The Undaunted

A Man of Destiny

"That's my girl," Jack murmured proudly under his breath before he could stop himself. He had just finished reading the latest article from Jenny and leafing through the 8x10 prints that had come through over the wire. He cleared his throat. "Anything else?" he asked in a normal tone.

"No, sir." Alice was looking at Jack strangely. "That poor young pilot," she said in a wavering voice. "I can't imagine her terror at being caught and tortured by those...those..." She looked up at her boss. "Can you believe such barbarity really exists in the world?" she whispered.

"Yes," Jack said sharply, tapping the sheets of paper together smartly on the surface of his desk. "Call the board members together, Alice."

"Right away, sir."

When Alice had left his office, Jack leafed through the pictures again, stopping on the close up of Kara's mangled and distorted right hand, a cigarette held between the middle- and forefinger. He shook his head at the cool heartlessness that it must have taken for that Nazi to smash all twenty finger joints of a then nineteen-year-old girl. A girl whose only crime was defending her motherland. It made his stomach churn, and yet he knew this was exactly the kind of story that needed to be told. The whole world needed to know what had happened, not only to the countless Jews who had lost their lives, but also to the resistance fighters and other members of the Allied forces.

The story, the pictures all contained Jenny's special touch. Her special style that made Jack's heart ache for her. Only she could have done this story justice, only she could have found this woman who, by all accounts, had gone into hiding after her ordeal had rendered her useless to Stalin's 588th. And only Jenny could have captured these photographs and all their grotesque beauty. He decided the byline would not contain her alias, but her real name, Jennifer Snow, and to hell with what his wife and father-in-law thought about that.

But, first the board meeting. Then he would compose a letter to Jenny, sending it in care of the last place she had been known to reside in Paris. The longing for Jenny had turned into a palpable ache. He could feel Ashton's choke hold closing in on him and, though he knew it was wrong, he longed to see her smile, look into her eyes even if it was for the last time.

After the board meeting, Jack put on his hat and threw his overcoat over his shoulder. He decided to walk the sixteen blocks home that evening, recalling a disagreement he'd had with Ashton earlier that week. It had been his intention to shop for a home for the three of them. Soon to be four. His idea was to look for a spacious four-bedroom house upstate, away from the city. Ashton had violently objected to that, accusing him of wanting to secrete her away from the city where he would continue to work.

"You're treating me like I'm bloody Mrs Rochester! I won't have it, Jack!"

Jack had massage his temples wearily listening to her. "Ashton, that's not true. The city is no place to raise a family. I'm trying to think of the children. Someone has to."

"The children!" she that venomously, remembering to place a hand over her swelling belly. "That's all that matters to you, isn't it? The children! That little orphaned brat and,"...her eyes drifted down to her middle..."now this one."

"I thought you were happy to be pregnant, Ashton," Jack said steadily, not looking at her as he lit up a cigarette. "That and holding Natalia's secret over my head is how you managed to hold onto this marriage, isn't it?"

Ashton's hateful expression melted into one of pleading. "Why are you so cruel to me, Jack?" she whined, fingering the empty left sleeve of her dress as she often did for sympathy. "I didn't ask for this, you know."

He turned around and looked at her seriously. "Neither did I. Let's not start with accusations and recriminations, Ashton. We've had a couple of good weeks lately. We're married; nothing's going to change that. We're going to have a child. Can we at least try to be a family and put the horrors of the war behind us?"