Disclaimers in Part 1

Ivan worried what the revelations would do to his relationship with John. He decided he didn’t want to be hurt anymore so he pushed his lover away. At least he tried.  He even went so far as to offer himself to one of the day workers who lived in town in exchange for a ride.  He was politely refused and the offer was reported to Quinn.
 

"If you wanted to go into town, you only had to ask.  There was no need to resort to subterfuge.  I would have gladly taken you," John said.
 

"And if I had asked to stay, or to return to where you found me?  What then? What if I wish to go back to whoring?  What if I said I was tired of you, old man?"
 

"No one forced you into my bed," he said tiredly, "and no one will force you to remain."  He longed to wrap himself around his snowflake and keep him safe from the world, but he knew that was wrong for both of them.  "You should be warned, however, there have been inquiries made into your whereabouts.  Whoever wants you found knows you left Hong Kong with me, and it won’t take a genius to put 2 and 2 together and decide you’re here."  He’ d been told about the people looking for the young man just an hour before, and it had sent a stab of panic through his heart.  'I can go and take him with me; the soulhealers in the Temple could help him far better than the crude methods they have here.'  But would it be fair to him to take him away to a world he might never fit into?  To make him dependent on another? Qui-Gon’s heart cried out against it.
 

"I can protect you here on the plantation.  I can even have you guarded if you wanted to go into town.  If you go wandering off on your own, you might stumble into something you can’t get out of.  We don’t know who’s looking for you; has it occurred to you it might be the one who held you before?" He could see it hadn’t by the terrified expression on Ivan’s face.
 

"You’re – you’re just saying that about someone looking for me to keep me here.  To keep me in your bed!  Don't touch me!"  Seeing how upset he was, John had moved to comfort him, only to be pushed away.  Ivan fled to his room and wouldn’t come out even for dinner.  The cook took him a tray; what sort of conversation passed between them would never be known.

Quinn was sitting on the veranda staring out at nothing when he heard soft footsteps approach.
 

"I asked around, and you were overheard talking on the phone.  There really is someone looking for me?  You weren’t making it up?"
 

"I wasn’t making it up."  John looked up at Ivan.  "I’ve taken some steps to beef up security, especially close to the house."  He didn’t mention the measures included hi-tech scanners sweeping the borders of his property for the slightest trace of gunpowder or explosives.  "No one will get anywhere near you without going through me first.  I told you I care about you; I
want you to believe you’re safe here.  Even from me.  If you want to go, I will send you to a friend in America.  He can give you a new identity, and I ’ll even tell him I don’t want to know what it is."
 

"I – don’t really want to leave.  I want to stay, to be with you.  But – the memories.  The horrible things that were done to me.  The things I’ve done. The whoring.  I was a whore in Kiev as a child, after the war.  Perhaps he was right, and I’ve always been a whore."
 

John stood and gingerly embraced him, mindful of the earlier scene.  When he didn’t resist, he pulled him closer and into the building’s shadow.  No need to take chances; even the most reliable systems malfuntioned.  "You were a whore when I found you.  Nothing in your past could be so vile as to cause me to abandon you completely.  There’s at least a decade, possibly two, of your life we know nothing about yet.  You’ve been through some terrible things; give yourself a chance to heal.  Your mind and emotions need to mend as much as your body, and that takes a lot longer.  I should know; there were wounds to my soul that took years to heal completely."
 

"You?" asked Ivan, incredulously.  "You’ve always been a tower of strength, like the Rock of Gibraltar."  He’d noticed his lover was a physically imposing man, standing nearly six and a half feet tall and weighing close to 200 lbs., none of which was fat.  His silver-gilt brown hair may fall halfway to his waist, but it fell past a pair of very wide, intimidating shoulders.  There was certainly nothing weak or effeminate about his face, with its broken nose, piercing blue eyes, and salt-and-pepper beard. Standing in the shadows, in the protective embrace of this man, between him and the building, he found it hard to believe he had any vulnerabilities at all.
 

"Perhaps," he said with a slight smile, "we should go inside and discuss it. Your room?"  They spoke of that and many other things before curling themselves together and going to sleep, not needing passion but desiring instead the simple comfort of knowing you’re not alone.

That was how things stood, with Ivan having regained some memories but none which could identify his tormentor, when Quinn got the telephone call from his old friend Alexander Waverly.  He was calling to say he would be in the area and would it be all right if he dropped by?  There was someone he wanted to introduce, and something he needed to discuss.
 

Napoleon Solo stared at his boss dumbfounded.  "I’d always thought we received the major part of our funding from various governments."
 

"That’s what Section 1 has encouraged everyone to believe; it allows our host country, and several others, the illusion they could influence us by threatening to withhold funding," Waverly replied.  "Quinn saw this decades ago, when UNCLE was barely more than a dozen people and a dream to save the world.  So he gathered together enough capital to start a dozen various companies in as many countries.  He had an excellent head for business and the most phenomenal luck I’ve ever seen.  Every single one of those companies is now a multinational corporation, and a portion of their profits finds its way into UNCLE accounts worldwide."
 

"Quinn also realized we’d need a way to move people and material discreetly. He set up certain, shall we say, less than above board shipping routes and used legitimate shipments for other things than were listed on the bills of lading.  His companies hire most of our retired and disabled agents to run just such operations."
 

He paused as the stewardess approached to ask if they wanted anything.  Both men ordered drinks as this was the first of several connecting flights: New York to San Francisco, San Francisco to Honolulu, Honolulu to Tokyo, Tokyo to Colombo.  They’d take turns sleeping later; Waverly between San Francisco and Honolulu, and Solo between Honolulu and Tokyo.  They took up the conversation after they’d been served and the stewardess had left.

"So this Quinn person is UNCLE’s banker and occasional smuggler."  Solo took a sip of his drink.
 

Waverly got a far away look in his eye. "John Quinn’s a good deal more than that.  Did you ever notice UNCLE agents have a unique fighting style?  He taught it to myself and the other founding members, and we’ve tried to pass it along.  He’s also passed along methods and technologies years ahead of anyone else’s.  About half our gadgetry is based on things he gave us and our bright boys and girls modified and extrapolated from.  In fact, one of his companies makes all the things we need in quantity, like personal communicators and the special guns and sleep dart ammo."
 

"I’ve wanted to introduce the two of you ever since I decided you would replace me as Number 1, Section 1, but Quinn’s a difficult man to get in contact with at times.  I almost wish I could get in touch with him more often; it might have prevented some of the difficulties we had in the past." Solo knew what his boss was talking about; despite every precaution, check,
and evaluation, Section 1 had once been compromised by THRUSH, nearly resulting in the loss of the entire section.  "He’s the best judge of character I know.  It’s almost as if he can read a person’s mind or see into his soul.  That’s why I stopped worrying about Mr. Kuryakin as soon as I confirmed John had gotten personally involved."