Chapter 34 - Interviews

"Sharon!"

"Sammy!"

"What on Earth are you doing here?" For the first time since she had seen Jack O'Neill kiss his ex-wife, Samantha Carter smiled a genuine smile. There are people who just make you feel better by being there, and as far as she was concerned, her cousin was one of them.

"Hey, I iwork/i here. What you are doing here is a better question."

"You work at SHIELD? I thought you had a secretarial post at some corporation, from what Father said."

"Did he? Well, I guess the old General still knows how to keep a secret. But I'm guessing you're here on business? You are in some Air Force intelligence unit, aren't you?"

"Mh-mh," Samantha sort of grunted.

"I've been wondering. I remember we used to play astronauts, and somehow I always thought you would end up in space… I mean, if I'm prying, just tell me to shut up."

"Well, thousands try, Shary, and most don't make the cut."

"What?"

"I didn't make it."

"Wha-iat/i?"

"I'm not going to be a spacewoman. Not as far as the Air Force are concerned, anyway."

"I don't believe it. Sorry, Sammy, I can't believe it. Were they just stupid, or did you step on someone's toes?"

Samantha did not want to dig up the old story. It was something that hurt still, and she felt fragile enough after getting her heart broken and handed to her. She tried to change the subject, without realizing that her cousin had not exactly answered her question about work at SHIELD.

"Well, anyway, I might end up here. My unit is being merged with SWORD, and I've had a proposal to be transferred to work with SHIELD's science core."

"Really? You're at DST?"

"Sure am. I've done some interesting work, and it's helping me with my PhD."

"So you're happy there?"

"Well… That's the good part. The place is far away from anywhere. It's not particularly suited for astronomy, for observation work, and till recently it wasn't good for my career. And there were personal issues."

Sharon Carter looked at her cousin, and drew her own conclusion. They had been Air Force brats together till their teens, and she thought she knew her well. She certainly wasn't the sort of person to complain aloud about having issues with anyone. Sharon suspected a major emotional smash, purely from the taciturn and moody appearance her cousin's face had suddenly taken.

The SHIELD leaders who were covertly watching their meeting were also interested, from a different viewpoint. Nick Fury looked up from the screens, at Dr. Cajetanis and Jasper Sitwell.

"Well," he said, the words snarling their way about the unlit cigar chomped by his teeth, "not honeytrap material, would you say?"

"No, I agree, Director," answered Dr. von Cajetanis. "It's a pity, given her looks. But some women know how to use them, and some women don't. And I agree with you, she would not make an agent or an infiltrator. There is that basic simplicity about her. But I'm much mistaken if she won't make a talented science officer… always bearing in mind that the one thing she will not do for anyone is lie in public."

"Don't worry about that, Doctor," broke in the third man in the room, Jasper Sitwell. "We want to give people jobs that suit them. Or, from our point of view, use them for what they're good for."

"That's good. Now, Director, there's something else I wanted to discuss."

"Fire away."

"I'm afraid whatever it is that Hydra have done with the Winter Soldier, it's pretty bad, and pretty sticky. The man is delusional, and clings to his delusions. He gets angry if they are questioned."

"So he's still loyal to Hydra?"

"Actually, that's what bewilders me. His delusional system doesn't seem to hinge in any way on Hydra. At least so far as we can see. He's not very communicative."

"Are you sure? Hydra wouldn't go to the trouble of breaking a man's mind if they couldn't use it for their own advantage. We've seen that with poor Dum-Dum, and Gabe, and Val."

"Indeed, and it goes further than that. I mean, it's not just a pragmatic need to use people for their purposes. What I call the Hydra syndrome, Colonel… I mean, General… involves a sense of loyalty and belief, an irrational adhesion to Hydra purely as an entity, an idea that Hydra is fundamental to a member's identity and personhood. This is reinforced in various ways, and it is absolutely at the heart of everything. They would never trust a member who did not show every sign of treating Hydra like that. But what we can make out of the Winter Soldier's delusional system has absolutely nothing to do with that. In fact, if anything, he sees himself as their enemy."

"He does?"

"Yes. He thinks that they abducted him and mind-controlled him."

