Chapter Eleven: An Old Friend
December 16, 1991
Howard snarled as ACCESS DENIED : DECRYPTION FAILED popped up on his screen again. He was right damn tired of seeing that message. His fingers darted over the keyboard again and again the same message. He'd tried every high-security password he'd ever had; run every decryption program known to man. Nothing but that stupid error message. In frustration he ejected the CD and tossed it on his desk.
"Start small, Howard," he muttered to himself, slotting the floppy disk into the computer. Whatever had copied onto there had been a much smaller file—which meant less sophisticated encryption. And possibly useless information.
The hard drive hummed and buzzed for a long time; the decryption program gnawing away at the information. Just when he'd begun to expect the error message, his screen filled with files—decrypted and open.
"About time." He'd been ready to call Tony down from whatever he was up to in the lab. He still might have to for the CD, despite his reticence to involve his son in whatever this was. For now, at least, he could hold off.
Each file was numbered and labelled and in alphabetical order. He started recognizing names. Von Braun, Gehlen, Strughold, Zola. They were personnel files; all scientists and all from Operation: Paperclip. He narrowed his eyes and double-clicked on Von Braun's file. The document was nothing special; no different from the hard copy that Howard had looked at a million times. Name, SHIELD number, address, education, work history, psychiatric reports, medical records... Howard paused at the end of the document. There was a note that wasn't on his copy. Or any copy he'd seen, for that matter.
Don't bother trying to recruit this one. He's gone native. The cause would be lost on him.
The note was typewritten, so he couldn't discern whose words they were, but he scowled at it for a long time nonetheless. He opened other files and found similar notes; some warned against attempted recruitment, some reported success. Some were followed by lists of other names—men and women recruited to SHIELD by the men whose file they were tacked onto. Strughold's was lengthy. Zola's was even longer. They were all date-stamped. The earliest—starting in 1947—were all German names, but by the sixties most were American. Howard couldn't shake the feeling that some of the earliest names sounded familiar—like he'd read them before.
"Of course you have. They worked for you."
There was something else going on. There had to be. That was why he'd copied this stuff, after all. A twisting, gripping dread had settled in his stomach. A voice in the back of his mind was telling him to close the file, eject the floppy, and forget he ever saw this. The rest of him was determined to dredge up the entirety of the proverbial iceberg, no matter what he found lurking there.
He opened another window, pulling up his own stored copy of SHIELD's personnel files. He scrolled down to the first name on Zola's list. Heinz Ackermann; radar technician, communications officer for SHIELD... former HYDRA operative captured in 1945. Howard swallowed. The next name on the list was Matthias Dressler; engineer, one of the designers who worked on the first Quinjets... former HYDRA operative captured in 1945. Then Friedrich Ingersleben; neurosurgeon. Then Jan Hofer; psychiatrist. The Groß, Eberhardt, Kassmeyer, Schwenke, Oberst... all covert operatives. Every single one of them was a former HYDRA agent.
Howard ejected the floppy, tucking it into his briefcase and looking again at the CD. His dread was now a boiling nausea. Again he had the urge to toss both disks away and forget about all of it—to blast it out of his mind with whiskey and tequila. But SHIELD was his baby. He'd stood in front of Senate committees, lost nights interrogating moles, argued, charmed, and bribed his way out of a thousand shitstorms to make her what she was now. Just because he was retired didn't mean he was going to sit back and watch her rot.
He stuck the CD back into the drive and waited for the computer to register. When the window appeared, asking for a password, Howard took a deep breath.
"I'll sleep a lot better if this doesn't work."
Slowly, deliberately, he poked caps-lock and typed HAILHYDRA into the box. There was no way it would work. HYDRA was dead, defunct. It had fallen the day Johann Schmidt died. The SSR had shattered that beast forty-six years ago. Whatever Zola's cause was, it had to be something else.
The computer stopped humming and a new message box flashed up on the screen. ACCESS GRANTED : DECRYPTION COMPLETE.
Howard stopped breathing. A window opened, displaying dozens upon dozens of files; operational records, budgets, codenames, security protocols, transaction records, maps, architectural plans, more personnel files, blueprints for something called Project: Insight. Decades of material lay open to him like a lanced boil and he had no idea where to start. Heart in his throat, he clicked on the folder titled WS-MedRec.
