15/4/46

Steve,

I never got a chance to tell you, but...I hate living in New York. It's an unparalleled achievement of human engineering, but the people are...well, I don't want to sound snobbish. I know how much you loved it, and I simply couldn't bear what you might think of me. Silly, I know, but so is a ninety-pound asthmatic gaining another one hundred and thirty in muscle (as well as another foot and a half in height).

It's been a year, and my new job is frightfully dull. This fellow they put in charge, Agent Flynn, is completely incompetent in nearly every way possible. I follow a routine now, I wake up, go to work, then go home. If there's ever a mission, I'm never chosen. I think I understand what you were telling me about "never being picked for stickball".

I hardly ever see Howard anymore. He calls, but I'm usually swamped with unfinished field reports and the like. I suppose he doesn't have much better to do, now that he's finally given up looking for you.

The war's over, but life goes on. Without you.

My father died on my thirteenth birthday. The doctor said it was a heart attack. Mother was sobbing through the whole ordeal, but Aunt Melissa was insistent on making sure she kept calm, for the sake of the brother I hadn't met yet, nearly ready to be born. A week later, at the funeral, my Uncle Robert told me that he and Melissa were going to be looking after me and the baby. I hadn't said a word since I had blown out the candles and Father had collapsed onto the stairs.

My aunt and uncle lived in bustling London, and had a comfortable flat near a hospital. Uncle Robert was a doctor, and Aunt Melissa was a secretary. The year was 1928 when little Michael and I went to live with them.

I went to school, of course, but also looked after Michael. I never felt as if I had any time to myself. Although that's not to say I didn't. Whenever Michael was asleep for the night, and I'd finished all my homework, I'd look in my trunk to try and find some of Father's RAF medals.

He was highly decorated in the war. The Great War, he always called it. Everyone did, then, of course. Nobody knew what lied ahead. Whenever Mother was out of the room, fixing dinner, he'd sit down by the fireplace, and I'd always ask him to tell me about life in the RAF. He always said it was the height of his life, and that he'd never known a greater feeling of significance and camaraderie.

Naturally, I was enamoured. I would salute Father when he came home from work, and after he had returned it, he'd laugh and kiss me, then my mother. Mother always scowled when he talked about the war. In retrospect, I think she hated to remember the feeling of having him away. I certainly do now.

When I was a young woman in 1939, when the world broke out into war for the second time in 25 years, everyone was scared, but no one dared show it. I was working as a librarian in Soho at the time. Michael was living with me, since Aunt Melissa had died the year before, and Uncle Robert joined up again. I hated him for leaving me.

Michael would always ask for mummy, but he really meant Aunt Melissa. It managed to cut just as deep every time. But even then, there was a routine to be meant. Walk Michael to school, go to work, pick up Michael, then go home.

When the newspaper boy was shouting in the streets about the Germans, Michael would always ask me questions about whether or not we were next.

Those were the words he used, "Are we next?"

I lied, and told him I didn't know.

When the bombings started, and we sheltered with another family, Michael began to grow ill. He coughed so violently when we came out in the morning. Something in the ash, I suppose. When he closed his eyes, and I began to fear whether or not he'd ever open his eyes again, I also began to hate not only the Germans, but the war itself.

So I knew I had to do whatever it took to end it, as quickly as possible. I found myself conscripted into the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, and I left Michael in the care of the family we had often hidden from the bombs with. He wrote me letters, and I'd receive them in the radio office, then read them in the barracks, along with all the other women away from home.

I had done exceptionally well in the aptitude training, and worked as a code-breaker for the RAF. I often thought of Father's medals, and that always put a skip in my step, even on the worst days.

One day, in 1943, I received a letter marked Top Secret. It contained transfer orders, as well as the new address at which I would be reporting. From what I remember, it was a bakery on the outside.

When I entered, a small, wizened man stood smiling behind the counter.

"Good afternoon. Stopping for tea?"

"Yes, thank you, it's awfully chilly out."

The man nodded, then led me to an adjacent room which just happened to be an elevator. I was surprised, to say the least. We reached what I assumed was a basement, then a large metal door. The man nodded to me.

"Good luck, Miss Carter."

I nodded, and he went upstairs. I knocked on the door twice, and it opened to reveal a tall, well-dressed, undeniably handsome man with a thin mustache and a toothy smile. He held out his hand, and he had a drink in the other.

"I'm Howard Stark. Welcome to the Strategic Scientific Reserve. Can I get you a drink?"

I had heard of Howard Stark, of course, who hadn't? Intimidation seized me.

"I...no, thank you."

I could feel a sort of electricity coming off him in waves, and it suddenly occurred to me that I was not the first woman he had used that line on.

"Fair enough. If you'd follow me, please." He led me through a long, metal hallway to another door with the letters SSR printed on it in surprisingly small lettering. He gave me another toothy smile, then opened the door.

The office was bustling with men in white coats, men in suits, men in uniforms, women in uniforms, and telephones ringing over the din of top secret conversation. A man in a white coat with thin glasses and thinner hair came up to me and shook my hand.

"Miss Carter, it's a pleasure to meet you." He had a German accent, and I recoiled on instinct (principle?). He took notice to this and chuckled.

"Oh, please, don't be alarmed Miss Carter, I'm Jewish."

"Ah, right, forgive me, mister…"

"Doctor Abraham Erskine, Miss Carter."

"Right, right."

He and Stark led me to a small room with only one door. There was a table, and three chairs. They sat on one side, I sat on the other. I made sure to keep my chin up.

Erskine perused my file (mine, I presumed), while Howard kept taking swigs from a pocket flask. Eventually, Erskine looked up, and closed the file.

"Don't let the letter you received fool you, Miss Carter, this is an interview, not a transfer." I nodded.

"Your file looks very promising, although you're one of fifteen candidates we're considering today." Again, I nodded.

He leaned forward, looking very serious.

"Miss Carter...do you believe in miracles?"

I thought of the newsreel footage I'd seen with Michael, I thought of Michael choking on the ash from the firebombs, I thought of the charred men and women in the hospital and the weeping nurses, and I thought of my father's RAF medal in my breast pocket.

"I think we need one to end this war, Herr Doctor."

Erskine smiled wide and looked at Howard, then back at me.

"I think you're going to fit right in, Miss Carter."

And I most certainly did.