"But…. Doesn't this show he has some grip on reality?"

"To that extent, maybe. But it's an 'even a broken clock is right twice a day' kind of thing. What we can see of his ideas shows that all the reasons he has to think so are false. And they connect each other, they support each other, which is a frequent symptom of insane ideation."

"I see. Nevertheless, Doctor, I want your thoughts about using those delusions to make him work for us."

"What?"

"Get him to work for us. Not get him to rot in detention."

"Director, I can't do that!"

"Look, there are two choices, other than that. One, we let him rot in detention, as I said, in the remote hope that he'll regain his senses or that you'll find a cure; and there's always the risk that he'll escape and get out of control. Or, two, we cure him… permanently. And that's something I've always refused to do, even for people still more dangerous than the Winter Soldier."

(At this point, unnoticed by the director and the psychiatrist, Jasper Sitwell's face twitched. He was thinking angrily to himself: "And look how much good it's done! If we had executed Franklin Hall as I insisted, tens of thousands of people would be alive, and New York City would not have suffered billions of dollars of damage.")

"It's your decision, Fury. But if I do it, it'll be under protest. It's incredibly dangerous to let a delusional paranoiac act upon his own delusions, however close they may be to reality."

"Doctor, suppose he had someone trained near him all the time. Someone to follows his actions. Not to control him, I can see where that would just compound the risk… just to monitor him, and let us know whether there are any danger signs, so we can intervene or even shut him down if necessary."

"Someone female, you mean?"

"Female, and attractive, and trained to make use of it. Like Sharon Carter, we were watching her just now…"

"Well… the best I can say is I can't see how that would make things any worse. You will bear in mind that this lady will have to work with a man trained to kill people."

"Pffft! As if she hadn't done it before!"

Fury's cellphone rang. He listened, interposing the speaker's report with grunts of approval. "I'll give orders to reactivate the Cube… No, but we can't do anything better, we're still vulnerable… We'll just have to increase security as much as we can… Yes, that kind of gadget." And then, after a longer pause: "Tell them that it's closed season on the Hulk. Ross must be out of his mind… I'm counteracting his orders, and I've got presidential backing for that." And finally: "Tell him to complain to the President!"

"Must feel nice to push a two-star general around," said sardonicallly.

"It's not about my ego, doc," answered Fury. "It's national security. The Hulk took Graviton down. He's a major asset, and if we make him mad for no reason, if we seem ungrateful… well, the least that can happen is we'll lose that asset. The least.

"You'd think he'd leave well enough alone. The Hulkbuster unit… or Gammabuster unit, sorry… has been rounding up gamma monsters more successfully than anyone else. They've got the Leader, the Abomination and three or four others. If he's lucky, the stuff General Carter and his people have been digging up will be swept under the carpet. But if he keeps interfering with the Hulk, I'll make damn well sure he regrets it. And that's if the Hulk doesn't do it first. When will Ross realize that the Hulk is not a dumb beast?"

….

At the other end of the line, General Ross had been standing next to the SHIELD agent who was reporting to Fury. And he was, of course, furious. He wondered if Fury was named after his effect on normal people… (regarding himself, of course, as normal).

"Thunderbolt" Ross regarded himself, and enjoyed his public image, as a blunt, simple, rough battlefield bull of a soldier. He had carried this image from before Vietnam, and it had carried him through every grade of the US Army from private to two-star general. But his hatred for the Hulk went beyond simply the understandable fear of an uncontrollable, invincible monster; it was something that had taken over his mind and his sense of priorities for years now, and had endangered what had been, until then, a well managed career.

For behind the blunt, moustached military surface lay something unexpected, indeed unknown – except to the few who, like Nick Fury, had had to deal with the General as a bureaucratic or political opponent. When such things happened, Ross had a habit of connecting with old friends, perhaps people his opponents did not realize were his friends, and to express his complaints in his rough, bluff way, over a glass of beer or tomato juice. Ross certainly was a soldier, and a brave one; among his extensive "fruit salad", those who understood such things could be impressed by the five-star ribbon of a Medal of Honor. But he had weaponized his supposed simple soldier manner into a formidable weapon of behind-the-scenes combat. Had he not, he would have been stuck at Colonel.

