Edward Pleasure had been a journalist over 30 years, twenty of those as a freelance, following one scoop after another; but for the last eight years he had been doggedly following the scant trail of clues left by the disappearance of foster son Alex. That broken young man had disappeared, but in the last two months fall of SHIELD had exposed HYDRA's operations and had finally given him concrete proof that Alex had been kidnapped, tortured and brainwashed in 2005, all with the aim to produce the perfect remorseless killer. There was the slim possibility, that Alex was still a prisoner, only that hope was wearing thin. All leads to the named technicians had shown they were long gone and the bases detailed in the files had recently been destroyed. For two months, the reporter had been following a trail of blood and destruction across the Balkans, filing stories along the way to keep his hand in rather than any drive to write. Then no attacks or any new leads for the last two weeks. Maybe his ex-wife had been right all along. In 2006, Liz had started the legal process of declaring Alexander Rider dead. His refusal to cooperate, to see reason in her eyes, had resulted in her kicking him out.
He was sat around in the same hotel he's occupied while covering the Serb side of the Balkans war. Only now it was like he was a holiday rather than actual work. Sitting on his arse with no leads, no witnesses and the fact anyone remotely affiliated to HYDRA had either disappeared or was denying all knowledge of the missing English boy. He had heard the rumours from contacts in Russian Federal Security Services that the HYDRA's top assassin, the infamous Winter Soldier, had gone rogue after Washington and was now cleaning house with ruthless efficiency. Rather than sit and do nothing, he revisited his sources and then uncovered the Rider family history in those files.
At the point of going stir crazy, Edward started looking up every old contact he knew in the city. So, this evening the journalist was sat in a back street bar in Zagreb, waiting to catch up with Pavel Grozhni, to a former assistant of Zeljan Kurst, the former head of the Yugoslavian Secret Police then chairman of SCORPIA. That criminal organisation had recently been outed as being part of HYDRA.
Edward had drunk three cups of strong black coffee and could not stomach another, so ordered a beer to nurse as his contact was over an hour late. Really, he should go back to London, apologise profusely to Liz and start to mourn Alex properly. Only he would always feel guilty over his misguided parenting when he just let Alex walk out the family home in 2005 and then for trusting Tulip Jones to protect him, when the eighteen year old had returned to London. He knows that Alex was eighteen, ready to start university and that he is being maudlin over decisions he would always have made, considering how could you plan for HYDRA's interest in a washed up teen spy. He rubbed his aching leg, which throbbed from overused. The physical discomfort a daily reminder of all he owed Alex. The atmosphere in the bar stilled and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He slowly looked around to the bar and suddenly stopped breathing. Now he was hallucinating, stood by the bar was Alex. Looking like the same teenager that had left San Francisco in 2005. Tall, lean but with longer hair and looking like he had not slept in days. In shock, he took in a deep breath as the young man was walking up to him.
A bottle of Jack Daniels was placed on the table with two glasses. A familiar deep voice with a slight London accent spoke softly, "You look like you could do with a drink." A stiff measure of bourbon was poured out into each tumbler and the blond downed his in one gulp. "I remember you. You were kind to me. From the little I can piece together, you always listened and never judged me for being a paranoid nutcase."
Edward could not take his eyes off the kid, who could not possibly be Alex as he looked not one day older than they had parted at the airport, almost nine years ago.
The staring contest was intense, but then again this whole reunion was strange, Alex had seen this man in his dreams, just fragments of conversations, no real substance. "Right, come on, drink up. It'll help because you're in shock and no, I'm not a ghost or an imposter. I remember you drinking this shit on the flight out to San Francisco, after Jack died. You said you only drank when you had to break bad news to Liz." Alex wondered if he had trusted this man enough to talk about his checkered past. He could not right out ask, 'was I a killer/terrorist/spy?'. "I guess we played happy families for a while." Alex then sat down and refilled his glass and knocked back another mouthful of the amber liquor, like it was water. "I was told that meeting you would jog my memories. Can't say it has. So, I have serious memory problems… amnesia. HYDRA did that to me, most of my memories are a jumble without context or meaning. Most of what I do remember I wish I didn't."
"You have not aged?" The man blurted out looking at the thin, impossibly young face with matted, unevenly cut, blond hair and familiar brown eyes. The face was an expressionless mask, the blankness, exempt of all emotion, that had settled in after Jack's death.
