Peggy was not at all happy about the situation, but at the same time, she knew she had nobody to blame but herself.

After all, she was the one who'd broken Dottie Underwood out of prison and then lost track of her. That made it, technically, Peggy's fault that the woman had robbed the new Toucan Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, making off with some two hundred thousand dollars. Now the mafia was looking for Dottie, along with dozens of corrupt police officers all over the country, all of them getting in Peggy's way. So far they had threatened her, lectured her, tried to bribe her… and now, as if that weren't enough, now the bloody FBI had gotten involved.

All things considered, Peggy was very tempted to call in to work with a headache. The main reason she did not was because half the people involved in this palaver already considered her a potential criminal and she didn't want to give them any ammunition to use against her. But there wasn't exactly a spring in her step was she opened the door marked Auerbach Theatrical Agency on that Tuesday afternoon.

It was a sunny morning in Los Angeles, and light was pouring through the big window into the middle of the room. There, a blonde in a pink cardigan was kneeling on the floor, doing a scene from MacBeth.

"The Thane of Fife had a wife !" the woman lamented, in a shockingly obnoxious mockery of a Scottish accent. She mimed thrusting her hands under a stream of water and rubbing them together to wash them. " Where is she now?"

"Good morning, Rose," said Peggy to the woman behind the desk.

"Morning, Peggy," Rose Roberts replied with a sigh. The SSR had gone out of its way to make the supposed 'theatrical agency' nearly impossible to find, and yet hopefuls still showed up, multiple times a day. When Peggy had left the previous evening, there'd been a pair of young Korean men, twins, juggling knives. One of the blades was still embedded in the wall where its owner had thrown it. Now there was this would-be Shakespearean.

"What, will this hand never be clean ?" the blonde went on, refusing to break character. " No more of that, my Lord, no more of that! You mar all this with starting!"

"Well," Peggy said, "if anyone needs me, I'll be upstairs, waiting for my ten o'clock." FBI Agent N. Russel, here to offer his 'assistance' apprehending Ms. Dorothy Underwood – and to keep an eye on SSR Agent Carter to make sure she wasn't involved in any criminal activities. They might have at least tried to be subtle about it.

"I'll let you know what he arrives," said Rose.

Peggy turned to head upstairs, but stopped short as a new voice spoke.

"Agent Carter?"

She turned around. The blonde was standing now. She was small, shorter than Peggy, and dressed in a mid-calf beige skirt, with the pink cardigan over a matching blouse with a single tasteful string of pearls. Her makeup was quite dramatic, with bright red lipstick and dark eyeliner. Her purse was also bright red, and she reached into it and pulled out a little leather billfold, which she opened to reveal a red and silver badge.

"I'm Agent Nadine Russel," she said.

Peggy should not have been startled – she really should not. She was thoroughly sick of everyone she met being surprised that SSR Agent Carter was a woman, and this Agent Russel probably felt the same, but it took her a moment to recover a neutral expression regardless. She looked at Rose.

Rose shook her head. Apparently the woman had simply walked in and started doing Shakespeare.

"I'm sorry," said Russel with a smile. "She asked me if I were here to audition, and I couldn't resist."

"To be fair, she's not one of the worst we've had," said Rose.

Russel stepped forward to shake Peggy's hand. Peggy accepted the gesture, now back in control of her face and body language.

"I apologize as well," she said. "I wasn't aware the FBI employed female agents." It made sense, though. If they wanted to send somebody who could tail Peggy properly, a man would not do. They would know from her history that she could get away from them easily.

"That's how they like it," said Russel. Her accent was educated American, non-regional. Peggy could not have begun to make a guess where she came from. "Let's go upstairs, and we can talk."

In the upstairs offices, the other employees of the Strategic Scientific Reserve were already getting on with the day's work. Director Daniel Sousa was having a conversation with Agent Sato when Peggy and Russel arrived, and Peggy waited a moment until she knew the men had seen her, before interrupting.

"I'm sorry, Daniel," she said, "but Agent Russel wants to discuss the Underwood case with me, somewhere private. May we use your office?"

Daniel was just as surprised as Peggy to find that Agent Russel was a woman, and while there was a part of Peggy that thought he, too, really ought to know better, another part was just glad she wasn't the only one. "Of course," he said. "Go right in. Ben, let's go to your desk."

