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Following Audrey Hepburn, Henry once again visited UNICEF-supported child protection institutions, this ti accompanied by staff from the organization. The trips weren't limited to Africa—South Asia, Central Arica, South Arica, and other impoverished regions were also on the list.
Unlike before, neither Miss Hepburn nor the UN staff dared split up when visiting conflict-prone areas. They were escorted at all tis by UN peacekeepers, supplented by private security teams provided by insurance companies.
The cooperation with Bryan Mills and his team had been a one-off, tied to that ill-fated Somalia trip. Afterward, each mission saw different teams contracted. It wasn't out of preference; the nature of the work simply demanded flexibility. Unless one signed a long-term contract—which ant paying even for downti outside Africa—it was inevitable to change partners each ti. And insurance companies, being the businessn they were, would never pay extra without need.
Fortunately, Miss Hepburn's security requirents were relatively straightforward. UN personnel usually bore the brunt of responsibility. No matter how chaotic Africa was, few dared to provoke the Blue Helts. Outside Africa, local police or military escorts sufficed.
The Somalia incident, then, was an exception among exceptions. Shortly after Henry and the others escaped, the country plunged headlong into civil war. Warlords mushrood everywhere. Hepburn had simply been unlucky enough to arrive on the eve of total collapse.
As everyone knew, the early stage of upheaval is when the most reckless madn appear. It takes rounds of bloody elimination before the truly dangerous consolidate power and the rest learn to avoid them. That was why so dared to seize the chance to kidnap a Hollywood star, separated from UN protection.
In truth, UN missions were generally reliable, especially regarding safety. After all, Hepburn was one of their brightest symbols. If sothing happened to their "brand," it would be a massive humiliation. For the major powers in the UN, if soone embarrassed them, they could just slam the table and demand obedience. But for so small-ti warlords to trample the UN's face? Intolerable.
From his quiet conversations with peacekeepers, Henry learned that soon after Somalia, UN forces had conducted live-fire drills in the country's south. Ironically, that region had since beco the most stable part of war-torn Somalia.
Of course, one of the main reasons Audrey Hepburn felt so at ease now was Henry himself. A man who could fly, who bullets couldn't harm—having such a presence nearby was deeply reassuring.
As for his feat of lifting a small plane into the sky, Audrey had little grasp of how extraordinary that really was. Had she shared the story, soone might have told her the difficulty involved. But Henry had never asked her to keep it secret. She chose on her own to respect his wish, never disclosing a word of it to outsiders. When asked, she offered only bland, official-sounding responses.
The other abilities Henry had shown during their escape—heightened senses, driving skills, marksmanship—perhaps drew Bryan's suspicion. But they could still be explained away as natural talent or sheer luck. Nothing that invited scrutiny.
Whatever the case, Henry's presence undeniably lightened Miss Hepburn's workload.
She never once thought of forcing him into "greater" work. What could be greater than helping UNICEF bring relief to children in the Third World? Asking him to step into war zones and talk opposing armies into peace? No—such miracles were beyond even Henry. Helping her here was more than enough, far better than being a naless extra back in Hollywood.
Perhaps he was simply too capable. During the trips, Henry handled most of the trivial chores, leaving Audrey to do what only she could: play with children, pose for photos, and radiate hope.
Back in New York, she submitted finalized reports—reports Henry had drafted and she barely needed to edit. After a few rounds, she stopped revising them altogether, trusting his drafts as final.
The cycle repeated: travel, visit, return, report, attend fundraisers, coax money out of the wealthy, and then set out again.
Henry at last understood Givenchy's complaint that Audrey Hepburn was "too crazy."
Each round trip between the Third World and New York took half a month or more. Audrey could complete two or three such trips before resting briefly at her ho in Switzerland, only to set off again.
If the world had known her schedule, the nickna "workaholic queen" would have appeared twenty or thirty years earlier.
Even at ho, she did not rest. Gardening and reading—her passions—demanded ti and energy. Especially gardening, which consud both.
And Henry? He didn't get to rest either. He had, after all, signed up partly as her driver. He had his own small room in the villa. When she went out, he drove. When she stayed in, he worked quietly as her assistant.
Despite retirent from film, her phone never stopped ringing: UNICEF, her business managers, investnt advisors. In his spare ti, Henry helped with the garden as well. Because weeks or months passed between visits to Switzerland, the garden always required heavy upkeep.
These tasks were trivial for soone with Kryptonian abilities. Though he refrained from doing everything in one swoop—gardening, after all, was about the process, not the results.
At night, Henry even carved out ti for himself. He had moved his computer from his Los Angeles apartnt—which he still paid rent on—and dabbled in software projects.
It was in 1991 that Linux first appeared, posted to newsgroups in August and uploaded to Helsinki University's FTP server in September. But in this altered tiline, it wasn't just a kernel. Thanks to cooperation with the "Joker BBS" community, parts of GNU were already integrated, creating a working free operating system. Progress had leapt forward.
Under the userna "CK," Henry quietly joined the open-source movent. He couldn't spend all day on BBS forums like others, but every so often he dropped a software package into the Linux ecosystem, earning himself the mystique of a hidden master.
Then, at the end of 1991, shocking news rocked the business world: Howard Stark and his wife had died in a car accident.
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