LONDON

Sam Wilson leaned back on his pub stool, lifted a beer mug that (he had been assured) Samuel Johnson had almost certainly drunk out of before him, and made his voice as dyspeptic and English as possible. "'Sir,'" he intoned portentously, "'I perceive that you are a vile Whig!'"

Steve, sitting next to him, gave him a wry sidelong glance. "I'm not that old, Sam," he said.

Sam rolled his eyes, and took a sip out of the mug. Privately, he was actually rather gratified; that was the first real spark of levity he'd seen out of his friend since the news of Peggy Carter's death had reached them the day before. And he couldn't actually prove that Steve's riposte had referred to the 19th-Century American political party founded by Henry Clay, rather than the 18th-Century English oligarchy that Dr. Johnson had in fact been denouncing. But he knew Steve Rogers.

Following a natural association of ideas, he laid the mug down and inquired conversationally, "So how are you doing with Modern Times, Cap?"

"Huh?" Steve appeared nonplussed by the question for a moment. "Oh. You mean the book. Frankly, I pretty much abandoned it after the chapter on Harding and Coolidge; it felt like the author was getting a little too hung up on wealth as the sole measure of a country's success."

"Well, it is important," said Sam. "Can't have a government squandering the country's resources and still thinking it's doing a good job."

"I'm not saying you can," said Steve. "But the resources aren't the reason for the country. What matters is whether the country's using them to do the things it really exists for – the things the Constitution talks about in its preamble."

"One of which is promoting the general welfare," Sam reminded him.

"Sure," Steve agreed. "All I'm saying is, you can't do that at the expense of justice, domestic tranquility, the common defense, and the blessings of liberty. And the way Paul Johnson talks, I think he'd be tempted to. We've all seen people who think that money can solve all the world's problems by itself; just the other day, I saw someone on a news panel arguing that some politician or other was independently wealthy, so of course he had to be smart and brave and honest and everything we want in a leader."

Sam snorted into his beer. "Yeah, sure," he said. "That's why the name 'Tony Stark' is synonymous everywhere with statesmanly virtue."

"My thoughts exactly," said Steve. "But that's the mindset, you see. Make people rich enough, and they'll just automatically become good citizens. The idea that there might be things important enough to sacrifice a country's prosperity for doesn't seem to…"

He trailed off abruptly, and stared in the direction of the pub door. "Sam, check me on this," he said, gesturing with his own mug. "That's the Vision coming in, right?"

Sam turned. "Yep, looks like him," he said. "Don't know when he got the new duds, but, unless there's someone else walking around with a stop-sign-red face and a crystal in his forehead, that's our Vision all right." He glanced back at Steve. "Any idea what he's doing in London?"

Steve shook his head. "Not an inkling. He didn't know Peggy… and who's that with him?"

Sam looked again. Yes, there did seem to be someone accompanying the Vision, though he hadn't noticed that at first glance – and, now that he had, he could see why not. That short, gray-haired, vaguely fish-faced Englishman was exactly the sort of person one might overlook under any circumstances, and all the more so when he was standing next to a 6'3" crimson android in bright green and yellow vestments.

Before he had a chance to reflect further, the Vision spotted the two of them, and, with every other gaze in the pub following him, approached their corner booth along with his companion. "Good morning, Captain Rogers, Sergeant Wilson," he said. "May we join you? There are certain things we must discuss."

"Sure, fine," said Steve, and he and Sam scooted inward to make room. "Who's your friend?"

"My name is Pond," said the nondescript Englishman, taking the seat next to Sam and leaning his umbrella against the table. (It was, in fact, raining outside, but Sam suspected that this particular man would have had an umbrella with him even if it hadn't been.) "Mr Fury and I have a certain acquaintance with each other, which led to your compatriot looking me up in the course of his enquiries regarding the Sokovia Accords. I gather that Miss Romanoff argued persuasively for some ulterior motive behind the proposal – which is quite reasonable, of course, since it naturally raises suspicions when such weight is given to so ineffectual a measure – and…"

"Whoa, whoa, hang on a minute," said Sam. "I'll agree it's a dumb measure, but how can you call it ineffectual? There's 117 countries that have agreed to support this thing."