"Yeah, well, those fucking bastards froze me for nearly eight years. Technical the term's Cryofreeze. Hurt like a bitch getting defrosted. They fucked with my head before that. Tried to wipe me clean, with the usual torture, torture and more torture. Who am I kidding, there was no try about it; I woke up not even knowing my own name. I've been informed my memories should come back with positive stimuli, only I get there was not a whole lot of positive about my life before." Alex was tempted to drink the entire bottle of bourbon, not that alcohol affected him. He knew the connection to this man was there, as he hated the fact Edward looked so haunted. Alex sighed, not knowing how to move this one sided conversation on, wanting more than anything to tell Edward to go home and forget about Alex Rider.
With a shaking hand, Edward Pleasure mirrored Alex and downed the whisky in one gulp and then automatically coughed, "Shit, that burned. To think of the hundreds, no thousands, of interviews I've done and today I can't think of one thing to ask you?" Edward carefully poured himself another whiskey. "So, verification that you are you. Show me your lower left arm, hand up."
The pattern of six moles in a slightly wonky line was still there. "Questions are tricky, with your memory problems, but what is Yassen's real name?"
"Yasha…Of course you'd know I could never forget that absolute cunt." Alex quipped with a sad smile.
Edward laughed at the coarse language. "Lets go get dinner at my hotel. Don't worry Dieter Sprintz is footing the bill. He shared my belief that you were still alive. We have both read those HYDRA files about you being enhanced."
"No, Edward. Enhanced? That makes it sound like its a good thing, when the fact is it fucking sucks and blows big time. As for being frozen, that is not life. Technically I was a frozen corpse and any normal person would have died. The serum bullshit is like a vampire curse. Death is preferable. You should mourn your son. The Alex you knew and loved died. I'm just the scrapings on the floor left after all that was your Alex was scrubbed away."
…..
Nick Fury was chasing shadows and ghosts in Europe, as soon as he had a lead on the former SHIELD operatives known to be rogue, they had fled or the base concerned had been raised to the ground. HYDRA was scattered to the wind, waiting on the opportunity to resurrect itself. He was following a lead on the most recent phases of research into superhuman serum, rumours of a descendent of the WWII British super-soldier programme. He had sent the notes he had procured to Stark and Banner. The subject in question was a twenty-seven year old male in cryofeeeze somewhere in Eastern Europe, most likely Albania, Serbia or Macedonia. It was a lot of ground to cover for a single one eyed ex-SHIELD director. He was currently on high alert, as a lifetime as a high profile target told him he was being watched.
Two days ago Maria Hill had been set a text from a burner phone, this address, a date and time and promise of information. She had sent the info to him, not her new boss Stark. The bar was on a backstreet in Sarajevo, a place no tourist would frequent. The barman had detailed prison arm and neck tattoos proudly on display. The tall blackman with an eyepatch was watching both front and rear doors as he drank his beer. The local brew was cold and wet. The bar snacks were some form of salted treat. No TV or awful Europop playing was its best feature.
The street bordered the red light district, so the spymaster was not surprised when a young man dressed in very tight black jeans and Gap t-shirt arrived, texting on his phone after ordering a coke in Serbian. Ten minutes later an English journalist walked in, with the barman was already pouring out two glasses of raki. Fury had recognised the man immediately as he had read Edward Pleasure's byelines in Vanity Fair after he moved to the US. The guy was a long way from home.
One glass was placed in from of the American, the journalist stated in a soft London accent, "Your health, Mr. Fury. Information for your Avengers."
A data stick was left on the bar, untouched by the supposed recipient as the ex-director of SHIELD's good eye watched the kid walk out again, swinging his hips and whistling the tune of the Star Spangled Man and into a waiting taxi.
"This is information is a bargaining chip. Quid Quo Pro. Not all info on HYDRA is in the open. You know my foster son. Former MI6 operative kidnapped on the orders of that bastard Pearce, tortured, wiped and frozen. Found and defrosted by the infamous Bucky Barnes." The thin bald man drained his drink in one, looking old and tired, thinking of moving again, as going back to the US was no longer safe; not with people like General Ross in the mix. "You will leave us alone. Alex is going to Switzerland. Dieter Sprintz is paying for neurological and psychiatric treatment. Yes, he may be a super-soldier, but he is out of the picture. The info on the stick is all real. I had it independently checked out by a friend of a friend. There is a HYDRA base in Sokovia. You guys need to put a stop to the experiments on the orphans there. Rather than waste resources, Barnes is no longer in Bosnia. He handed Alex over and left two days ago. My son has seizures and he still can't recall most of his childhood. It may take years for him to recover. Do your job and wipe HYDRA off the map." The worried father had digested the hard facts over deep programming and their long term effect that meant Alex was never likely to leave a psychiatric unit.