Half of the contacts were reports from neurologists—brain scarring, voltages, effect duration, suggestibility, recovery times. It read like the worst kind of exploitation horror. Those voltages should have been fatal. Other files were short essays from some of SHIELD's medical staff on drug effectiveness; everything from LSD to Benzodiazepine. One of the oldest reports was actually signed by Dr. Johann Fennhoff. Howard swallowed a wave of nausea.
Amidst all the typewritten documents, a blueprint caught his eye and sent a stab of horror through his chest. It was an arm—a prosthetic. A core of carbon nanotubes with titanium alloy rods and heavy-duty servos. Complex electronics wove among the tubes, connecting to nerves where the shoulder was anchored to the body. An outside layer of interlocking vibranium plates made it almost invulnerable. The only weak spot Howard could find was at the elbow when the arm was bent. Even then, it would take another vibranium implement to take advantage of it.
He recognized some of his own work in it—work he'd shared with Zola while they'd cooperated to stop a Zodiac cell. Some of Vanko's work was in it too. But it wasn't just his own inventions that Howard recognized. It was the arm itself. He'd seen it a dozen times in a dozen grainy pictures from a dozen unsolved assassinations. In 1963 he'd thought it was a gauntlet. In 1973 he'd thought the same. And in 1978, and in 1985, and in 1989. He'd seen that arm in Dallas, in Chechnya, in Afghanistan, in East Germany. The Intelligence Community had adopted the Soviet's name for him. The Winter Soldier. To most he was an urban legend. A bogeyman.
"Jesus Christ... Right under my goddamn nose."
He didn't hear the door to his office open, or the soft chuckle.
"What's under your nose? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Howard jolted, banging his knees on the underside of the desk and almost reaching for the handgun in his top drawer. In the doorway, Maria hadn't missed the near grab, and that, combined with Howard's deer-in-the-headlights look, put a frown on her face.
"What's wrong?"
Howard ejected the CD and shoved it into his briefcase alongside the floppy. "SHIELD's compromised..." God, what was he going to do? How far did it go? Who could he trust? How the hell had this slipped past his radar—past Peggy's—for all those years? "I... I have to fix this... I have to..."
Maria was looking at him like he'd grown a second head. "What do you mean, SHIELD's compromised? What's going on?"
Howard was on his feet, stuffing more papers in with the disks. A moment's pause and he jammed his gun in there too.
"Howard?"
"Hang on!" He snagged the phone off its receiver and dialled. He knew who he needed to call. He knew who he could trust with this. Adrenaline was thrumming in every vein. Every ring of the phone seemed an eternity. His knuckles were white where he held the phone to his ear. He couldn't even tell whether it was fear or outrage. Both. Probably both. The sound of the phone connecting on the other end was a profound relief.
"Director Pierce."
Pierce's voice was so calm that Howard had to stop himself from jumping down his throat.
"Director, this is Howard Stark... We need to talk. It's urgent."
"Mr. Stark, it's been a while. What can I do for you?"
Howard paced the office, Maria's green eyes following him back and forth. "I need to see you in person, Alex. We've got a problem. Secure lines aren't going to cut it."
"I was about to head home for the night. I can pencil you in for first thing tomorrow—"
"I'm not kidding around here. This is Cuban Missile Crisis urgent. I'm coming down there—"
"Jesus, Howard, slow down. Talk to me."
"We're compromised... SHIELD's compromised... HY—"
Alex cut him off with a curt clearing of his throat. There was a second or two of silence and Howard knew he'd got the Director's attention. Thankfully Alex had had the good sense to stop him from blurting the whole thing.
"Rats in the hold?" Pierce asked.
Howard paused momentarily, then cottoned on to the hastily-constructed code. "The hold, the galley, the officer's mess... You name it. We've got a full-blown infestation."
The Director's voice sounded cautious and thoughtful when he spoke again. "All right. I'll be in my office. Come straight up when you get here."
"Thank you, Director." Howard nodded to Maria and darted back to his desk. "I'm on my way."
"You're coming up from the Long Island house, right?"
"Don't worry about it."
"All right, Stark. Whatever you say. I'll have security on high alert."
"Good call. See you in a couple of hours." He hung up and met Maria's eyes.
"Feel like explaining?" she asked, arching an eyebrow.
Howard gathered up his briefcase. "I'll tell you in the car."
"The car?" Maria asked, incredulous. "You're going to drive all the way to the Triskelion? It's a long way to Washington, you know? Unless you finally got Lola working."
Howard looked about as frazzled as he felt. "I don't have time to call the airstrip—"
"But you have time to drive to another state?" Maria sighed. "You go get the car ready; I'll call ahead and have them fuel Bluebird."
