by Alex Irvine
“No,” Karpov said. He opened the door. “No cops.”
On his doorstep, the man grinned. “Thank you.”
But Karpov was completely unprepared for what came next.
He came back to his senses hanging upside down from his basement ceiling. His head dangled in the utility sink, where a trickle of water dripped down from the faucet. Karpov struggled a little, but he could tell right away that he wasn’t going to be able to work himself free. The man who had tied him up was a professional. Better to talk his way out. It wasn’t the first time he’d been in a dangerous spot.
Karpov watched as the man searched the basement. Eventually, he found the aluminum box hidden deep in the wall. He dumped its contents onto a table near the stairs and spent a moment looking through Karpov’s service files from decades ago. The red book containing the Winter Soldier’s activation commands also fell out of the box. The intruder ignored it.
“You kept your looks, Colonel. Congratulations,” the man said. Then he added, “Mission report: December sixteenth, 1991.”
Karpov knew that date. He remembered the mission. How did this man know about it… and more important, why did he want that report?
“Who are you?” he asked, trying to buy time.
“My name is Zemo. I will repeat my question. Mission report: December sixteenth, 1991.”
Keep him talking, Karpov thought. “How did you find me?”
Zemo relaxed. He picked up the red book. Karpov got a chill. If Zemo knew what the book contained…
“When S.H.I.E.L.D. fell,” Zemo said, “Black Widow released Hydra files to the public. Millions of pages, much of it encrypted, not easy to decipher. But I have experience. And patience. A man can do anything if he has those.”
“What do you want?”
“Mission report: December sixteenth, 1991.” Zemo stood up. “Hydra deserves its place on the ash heap, so your death would not bother me.” He sighed. Karpov couldn’t tell whether his regret was real or not. “But I have to use this book, and other bloodier methods, to find what I need. I don’t look forward to that.”
Karpov knew this was the moment. If he told Zemo where to find the mission report, he might live.
But instead, all Karpov said was, “Hail Hydra.”
CHAPTER 6
After Ross left, tensions among the Avengers didn’t take long to come out into the open. The team was conflicted. None of them wanted to give up their ability to operate freely… but that video montage had shaken them. Was there a better way? Rhodey and Sam staked out opposite positions right away.
“Secretary Ross has a Congressional Medal of Honor, which is one more than you have,” Rhodey told Sam.
Sam wasn’t impressed by the secretary’s credentials. “So let’s say we agree to this thing. How long is it gonna be before they LoJack us like a bunch of common criminals?”
“One hundred and seventeen countries want to sign this,” Rhodey countered. “One hundred and seventeen, Sam, and you’re just like, ‘No, it’s cool.’”
“How long are you going to play both sides?” Sam demanded. Rhodey had been skeptical while Ross was in the room. Now he was taking the secretary’s side, and Sam didn’t like it.
“I have an equation,” Vision announced.
“Oh, this will clear it up,” Sam said, his sarcasm plain.
“In the eight years since Mr. Stark announced himself as Iron Man, the number of noted enhanced persons has grown exponentially,” Vision said. “And during the same period, the number of potentially world-ending events has risen at a commensurate rate.”
“Are you saying it’s our fault?” Steve asked.
“I’m saying there may be a causality. Our very strength invites challenge. Challenge incites conflict. And conflict… breeds catastrophe. Oversight. Oversight is not an idea that could be dismissed out of hand.”
“Boom,” Rhodey said, leaning back in his chair.
“Tony, you’re being uncharacteristically nonhyperverbal,” Natasha said.
Steve had also been watching Tony, knowing that his opinion would sway people. “That’s because he’s already made up his mind,” he said.
“Boy, you know me so well,” Tony replied. “Actually, I’m nursing my electromagnetic headache. That’s what’s going on, Cap. It’s just pain… discomfort.” Restless, he got up and put some dishes in the common room sink. “Who’s putting coffee grounds in the disposal? Am I running a bed-and-breakfast for a biker gang?”
