Peggy did not particularly expect Lake to give up just because somebody was clinging to the bonnet of her car, and sure enough, she did not. Instead, she did exactly what Peggy would have done in the same situation, and hit the gas to try to throw her off. The car backed up sharply, and collided with the one across the aisle. Peggy grabbed the side view mirror and braced a foot against the hood ornament – the latter snapped off and jingled on the asphalt. Lake made a hard left, drove right over the grass, and got onto the little bridge that crossed the train tracks.
Peggy got one arm through the window and a foot onto the running board. She knew very well that Lake was going to batter down the prison gate with the car, and if Peggy were still on the bonnet when it happened, she would be crushed. She made it with seconds to spare. Bullets pinged on the metal and shattered the back window as they passed the watchtower, and then splinters sprayed as the gate gave way.
Another right turn took them onto Hudson street, and the fugitive sped up as police sirens began to scream behind them. Peggy climbed through the open window and into the passenger's seat.
"Stop this car!" she ordered.
The woman glanced at her, then put up a hand. Peggy moved to defend herself, but Lake effortlessly twisted Peggy's arm back and reached into her jacket to pull out her gun. Peggy caught her wrist, and for a few moments the car veered wildly back and forth on the road as the two women wrestled over the weapon. Finally, Peggy got it out of her jacket and threw it into the back seat, where neither of them could get at it – Lake couldn't use it against Peggy, and Peggy couldn't get carried away and shoot the driver of a moving car.
"I said stop the car!" she repeated.
"Or you'll do what?" Lake demanded, eyes on the road again.
They were coming to the end of Hudson Street. Peggy grabbed the wheel and forced it to the right. The car ploughed into the bushes of Sparta Park. Again, the two of them fought for control of a machine, until they went right down in the incline and into the Hudson River.
Lake kicked the door open and climbed out. Peggy scrambled after and threw herself on top of Lake as she tried to crawl up the stony slope. Together they rolled back into the water. Peggy ripped Lake's hat off and yanked on her blonde hair. Lake responded by driving an elbow into Peggy's gut and then wrapping an arm around her neck. Peggy reached back and yanked Leg's legs out from under her. Lake grabbed Peggy's jacket with one arm to stop herself falling, and with the other pulled a small object out of her pocket.
For a terrible moment Peggy thought this was a grenade. Then the moonlight caught it, and she saw that it was… a perfume bottle? It sprayed a fine mist in Peggy's face.
She just barely had time to wonder what that was, and then it was as if everything caught fire. Her eyes, nose, mouth, throat, ears… everything was burning. Tears poured down her face. She couldn't see.
Something hit her hard in the jaw, and she fell forwards into the river. Peggy wouldn't have thought the burning sensation could get any worse, but it did, as if rather than putting out the fire on her skin the water just made it hotter. She clawed her way out onto the shore and scrubbed at her eyes with her knuckles, but that made it worse, too.
She heard a startled cry and a honking horn. Voices shouted. What was going on?
"Carter!" That was Thompson. "Carter, where are you?"
"Down here!" Peggy raised a hand and waved it, hoping she was facing the right direction.
The sound of shoes on stones approached her, and she flinched at the feeling of a hand on her back.
"Carter?" asked Thompson's voice, right beside her. His other hand went to her waist, which she would normally have objected to, but right now she needed the help. "What did she do to you?"
"I have no idea. What does it look like?" Peggy asked.
A light shone in her eyes, which was insanely painful but also somewhat reassuring. It meant she hadn't been entirely blinded.
"You're bright red," said Thompson. "And swollen. We'll get a medic in here."
He helped her up the hill and back to the road, where the lights from two or three police cars illuminated a shifting mass of shapes and colours that refused to come into focus. People were shouting and dogs were barking. Every light and ever sound seemed to drill into Peggy's skull.
"We've got another for the ambulance!" Thompson shouted.
"Another?" asked Peggy. "What happened?"
"The blonde," he replied. "One of the cops ran into her."
"See if you can find her perfume bottle. That's what she sprayed with me," said Peggy.
