Don Challenor and Jack Harkness’s temporary alliance

Don Challenor and Jack Harkness’s temporary alliance is an arrangement of necessity, not trust. Don helps Harkness, a fugitive, reach Cornwall and negotiates with Amos French using money offered for Fran Revell’s freedom. The bargain brings their opposing interests into line for a time: Don’s concern for Fran and Harkness’s plan to secure her release outweigh Don’s suspicions, while French’s search for missing funds gives the negotiations their leverage.

Origins in Competing Pressures

The alliance grows out of pressure from more than one direction. French offers Don substantial payment for information about money Harkness has hidden, giving him a week to produce results and warning that he will otherwise resort to force. French specifically proposes that Don obtain what he needs through Blake and Fran, while promising not to tell them about the offer. Don recognizes the predicament as the consequence of accepting a favor from his former wife; taking French’s money would make him an intermediary between competing parties rather than a neutral investigator.

Don and Blake also test whether Keith Perkins will exchange information about the connection between Luscinia and Harkness. When Perkins asks whether they are prepared to trade information, Don says French has offered them money, but that they have not accepted because Perkins may know what they need. The possibility of taking French’s offer becomes leverage in that conversation, not proof that Don has agreed to it. This parallel negotiation establishes the pattern that will shape the later alliance with Harkness: Don uses the prospect of one bargain to open another, while trying to keep control of what information changes hands.

Don Agrees to Help Harkness

When Harkness asks Don to drive him to Cornwall, he presents Fran’s welfare as their shared priority. He says he believes he can get her out safely, but explains that he needs to be in Cornwall and cannot travel openly because he is a fugitive. Don questions him and does not trust him; he is uncertain whether Harkness genuinely cares about Fran. He nevertheless unlocks the passenger door, deciding that he must proceed on the assumption that they are working toward the same end because Fran’s welfare is at stake.

That decision is the alliance’s defining condition. Don does not become Harkness’s confident or accept his account without reservation. He offers practical help while keeping the uncertainty explicit: cooperation is warranted by the urgent purpose, not by confidence in Harkness’s character or promises. Harkness, for his part, relies on Don’s access to French and his ability to make contact without immediately drawing attention to Harkness himself.

Money as Leverage

Harkness’s plan makes the alliance concrete. With his MG switched off and its lights out, he tells Don to call French and claim to have the information French wants about the missing money. Don objects that he does not have it. Harkness’s answer is that Don will have something else to offer when they meet: half the money in the bag on the back seat, which Harkness expects will persuade French to stop searching and release Fran.

Don carries that proposal to French and opens the bag. It contains two and a half million Swiss francs. He makes clear that he cannot disclose the whereabouts of the money French says Harkness took from Quintagler Industries; instead, the bag represents half of what Harkness is willing to pay for Fran’s freedom, conditional on French calling off the search for Quintagler’s money. Don frames his part in the exchange around Fran’s welfare, rather than presenting himself as a partner in Harkness’s financial affairs.

French accepts the money, though he insists it be counted in front of him. His acceptance is significant but limited: he dislikes Harkness and resents how readily Harkness appears able to solve his problems. French says Zlenko must also agree to the arrangement; he does not treat his own acceptance as sufficient to settle every danger. The transaction therefore secures a measure of cooperation without making the underlying conflict disappear.

Conditional Cooperation and Its Limits

The terms remain precarious when Harkness later offers to cooperate by providing access codes for his asset-management system. He makes that cooperation conditional on French allowing both him and Don to leave once French has obtained what he needs, and on there being no further killing. Don recognizes that French could give such an assurance and later break it. The alliance therefore cannot rest on a promise alone: Don sees the weakness in Harkness’s proposed protection even as the negotiation depends on French accepting its terms.

The practical consequences bring Don and Harkness into close cooperation. Harkness tells Fran that Don has been helpful and directs her to leave without contacting anyone yet; he says he will leave with Don once matters are finished, and suggests she meet Don at Robin Pawley’s offices in Helston at noon. The plan places Don at the centre of the arrangements linking Harkness, French, and Fran, although Harkness refuses to tell Fran where he himself will go afterward.

After the confrontation, Don helps Harkness move the policeman and Wynsum Fry into the completed garage of the barn conversion. The work leaves Don struggling to contain his horror, and he wonders whether Wynsum Fry’s spell might still affect him. Harkness addresses that uncertainty by pointing out that her claimed powers did not spare her from death. Their exchange does not erase Don’s distrust, but it shows that their temporary cooperation persists amid the consequences of the violence around them. The alliance is defined throughout by that uneasy combination: shared action and a common immediate objective, without any assurance that either man can safely rely on the other.