Memorabilia

The L.A. sun was scorching and Spring street was full of people at this time of the day. Benji stood in front of a building with it’s street side face full of glass. On top of the entrance was the sentence “City Lofts” in big red letters, outlined with a red line a shade more orange. On one side of the double-door entrance was a cocktail lounge and on the other side a bar. He peered inside a bit, but soon realized the entrances to the apartments seemed to be located just a bit more down the street, next to the entrance of a car park. The decorated entrance was just to impress and to draw out a bit more money from the establishments renting the space. There was probably a way inside the apartments on the inside of the glass building, but that wasn’t for current residents. No, the way inside the apartment building for them was the crickety old door down the street.

Benji went to the door and after getting in through the unsurprisingly unlocked door, he went to the elevator and up to the floor where apartment #203 was located. The elevator opened up to a small corridor and Benji could see the door to the apartment located in a corner to his right. The decor was outdated but didn't seem too from the years of use. Not too shabby for a hideout, he mused.

Should he knock? Yelena would probably not appreciate him sneaking in. That might end in a compromised safe house along with needless injuries.

Benji knocked on the door thrice, then moved a respectable distance to the side. He was still in the view of the peephole, though. No need to hide around corners. But enough distance and to the side in case Yelena was in the mood to channel her anger at someone she felt “deserved it”.

Benji waited in silence for a while, not hearing any noises from the apartment. Finally the door opened, just a midge.
“Vere’s Oksana?” Yelena asked harshly.
“Maybe we should talk about inside. Shall we?” Benji flashed his encouraging ‘let me the fuck in, there’s civilians around’ smile, meaning a bit too much teeth to make it friendly.
“Uuuh…fine,” Yelena commented on his response, eyeing him up and down. She seemed almost like a teenager to Benji, but at least she seemed to be enjoying what little freedom she had in talking to people without needless pomp.

Yelena moved away from the door and Benji was let into the apartment. A small bare hallway separated him from the rest of the space, but after a few steps he could see that the rest of the apartment seemed as empty as he expected, with only food containers and random stuff like a weird folded vest looking garment littering the counters.

“I have the package in my backpack”, Benji answered, while hoisting it off his shoulder and to one his hands, “Oksana was kind enough to leave it to me. She died from what seemed to be a stomach injury. Widows, I assume.” They no doubt knew now, and were trying to sniff his trail out. Outsiders who knew about Oksana being a Widow wouldn’t have been bold enough to attack, much less lethally.
“‘I have the package’? Seriouzly? Cliché a lot? Vere’d you leave her? And yes, Widows likely” Yelena snarked.
“At my apartment. She made it there, but didn’t exactly explain why or what the vials were. They’re the gas, right? The one I’ve been hearing about, the one that breaks the Red Room’s control?”
“Yes. Me and some oter Widowz vere sent to retrieve vialz. Morocco. Oksana managed to gas me and ve fled.”
Talking of Oksana made her voice waver a little and she turned away from Benji. He didn’t know how they saw each other, he wasn’t exactly trained the same way as he and the other Wolf Spiders were.
“Were you two close?”
“No, not really. Ve knew each other, like most Widows. But it wazn’t like I had anyone else now on the run.”
“I am sorry.”

Yelena turned back towards Benji after a few seconds.
“She waz meant to get vialz to Natasha. We assumed she had her Avengers contacts and that vialz would be safe vith her.”
“To Natasha? Why did you end up here in America then? Isn’t she in Northern Europe?”
“Damnit, that vas problem! Ve didn’t know vere she vaz when she ran from whole mess vith Accords! Ve didn’t have same recourses as before and Oksana and I couldn’t just run around vithout a tzar in our heads!”
“Well, why did she leave? Why come here?”
“Because ov Ross! He vas hunting her here, so ve trusted that invo like idiots! Oksana left to get vialz to her but ven ve realized ve vere wrong and that Natasha vas far avay, Oksana had already left and I couldn’t contact her!”
“Ross?! You trusted that that idiot would have concrete info! This is Natasha we’re talking about!”
“Ve didn’t have any other invo мудак блять!”

Benji moved a few paces back and held his arms up. Dammit they needed to calm down. A few pounds sounded from angry neighbors. It seemed their little quarrel caused some disturbance. Yelena, red-faced and pacing, seemed to deflate a little after a few seconds of silence.

“Fine, fine, fine. So when she realized independently that the info was incorrect, she already had a squad of Widows on her tail, correct?”
“Yes. No one else outside Red Room could know about the vialz specifically and they seemed to be only interested in them. Oksana and I are collateral”
“So I just happened to be the closest trustworthy guy?”
“Yes, or close enough to trustworthy.”
“Fucking dammit,” Benji his nosebridge between his index finger and thumb, utterly defeated. His whole new life and family gone just for “he just was the closest''. He sat on one of the scavenged bar stools next to the small kitchen island. He felt like he was being a little bit selfish considering all the Black Widows and even the few Wolf Spiders who were out there. But he just couldn’t help it. Finally he had something to truly live for, something just for himself… and now he has to let it go because of and for other people.

“I…Look I am sorry for upending your life, but I, WE, need your help vith this. I don’t know vhere Natasha iz. But I know that you have contacts.”
“Yes, I do. I suppose you know Rick Mason?”
“да.”
“Mason knows about my past and he divulged enough information for me to know that Natasha settled in Northern Europe, like I said. Norway to be more exact.”
“Norway? And you trust Mason enough not to lie to you?”

Yelena was clearly suspicious of him and was assessing him for any maliciousness. She didn’t trust, not like she trusted other Widows and not nearly enough for them to work together smoothly. But she knew he was her best bet getting to Natasha. She had to have been desperate to turn to him and not just take the package and kick him out of the door.

