ch.15

Colonel Nicholas Fury sat in a table surrounded by a circle of computer screens. Two of them were about to come on, starting what was going to be a very delicate conference call.

"Colonel Yü Zhi-O speaking," said one of the screens as the image of a middle-aged Chinese man in a PLA colonel's uniform came on.

"General Vitaly Vitalyevich Malkov speaking," said another one, showing the face of a very pale, balding man in a Russian Interior Ministry Troop general's uniform, with one star on his epaulettes. "I hope this very unusual procedure is worth our time."

"Oh, I think you'll find it is, General," said Fury, pulling on his cheeroot. Ever since he had been told he had a gift of extended life, he had gone back to some of his old bad habits. "Somethin's happened that's literally got no precedent, and we thought we'd rather tell you first.

"A few days ago, some of our people discovered a Hydra base on American territory."

"What?" said the Chinese colonel in astonishment. "And you just admit it to us like that?"

"I do. US territory includes fifty states plus umpteen islands in the Pacific and the Caribbean. Good luck finding where the base actually is, Colonel.

"What makes this unprecedented is that this base turned out to be the heart of Hydra's Winter Soldier operation." Both the Russian and the Chinese man gasped. "AND that we found seven other people in the same conditions as the Winter Soldier – which I'll tell you about in a sec. Three of'em was agents of ours whom the Winter Soldier was supposed to have killed. Two are Russian – Irina Vladimirovna Filipova and Sergei Alexeievic Belousov – and one's Chinese – Zhang Fulien." Both men gasped again. "I s'pose they were also reported victims of the Winter Soldier, like ours?"

"Since you are so far ahead of us," said the Chinese colonel, "I guess it does no harm to confirm that." The Russian general grunted assent.

"Now lemme tell ya what Hydra's been doin' with them, best that we can reconstruct it. We'll be sendin' your guys back to you, but be careful, they're all a bit damaged. Like our guys.

"So you've got captives and nobody knows you've got'em, 'cause they're reported missin' presumed dead. Now if you're Hydra, the first thing you do is put them through a serious brainwashin' program. If it works, you've got yerself a nice little operator, with lotsa experience an' skills, and inobody/i knows you've got'im... or her... 'cause they're reported dead.

"Thing with brainwashin', though? It's unreliable. Often as not, brainwashed people wake up. So you build a double barrier. First, you place'em in frozen sleep – cryogenically induced lethargy, as our eggheads are callin' it – and only wake'em when you want'em on their feet and workin'. And second, we don't know how this was done yet, but you build up a complete psychological dependency on one of their folks. You make'em loyal to one Hydra guy as a child's to his mom, or a dog to its owner. I've seen a sixty-year-old scarred veteran in complete shock and withdrawal when he found that his dependency-master was dead."

Both men were plainly horrified. Though they were veterans of secret war, with long and ugly lists of secrets, this way of playing with men and women like they were machinery was still beyond them. Killing an agent, torturing him to death for information, yes, they had done and would easily do again; but this heartless use of people as machinery, and at the same time making them love their abusers, was something so outrageous that, for a short while, their own original humanity awoke within them, and shuddered. Not for very long; before the day was done, both the Chinese colonel and the Russian general were beginning to think of ways to use this new concept.

"These guys are only a handful of the Winter Soldier's reported victims. We've been through our records, and there's at least twenty more reported killed but bodies unrecovered. So we think that these guys are those who made it through the process alive, and that many more did not."

"Colonel Fury. I will go through our lists and find out those of ours who are missing, and I will post them dead in service and place their names on a marble plaque in our head office, as fallen in the service of the Motherland. If you could let us have your own assessment of which Russians are among the missing victims, so that we can compare it, I would be grateful."

"And I would ask for the same favour, Colonel. Those victims had families," said Colonel Yü Zhi-O.

After a second's silence, he said: "I have another question."

"Yes?"

"You said that you had seven... survivors. But you only mentioned three Americans, two Russians and one of ours."

"Ah yes. The seventh is stateless, and presents a problem in herself." Fury said nothing more, and was quite aware of the sharpened attention from both his counterparts. "Now I'd like to talk about arranging for your survivors to be handed over to you..."

…...

Buffy was sitting in her parents' dining room when a strange thought crossed her mind. It came, perhaps, from looking around her and seeing those familiar things, and being aware that they were about to end; that even what they kept through the move would be in different places, in different ways, in different arrangements. There was a close, and it was coming closer. So Buffy was reminded of a few words that had come to her so recently... iPlease remember me. I lived. I existed. I counted for something./i

...

Nick Fury walked away from the communications centre with a grin on his face. He was thinking of the cats he had set among the pigeons both in Beijing and in Moscow. People will be running around like chickens with their heads cut off. When he had approached the two secret services asking for a conference call with responsible officers, he had not expected much – and he had certainly not been disappointed. Both agencies had kept him waiting for a couple of days before assigning the lowest-ranking officer they could decently send, informing him pretty clearly that they did not regard him or anything he might have to say as very important.

Well, let them disregard him now. He had informed them that he had located and smashed the most notorious murder operation in the world; but he had carefully not mentioned whether or not the Winter Soldier himself was still alive and in their hands, and what he may have been saying. He had said nothing about the personnel of the base, and he had informed that as part of the rescue he now held three of their most famous lost agents. No doubt the little mice are scurrying, with panicked memos and obsequious yet terrified meetings higher and higher up the scale. Well, this time they would wait; and he would give them what he wanted and not one bit more. They would have their men; but they also would find out that the Winter Soldier would stay in America. Nick Fury had no doubt that the Hydra killing machine had been employed as a convenient mercenary by several governments in the past, and he intended to have him cured and carefully debriefed. He would also claim him for a trial on American soil, and God knows there was cause enough. Besides, there was the outside chance that the man might be – or have originally been – an American citizen himself, in which case extraditing him to a hostile jurisdiction would be unimaginable.

"Sitwell," he said to his deputy, "if anyone, and I mean anyone, from Moscow or Beijing, ask for me for the next three days, I'm gone fishin'. And if they ask about the Winter Soldier, play the fool. Have fun with them."

"YesSIR!" answered Jasper Sitwell, with the tone of someone who had just been handed a year's supply of tickets to his favourite band. His priorities may not exactly have been those of his boss, but he shared his resentment about the superior attitude of big-time agencies, especially foreign ones. "I look forward to asking whether he has a Summer Soldier too."

"Them's the little joys of life, Sitwell."