Lendle

THIS MAN'S FATHER
a novel by Jack Quinn

The day before his assignment to protect presidential candidate Senator Charles N. Robinson, secret service agent Jared Coughlin surprises three German burglars in the senator's home. The last thing Coughlin remembers before passing out in the senator's bedroom from wounds inflicted by the intruders is a 1941 photograph of young Charles Robinson with Coughlin's mother.
Although the senator denies knowing Jared’s parent, Coughlin begins delving into Robinson's past to learn the truth. Despite orders from his boss to desist from his inquires and getting stonewalled by the FBI, Jared locates an elderly friend of his mother who crewed on a civilian submarine patrol boat during WW II on which his father was killed; he enlists the woman's daughter, clinical psychologist Stephanie Graham, in his search; discovers the senator has two sets of fingerprints in the FBI database; determines that the German burglars are members of the notorious Baader Meinhof gang; and were secretly flown out of the country by the German embassy.
Jared remains in Robinson's protective detail as the presidential candidate campaigns from coast to coast, and despite his belief that Robinson may have murdered Jared's father, he single-handedly prevents the senator's assassination by German nationalists. Jared and Stephanie become lovers, but are torn apart by his dogged efforts to expose the senator's murky past, and her determination to adopt a delinquent black teen who falsely accuses Jared of rape.
Putting their personal problems aside, they kidnap Robinson aboard Jared's boat, elude his brother agents and ruthless German killers under cover of dense fog; and force the senator to reveal his role as an American spy in the highest echelons of WW II Nazi intelligence, who thwarted a German attack on the United States, was incarcerated in Bergen-Belsen, and holds the key to preventing a Neo-Nazi plot to fund Third World terrorists and decimate the U.S. economy today.
When Jared is critically wounded by gunfire from a pursuing seaplane, the senator reveals a startling confession made by Jared's mother regarding Jared’s father and Senator Robinson thirty-five years ago.