“I pay him well enough and as long as you pay him, he won’t disappoint you. He’d lose quite a lot of customers if he wasn’t reliable. And he trusts me well enough to not attack her needlessly, he seems a bit protective of her,” Benji smirked, a bit like an older brother teasing a younger sibling, anf paused, then looked at her, “so…what’s the plan?”

_______________

Ethan was bouncing his leg up and down, unable to calm down. Today the results from the early investigation would be explained to him and the rest of the unofficial team. Ethan had been pretty much kicked out of the apartment, only being asked questions about specifics like “is this one of Benji’s possessions” or “were you aware of the computer passwords” or “does he normally store dead people in his apartment”.

Finally Will and another man, Stansfield, walked into the room. Stansfield, a shorter man with messy brown hair and a beard dressed in a beige suit, was holding a smallish stack of papers and pictures in his hands while Will was holding only a cup of coffee and a flash drive.

“Agents Hunt, Stickell, Faust and Carter,” Will said as a professional greeting, “the first phase of the investigation conducted by I.M.F. in collaboration with the local police has ended.” Will paused to plug the flash drive into the meeting room's computer and open a digital version of the summary. At the same time Stansfield offered them paper versions of the findings. Ethan leafed through the package but focused on Will and the digital presentation quickly.

“Now, we’ve been able to establish a few things to start with. The woman died approximately 6 hours before agent Hunt arrived at the scene. There were no signs of a struggle at the apartment and the amount of blood in the apartment along with the blood traces found in the hallway indicates that the woman was lethally injured elsewhere. Agent Dunn is therefore not suspected of any crime pertaining to the woman’s death as of this stage in the investigation. There was no blood found elsewhere in the apartment other than some fingerprints in the kitchen and some in the bedroom. Discounting the hallway and the main living room area, of course. The fingerprints in the kitchen and bathroom were matched to agent Dunn, so the unidentified woman seemed to have stayed in the living room after getting into the apartment.”

“We haven’t been able to access agent Dunn’s computer as of this moment and he has not been found. The last confirmed visual sighting of him was in the metro heading south-west. After that it has been assumed he left the city.”

“But most worryingly, while the body of the woman has not been positively identified, we have, thanks to some archived data, been able to establish her as belonging to a group investigated by S.H.I.E.L.D. known as ‘the Red Room’. Now, the Red Room has been connected to a number of criminal and terrorist organizations, most notably HYDRA, but the organization was thought to have been destroyed in the mid-2000s with the death of its leader. He was reported to have been killed in an explosion in Budapest. It was only now, with the body of a dead Widow, a member of the Red Room, that the case was reopened. It is currently unknown if the organization is still active or if the Widow in question was working independently.”

“Agent Dunn has not been connected to the Red Room, but as it is known that the agents of the Red Room specialized in espionage, a possible connection has not been ruled out.”

Ethan felt as if his stomach had lost its bottom and a wave of nausea twisted his whole body. Benji… Benji couldn’t be double-agent. Not sweet, funny, eternally optimistic Benji. Everyone knew of the ghost story that was the Red Room. Girls, and sometimes boys, kidnapped or bought or otherwise recruited to become perfect killers and spies. Ethan would’ve said it sounded like it came straight from a comic book…but he had learned about Captain America in history class and then he started working with the I.M.F. and you saw and read about all sorts of stuff when working behind the curtains. And then Tony Stark flew through the sky in a metal suit and well…he stopped questioning it all.

The rest of the team had similar feelings. None of them believed that Benji could be capable of betraying them. Will couldn’t say anything because of professionalism but the moment he had been presented with these allegations against Benji he had wanted to shout at the investigators to go shove the results up their asses.

Jane had known Benji for years, almost as long as Ethan had known the man. Benji had started out as a quirky techie, but transformed into a formidable field agent in his own right by the time Jane met him. He was, at the time, still a bit wet behind the ears, but he more than made up for it thanks to his technical knowledge. Definitely not as physical as Ethan or her or Ilsa, but he had his own irreplaceable set of skills. Working with Benji in the field had been fun, but Benji sometimes felt too soft and caring for his own good. He had done his best to comfort Jane about Trevor’s death…and that had been the final nail in the so-called coffin. After that Jane would’ve trusted Benji with her life. Hell, maybe she trusted Benji more than Ethan! But to have allegations like that on Benji…it darkened some of her memories. Surely a double-agent wouldn’t put that much effort into a simple persona?

Luther had met Benji through Ethan and he saw Benji as almost like a little brother. They were both techies and that made them bond in a team full of action-movie heroes. Ethan had introduced them and they had gotten along well enough. They had worked together for years now but they were always in the same group, never just the two of them. It wasn’t until the Lane fiasco and them having to work independently from Ethan in France that they finally found their “groove”. Luther himself had seen that Benji was hiding something, but he refused to believe that Benji would’ve brought danger to them intentionally or unintentionally. No matter how good of an actor, you just can’t fake it that well.

Ilsa had met Benji during that evening at the Opera and even though they hadn’t hit it off right away, oh goodness definitely not, they had eventually mended their differences and now she liked to think that they worked together fantastically. Not as good as with Ethan, but that was a simple difference in skillsets and personalities. The near death experience in Nepal had brought them closer together than ever. But the Red Room…Ilsa had heard that plenty of Black Widows and a handful of Wolf Spiders were running around, S.H.I.E.L.D. had even employed one! Benji didn’t exactly match the description she had of the Wolf Spiders, but at the same time, Ilsa had experienced enough backstabbing to last a life-time and if Benji did turn out to be a double-agent…Well, that might just shatter her.