She could tell that Thompson was smugly enjoying the chance to swoop in and rescue her from something, but Peggy was hardly in any shape to protest as he and another man helped her into the back of the ambulance. Somebody offered her cold water for her face, but she refused emphatically.
"I think I need soap," she said. "Whatever it is, water alone does nothing."
She could still see only lights and shadows, but sounds and the bouncing of the vehicle told her they were loading Miss Lake into the ambulance next to her. Peggy moved out of the way as best she could, and asked, "how badly hurt is she?"
"She's unconscious," a male voice replied, "but she doesn't seem to have broken anything."
"That's good," said Peggy. "We need her alive to question her."
The ambulance doors closed, and Peggy sat back, shutting her eyes. She wasn't sure if that helped or not, but at least it blocked out the light. It was only as they pulled away that Peggy realized she had no idea who Miss Lake had shot, or whether the victim had survived. She would have to ask Thompson when he came to see her.
As it turned out, Thompson did not get the chance to visit Peggy in the hospital. After washing her face with soap over and over again, the doctors declared that while they didn't know what had been in the perfume bottle, it seemed no worse than a strong irritant and was unlikely to have any long-term effects. Peggy was therefore released and allowed to take a taxi back to her hotel.
The driver did not say anything to her, which she was glad of. By this time the burning had gone down significantly, although Peggy's eyes were still swollen and water and the back of her throat felt as if she'd drunk straight vinegar and immediately vomited it up again. In addition, she had developed a pounding headache. It felt as if her skin were too tight for her skull and her eyes too big for their sockets, with everything pulsing in time with her heartbeat. She kept her eyes shut for the entire drive.
At the hotel, she gave the elevator operator her floor number, and then felt her way along, counting doors to get to her own. Even the dim late-night lighting in the hallway felt like needles in her eyes. When she got into her room, she made sure all the lights were off and stumbled into the bathroom to splash more cold water on her face.
This was a cause for immediate regret, as everything started burning all over again.
In the end she simply dropped herself into bed, face-up, and hoped to feel better in the morning.
She did not.
It was nearly noon when Peggy woke, thanks in part to the time difference between the oasts and in part to the very late night before. Her head still ached, and the sunlight through the crack in the hotel room curtains seemed to slice into her eyes like one of HYDRA's beam weapons. It was incredibly tempting to just stay in bed all day, and the next day, and the day after that, and Peggy might have given in were it not for the fact that when she rolled over she realized she needed to use the loo. With a theatrical groan, she tossed the covers back, stood up, and staggered into the washroom.
When she'd arrived the previous evening, Peggy hadn't bothered to assess what she looked like in the aftermath of Lake's attack. Now that she did, it was not quite as bad as she'd feared, but still not a pretty picture. Her eyes were nearly swollen shut and the skin around them, along with her nose, lips, and cheeks, was ferociously red and puffy. It looked superficially like a severe sunburn.
She reached to rub one eye, then thought better of it.
Now that she was upright, Peggy no longer felt quite so much like staying in bed the entire day. She should at least have some breakfast, she decided, and then let Daniel know she was all right. He would most likely have heard about last night and would want to be kept informed. With that in mind she called downstairs for room service, combed her hair, and then carefully held the telephone reciever an inch away from her skin as she asked the operator for Los Angeles.
Daniel was relieved to hear from her. "I'm glad you're okay," he said. "Thompson said you'd been burned by some kind of chemical?"
"I have," said Peggy, "and there seems to be nothing I can do except wait for it to get better. It's already improved from last night." The headache, at the very least, was no more than a mild annoyance today, rather than an all-consuming agony.
"Let me know if they figure out what it was," Daniel said. "Could be useful."
"Whatever it is, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy," Peggy told him, only to re-evaluate this statement a moment later. Who did she consider her worst enemy? Some of those Nazis who were still being tried for their crimes could do with a faceful. At her most obnoxious, so could Dottie Underwood. She would keep that in mind. "I don't know yet how our mysterious Miss Lake is doing," Peggy went on. "She was still in the hospital when I was released."
