bottom. Does money mean so much to you?”

“I wasn’t doing it for the money. I didn’t have a choice. They backed me into it.”

“Who?”

“The Ariel Group. I told you-two weeks ago they showed up in my office. They knew I was headed back to Nam. What I didn’t tell you was the real reason they wanted me to work for them. They weren’t tracking MIAs. They were tracking an old war criminal.”

“Friar Tuck.”

He nodded. “I told them I wasn’t interested. They offered me money. A lot of it. I got a little interested. Then they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“Ah,” she said with disdain.

“Not money…” he protested.

“Then what’s the payoff?”

He ran his hand through his hair and let out a tired breath. “Silence.”

She frowned, not understanding. He didn’t say a thing, but she could see in his eyes some deep, dark agony. “Then that’s it,” she finally whispered. “Blackmail. What do they have on you, Guy? What are you hiding?”

“It’s not-” he swallowed “-something I can talk about.”

“I see. It must be pretty damn shocking. Which is no big surprise, I guess. But it still doesn’t justify what you tried to do to me.” She turned and walked away in disgust.

The road shimmered in the midmorning heat. Guy was right on her heels, like a stray dog that refused to be left behind. And he wasn’t the only stray following her. The slap of bare feet announced the reappearance of Oliver, who skipped along beside her, chirping, “You want cyclo ride? It is very hot day! A thousand dong-I get you 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 emanating from the four skeletons on the table. Maybe that’s why Nate smoked those rotten cigars; they masked the smell of death.

The skeletons, each labeled with an ID number, were laid out on separate tarps. Also on the table were four plastic bags containing the personal effects and various other items found with the skeletons. After twenty or more years in this climate, not much remained of these bodies except dirt-encrusted bones and teeth. At least that much was left; sometimes fragments were all they had to work with.

Nate was reading aloud from the accompanying reports. In that grim setting, his resonant voice sounded somehow obscene, echoing off the walls of the Quonset hut. “Number 784-A, found in jungle, twelve klicks west of Camp Hawthorne. Army dog tag nearby-name, Elmore Stukey, Pfc.”

“The tag was lying nearby?” Guy asked. “Not around the neck?”

Nate glanced at the Vietnamese liaison officer, who was standing off to the side. “Is that correct? It wasn’t around the neck?”

The Vietnamese man nodded. “That is what the report said.”

“Elmore Stukey,” muttered Guy, opening the man’s military medical record. “Six foot two, Caucasian, perfect teeth.” He looked at the skeleton. Just a glance at the femur told him the man on the table couldn’t have stood much taller than five-six. He shook his head. “Wrong guy.”