Benjiro Sato nodded, and the two men got out of the way. Inside, Peggy sat down in Daniel's chair, leaving Russel to take the one opposite. This was quite intentional on Peggy's part. It would help to remind Russel, who was after all not exactly an ally, that Peggy was on her home ground here and the other woman was not.

Russel didn't comment on the arrangement, although Peggy knew she must have noticed. She pulled her chair closer to the desk, and held up a leather-bound folio. "This is the information we have on Ms. Barynova," she said. "I was going through it again on my way here…"

"Barynova?" Peggy interrupted. A chill ran up her spine. "You mean Ms. Underwood?" In all her own work on and with the woman, Peggy had never encountered anything that might be her real name. Only a series of aliases, with 'Dorothy Underwood' being the one they'd placed on the 'most wanted' list.

"Oh, yes, I beg your pardon, her name is Olga Barynova," said Russel. "At least, according to sources at the CIA that I'm apparently not allowed to speak to directly."

The CIA as well? There were entirely too many acronyms involved in this, Peggy thought crossly. The more departments got interested, the more bureaucracy, the more paperwork, the less communication, and the less chance of anyone ever finding their target.

"I see," Peggy said. At least that was new information. She wasn't surprised the CIA hadn't shared it with her, but she was impressed that they'd been able to find out. Her impression of them in peacetime was not good.

"Anyway, as I was saying." Russel took a notepad out of of the folio and sat back to balance it on her knee. "I was looking through our information and realized that for all you're the one who first encountered her, apparently nobody has interviewed you about your history with Ms. Barynova, which…" she paused, perhaps searching for words, and settled on the tactful, "seems like an oversight"

"It is rather, isn't it?" Peggy asked. She remained calm on the outside, but inside her mind was scrambling. Russel was about to ask her to tell the story. Peggy didn't want to incriminate herself, because that would only slow down the whole process of catching Dottie, but she didn't want to tell too many lies, either. Lies could be checked. Whatever she said, it would have to be self-consistent.

"Maybe you'd like to tell me what happened?" Russel suggested.

"I would very much," Peggy lied. "To the best of my knowledge, Ms. Un… Ms. Barynova came to this country in the employ of a man named Fenhoff, who claimed he needed her help with something to do with undermining democracy. I'm not sure of the details. What he was actually doing was an over-elaborate plot for personal revenge on Howard Stark…"

The first half of the story was easy enough to tell – the half in which Peggy had been purely trying to catch this woman and hadn't been complicit in her presence. The second half, the part that took place here in Los Angeles, she had to be far more careful with.

"When I left New York she was locked up," Peggy said. "The next time I heard about her, she'd escaped and had been sighted here in California."

So far Russel had been listening, making notes, but not interrupting. Now she suddenly asked, "what do you think brought her here?"

Now it was time to lie. "Quite honestly, I think she was following me ," Peggy replied. "When she was arrested at the bank, she had taken some trouble to look like me. I think I may be the only person who ever really tried to get inside her head, and that seems to have impressed her." Perhaps Peggy was tooting her own horn by saying so, but she did get the idea that Dottie was somewhat obsessed with her, and that was her best guess at why.

Russel nodded. "We're not used to people trying to get inside our heads," she observed, tapping her temple with her pen. "Men tend to assume there's not much going on in there."

"They do, don't they?" said Peggy, not amused at all. Russel was doing the same thing with Peggy right now, of course, trying to get inside her head – and she must be perfectly well aware that Peggy knew that was what she was doing. This could turn into a dangerous game indeed, and a distraction that Peggy did not need right now. "Unfortunately, during Ms. Barynova's stay in California I was distracted by Agnes Cully and the problems at Isodyne, and I wasn't available to pursue her. By the time I turned my attention to that, she was long gone."

"Do you think she has a long-term goal?" asked Russel.

"I can't say," Peggy replied, and that was the entire truth. "Sometimes it starts to seem like she's up to something fiendishly clever and I'm only seeing the tiniest tip of the iceberg. Other times I think she's doing it all for the fun of it. I do know that she doesn't want to go back to the USSR."

"No, we have some idea what happens to Russian agents who outlive their usefulness," said Russel. "Besides, we'd much rather have her here in the States, where we can pick her brain."