"Make it Pegasus." Bluebird was fast, but Howard knew Pegasus could manoeuvre better. The refurbished Hurricane still had something of the old fighter in her. Maria gave him an odd look but hovered off to make the call nevertheless.
~8~8~8~8~8~8~
The winding road that led from Howard's mansion down toward Brooklyn was icy and edged by high snow banks. They'd had a decent blizzard a week ago and it hadn't warmed enough to melt anything. They were treacherous conditions, and every weatherman on the East Coast had been telling people to drive carefully. Evidently Howard didn't watch the news.
Of course, with what he'd just told her, Maria didn't blame him for being in a hurry. Finding out that an enemy you'd thought dead and gone had endured the last fifty years as a parasite in an organization you built was enough to get anyone in a flap. She felt sick, herself. How many of her fellow agents—men and women she had worked with for years, trusted her life to—how many of them were HYDRA? Still...
"It'd be nice to arrive in one piece."
Howard frowned, screaming around a tight corner. "I can't afford to waste time. The entire goddamn STRIKE team is HYDRA—Harrison, Sanchez, Millhouse, Breslov; even the rookies like Rumlow. If they get wind of this before I get there..." He didn't need to finish the sentence. They'd seen the STRIKE boys in action. They'd have no trouble arranging an unexpected accident for the Director, and even the Pegasus wouldn't be able to outmanoeuvre a Quinjet.
Maria shivered. This could easily get ugly. It was hard to know who to trust when even the most loyal of men were HYDRA sleeper agents. They rounded another corner and this time there was a loud bang. For a split second Maria thought they'd hit something. Then Howard swore and the car started to slide. Another bang and the world blurred.
The Aston Martin flipped and rolled over the frozen asphalt, side mirrors and driver's side windows smashing. Metal screamed, spitting sparks as the car skidded along on its back. The car spun several times, chassis groaning, before coming to rest with a whump, the trunk buried in a snow bank.
For a moment the world was eerily silent. The only sounds were Maria's own harsh breaths and the background drone of the still-running engine. They were upside-down, cold air rushing in the broken windows. She looked to her left.
"Howard?"
~8~8~8~8~8~8~
The car was steaming slightly when it came to a rest, but there were no flames and no smoke. He would have to confirm the kill. The Soldier rose from his crouch, returning his sniper rifle to the magnetic holster on his back and unslinging the M4A1, flicking it to single-shot setting. The cold and wind were nothing to him as he trudged down the hillside. The car wreck was blocked from view by a copse of trees for twenty seconds or so, but the Soldier was not concerned. The only complication he'd faced on this mission was a fogged-up mask, which he'd removed. He would report the malfunction upon returning to base.
He crossed the icy road. The primary target was still in the car, just regaining consciousness. The secondary target was missing but tracks led from the broken window into the woods. She would be easy to follow in the snow.
~8~8~8~8~8~8~8~
Howard blinked, groaned, and tried to move. His head was pounding and it took him a second to realize he was upside-down. Broken glass littered the roof. The seatbelt was digging into his shoulder and waist—the only thing keeping him where he was. He could smell hot oil.
"Shit," he mumbled, fumbling for the release on his seatbelt. Maria was gone. The realization took a moment to sink in. Then he noticed his open briefcase. She'd taken the disks and the gun. She prioritized... Took the intel and ran... What the hell is she running from? Movement caught in the corner of his eye and he froze. He had to blink and squint to focus the dark shape moving across the road. When he did, his heart jumped into his throat.
Black leather, dark hair, a metal arm... The Winter Soldier.
Every instinct told him to fight. He wanted to reach for the gun in the glove compartment. He wanted to unload a clip into the bastard's chest and finally find out who he'd been hunting all these years. He wanted to live, wanted to blow the lid off of all of HYDRA's hidey-holes. But there was nothing he could do and that was the horror of it. The Soldier was a legend for a reason. When he came for you there was no escape.
He moved like a panther; smooth and sinewy and focused. The black leather he was encased in reinforced the image. As always, everything he wore was black: his gloves, his pants, his harnesses, his holsters and belts, his heavy combat boots and his one-sleeve combat jacket. The only colour on him was the bright, crimson star painted on the shoulder of his metal prosthesis. Howard wondered if HYDRA had set out to make him look as menacing as possible or if it had been sheer chance. Whatever it was, between the suit, the arm, the blood red star and the long hair, the Soldier was intimidating.
