Several hundred miles away, deep in a Soviet bunker
"You know, Ivanov, someday this 'bringing people back from the dead' business is going to bite us in the behind."
"Klein was never dead. The gas pulled him into a coma, that's all. And we pulled him out."
"Yeah," said the KGB bagman, "and why did we do that, again?"
Nikolai Ivanov was not a small man; he loomed over the bagman, and hunched shoulder and hooked nose, and storms brewed behind his eyes. "Mimi," he said. "And where Mimi goes, it seems, the Winter Soldier will follow."
"So? I thought that was part of his plan."
"It wasn't part of mine." Ivanov strode forward, pulling off his leather glove as he did, and used it to smack the sleeping Klein around the face. "Wake up, you little Nazi shit. We know you're listening."
Emil's eyes snapped open so fast it was almost unsettling. They were so bloodshot there was not a jot of white in them, but the poison had not killed any of their sharpness. He breathed in with a horrible, rattling noise, and gave them a rotting smile. "So," he rasped, "the Cold's most fearsome weapon is not a weapon. I guessed as much."
Ivanov reached behind him with his foot, hooked a stool and dragged it to the Nazi's bedside. "We know you've got a secret," he said calmly, taking off the other glove and tucking them into his breast pocket. "We know Agron knows it, but he's too embarrassed to tell us. There's not a lot of people who can humiliate a Vor. The Winter Soldier is one of them. Mimi Ivanovna is another. I gather you were also on the receiving end of their… antics."
"The couple wearing skulls, I assume you mean. They killed our honeytraps and slunk in under their names. I knew, of course. But it was fun to watch them dance. You think they did this to me? They don't have the balls. This was the Americans."
"Why?"
"We had something they wanted. You would want it too, if you knew what it was. Now they've got the treasure map, and I'm guessing your slut daughter has the key."
Oh, dear, thought the bagman, expecting Ivanov to kill Klein for a comment like that. But the Soviet ambassador just… smiled. Smiled and laughed. Somehow, that was scarier.
"You sent the Winter Soldier to be a nursemaid for your little girl," said Klein in that horrible, skin-crawling voice. "Didn't you? You're a fool. You should have sent her to be one of the Sparrows; one of the Widows. But instead you let her run off into the West, and now she has to power to kill this filthy new world. You -"
"So that's your secret," said Ivanov, and Klein's grisly façade seemed to flicker for a moment. "A weapon to kill the world with. Germans – you just don't know how to lose, do you?" He stood up, and the bagman drew himself to attention. "They're headed for the Doomsday Device."
The bagman's eyes widened as his heart dropped to the cold, hard ground. "I thought that was a myth," he said. "The White Storm's bluff."
"It's no bluff," said Ivanov, reaching into his breast pocket for his gloves. "Designed by Nazi abdicators that would later become part of Operation Paperclip, built by the Russians, and kept by Churchill and his dogs. Only one of the original inventors knew the key, and he was supposed to have put a bullet in his head ten years ago. I suppose that the Storm did it for him. We couldn't let the Americans know, but there were always whispers." The leather creaked softly as he pulled it snug around his fingers. "To them it was about as real as the Winter Soldier. Thank you for your cooperation, Mr Klein." He reached back into his pocket, and pulled out a gun. "You've been very helpful."
Bang.
Blood ran along the railings of the hospital bed and began to drip onto the floor. "Clean that up," Ivanov ordered the bagman, "you see, there's no problem in raising someone from the dead if you drop them back down when you're done with them. And sort me out transportation to London. We should get there before the Yanks do, at least."
"Yes, sir," said the bagman, "but your daughter -"
"My daughter," said Ivanov, and grimaced. "You leave my daughter to me."
"But if she's compromised the asset… Nikolai, they'll kill her. Apart from thebeast itself, nothing's sacred to them."
"And apart from her, nothing's sacred to me, you understand?! I will rip Hydra out of the Soviet States with my bare fucking hands before they lay a finger on my daughter and nobody, not the KGB nor the Kremlin nor President fucking Breshnev himself will do anything, anything to stop me! Do you understand me?!"
The bagman yelped something along the lines of "yes sir, of course sir, three bags full sir," and hoped desperately that he had not pissed himself.
"Good. Mimi Ivanovna will not be harmed, you hear me? She's got the key to the Doomsday Device, which makes her invaluable, and more importantly… she is my child. I'll shoot the metal-armed son of a bitch myself before they get to her. Now," he added, "get me to London."