People who opposed Ross tended to be surprised by problems coming from left field, with people or units they had never before had issues with. Nick Fury was already familiar with Ross' ways; Ross' Hulkbuster unit had effectively been set up to poach in SHIELD's preserve – as a super-being, the Hulk was very much a SHIELD problem. But when Fury had complained, he had found himself stymied by sudden problems across the board. The Hulkbuster unit had however been an expensive failure, and Fury had not failed to make the point to anyone in the Pentagon and the White House who would listen. Between Fury and Ross, unnoticed by anyone else, there was a bitter feud.

…..

Of course, Ross' friends were of a certain type, bureaucratic conquerors and intriguers, people who dealt in favours and influence. If they had not been, their friendships would not have lasted. Ross had often dropped or reduced to a minimum his contacts with old comrades and friends from his early days, because they had proved unambitious, or unsuccessful, or the wrong kind of success. But that meant that he often associated with people who did not show their hand, even to him. He understood that. Sometimes he felt, almost on an instinctive level, that he would be wise not to inquire too deeply into a friend's affairs. And so it was that some of his friends, part of something taking the name of Secret Strategic Council, were involved, at roughly the same time as these events, in a series of job interviews with Kathleen Walsh, for the post of civilian director of their research and design offices. Many of the interviewers were impressed with the clarity of ' vision, and with her plans for trans human soldiers and other instruments of war.

For some reason – perhaps to do with the military and patriotic symbols scattered all over the office buildings in which the interviews took place – Margaret found herself, more than once, thinking of Steve Rogers' face; and even with a strange, unexplained feeling that there was something she might be ashamed of. Naturally, she told no-one.

Another interview was taking place somewhere else in Washington DC – one, no doubt, of dozens of job interviews taking place every day in that city of offices and bureaus. Jasper Sitwell, in the absence of Nick Fury and Valentina de Fontaine, was interviewing Samantha Carter.

"I've got to prepare for these damn hearings," Fury had told him. "I'd tell them to go to Hell, or at least send someone else, but this is the opportunity to drive our issues into the skulls of those fucking obstructive politicians. They won't want to be seen not to listen when New York and Las Vegas have been reduced to rubble."

Stilwell grinned inwardly. Fury may have been a great agent and a fine leader, but as a desk warrior he was hopeless. No wonder he kept getting sidelined by insiders with one tenth of his seniority and experience. He himself, Stilwell, didn't even think he was that clever, but he could see a dozen ways in which an experienced politician could dodge Fury's public criticism. Dodge them or worse. IN fact, the likeliest line of attack was to blame him as the man in charge. After all, those 73 monsters and crooks had escaped jail on Fury's watch. And Stilwell could see it coming, though Fury couldn't. Of course, if they wanted to really ruin, they would go for his relationship with Val, and for his fairly eccentric leadership style.

Stilwell himself didn't want Fury to go. His distaste for bureacratic detail, and his frequent absences on missions that any of his agents could have carried out as well as him, allowed Stilwell to make his own decisions in many areas, especially staffing and archiving. This allowed him, from time to time, to hire people that a more careful leader would have thought twice about, or to bury reports that might have had inconvenient results if someone intelligent had gone through them with care.

Not that there was any doubt about how this interview should go. Even if Fury himself had not dropped heavy hints that he wanted Sam Carter's daughter on his team somehow, Stillwell would have made her an offer. He would have looked stupid if he hadn't, and he did not want to get that sort of reputation. And the girl really was an all-around surprise. A beautiful egghead who could also fight like a tigress if needed, the only question about her was which of her amazing roster of abilities it would be best to develop.

The beautiful egghead. Not that beauty was a mark against her. Stilwell came from a family of scientists, and his grandfather had had a major pash for Cecilia Payne. What the Hell, Marie Curie was a blonde beauty too. We should get rid of this stupid reaction of equating beauty and silliness. No, what bothered him was, exactly, her intelligence. And her cool reaction to things like symbols and emotional attachments. She was not a good candidate for turning and recruitment. But what the Hell, if and when the time came, she could always be dismissed or got rid of one way or another, like every other holdover from the old days.