"Oh, she's out now," Daniel said. "Thompson called me this morning. They've got her in custody at the police station down the street from the phone company, the same place we kept Underwood, but she's not talking."
Peggy sat up a little straighter. "Well, at least we know she won't be able to escape without help," she quipped. "Nobody said anything to me."
"They probably didn't want to disturb you," Daniel suggested. "You're convalescing, after all."
She considered how she would have felt if the phone had rung at eight am while she was still trying to sleep off whatever this was, and had to concede the point. "I suppose I'd better head over there and see what they're up to. Thank you for telling me."
"Don't work too hard," said Daniel.
"I'll try not to, but I make no promises."
After eating, Peggy washed her face – carefully, and with almost more soap than water – and put her hair up, then got dressed. Makeup seemed like a terrible idea so she wore none, choosing instead a pair of large sunglasses and a hat she could tilt down to make her face harder to see. She couldn't see well enough to tell if people were staring at her as she hailed another taxi. It wasn't far to the SSR offices, but if she tried to walk they would probably think she was a blind woman, blundering down the street with only the barest idea where she was going.
"Bell telephone company, please," she told the cab driver.
Peggy had often thought she could have found her way around the New York office of the SSR with her eyes closed – now she was relieved to realize she'd been right. She took the elevator up and stepped out into the main room. A man in a beige suit came to greet her, which she thought was probably Thompson, but she couldn't see well enough to be sure until he was only a couple of yards away.
"Marge?" he said. "You look terrible."
"Your honesty is refreshing, Mr. Thompson," she replied, not sure if she were being sarcastic or not. "Has anyone figured out what she sprayed me with yet?"
"Actually, Dr. Mroczek was just giving me the results of that now," said Thompson.
Frank Mroczek was the East Coast SSR's new head of the science department. He looked like a walrus at the best of times, with an enormous bushy black moustache, and the movement of this facial hair was all Peggy could really see of his face as he stepped out from behind Thompson.
"Good morning, Agent Carter," he said in his Polish accent. He tactfully declined to say anything about her appearance, and got straight to explaining his findings. "We analyzed the substance in the perfume jar, and the active ingredient appears to be capsaicin."
"What is that?" asked Peggy, walking towards Thompson's office.
"It's the chemical that makes paprika spicy," Mroczek explained. "She seems to have isolated it, put it in an emulsion with what I think is propylene glycol, and used it as a weapon. It's not soluble in water, so trying to rinse it off won't work."
"I'd noticed," Peggy said. "Thank you, Dr. Mroczek." The idea that it was a substance people ate on purpose was reassuring – that seemed to confirm that Peggy would suffer no lasting damage. "Have we learned anything else?" she asked Thompson.
"We found your gun in the car," he said. "Along with hers – another colt thirty-eight, but that's not what she used at the prison. She took that guy out with an arrow, fired by some home-made compressed air device."
That was why all Peggy had heard was a popping sound. "How did she break the window glass?"
"She didn't. She drilled through it with a hand auger." Thompson shook his head. "She must've been at it all night. I have no idea how nobody saw her."
"All that effort only to shoot the wrong man." Peggy shook her head. "Who did she get?"
"Armin Zola," said Thompson.
Peggy's eyes were too swollen to open wide, but she could feel them trying. "What, really?" As political prisoners went Zola was, if anything, more important than Fenhoff. He was one of the men the United States Government was pumping for information on HYDRA's research and weaponry, although unlike some others he was considered too dangerous to be allowed his freedom. The CIA was going to be furious.
Just what they needed, she thought. Another acronym involved in this mess.
"Is he dead?" she asked.
"Very," Thompson said. "The arrow entered the left side of his neck and went straight through the carotid artery. He bled out before anybody even got to the cell. Good riddance, if you ask me."
"I'm inclined to agree, but there are people who won't," Peggy observed.
She heard the elevator doors open and turned to see who it was, but from this distance Peggy could see only a vague blue shape. She stood no chance of recognizing the individual until he spoke.
"Chief Thompson?" he asked. "I'm Ned Russel, from the California FBI."
"Agent Russel?" Peggy asked. "What are you doing here?"