"Yes, exactly," said Pond. "If there were only eight countries supporting it – or, indeed, even as many as fifteen – then it might well be formidable. But, as there are 117, of course it must be entirely meaningless."

Sam stared at him for a long moment, and then glanced across the table. "Vision, where did you and Fury find this guy?" he said.

"No, wait, Sam," said Steve, frowning in sudden concentration. "I think I see what he means."

"Of course you do, Captain," said Pond. "It's obvious, isn't it? The Sokovia Accords are a United Nations resolution – and the legislative authority of the United Nations, by its Charter, rests not with the General Assembly to which all member states belong, but to the Security Council composed of a rotating group of fifteen nations. The Assembly vote on Thursday can be no more than a non-binding recommendation to the Council; if it's being treated, even by your Secretary of State, as the major event, that suggests that the forces behind it don't really expect the Accords to pass the Council, but wish to make some sort of capital out of them nonetheless."

The Vision turned to Pond in surprise. "Is that so?" he said. "You didn't mention it when we spoke before."

"Didn't I?" said Pond, blinking vaguely. "My apologies. I suppose I assumed you knew."

Sam leaned back in his seat, and stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Okay, that sounds good," he said, "but does it really work? I mean, if 117 countries are in favor, how likely is it that they can't get a majority of the Security Council?"

"Well," said the Vision, "how many member states are there in the United Nations?"

"Two hundred and one," said Steve promptly. Catching Sam's surprised look, he shrugged and said, "It's the kind of thing I try to stay informed about."

"Then, if we presume that the other 84 are opposed," said the Vision, "the odds of eight of these appearing in a random selection of fifteen would be the sum from 0 to 7 of 84-choose-8 117-choose-n over 201-choose-8-plus-n, or aproximately 41.6457%. A quite respectable minority outcome, in fact."

Pond coughed. "Actually, Mr Vision, it's a good deal more likely than that," he said. "You see, there are five nations that have perpetual seats on the Security Council, and it's with them that the real power rests; by the United Nations Charter, no measure may pass the Council unless all five of these nations vote for it – and they have, between them, more than enough influence to ensure the votes of three other member states in any set of ten." He glanced around the table and added, almost apologetically, "You see, 'the equal rights of nations large and small' sounds very well on paper, but, when it came to making practical arrangements, the Allies were as little inclined as anyone to let power slip from their grasp."

"The Allies?" Steve repeated, with a hint of dawning understanding in his voice.

Pond nodded. "Yes, the five victorious nations at the end of the Second World War," he said. "Of course, one of those five, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, no longer exists, while the existence of another – the Republic of China – is, to put it mildly, a matter of contention. And, indeed," he added dryly, "if the Scottish Nationalists have their way, there may soon cease to be a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as well. But the United Nations understands Article 23 to refer to any hegemonic successors of the nations it names, as well as those nations themselves – so Moscow and Peking retain their permanent seats at the Security Council's table, alongside London, Washington, and one other party whose significance I believe you, Captain, have already spotted."

"Paris," said Steve.

Paris? Sam thought.

"Paris?" said the Vision.

"Paris," Pond agreed. "I gather, Captain, that you were in Paris yourself not long ago, purchasing that daring wardrobe that Miss Maximoff has since made her trademark; you may have got some hint, then, of the enthusiasm that the people of France feel for the Avengers." (Steve smiled quietly, and nodded.) "For whatever reason – and there has been an abundance of learned disquisitions on the phenomenon, I assure you – you have come to symbolise, to the French man in the street, all that is best in the American spirit. No," he added mildly, as a noise of disbelief involuntarily escaped Sam, "that isn't a heresy on their part. The French may have had their quarrels with America, and may despise American tourists as heartily as they do all other foreigners who dare to defile France with their presence – but they still have the immemorial French habit of distilling a thing to its ideal essence, and cherishing that legend even as they scout the reality. And the Avengers," he said, with a small, unconscious bow to the three members of that band before him, "are, if I may say so, as nearly the ideal legendary Americans as even a Frenchman could ask for: the powers of spacemen combined with the independent spirit of cowboys, and all wrapped up in the honour and valour of the paladins of yore."

