What Price to Pay?
Jonny hunkered
down, leaning wearily against the bulkhead in the belly of the tramp steamer,
and listened to the steady throb of the engines. They reverberated at just the right frequency to amplify the
pounding ache in his head. He could
never remember being this tired or frustrated. For the last two weeks they had chased Julia from one city to
another over the whole of Europe. They
had started in Amsterdam where they had just missed her. Of course so had Cain. He had gotten there just a shade before they
had, and he must not have been a happy man. Cain's reputation said he didn't miss . . . only this time he had. And Julia had run. And run. And run. From Amsterdam to London. And from there to Paris, Brussels, Berlin,
Bern, Athens, Rome, Madrid . . . Jonny
was convinced there wasn't a single large city in Europe she had missed. And through it all they had chased her . . .
sometimes Cain getting there first and sometimes Jonny and Race. They had been on the go almost continuously
for the entire time.
Jonny looked
over at Race who was talking with the cargo master of the vessel they were
currently on. They had come aboard this
vessel because they had received a tip that Julia was throwing up a smoke
screen in preparation to making one final run to her safehouse. They still didn't know where that was, but
supposedly someone aboard this ship did. As far as they knew, Julia still didn't know they were following her . .
. or at least she didn't know who it was that was following her. Other than Cain. Oh, she knew Cain was following her, that much was certain. He was making it very clear that he was
stalking her, and it had her rattled. Race was hoping that she was rattled enough that she didn't recognize
she had two sets of pursuers. He was
also convinced that she was recruiting as part of her multi-city European
jaunt. For what, Jonny didn't really
want to know. He put his head in his
hands and tried to shut out the sounds of the engines. If only his head would quit hurting . . .
Race came up
and grabbed his arm. Jonny rose and
followed him silently out of the cargo hold. In the main corridor the sound of the engines were even louder and his
head began to throb in earnest. Race
reached a gangway and began to climb steadily until he reached the main
deck. There he stepped out into the
cold salt air and moved toward the rail near the front of the ship. Jonny followed. Here, at least, the engines were blessedly muted. Race leaned against the rail, face into the
wind; then turned to look at him. "You
look like hell."
"I'm fine."
"If this is
'fine' I hate to think of what lousy would be. Come on, Jonny, what is it?"
Jonny
shrugged. "Just got a headache. It'll be okay now that I'm away from the
engine noise."
"When was the
last time you ate anything?"
Jonny rubbed
his aching head trying to make his brain work. He honestly couldn't remember. "I don't know . . . I'm not much hungry, though."
Race
straightened up and said sternly, "This
won't do. You have to eat and sleep
when you have the opportunity on a mission like this. If you don't, you're liable to be caught without being
ready. And that can get you dead." He led Jonny to the mess hall down below and
sat him at a table. He then went and
filled a plate, which he brought back and set in front of him. "Eat!" was his stern command. Jonny
stared at it with loathing but he took the fork and began to pick at it. Race got a second plate and sat down across
from him, attacking the food with efficiency.
If Jonny had
not known that the man across from him was Race Bannon he would never have
recognized him. His hair was a dull
brown, which fell down over his ears. He had a heavy brown beard and brown eyes. A jagged scar ran down his right cheek from his eye to the corner
of his mouth. He was still a large man,
but now he moved with a decided slump, appearing somehow shorter and more
shambling. And Jonny knew that he
looked drastically different at well. His hair was still blonde, but rather than it's characteristic yellow
blonde, it was a dirty dishwater color. It hung over his collar and was dirty and stringy. He would probably never be able to grow a
beard, but he could generate a scruffy-looking stubble that made him look decidedly
disreputable. His blue eyes were now a
washed out hazel and he squinted most of the time.
"Where are we
going?" he asked Race as he tried to eat the plate of food in front of him.
"New York."
Jonny
stopped. "She's heading back to the
States?"
"Looks that
way."
Jonny shoved
the food away from him abruptly, suddenly afraid. "Why's she going there?"
Race looked at
him sharply and then shoved the plate back in front of him. "I said eat! And I would assume she's going there because that's where home
is. We've known all along that when she
goes to ground it's somewhere back in the States. I'd say she headed back to go to ground again."
"Or she's
recruited her army and she's going back to go after Jess again."
"Calm
down. I don't think that's what she's
doing. Remember Cain's still after
her. She's not going to try any kind of
full-scale operation until after she's gotten rid of that threat. And even if she is, that at least gives us
knowledge of her target which makes it much easier to stop her."
Jonny stared
at him in sudden rage. " . . .
'Knowledge of her target'?!! This is
your daughter we're talking about here, not some lame, government
bureaucrat."