"Agent Carter?" Russel was as surprised as she was. He came closer and she was able, by squinting, to make out his familiar face and blue blazer. "I didn't recognize you!" he said. "Bees?"
She blinked. "Bees?"
"One of the secretaries at the Sacramento office got stung by a bee in her garden last summer," he said. "Her hand turned purple and swelled up like it would burst. Some of the men still call her Lobster Lady."
"I'm sure she appreciated the sympathy," said Peggy.
"I see you two have met," Thompson observed.
"Briefly," Peggy agreed. "Agent Russel, I thought you were being taken off this case."
"I'm here as a witness. They want me to identify Miss Lake as the woman who drugged and robbed me. After that… yes, I'm being reassigned," he admitted.
"I'm sorry to hear that," Peggy lied. "How is your wife?"
Russel sighed. "She's gone to stay with her brother in Houston."
"Well, I'm afraid that serves you right," Peggy said with a nod. "No, incidentally, I was not stung by a bee. I was stung by Miss Lake."
"I see. Guess I got off easy."
Thompson escorted his two guests up the street to the police station where Miss Lake was being kept. She was, indeed, not only in the same building but in the same cell as they'd kept Dottie, in the basement beneath the main offices. Peggy couldn't see very well, but she made out that they'd washed the charcoal off Lake's face and hands and put her in a gray women's prison uniform, and she was now sitting on the bed with shackles on her wrists and ankles. Her accident had taken the skin off the back of her right elbow, and her right cheek was scraped and bruised, but she still looked considerably better than Peggy did.
The dim illumination in the cell block was much kinder to Peggy's aching eyes than the full light of day in the SSR offices had been. She still could only see a blur, but the bottle-blonde hair and the way the woman moved… yes, that was the same person who'd come to the Los Angeles office claiming to be Agent Nadine Russel.
The prisoner looked up as they entered. She smiled, wiggling her fingers at them in a parody of a wave. Her expression was downright smug, Peggy thought. Miss Lake knew she had secrets the SSR wanted badly, and she also knew that she alone had control over when and whether she would reveal them.
"That's her," Russel told Thompson.
"All right." Jack nodded. "We've got one positive ID. How about you, Carter? Is that the woman you met?"
"Yes, it is," said Peggy. "I would know her anywhere."
Thompson approached the bars, and Peggy very nearly grabbed him and pulled him back. She could just imagine Lake darting into action the moment a potential victim came within reach. Fortunately, Thompson was smart enough to stay about an arm's length away to speak to her.
"You're going to jail either way, sweetheart," he said. "Assault, robbery, impersonating an officer of the law, unauthorized access to classified information, breaking and entering, and now murder. We know you can talk, so there's no point in sitting there all stony-faced. If you tell us what we want to know, we might go easy on you."
Lake raised a hand and pointed at Peggy. "I want to talk to Agent Carter," she said.
Thompson's eyebrows rose. He looked over his shoulder at Peggy.
"Is that the first time she's spoken?" Peggy asked.
"First time," he agreed. Thompson looked the prisoner over. "Why do you want to talk to Carter?" he asked.
Lake didn't answer him.
Peggy tried. "Why do you want to talk to me?"
"Because I think you want to talk to me," said Lake.
She was certainly right about that . Peggy's purse, with that mysterious letter still in it, suddenly felt very heavy. Ironic how the thing she most wanted to ask about was one she could not bring up with other people around. She could definitely learn something, though.
"That, I do," Peggy said. "If one of you gentlemen could bring me a seat," she said to Thompson and the police, "I'm sure I could talk to our guest all day."
One of the officers brought a folding metal chair, and Peggy sat down facing the cell, just over her own arm's length from the bars. She was taller than Miss Lake, so if Peggy couldn't reach the cell door, neither could their guest.
Thompson and the cops gathered around behind her. Peggy wondered if she should ask them to leave, but decided to wait and see. If Lake were willing to talk in front of them, it was better that she do so. The coordinates were probably a distraction anyway.
"So," she said. "Let's start with something simple. You told me Dorothy Underwood's real name is Olga Barynova. Is that true?"