"I doubt you'll get much from her. Nobody else ever has," said Peggy.

Russel turned a page on her notepad. "What did you think when you first heard about the Toucan Hotel heist?" she asked.

The two women talked for most of the morning. Peggy wasn't sure what Russel thought of her , but her impression of the other woman was of somebody intensely focused . From her point of view, that was not necessarily a good thing. She'd been dreading meeting Agent Russel because she'd feared he'd been a pain in the arse to get rid of, but Peggy had never doubted she'd be able to do it. This Russel was another matter entirely. She would not be avoided by going into the powder room, would nto be scared off by a mention of ladies' troubles. Nor had she been asking a list of routine questions. She'd let Peggy lead the way while she wrote notes, keeping her thoughts to herself but attentive and interested.

Nadine Russel was an equal, and the most annoying thing about the situation was that if it weren't for circumstances setting them up as rivals, she and Peggy would probably have got along like a house on fire.

Finally, around lunch time, Russel checked her watch and closed her notes. "Thank you for your time, Agent Carter," she said. "I've got some more interviews I need to do today, but I will definitely check in with you again. If you need to contact me, you can do so at this number." She held out a blank business card, with the phone number neatly written on it in black ink.

"Thank you, Agent Russel, I hope I was helpful," Peggy said.

"I hope I can be, too," Russel said.

They shook hands again, and Russel took her red purse and leather folio, and finally left.

Once she was gone, Peggy collapsed back into Daniel's chair and pushed her hands through her curls. Bloody hell , she didn't need this right now. She did not!

There was a rap on the door, and then Daniel stuck his head into the room. "Peggy?" he asked.

"Sorry, Daniel," she said, and got to her feet with a sigh. "You may have your office back."

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"I'm better than I might be, but worse than I'd hoped," Peggy said. "It would be a gift if I could just tell her the truth, but that would create far more problems than it would solve."

There was a moment of silence. Peggy and Daniel both knew that more problems would involve the two of them getting in deserved trouble for their own crimes. The problem was that there was no-one else they could trust to handle things like Dottie. The police were corrupt, the government and big business were incompetent when they weren't actually part of the problem, and they definitely weren't going to let the mafia deal with it. That only left so many options.

"We'd better get back to work," said Daniel.

"Yes, back to work," Peggy agreed.

She returned to her desk and let her purse drop heavily onto it. The world was such a mess. During the war it had been so clear who were the good guys and who the bad. Now it had become ever so much more complicated.

It wasn't until she was packing up her things to head home at the end of the day that Peggy noticed the envelope.

She was used to finding envelopes on her desk. It had taken Peggy a while to find a proper apartment in Los Angeles, so she'd used the SSR office as her address and still sometimes got mail there. Her colleagues also left things for her. This, however, wasn't on her desk or even in her desk. It was in her purse, which had been sitting next to her desk all day, except for when it had been sitting next to Daniel's desk in his office while she talked to Agent Russel. Peggy didn't remember anyone coming near it, but then, she'd had no reason to pay attention. What she was sure of was that there had been no envelope in it when she'd left home that morning.

She pulled it out. There was nothing written on it, and the flap was not sealed. Inside was a single sheet of paper. Peggy unfolded it, and found two typewritten lines of numbers:

74 47 35

95 25 03

Below them was a quickly scrawled drawing of a five-pointed star with two circles around it.

Peggy's breath caught. Her first instinct upon seeing the numbers was, of course, that it represented some kind of code or cipher, but when she noticed the star… perhaps she was biased, but she was fairly sure that represented Captain America's shield. If it did, maybe the numbers were much simpler than a code. Maybe somebody knew where the Valkyrie had crashed. Ninety-five degrees was a long way to the west, and seventy-four was further north than Howard had ever looked.

Who had left her this? Her initial idea was that it must have been Russel, but why would Russel do that, and where would she have gotten such information? If she had it, wouldn't she give it to Daniel, or to Chief Thompson in New York, or even to the Joint Chiefs and the President, rather than to Peggy Carter? Everybody thought of her in association with Captain America, yes, but she'd been a comparatively minor figure in his career. Maybe it was some kind of trap or distraction? But why do that? It seemed entirely irrelevant to Russel's goal of investigating Peggy's connection with Dottie.

But if not her, then who?