Coming back to the table, he brought up an image on the wall display screen. It was the photograph he’d gotten from the angry mother in the hallway behind the MIT auditorium. “Oh, that’s Charles Spencer by the way. He’s a great kid. Computer engineering degree. Three-point-six GPA. Had a floor-level gig. A plan for the fall. But first he wanted to put a few miles on his soul before he parked it behind a desk. See the world, maybe be of service. Charlie didn’t want to go to Vegas, which is what I would do. He didn’t go to Paris or Amsterdam. Which sounds fun. He decided to spend his summer building sustainable housing for the poor. Guess where? Sokovia. He wanted to make a difference, I suppose. I mean, we won’t know, because we dropped a building on him.” Tony set his coffee cup on the table with a bang. “There’s no decision-making process here. We need to be put in check. Whatever form that takes, I’m game. If we can’t accept limitations, we’re boundaryless; we’re no better than the bad guys.”
Steve could see why this was hard. He’d been there. He could conjure lots of faces of young men who didn’t make it home from Europe. “Tony,” he said, “someone dies on your watch, you don’t give up.”
“Who said we’re giving up?” Tony countered.
“We are, if we’re not taking responsibility for our actions. These documents just shift the blame.”
“Sorry. Steve, that… that is dangerously arrogant,” Rhodey interjected. “This is not the World Security Council; it’s not S.H.I.E.L.D.; it’s not Hydra.”
“No, but it’s run by people with agendas,” Steve said. “And agendas change.”
“That’s good,” Tony said. Clearly, he and Rhodey were on the same page. Steve wondered who would be on his side, if it actually came down to choosing sides. “That’s why I’m here,” Tony went on. “When I realized what my weapons were capable of in the wrong hands, I shut it down and stopped manufacturing them.”
“Tony, you chose to do that.” Steve was getting frustrated that Tony couldn’t see the glaring problem with the accords. “If we sign these, we surrender our right to choose. What if this panel sends us somewhere we don’t think we should go? What if it’s somewhere we need to go, and they don’t let us? We may not be perfect, but the safest hands are still our own.”
He didn’t have an answer to Steve’s questions yet, but Tony could definitely see that Ross had given them a warning. Supervision was coming, one way or another. “If we don’t do this now, it’s going to be done to us later,” he said. “That’s a fact. That won’t be pretty.”
“You’re saying they will come for me,” Wanda said.
Vision tried to reassure her. “We will protect you.” She didn’t look convinced. To Steve’s eye, she looked guilty and scared and ready for someone to tell her what to do.
“Maybe Tony is right,” Natasha said. “If we have one hand on the wheel, we can still steer.” Natasha knew even a year ago she would have thought differently, but things had changed since then. “I’m just… reading the terrain. We have made some very public mistakes. We need to win our trust back.”
“I’m sorry,” Tony said. He leaned on the table. “Did I just mishear you, or did you agree with me?”
“Oh, now I want to take it back,” she said.
“No, no, no. You can’t retract it. Thank you. I’m impressed by what you did.” He stood and spoke to the group. “Okay, case closed. I win.” Just like that, he was back to being flip Tony, the guy who always had a joke at hand. It was all so easy for him, Steve thought.
Stev
e’s phone vibrated. He glanced at it and saw a text: She’s gone. In her sleep.
The words were like a punch in the gut. Steve stared at them for a moment. Then he stood up. The rest of the conversation could wait. “I have to go,” he said. Nobody tried to stop him.
CHAPTER 7
The choir sang a dirge as Peggy Carter’s casket was carried into the London cathedral. Steve Rogers was the lead pallbearer on the right. He guided the casket to the front of the sanctuary, and the pallbearers set it down on a pedestal next to a large photo of Peggy and wreaths of flowers. A vicar, waiting in the pulpit, paused while everyone got to their seats, then welcomed them with a brief prayer. When he had finished, he said, “And now I would like to invite Sharon Carter to come up and say a few words.”