"Yes," said Lake.
"And you told your landlady and employer at the Botticelli Gardens, and Agent Russel, that your own name is Katherine Lake."
"Yes."
"What's your real name?"
"Katerina Lachkova," she replied immediately.
Peggy's gut reaction was bollocks . Nowhere on her long list of Dottie's aliases was anything that sounded remotely like Olga Barynova. There was no way Lake would have given anybody even an approximation of her actual name. "Is that a fact?"
The woman flashed her a smile. "Call me Kay."
This was off to a marvelous start. Lake might be willing to talk to Peggy, but that didn't mean she planned on being helpful . "Very well, Kay," said Peggy. "Are we to assume, based on your posing as Agent Russel, that you're here looking for Miss Barynova?"
"That's one reason."
Peggy scowled. "You said you wanted to talk to me. Is this entire interview going to be like pulling teeth?"
"Probably," said Lake. Something jingled, and she slipped the shackles off her wrist and ankle and placed them on the mattress next to her. Peggy had never even noticed her undoing them. Lake sat up straight, folding her hands in her lap in imitation of Peggy's own posture. "Our masters want Barynova back because they need to figure out what went wrong with her. How did she go rogue? Was it just Fenhoff? Was it her?" She paused, looking Peggy over. "Was it you? Whatever it was, they want to be sure it can never happen again."
"So you want her alive," said Peggy.
"Dead would be mission failure." Lake examined Peggy's face again, and Peggy wondered what she saw behind the redness and swelling. "She is alive. How did she get out of this cell? I'm told she escaped. How?"
Peggy absolutely refused to turn around and look at Thompson, but she was quite sure he was looking at her . "We haven't the faintest idea, except that it seems she had help from somebody named Katherine, who was posing as a psychologist."
Lake chuckled – she knew what Peggy was trying to imply, and she knew it was nonsense. "I see," she said.
"I'm the one who's supposed to be asking the questions," Peggy reminded her. "What can you tell me about these masters of yours?"
"Absolutely nothing," said Lake.
"Is this negotiable?"
"No. I don't know anything," Lake explained. "I don't know their names, I don't know their location, I only know they give the orders. I can't tell you what I don't know."
That might be a lie, but Peggy decided to put a pin in it for now. "So you want Dottie alive, but Fenhoff dead."
Lake snorted. "Nobody cares about Fenhoff. It's what he did to Barynova. He could only tell us what he thinks he did to her. Fenhoff can rot in prison for the rest of his life as far as anyone in the USSR is concerned."
"Then why did you take the risk of trying to assassinate him?" Peggy asked.
"You don't believe I did that for Fenhoff," said Lake.
The idea that Zola might be the actual target had occurred to Peggy. The Soviets wanted HYDRA scientists, too, and Zola had been at the top of that despicable heap. Maybe they'd decided that if they couldn't have him, nobody would. "Well, since you can read my mind, tell me what I do think."
"If you could read mine," Lake said quietly, "you would thank me for taking out your garbage for you."
It had already been chilly in the cell block, and something in those words made the temperature seem to drop even further. The distinct impression was that this was personal. Lake hadn't shot Zola because she'd been told to. She'd done it because she hated him so much she could barely contain herself, even with a lifetime of training. Or was that what she wanted Peggy to think?
"Be explicit," said Peggy. "Who did you try to kill last night, and why?"
"Armin Zola is dead." Lake looked directly into Peggy's eyes. "Because he was an evil man, and the world is a better place without him."
"Why do you say that?" Peggy asked, though she was inclined to agree. "You said if I could read your mind. What do you know?"
"I know who he's been talking to, and I know the poison he's been pouring in their ears," Lake replied. "The same thing is happening in the Supreme Soviet. You might want to talk to your scientists, Agent Carter. Talk to your politicians. Ask them what they've learned from Zola, and from Fenstermacher, and Vogt, and Reichardt. The talkative ones are the worst."