Sam considered this description, and a slow grin stole across his face. "Spaceman cowboy paladins," he said. "Yeah, I can get with that."

"Quite," said Pond. "And so, you see, trying to break the Avengers to the saddle of international government would be political suicide in France just now. I'm quite certain that Paris has no intention of allowing it – and, without its support, the Accords can never become law."

"So the whole vote on Thursday is… what?" said Steve slowly. "A bluff?"

"Perhaps," said Pond. "Certainly there's a bit of sharp dealing involved, with this whole business of holding the vote in Vienna to discourage the opposed countries from bothering to show up. If they stayed in New York, you know, and the full Assembly voted, 117 countries couldn't even pass a non-binding recommendation to the Council; on a matter of international security, that requires a two-thirds majority. So it's quite possible that the goal is to get the recommendation passed and let the world act as though the law had been made; your Secretary of State, for instance, if I may say so, doesn't strike me as the sort of man who would scruple at that.

"But I doubt that's the real idea," he continued. "Such a bluff would almost certainly be unsustainable for any length of time; there are too many people in the world who know the U.N.'s rules. No, my own theory is that a certain nation is dissatisfied with the Allied monopoly on international power, and is manipulating this process to sow such dissatisfaction broadcast. The idea, I think, is for the Accords to pass the Assembly, for the Security Council to strike them down, and for the world to look at this and say, 'What injustice! Why should something that the world so urgently demands fail to be obtained, just because one passé Western power doesn't approve of it? If that's U.N. law, then down with the U.N.; let us build a new international organisation, which will be genuinely responsive to the concerns of all the world's peoples alike.' And then, with the power of the old Allies broken, this other country will have the field clear to start heaping up international power for herself – perhaps even to create a new global empire."

"Empire?" Sam repeated, startled. "You mean these Accords that everyone's so excited about are a front for some evil mastermind bent on world domination?"

"Well, I shouldn't like to be quoted in the Times," said Pond, "but – yes, I think so."


There was a brief silence, which Sam eventually took it upon himself to break. "So which country is it, then?" he said. "I think we kind of missed most of this debate; the only head of state I know who's been moving and shaking in this business is that king in Wakanda."

"Ah, yes, Wakanda," said Pond. "Tell me, Sergeant, what do you know of Wakanda?"

Sam shrugged. "Not much," he admitted.

"Well, you're hardly alone," said Pond. "Few people do know much about Wakanda, even among her nearest neighbours. From time immemorial, she's stood apart from the rest of the Bantu world, wrapping central Lake Turkana and the surrounding countryside in a veil of impenetrable obscurity. Even my ancestors couldn't break her silence when we entered Africa; under the leadership of their sacred warrior chief, the Black Panther, the Wakandans fought the English colonial armies to a standstill – and, since the place was mostly just scrubland and desert anyway, we never bothered with a second foray, but left them to the privacy they so ardently desired." He chuckled, and added whimsically, "The big-game hunters, you know, always did say that the leopard was the greatest challenge of the Big Five."

Sam, whose interest in big-game hunting was tepid at best, had no idea what that meant, but he let it slide. Pond's main line of thought, the implications of which were just beginning to dawn on him, seemed at that moment to be far more interesting.

"But," Pond continued, "there are rumours – nothing concrete or definitive, but having the ring of authenticity about them – that there was, and is, much more to the Land of the Leopard-Folk than a taste for solitude and a totemistic Commander-in-Chief. Some go so far as to say that Wakanda is the last surviving remnant of the ancient Egyptian culture – that, sometime during the Eighteenth Dynasty, a Wakandan slave in Meroe escaped and returned to his homeland, and that the memories he brought with him of Egyptian craft, learning, and religion were mingled with the local traditions and resources to produce a civilisation unlike any other, and dramatically in advance of those about it. Eldorado, Lemuria, Atlantis – the comparisons get a bit overwrought at times, but they can all be distilled to one indisputably sensible reflection: that a people possessed of the wisdom of old Egypt, Earth's sole deposit of native vibranium, and some three thousand years of isolation to develop them both, may be expected, in the natural course of things, to grow into a mighty and formidable nation indeed."