Sharon reached the podium, and Sam, sitting on Steve’s right, nudged him. Steve had been looking down, lost in thought. Now he looked up and realized that he recognized Sharon Carter. She was the undercover S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who had revealed herself when the Winter Soldier shot Nick Fury in Steve’s apartment two years before. She’d posed as his friendly neighbor to keep an eye on him at the time. How come nobody had told him she was related to Peggy?
Sharon took a moment to collect herself. “Margaret Carter was known to most as a founder of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she began. “But I just knew her as Aunt Peggy. She had a photograph in her office: Aunt Peggy standing next to JFK. As a kid, that was pretty cool. But it was a lot to live up to. Which is why I never told anyone we were related.” She looked directly at Steve as she said that. “I asked her once how she managed to master diplomacy and espionage at a time when no one wanted to see a woman succeed at either. And she said, ‘Compromise when you can. When you can’t, don’t. Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right.’” She caught Steve’s eye again, and he felt like she was speaking directly to him. “‘Even if the whole world is telling you to move, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye, and say, “No… you move.”’”
Steve waited for Sharon by himself in the beautiful stained-glass sanctuary. Natasha walked up to him. He was glad to see her, even though the question of the Sokovia Accords was the elephant in the room that neither of them wanted to talk about.
“When I came out of the ice, I thought everyone I’d known was gone,” he said, looking at the photo of Peggy as he remembered her. Young, with beautiful dark hair swept up in a wave, gaze steady and strong. “When I found out that she was alive, I was just lucky to have her.”
Natasha understood what he was getting at. She’d been torn out of her previous life, too. She’d had to leave people behind. “She had you back, too.”
He was grateful to Natasha for taking a personal moment with him, but it was time to get down to business. “Who else signed it?” he asked. He already knew Natasha had.
“Tony, Rhodey, Vision,” she said.
“Clint?”
“Says he’s retired.”
If Steve had a family, maybe he would do the same thing, he thought. But seventy years on ice had put an end to that possibility. “Wanda?”
“TBD,” Natasha said. To be determined. Steve wondered why Wanda was wavering, after what she’d done in Lagos. He wanted to ask about Banner and Thor, but he knew they were in the wind—nobody could ask them.
“I’m off to Vienna for the signing of the accords,” she said. Natasha paused and added quietly, “There is plenty of room on the jet.”
When he didn’t answer, she kept trying. “Just because it’s the path of least resistance doesn’t mean it’s the wrong path. Staying together is more important than how we stay together.”
He couldn’t agree with that. “What are we giving up to do it? Sorry, Nat. I can’t sign it.”
“I know,” she said.
“Well, then. What are you doing here?”
“I didn’t want you to be alone. Come here.” They hugged. Steve wondered what it would be like if they ever really had to confront each other because of the accords. Natasha was wondering the same thing. Both of them knew what was coming, but both of them hoped it wouldn’t be as bad as they feared.
CHAPTER 8
In Vienna, one hundred and seventeen countries have come together to ratify the Sokovia Accords,” a television reporter was saying as Natasha watched the delegates flow into the main meeting chamber and seat themselves. She was down near the front, close to the floor-to-ceiling windows that spanned the wall behind the podium.
“Excuse me, Miss Romanoff?” She turned to see a nervous bureaucrat. “I just need your signature.”
Natasha signed the document without looking at it. “Thank you,” the bureaucrat said, and melted away into the crowd.
“I suppose neither of us is used to the spotlight,” said a voice nearby. She turned and saw the Wakandan prince, T’Challa. T’Chaka’s son had his father’s composure and bearing, but he was taller and… Natasha couldn’t put her finger on it, but he seemed to radiate a self-assured confidence.
“Well,” she said, “it’s not always so flattering.” The truth was, she hated spotlights and was uncomfortable with any attention she hadn’t drawn to herself on purpose.
“You seem to be doing all right so far,” T’Challa complimented her. “Considering your last trip to Capitol Hill, I wouldn’t think you would be particularly comfortable in this company.”