With shaking hands, Peggy folded the page up again. She was getting ahead of herself – she had no idea what those numbers meant. She was probably jumping to conclusions. Geographic coordinates was only one possible theory. Theories needed to be tested.

Testing this one would be a simple matter. All she needed was a map or a globe. Peggy didn't own one that would show the details of the landscape. There was a large map of North America on one wall of the SSR office, but she didn't want anyone seeing her poring over that and asking. Why. Perhaps a public library? But what if somebody were watching her? If this were what she thought, she could not allow that information to fall into the wrong hands.

Remaining calm, Peggy put the page back into the envelope, and the envelope into her purse. She gave Daniel a kiss and wished him good night, and said goodbye to Rose on the way out. She wanted everybody to think she were simply going home at the end of a tiring day, and that nothing was wrong I the world.

She did not, however, go home. She went to Howard Stark's house.

Howard himself was not there, but Edwin Jarvis answered the door and looked delighted to see Peggy, as he always was. The man never seemed to learn.

"Agent Carter," he said with a smile. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I'm afraid it's a business call," said Peggy. "I need to borrow a book."

"Of course, come right in," Jarvis said, standing aside. "I'll make tea. Can I interest you in a slice of apple torte? Anna has the dog outside, so there's no need to fear an immediate assault upon entering the kitchen."

Peggy smiled. The Jarvises had recently acquired a Bernese Mountain Dog puppy, which Anna had named Zoltan. It was already twice the size it had been when they brought it home, and showed no signs of slowing down, while having no idea that it was already much too big to fit in a human lap. Anna adored the monster, and Edwin pretended to be annoyed with the amount of hair it shed, but could not bring himself to truly dislike an animal that made his wife so happy.

"Thank you, Mr. Jarvis," she said. "Apple torte sounds lovely."

In the library she quickly found what she was looking for – an enormous leather-bound Atlas of the World, the sort of book Howard bought because he was supposed to have one, and then never looked at because he had the entire geography of the earth memorized already. Mr. Jarvis brought her cake and tea while she flipped the pages, until she found one showing the islands of Northern Canada.

She took the paper out again and unfolded it. Seventy-four and a half degrees north was… just about there , and ninety-five degrees west was… just off the coast of Cornwallis Island, a place choked by sea ice for nearly the entire year. As she'd suspected, it was far north of where they'd thought the Valkyrie might have gone down based on its last known trajectory. Perhaps they'd underestimated the speed of the jet-powered craft?

Could it really be? Could somebody have simply handed her the location of Steve Rogers' remains?

The only way to find out would be to look, but looking would be a big undertaking, with personnel and ships and winter gear. Peggy did not yet have nearly enough information to start something like that. Before she could begin, she had to find out who had given her these coordinates, where that person had gotten them from, and how many other people might know about them. For all she knew, this was some kind of trap.

Mr. Jarvis came to collect her empty teacup. "Have you found what you needed, Agent Carter?" he asked.

"I believe I've made a start," Peggy replied. "May I use the telephone?"

"Of course," he sad.

She pulled out the card Agent Russel had given her, and asked the operator for the number. The phone rang… and then rang again… and rang again. Peggy waited with increasing pessimism until it had rung twelve times, and then hung up. Maybe Russel was busy, or perhaps she'd gone out for dinner or something. There were plenty of explanations that didn't involve her deliberately avoiding Peggy, and Peggy would not improve the situation by becoming paranoid.

She put the paper back in her purse, thanked Mr. Jarvis, and headed home again.

When she arrived, she rang Russel's number again, but still got no answer. This was annoying for several reasons, not the least of which was that Russel would be the easiest suspect to eliminate. Peggy could just ask her if she'd left an envelope, while her colleagues were a different matter. If she asked the wrong person and they weren't the culprit, they might spread the news around and then there would be a big fuss over what might turn out to be nothing. Peggy didn't want that.

Perhaps this was just a ploy to distract her from looking for Dottie, so that Russel or somebody else could take the credit. That would have been infuriating if Peggy hadn't long ago stopped caring who got the glory for saving the world, just so long as it ended up saved.

Before she turned in that evening, Peggy did try one last time to telephone Nadine Russel. There was still no response.