At any other moment, Sam would have been awed by such a concept; in this context, though, its implications were ominous enough to make him shudder. "So you think it's them behind all this?" he said. "They've been biding their time all these centuries, and now they've finally come out to make their move – to make this King T'Chaka of theirs into some kind of global super-pharaoh?"

To his straightforward mind, this notion seemed quite plausible; he was rather startled when Pond blinked in apparent surprise. "The Wakandans?" he said. "Oh, good heavens, no. The Wakandans couldn't possibly be the conspirators you're after; they're far too mysterious and secretive to be any good at that."

Sam took a moment to process this sentence, and then shot an aggrieved look across the table at Steve and the Vision. "He's doing it again," he complained.

"Doing what?" said Pond, sounding honestly bewildered.

"I believe what Sergeant Wilson means," said the Vision, with a hint of amusement in his voice, "is that, to simple souls such as we, being mysterious and secretive appears to be an advantage to a conspirator, not a handicap."

"Oh, in that sense, of course," said Pond. "But only if that which you're conspiring against isn't likewise a mystery to you. Wakanda's traditional isolationism cuts both ways; if it's kept the world from knowing much about Wakanda, it's also kept Wakanda from knowing much about the world. And the party you're looking for – the one who has so deftly manipulated the climate of world opinion to bring about the present crisis – must surely know a very great deal about the world."

Steve nodded. "Fair enough," he said. "So it's not Wakanda, then."

"Well, that depends on what you mean," said Pond. "For my own part, I suspect that Wakanda does play an important role – not as a conspirator, but as… er… well, for lack of a better term, a cat's-paw. That is, I think Miss Romanoff was right that the Wakandan delegation in Lagos was not killed by accident; I daresay that the real conspirator finds it quite advantageous to have a small African nation presented to the world as the victim of an injustice that must be rectified. So many people, who might otherwise be indifferent or even sympathetic to the Avengers, can be reliably galvanised into wild fervour under the influence of that stimulus."

"What stimulus?" said Steve, with a frown.

"White guilt," said Sam promptly, and chuckled at his friend's quizzical expression. "You've got to finish Modern Times, Cap."

Pond shrugged. "Call it what you will," he said. "All I say is that your foe can count on much more sympathy as the champion of a wronged Wakanda than he could expect to have otherwise, and I'm sure he knows it. Indeed, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that he's been feeding T'Chaka talking points through appropriately discreet diplomatic channels – and T'Chaka, in his geopolitical innocence, may not even be aware of it."

The Vision glanced at him. "You keep speaking of 'our foe' and 'the conspirator', Mr. Pond," he said, "but I sense that you have a specific suspect in mind. Is it only the fear of indiscretion that keeps you from naming him? I could use the Mind Stone to keep us from being overheard…"

Pond shook his head. "No, it's not my place to bandy unproved accusations," he said. "I have my notions, of course, but they're based on quite obvious and common facts. There's the Assembly location, I mean, and Mr Rumlow's former affiliations – trivialities, of course, in themselves, but when you add in Wakanda, which is so proudly independent of Western influence and of which fully a third is called Rudolf, it does rather suggest…"

Then he paused abruptly, and reached into his pocket and withdrew a small, black, vibrating device that vaguely resembled a cell phone. He pressed a button on it, frowned at it for a moment, and then arched an eyebrow. "Oh, dear," he murmured. "I'm terribly sorry, gentlemen, but I'm afraid I'll have to beg off unexpectedly. Mr Vision, you and your colleagues will see to that other matter, won't you?"

"Of course, sir," said the Vision.

"Fine," said Pond, and rose. "Good day, then, Sergeant; good day, Captain – and, incidentally, may I extend my condolences on your loss. I knew Peggy Carter slightly – one did, in my line of work – and I don't believe I've ever met a finer woman."