Peggy pressed her lips together as if to freshen her lipstick, though she wasn't wearing any, and thought of some of the conversations she'd had with Vernon Masters. Not to mention the Arena Club, who always knew tomorrow's news in advance. Those sorts of people would be very interested in some of HYDRA's ideas, wouldn't they? All she said aloud, however, was, "I didn't think they let you ladies out enough to catch wind of such things."
"Spying on our own government is one of our most important functions," Lake said. "Just because somebody is a member of the Party doesn't mean they have its best interests at heart." Then she smiled again. "You and I have a common enemy, Agent Carter."
"Oh, is that where you're going with this?" Peggy asked. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend?"
"Maybe not my friend, but compatible goals have to count for something."
"I see," said Peggy, and with a sinking feeling she realized that Lake had, in fact, been in charge of the interrogation the whole time. Peggy had just sat there asking exactly the questions the other woman wanted her to. She stood up. "This has been a fascinating conversation, Miss Lake. We'll have to do it again sometime. Perhaps tomorrow afternoon?"
"I'll bake biscuits if you'll bring the tea," Lake said sweetly, "and I told you to call me Kay."
Peggy's expression remained cold. "Thank you, Kay. I'll see you again."
"Bye, Peggy!" Lake gave another friendly wave.
Getting back out in the sunshine felt like coming up for air, even if Peggy's eyes were still fiercely sensitive to the light. She stood there a few seconds, composing herself, until Thompson joined her. He was still flipping through the notes he'd made during the interview.
"It's not much," he said, "but it's way more than we ever got from Underwood. Good girl, Marge!"
"Good girl?" Peggy echoed, in patent disbelief. "Jack, she learned more from me than I did from her. She played me like a fiddle, even after admitting at the start that everything she said would be a lie!"
"When did she say that?" asked Thompson.
"When she said her real name was 'Katherine Lake but it sounds Russian'," said Peggy. She rubbed her forehead – just thinking about this was intensifying her headache. "She now knows what we think the Soviet's priorities are, which gives them something to play to when concealing their true intentions. She pretended to talk openly while really telling us nothing. She's far more dangerous than Dottie. Dottie's quite mad, only out for herself. Lake is stone-cold sane, and she thinks she can rope us into a deal."
Peggy turned and started walking back up the street towards the SSR headquarters. This was unfortunately into the sun, so she kept her head down, with her hat pulled forward to shade her burning face.
"So you don't think we should try to work something out?" Thompson asked, following close behind her.
"Of course not!" said Peggy. "It would be a deal with the devil. I guarantee you she would find a way to get just what she wants and leave us with nothing, looking like fools."
"Seems to me she has a lot to offer us here," said Thompson. "She wants Underwood, we want Underwood. She catches Underwood and takes her back to the USSR, not our problem anymore."
Peggy couldn't believe what she was hearing. "While a murderess walks free with SSR secrets to give to her bosses, or sell to whomever she chooses?"
"Are you telling me you don't approve of that kind of thing, Carter?" Thompson's brows rose.
"I do not," said Peggy. She wouldn't let Thompson's suspicions get her hackles up, not when suspicions were all he had. It was not hypocrisy, she told herself – she had learned . "You can't control her, not unless she's under lock and key and constant guard by people you're sure you can trust. You saw how she got out of those shackles and we never even noticed her working on it."
They re-entered the telephone company building, and in the dimmer light Peggy was better able to see Thompson's expression. He looked thoughtful. There'd been a moment during that business with Agnes Cully and the Zero Matter when Jack Thompson seemed to have learned that Peggy could be a woman and know what she was talking about, but now he was clearly doubtful again. Peggy pressed the elevator button, and waited until the doors closed.
"Please, Jack," she said. If nothing else worked, maybe appealing to his vanity would. "You said I can think like these Russian girls, so trust my insights. We'll all regret it if you don't."
"What do you want to do instead?" he asked.
"Keep Lake in custody until we can press proper charges, and hunt down Dottie ourselves," Peggy said firmly.
"Because that's been working really well so far," Thompson observed.
"Jack…"
"I'll keep your advice under consideration, Marge," he said. The elevator doors opened, and Thompson returned to his office, closing the door behind him.