She told herself not to get cranky about it. Peggy had only met this woman today, and an FBI agent was doubtless busy – especially a woman, who would have to be twice as good as the men to get half the respect. Peggy herself could be almost impossible to contact sometimes. Howard, Mr. Jarvis, Angie, and even Daniel had complained of it. When it was time to panic, she told herself as she turned out the light, she would know.

As it turned out, the time for panic was around four o'clock the following morning.

That was when Peggy was awakened from a sound sleep by her phone ringing. She fumbled for the knob on the bedside lamp, turned it on, and picked up the receiver.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Peggy?" It was Daniel. "Did I wake you up?"

"I should say you did – what sort of time is it?" Peggy turned her alarm clock so she could see the face… ten past four. If Daniel were calling her now, it was something very serious. "What's going on?"

"They found Agent Russel," he said.

Peggy's heart sank right through the floor. "She's dead ?" That had not been on her list of potential reasons why the woman wasn't answering her phone.

"No…" Daniel said, and the pause told Peggy that what he was about to say would manage to be even worse. "The woman who came to see you yesterday wasn't Agent Russel. Agent Nedrick Russel has been found tied up in the trunk of his car at the airport."

For a moment Peggy couldn't even process that. "Bloody hell," she said finally.

"Can you meet us at the police station?" asked Daniel.

"Absolutely." Peggy threw aside the covers and stood up. "Give me a moment to get ready."

She hung up without saying goodbye, because now was not the time for pleasantries. In the washroom, she gave her hair a quick comb and put on makeup as best she could, then stood back to appraise her reflection, and scowled.

"Blood bugger," she declared. "Bloody, bloody bugger."

She might not know what was going on with the mysterious envelope, but she now knew in her gut exactly what had happened yesterday. Peggy had always been as lenient as she could with Dottie Underwood, though that wasn't very, because she knew Dottie had been brought up by cruel people who'd twisted her into a monster. The woman calling herself Nadine Russel must surely come from the same place… but after yesterday Peggy was going to have a hard time being nice.

Peggy arrived at the station near the airport, dressed and groomed but definitely not looking her best. A police officer met her at the entrance and escorted her into an interrogation room. There, three men from the SSR, including Daniel, and several more police were standing around watching a man devour a ham sandwich.

This individual was in his early fifties, with graying dark hair and a chisel-straight nose, wearing a white shirt with sweat stains under the arms. His tie and his blue plaid blazer were draped over the back of his chair. He was not at all interested in his audience, but was entirely focused on his food.

"Agent Russel?" asked Peggy.

The man raised his head to look at her, and held up a finger while he quickly chewed and swallowed his mouthful, then washed it down with half a glass of water. He must have been in the car trunk for some time, and it had left him both hungry and dehydrated. "You must be Agent Carter," he said. "This isn't how I pictured us meeting."

"Nor I," said Peggy. She turned to the police. "You questioned him?"

"Yes, Ma'am," said the nearest man. "He says he was having a drink at the Coconut Club when a pretty blonde came up and started flirting with him, and the next thing he remembers was coming to locked in the trunk of his car. His wallet and briefcase are both missing."

Peggy had heard of the Coconut Club, although she'd never been there. It was a fairly swanky pub not too far away from the airport. "Do we have a description of the suspect?"

"There's a sketch artist on his way," the policeman promised.

"She was about so tall," said Russel with his mouth full. He held his hand at the height of his shoulders to suggest a woman significantly shorter than he. "Blonde hair, blue eyes, great skin, nails like a tigress. Black dress with a little bolero, and a choker necklace with a great big rock on it." He pointed to his adam's apple to suggest where it had sat.

"Did she give a name?" Peggy asked.

"She said it was Katherine. Told me to call her Kay," Russel said. "You're not going to tell Alice, are you?"

Peggy rolled her eyes, and Daniel looked like he badly wanted to. "Agent Russel," Daniel said, "the SSR wants to know who this woman is and why she's interested in finding Olga Barynova. We don't care where your wife thinks you were last night."

Russel had been about to bite into his sandwich again. Now he hesitated. "You mean Underwood? She's not a real name now?"

"Was that not in the information your assailant took from you?" asked Peggy.

"No," said Russel. "No, we've got a list of her aliases but none of them were Russian."

Peggy had already been fairly sure this mysterious Miss Kay must be from the same organization as Dottie herself. Now she was certain. Had she assumed the SSR already knew Dottie's real name? Or had she only called her that by mistake? Either way, she'd covered for herself very quickly.