"Keep it
down!" Race hissed at him. He glanced
casually at the few other occupants in the room. None of them appeared to be paying any attention to the two men. "You blow our cover so we get tossed
overboard, its one hell of a long swim to the nearest land!" He gestured at the plate sharply. "Finish that, now!" Somehow Jonny choked it down. Once he was finished they both rose and left
the mess hall and went back up on deck. Jonny turned and strode away from Race, wanting to put as much distance
between them as possible. He was still
angry and they simply couldn't afford a scene. But Race followed him all the way to the bow of the ship. Finally, with nowhere left to go, Jonny
stopped and hunkered down in the shelter of one of the lifeboats. Race dropped down beside him and they just
crouched there for a long time.
When Race
finally spoke, his voice was completely neutral. "Want to tell me what's eating at you?"
Jonny started
to say 'nothing' but somehow he couldn't get that word out. He slid down until he was sitting on the
deck and simply stared off into nothingness. Finally, he said, "Do you have any idea what it's like to have done
something so awful . . . so vile . . . that the very idea of it keeps
you awake at night and yet have absolutely no memory of doing it? You go to bed wondering if when you wake up
in the morning you'll remember it. And
in the morning, you wake up and there's still nothing. You don't know whether to laugh or cry, and
yet the one thing you DO know is that if those memories do come back,
and you actually have to live through seeing what you did in your mind, you may
not be able to live with what you've done."
Jonny closed his
eyes and leaned his head back against the lifeboat. "Before this happened, Jessie was one of my best friends . . . my
buddy . . . as well as my girlfriend. I
knew that some day we would be husband and wife, lovers, parents . . . all the
things people do as they grow older and become more intimately involved with
one special person. And I won't say we
hadn't experimented a little. Some of
our necking sessions had gotten pretty intense. But we'd talked about it and we both agreed that neither of us was
ready for the kind of emotional commitment that sex brought with it. We were friends . . . I could trust
her with anything. And she could trust
me the same way."
Race sat
heavily beside the boy and stared at him. He thought they had managed to get this worked out in counseling. But it was pretty obvious that they hadn't.
"Rape was
always one of those things you heard about in school or saw on the TV movie of
the week. You knew it was awful. Any guy worth anything at all was nauseated
by the very idea of doing something like that. But I don't think . . . " and suddenly tears were running down his face,
" . . . I never stopped to imagine what it must be like for the
girl who had to endure it. And I did
that to her. She trusted me. And I did something like that . . . Race, how do I live with this? It's tearing me apart. And I don't even remember doing it!" Race reached out and put his arms around
him, holding him tightly as he cried.
Race Bannon
loved his daughter intensely. He was
fond of saying that in his entire life, Jessica was the best thing that had
ever happened to him. And at one point
he could have killed this boy . . . would have, probably, had he known what he
had done and if he could have gotten his hands on him. But Race had also known all along that
Jonathan Quest was a good and honorable individual who cared for his
daughter. To see him being destroyed by
something he had no control over was like a knife in his heart. And he knew, too, that his daughter loved
this young man and wanted nothing more than to have him back with her again,
regardless of what he had done. She had
never blamed him . . . not once . . . not even before she knew what had
actually happened. Once, when the two
of them were discussing it, she had tried to explain by saying, "It wasn't
Jonny who did this to me. Who Jonny
Quest is can be found in his mind, not between his legs. And the mind of Jonny Quest had
nothing to do with what happened." He
had never understood the distinction. Not really. And he could never
understand how she could make it in her own mind. But she had, and so he had accepted it. But now, finally, he thought maybe he could understand. This young man could never
have done anything like that. Benton
had been right, his own demons were the worst. And they had the potential to destroy him.
"Jonny, listen
to me. I know you've had a lot of
people tell you that this isn't your fault, including Jessie. But I'm telling you that it
isn't." He grasped him by the shoulders
and sat him up, staring him straight in the eyes. "Jessie's father and an ex-government agent is telling you . . . this is NOT your fault! I've been through brainwashing. I've had people try and program me to kill, to steal, to blow up
things. And my own agency even
succeeded in doing it to me once. And I
can tell you from experience that when they succeed there is absolutely nothing
you can do about it. I don't know what
it's like not to remember it. Every
time it has happened to me the memories have been all too clear. But remembering or not doesn't change the
fact that you couldn't have prevented it once the programming took effect. You can't continue to blame yourself for
this. No one else does . . . you have
to let it go."
"She should
hate me," was the choked, whispered response.
"She will
never hate you. She loves you. I know that. Your father knows that. Even you should know that. I've
heard her tell you often enough. And,
furthermore, the two of you have another bond that can never be broken . . . a
tie that will bind you together forever."
"What?"
"You're the
father of her children. And however
that happened, the two of you created life. I've seen your faces as you've watched the twins develop. You mustn't let this obsession with guilt
lap over and affect your kids. The
rules have changed now and their best interests have to take priority. That's the way it works."
Jonny sat for a long time in silence, his head in his hands. Finally, in a quiet, exhausted voice he said, "I'll try." Eventually, Race got to his feet and drawing Jonny after him, they went back down below to their temporary quarters for the night.