Without waiting for agreement or confirmation of the deal with the man known for his poker face and hard bargains, Edward left as he needed to catch up with Alex and get to the airport as a business jet was waiting. Knowing that what remained of SHIELD was here meant others would be close on Fury's tail.
…..
As a spy trained in paranoia during the Cold War, Fury had ensured a full record of his bar visit from a hidden camera, with back up to Coulson and his team. Just after the journalist disappeared from view, Fury got confirmation that the kid in the bar had a 97% match to Alexander John Rider. If the intel was kosher, he would let Alex rest and heal. Only his promises had the backing of no one, as they were not the guard dogs for the world anymore and the Avengers were now Stark's chew toy. He had to hand it to the kid's foster father, Switzerland was a safe bet. No-one pissed on the bankers of the world, not even HYDRA.
…..
Sabina Pleasure at nineteen had been sure she knew exactly how her life would play out. She had been in Oxford staying with her boyfriend; when Alex had disappeared in London a week before the start of his First Year at the School of Eastern European and Slavonic Studies to read Russian. Since then, she had endured the failure of her parents marriage, misfortune of several dozen bad jobs and a shitty relationship with a asshole lecturer who had thought hitting her was justified. Three years ago, she decided to get off the fence, playing go between for her Mum, who stubbornly refused to speak to Dad. She had bluntly told Liz Pleasure that, in her heart of hearts, she knew that Alex was lost, alone and needed them. Her mother had taken that as proof of siding with her ex-husband, not the plain fact that she could not, would not think of her brother from another mother decomposing somewhere in an ummarked grave.
Her dad had kept himself busy: chasing leads and stories, all work, work, work; driven since his the love of his life morphed into queen bitch of the universe. Even so, her daddy always made time for her, arranged treats and outings. They had grown closer. After the fallout between mother and daughter, he had paid her rent and for basic necessities as she finished the novel she had started writing to escape the horror of not knowing Alex's fate. Her heroine was steadfast and true, her lover lost in the Great War and the lonely spinster found love again, against all odds in 1930's Berlin. The bitter sweet ending as the shadow of war beckoned again. Pure historical romance escapism had been published, becoming an unexpected bestseller and her second novel was in the bag. As a treat her father had sent her tickets to visit his new home in Montreux. His flat in Pimlico had been shockingly awful. Last month, he'd packed up and relocated. His new apartment had a view over Lake Geneva. She suspected he had a new lover.
The first thing she noticed as she exited customs into the arrivals hall of Geneva Airport was that her father looked younger, happier and less care worn. He had a decent haircut, new glasses, a sun tan and new clothes. They kissed and hugged and Sabina could tell her dad had something to tell her, but had waited until they were face to face.
They were silent until Edward pulled out of the car park. "We are going to visit someone in hospital. I went to Serbia last month. Then I moved here. You were busy with finishing your novel, so now I can let the cat out of the bag and not derail your final edit. You can only tell people you trust, but I found him…. I found Alex in Serbia. He has amnesia, blackouts and seizures. All caused by severe trauma. If he asks for Liz, I'll talk to her, but I'm a realist. He has more bad days than good ones. Yesterday it took him a game of chess to recognise me and I've visited three times a week for the last two weeks."
They grove to a secluded road in a forest, which emerged into a former merchant's hunting lodge, now an exclusive clinic.
In a beautiful garden, surrounded by a double fence, Alex sat reading one of Edward's publications on Point Blanc. It helped him gain perspective on his visitors. People he sort of recognised, but could not name. Jamie Sprintz was a regular, visiting twice a week, sometimes with is super dour dad, but mostly on his own. Edward came three times a week, varying his visits, so not to fall into a pattern. His foster father was acting like a paranoid burned spy. Today, Sabina was coming. A girl no longer, but a divorced young woman, with two popular historical romance novels under her belt, one of which was going made into a movie. Edward was so proud of her. His whole face lit up when he started talking about her, then usually shut up, stating spoilers; as details could wait until the two siblings got reacquainted.