Had Kay gotten the coordinates from Russel? Peggy would have to find a more private moment to ask him. In the mean time, she took out the business card her visitor had given her yesterday, and showed him the number.

"Does this telephone number mean anything to you, Agent Russel?" she asked.

His mouth was once again full. He shook his head.

"Then that's where I'd like to start," Peggy decided. Maybe Kay hadn't thought they would find the real Russel so soon, and was actually expecting Peggy to try to contact her. Or maybe it had only been a ruse, to keep Peggy from getting suspicious. In light of last night's unanswered calls, the latter seemed more likely. She offered the card to one of the policemen. "Would somebody mind tracing this for me, please?"

The man looked at Daniel, who nodded. "Thanks," he said.

"And I'll want to speak to the sketch artist, myself," Peggy added. At the moment it was technically only a suspicion that 'Nadine' and 'Kay' were the same person. They needed to confirm it. Then she could decide what she would do next.

Peggy and Russel both spent their mornings with the police artists, getting their memories of the mystery woman's face down on paper so they could be compared. When the two drawings were finally placed side by side, Peggy was not at all surprised to see that they could very well be the same person. The woman who called herself 'Kay' had a pleasant oval face with a short, turned-up nose, the flawless skin Russel had already mentioned, and full lips that she accentuated with dramatic lipstick. She was, Peggy observed, not so much strikingly beautiful in herself as she was somebody who knew her own best features and how to emphasize them.

Dottie had been very much the same.

With that done, Peggy was finally able to stop by a diner for something to fill her grumbling stomach. She'd skipped breakfast, and now it was nearly lunchtime. Russel went with her.

"You've been eating all morning," Peggy reminded him when he ordered the breakfast platter – bacon, eggs, sausages, potatoes, tomatoes, pancakes, and toast.

"I was in the trunk of my car for twenty-four hours, Agent Carter," he replied. "I could eat a horse."

"I think you already did. Have you called your wife?" Peggy asked.

He looked sheepish. "I asked one of the police to do it for me."

Mrs. Russel had probably loved that. "How did it go?"

"I don't know yet and I'm not sure I want to."

"Mmm," was all Peggy said. It was a strange thing – men often treated their wive as foolish annoyances, yet in the next breath they could be utterly terrified of them, as if women were less people than they were forces of nature. "Well, perhaps you can consider it a learning experience."

"Damned right," Russel said Peggy wondered what he thought he'd learned.

"I suppose I'm going to have to go over the whole story of my interactions with Ms. Underwood again," Peggy remarked, as the waitress set their breakfasts on the table. Oddly, it seemed less daunting now, as if telling it to the spy had been a sort of practice run.

Russel cut himself a large square out of the edge of his pancakes and dipped it in syrup before stuffing it in his mouth. "Save it for the next guy, Agent Carter," he said through his mouthful. "Call it a hunch, but I think I'm about to be taken off this case."

At least he was a realist, Peggy observed. She sat quietly for a moment as he devoured sausages whole, then reached into her bag and took out the envelope. "Agent Russel," she said, "I believe our mutual friend may have given this to me. Did she take it from you?"

He looked at the envelope and frowned. "I don't think so. What's in it?"

"A piece of paper with six numbers on it," Peggy replied. "Seventy-nine, forty-seven, thirty-five, ninety-five, twenty-five, three." They had burned themselves into her brain. She would never forget them, any more than she would have forgotten her own name. "Does that mean anything to you?"

Russel shook his head. "A code?" he suggested, and thought for a moment. "Latitude and longitude?"

"It's an island in Northern Canada, I already looked it up," Peggy said. "There's nothing but sea ice for miles." Would that mean anything to him? Did he know of her association with Steve?

He shrugged. "The only thing I can suggest is call the Canadians and ask them to take a look."

Not his, then – and he hadn't known the name Olga Barynova. Had the latter been a slip, or had 'Kay' deliberately fed Peggy information? Was it actually Dottie's name, or another lie? And what in the world could be the meaning of the coordinates coming from a likely Soviet operative? Before she placed any long-distance phone calls to Canada, Peggy really needed to find this woman. The only question was, having done so, would they be able to get any information out of her?