"Thank you, Mr. Pond," said Steve softly.

Pond nodded, and left the table – heading, oddly, not for the door, but toward the restrooms. The Vision gazed after him quizzically, and then turned to the others. "Now, why do you suppose he did that?"

"Probably he didn't want to be noticed when he left," said Steve. "A man leaving from our table attracts attention; a man leaving from the bathroom doesn't, so much. That's probably why he left his umbrella, too." He poked it with his finger. "Lucky for him the rain's eased up, isn't it, Sam?"

"Sure, sure," Sam muttered. The truth was, he'd barely noticed Pond's latest eccentricity, having been thoroughly distracted by the last but one. So Wakanda stood proudly apart from the culture of Europe, and, moreover, every third person there was named Rudolf. Yes, very suggestive indeed. Sam wondered briefly whether Pond stuck in these things to make sure others were listening, or whether it was just some kind of fit that came over him from time to time. Both, maybe.

He shrugged, and forced his mind into another channel. "So what was that other matter he was talking about, Vis?"

"Oh, yes, that," said the Vision. "As you may have gathered, I called upon Mr. Pond last evening and told him of Agent Romanoff's theory about the Accords. Finding him receptive, we discussed various possible measures that might be taken in response, the most immediately practical of which was that we – the Avengers, that is – would be well advised to send a delegate of our own to the meeting in Vienna. Such a person could observe the delegates, and note if any of them betrayed signs of collusion; moreover, if the occasion arose, he could present our own position to the Assembly."

Steve frowned. "Do we have a single position, though?" he said. "The way Rhodey was talking when I left yesterday, it didn't sound like he was anywhere near ready to accept Nat's theory yet."

"No, he hasn't," the Vision conceded. "Nor has Mr. Stark. But I think they would both accept evidence if it were presented to them – which makes it all the more desirable to have someone on the spot keeping his eyes open. And, in any case, it would be a gracious gesture."

"Fair enough," said Steve. "So who do we send? Not Wanda, obviously; that's just asking for trouble…"

"Not Stark or Rhodey, either," Sam added. "Can't trust them to notice evidence for something they'd rather not believe." And who can blame them? he added mentally. I'm not exactly thrilled with the prospect of a world-hungry mastermind manipulating us, either.

"No," Steve agreed. "And, conversely, it can't be Nat or me; even if we found something, Tony and Rhodey would dismiss it as confirmation-biased. And the same goes for you, Sam; the way Tony's always thought of you as my sidekick, he'd never believe you were impartial."

"Which logic ought to rule me out, as well," said the Vision quietly, "since I truly am Mr. Stark's sidekick – or, at least, an evolution thereof."

Steve took a deep breath. "Right," he said. "So all the currently active Avengers are disqualified. What about Clint? Could we dig him out of retirement to do this job?"

"I should hardly advise sending Agent Barton on a diplomatic mission," said the Vision dryly. "Quite frankly, the ideal candidate would be Prince Thor: a truly independent Avenger, accustomed to associating with dignitaries, whose mere presence would serve to emphasize both the reason for the Avengers' existence and the presumption of a human organization trying to dictate terms to Asgardians. It's a great shame that we can't reach him at the moment."

As Sam silently agreed, a sudden inspiration blazed into his mind. "Well," he said, "we can get the next best thing."

Steve's eyebrows lifted, and Sam saw the idea clicking behind his eyes. "Oh," he said. "You mean… yeah. Yeah, we could do that. Of course, she's not really an Avenger, but…"

"But the symbolic effect's good enough," said Sam. "And she's neutral, like the Vision said about Thor, and internationally respected to boot. Plus, if you're looking for someone to collect evidence for something, why not get a world-class scientist?"

"Logical," the Vision agreed. "Shall I convey the invitation to her, then?"

"Might as well," said Steve, pulling out a phone and punching speed-dial 1. "Just as soon as I've confirmed it with… oh, hey, that you, Tony? Good. There's a proposal we'd like to bounce off you…"