“Well, I’m not,” she said. They were edging close to dangerous territory. Was he questioning her commitment to the accords? Were people going to be spying on them to make sure they did what they said they were going to do? Whatever it was, she didn’t like the subtext of the conversation so far.
He got more serious. “That alone makes me glad you’re here, Miss Romanoff.”
“Why? You don’t approve of all this?”
“The accords, yes. The politics, not really. Two people in a room can get more done than a hundred.”
King T’Chaka appeared, inserting himself into the conversation with a joke. “Unless you need to move a piano.”
T’Challa greeted his father. “Papa.”
“Son.” The king turned to Natasha. “Miss Romanoff.”
“King T’Chaka. Please, allow me to apologize for what happened in Nigeria.”
“Thank you,” he said with a nod. “Thank you for agreeing to all this. I’m sad to hear that Captain Rogers will not be joining us today.”
“Yes,” she said. “So am I.”
“Everyone, please be seated,” the sergeant at arms called over the auditorium loudspeaker. “This assembly is now in session.”
“That is the future calling,” T’Challa said. He nodded at Natasha as she left to find her seat. “Such a pleasure.”
T’Chaka turned to his son. “For a man who disapproves of diplomacy, you’re getting quite good at it,” the king observed, speaking Wakandan as they always did in their private conversations.
“I’m happy, Father,” T’Challa said. T’Chaka patted his cheek, and T’Challa took his father’s hand, kissing the ring that had been passed down from the ancient kings of Wakanda. At that moment, he was not a prince or a scientist. He was a dutiful son acknowledging his father’s praise.
Once the assembly had convened, T’Chaka took the stage to deliver introductory remarks before the Sokovian Accords were officially signed. “When stolen Wakandan Vibranium was used to make a terrible weapon, we in Wakanda were forced to question our legacy. Those men and women killed in Nigeria were part of a goodwill mission from a country too long in the shadows. We will not, however, let misfortune drive us back. We will fight to improve the world we wish to join. I am grateful to the Avengers for supporting this initiative. Wakanda is proud to extend its hand in peace.”
He was striking exactly the right note, T’Challa thought as he watched from the corner of the room near the windows. His father rarely exercised his diplomatic skills, but when he did, he usually got what he wanted. T’Challa himself didn’t have the natural gifts of a
diplomat. He had to work at it, and he preferred to spend his time almost anywhere else instead of in the conference room. His preferred subjects of study did not require he butter them up before they would work.
He gazed out the windows as his father went on speaking. The assembly hall was on the third floor of the Vienna government complex, and he was looking down on a parked van across the street. Its rear doors were open and a pair of police officers were searching it. Standard protocol. Nothing unusual… until one of them stumbled back and ran away. The other did the same a moment later. He could hear their distant shouts and saw pedestrians start to scatter.
T’Challa instinctively knew what was coming next. The anonymous van, the sudden fear from the police… He sprinted away from the windows, toward the speaker’s podium, shouting over his father’s speech. “Everybody, get down!”
The words had barely left his mouth when the bomb in the van went off.
The blast caved in the building’s front wall and turned the windows into a wave of shrapnel. T’Challa flew across the chamber and slammed hard into a support pillar. He got to his feet, ears ringing and blood on his face. Delegates screamed for help. Some fled and others were trying to aid the wounded. Frantically, T’Challa searched for his father. Fires were burning at the edges of the chamber, but he ignored them, fighting his way back toward the front of the room and the destroyed podium.
His father, the king, lay unmoving. T’Challa knelt at his side, took his hand, and felt no pulse. Over the ringing in his ears, he heard sirens and screams. He smelled the smoke from the fires in the building and on the street. But none of it mattered. T’Challa crumpled over his father’s body and cradled it, weeping at his loss… but already another fire was kindling inside him. He would avenge this. No matter how far he had to travel or who stood in his way, the king’s murder would be avenged.