This time, though, his insect-like mask was gone. For whatever reason, his face was bare. Howard's morbid curiosity briefly overwhelmed his fear and he craned his aching neck to get a better view as the Soldier approached.
The blank, emotionless expression on his face made him seem even more robotic than he otherwise would have, but it wasn't the most horrific thing about his face. It wasn't what turned Howard's blood to ice and sent his stomach spinning. It wasn't what turned him numb even as a thrumming ache settled behind his collarbone. He knew that face; would have known it anywhere. He knew that sharp jaw line, those bow lips, that cleft chin, those deep-set blue eyes. He'd spent the last forty years searching for that face.
"Bucky?"
The Soldier paused, cocking his head to one side like a curious dog. There was no sign of recognition—either of the name or the man who'd spoken it. Howard just stared. It had been four decades. He was an old man now, but Bucky hadn't aged a day. His hair was the only sign that time had touched him at all.
The emptiness in that face made Howard want to cry. He looked like someone had shoved a fishhook down his gullet and ripped out his soul. Christ, what did they have to do to you to leave you like this? He couldn't—didn't want to—imagine what sort of horrific tortures that must have been visited upon him to make him into this empty, broken thing.
"Bucky... Jesus, Bucky, we thought you were dead."
Bucky frowned, but his eyes remained blank. He raised his assault rifle and took aim. Panic settled in Howard's chest.
"Hey, come on pal. You know me."
Whatever momentary confusion had made Bucky pause evaporated. He narrowed his eyes.
"Nyet."
~8~8~8~8~8~8~
The roar of a gunshot bounced off the hills and crackled through the trees. Maria flinched, her breath leaving her like she'd been kicked in the chest. She couldn't go back, but she didn't need to be there to know that Howard was dead. Her eyes stung, her vision blurring, but she ploughed on through the snow. She wanted to curl into a little ball and cry; wanted to crawl back to the car and hold Howard's body until SHIELD arrived. But she knew that the disks in her hand were more important that her grief. The information they held had to reach Pierce, and...
There were only two people Howard had told about the infiltration. She hadn't been the one to call in HYDRA's attack dog, which meant... God, which meant that Alexander Pierce was HYDRA. Maria's blood ran cold. You fucking bastard! You goddamn slimy bastard!
Nick Fury. She could take this to Fury. Sure, he was Pierce's friend, but there was no way he was part of this. She trusted Fury like she trusted no one else.
She ran her hand over her forehead and it came away bloody. She needed a phone, a computer, hell, even a pager would do. She could rewire it to send Morse code. She knew of three safehouses in the area but she was bleeding badly and was far from dressed for a hike in the snow. Especially not with pursuit.
It was too quiet. God, this was why they called him a ghost. Maria tried to put as many trees between her and the road as she possibly could, but there was nothing she could do about her trail. She couldn't hide, so she had to run. How many others have been here; running like a lamb from a wolf?
Her ears registered the bang a second before the pain reached her. She was on her knees in the snow before she knew what had happened. Years of honed instincts had her scrambling around behind a thick pine trunk while she was still numb. She'd been shot before and she was prepared for the all-consuming fire that arced through her chest, shoulder, and down her arms. She looked down at her torso; blood was soaking into the silk of her blouse. It was hard to breathe and when she tried, blood frothed in the wound. She dropped her head back against the frosty bark. There was still no sound of pursuit, but that didn't mean anything. She knew there was only one way she was getting out of these trees.
She reached into her jacket pocket and withdrew her 9mm, cocking it as quietly as she could. The weight of it in her hand was small comfort. How many of his victims had they found with guns in their hands?
A soft, mechanical whir sounded behind her. She rolled around the tree and fired the entire clip at the dark shape standing there, knee-deep in snow. Christ, he got this close and I didn't hear a thing... One bullet found its mark. Blood spattered on the snow and the Soldier grunted, but he didn't even stagger. The metal hand shot out with alarming speed and tore the gun from her grip. She tried to stand, but dark blood gushed from her chest and her legs turned to Jell-O. The Soldier moved forward and Maria shut her eyes.
Damn you, Pierce...
~8~8~8~8~8~8~8~
May 2, 2012
Somewhere in the back of Steve's mind, even as he'd been plummeting toward the ice, the Valkyrie's engines screaming around him, he'd held out hope that he might survive. He was a super-soldier, right? This wasn't what he'd pictured.
Waking up sixty-seven years in the future had been disorienting enough. Skyscrapers as far as the eye could see, cars that looked like spaceships, glaring billboards, stereos roaring with music that bared no resemblance to any music that he'd ever heard... It had taken him a few days to stop feeling dizzy. Well, he still felt dizzy, but New York was still New York, cars were still cars. The billboards might have had a lot more naked people than they would have in his day, but they were still advertisements. And most of that new music wasn't half bad once you got used to it. He still preferred to listen to the old records, though. It wasn't that he thought they were better, just that it reminded him that he was still in the same universe.
What he hadn't been prepared for was waking up in a world where his friends were long since dead. Fury had told him early on that Peggy was the only one still living, but it hadn't felt real until he'd started sifting through the pile of folders stamped 'deceased'.
Colonel—no, General Phillips had passed in 1967. He'd been buried in Arlington, not far from Steve's own empty grave. Jacques and Howard had both gone in 1991—Jacques in his sleep, Howard behind the wheel of his Aston Martin when it flipped on icy roads. His wife had been in the car but by some stroke of luck his son had stayed home. He wondered if Tony was anything like his father.
Monty had gone in 1998—a stroke. His two kids were still around. Jacqueline was working for MI6 and Brian was retired SHIELD special service. He thought about visiting but he didn't have the first clue what he'd say if he did.
Heart attacks had claimed Jim and Gabe—Gabe in 1989 and Jim in 2000. They both had kids. Steve had been surprised to find out that Gabe had ended up marrying Peggy. It made him all the more hesitant to visit. They'd all moved on with their lives—found each other, had kids, grandkids. It didn't seem right to waltz back in like nothing had happened. It was why he'd put the phone down every time he'd gone to call her. She'd be in her nineties by now; on the tail end of a long, successful, happy life. What was he supposed to say? Surprise, I'm not dead?
Dugan's file listed him as KIA and Steve had to double-check the date, because there was no way the Army would have put a General in his eighties in the field... Steve winced. Right. September 11th, Pentagon. I guess that adds up.
On the bottom of the stack was the file he'd been dreading reading. Barnes, James Buchanan. SHIELD Director, Field Agent. Despite himself, Steve smiled. Director of SHIELD. Well wasn't that something?
"Good on you, Buck."
Part of him wanted to put the file away and forget about it. Did he really need to know how his best friend died? The best friend he'd been in love with since they were teenagers? The best friend who'd loved him back and who he'd never had a proper chance with? Part of him just didn't want to find out, but he knew that if he didn't read it his mind would spend days concocting all manner of scenarios, each worse than the last.
Another KIA stamp greeted him when he opened the manila folder. Steve swallowed and checked the date. Lost outside Lodeynoye Pole, USSR. December 19, 1951. It felt like a kick in the teeth. Six years? That was it?
The details were all there—the mission specs, the intel, the building being laced with demolition charges, Bucky losing his arm... To think that was all they found of him. Steve almost shut the folder. It was too much. As it was, he had to get up to wash the tears off his face.
He paced the apartment, feeling the weight of the intervening years more acutely than he had the day he'd woken up. He wanted to go after him, track him down, ride to the rescue, but he was sixty-one years too late. The pacing became a walk; down the street, past the tenement they'd lived in together, past Bucky's church, then Steve's, and onto the Brooklyn Bridge. He stood there, elbows on the railing, for half an hour. He could remember loitering here for ages with Bucky, watching the ships come in. Bucky had smoked his last cigarette up here when he'd decided to quit. They'd stood up here the day after Steve's mother's funeral, when he'd agreed to move in with Bucky.
He was crying again when he got back to his apartment. It was hard to go back to the file, but he forced himself to sit down and finish reading. There were years' worth of reports covering the search for Bucky. There were memos from MI6, Mossad, the CIA; a curt missive from the White House in 1963 closing the case on him.
Steve hung his head. This wasn't how it was supposed to end. I should have been there. Damn it, I should have been there. He set the last memo aside. Underneath it was a handwritten note.
I know you're probably feeling miserable right about now, Captain. So do me a favor and keep reading. The rest of this file covers all the things Bucky got up to while he was still alive. I think you'll be proud of the man he became. Trust me.
-N. Fury
He sighed, setting down the note and glancing around at the corners of his apartment. He never could tell if Nick had everyone bugged, was really good at reading people, or whether he actually could read minds. Regardless, Nick had him pegged. He was miserable.
He considered the remaining papers. The topmost page was a copy of Bucky's discharge papers—Section VIII, blue discharge. This was supposed to make him feel better? He made a face, but reached for the papers anyway.
"All right, Buck. What did I miss?"
