Chapter 17
“I feel like we have come to a dead end.”
Sharon wasn’t wrong. Peggy felt they had come to one as well.
“I have to apologize,” she admitted, lying across the bed in Sharon’s room, notes, case files, and Sharon’s laptop between them. “I feel I’m the one who even dug this hole we have found ourselves down in.”
Sharon didn’t look as if she would argue. “Yeah, but I’m the one who went along with it. Truth be told, I was sort of glad you did stick your foot in it. My first big case, a big assignment, and I was grasping at straws. None of this makes any sense. Maybe I was hoping you would come in with some insight, your legendary sixth sense, and blow it open.”
“Nothing about my sense is legendary, I’m afraid, outside of the stories your grandfather and Howard told. Memory and reminiscence tends to make strange bedfellows with facts.” Peggy sighed, thinking of Siobhan Haldane and their conversation. “I grossly misjudged...a lot of things in this. Steve was right, I fear, I was chasing my own outsized memories, those old demons and fears. I saw Darkmoor and the name Haldane and assumed the worst, because I was already assuming the worst with the Mandarin.”
“We all have our demons,” Sharon said, leaning back into the soft pile of pillows behind her.
“You don’t,” Peggy replied, sounding highly envious even to her own ears. “Since the day I arrived in this mad world, you have handled it all with a stride I don’t know if I could possibly possess. You have accepted time travel, and long-lost relatives showing up after decades, and the Avengers and all of the rest of it without assuming the worst. You accepted me without assuming I was part of some shadowy conspiracy to undermine...whatever. What would I undermine?”
“The World Security Council and their determination to scuttle the Avengers Initiative,” Sharon offered.
“I would undermine that, yes, but I think they do a rather brilliant job on their own.”
“That they do,” Sharon admitted, chuckling. “And as for demons...like you said, we all have them, even me.”
At that, she fell silent, clearly in no further mood to discuss the situation. Peggy let it be, glancing instead, pointedly, at her watch. “It is past Irene’s appointed dinner hour downstairs, I am afraid, and lunch was a while ago. How about going back to that pub we found, get a spot of something to eat.”
“Sounds good,” Sharon agreed, readily, rising from the bed and the cluster of papers there. “Though, maybe not in the outfits from last night.”
“No,” Peggy agreed, heartily, rising to gather her own things. Tiredly, they wandered back to the pub they had visited the night before, filled with quiet chatter, and several fellows sitting at the bar watching the match on the television. Whether it was live or not, Peggy didn’t know. It all was warm and cheery, something of a balm given her mood.
They ordered and were waiting on their food when a large group wandered in, looking decidedly out of place in the comfortable environment. That they had been out and about during the day was clear, given their clothing, the serviceable wool and drab jackets, designed for blending in with the washed out colors of nature in autumn. The group of ten, mostly men save for three women, all chattered loudly and amiably as they settled in a more private, open area in the back, away from the main room and guests there.
“You think it is the group from the manor, then?” Sharon had eyed the party with the same calculating eye as Peggy.
“Not many other places a group that large out hunting would be.” Peggy studied the look of those she could see. They were companionable enough, though she supposed a day out on the moors would do that. “Do you happen to have a photographs of any of the shareholders or heads of any of the Mys-Tech companies?”
“Already on it,” Sharon assured her, holding her phone up towards the group, surreptitiously. For several long moments, she studied it mildly. “Facial recognition is coming through on several of them. We got at least one board member and several different executives. The tall, balding one standing by the fireplace, he’s the head of MST Pharmaceuticals, Kyle Donahue. Lady Siobhan referenced him.”
Peggy turned in her seat to zero in on him. He was dressed as most of them were, in long, warm woolen trousers and hiking boots, a thick, flannel shirt on under his more practical, drab jacket. Whatever was being said among them all, he laughed as a story was shared. It seemed a shame to break up the good time.
“Let me go and chat with him,” Peggy turned to Sharon. “I know the serum and what to ask for. If it all turns to nothing, then I promise, I will get on the first plane I can get back on Monday and head back to America, as meek as a kitten.”
Sharon arched one perfect eyebrow, but allowed it. “Let me know what you find out.”
Peggy rose, making her way to the table of Lady Siobhan’s guests. They seemed a pleasant lot, but all looked quizzically at her as she moved to Sir Kyle directly, offering him her most polite and formal smile. “Excuse me, Sir Kyle, my name is Peggy Carter. I work with SHIELD. I couldn’t help but notice you were here with your friends, and I was hoping I could pull you aside. It seems I have some need of your professional advice.”
She might as well have said an Asgardian had just landed in the middle of the room and she was asking Sir Kyle to fight them for all the effect it had on the table, including the slightly baffled Sir Kyle. He blinked large brown eyes at her before looking to the table, then back at her. “Errr, all right, if you wish.”
With appropriate excuses to the table and curious looks, Peggy led the man off to one of the empty booths nearby, waiting for the gentleman to settle himself. He was certainly befuddled, but pleasant as he clearly tried to make sense of her. “You said you were with SHIELD? Are you here regarding the bombing, then?”
“Yes and no,” she replied, evasively. “I am offering some insight into what happened, however, I head up the Avengers Initiative.”
“Avengers?” That perked up his interest. “They are the ones who saved New York! You work with them?”
“As a matter of fact, yes, I do. That is a part of why I’m interested in speaking with you.”
That left him even more surprised. “What in the world would I have to do with the Avengers?”
“You might be surprised,” Peggy murmured, sensing in the man a sort of delight that he would even be noticed by them. It made her think, with a small sense of sadness, of Phil Coulson. “I work with Dr. Elizabeth Ross. I don’t know that you’ve necessarily heard of her, but she’s heard of MST Pharmaceuticals and the research they’ve done on their regenerative work.”
“That’s right, some time ago, now. Five years ago we had a department working full tilt on it, cutting edge stuff, was one of the most exciting parts of our research. What brings it up?”
Peggy ignored his question for the moment. “It’s my understanding the department is no longer funded, correct?”
“Well, yes,” he admitted, slowly, rubbing the top of his bald head. “We had some restructuring of priorities, that sort of thing. We were asked to work on more practicalities and not maybes, so a lot of the projects were either cut or spun off into their own research groups working in affiliation with us. Helen Cho in Seoul is one of those, a few others. Why?”
“Were any of them working on any sort of advanced work on cellular regeneration in humans,” Peggy pressed.
Sir Kyle shrugged, vaguely caught off by her question. “I mean, in theory, they all were, but only some of them were successful. Even then, they were only successful in certain aspects, like skin cell regrowth, or the healing of damage from a singular wound, say from surgery, that sort of thing. We aren’t talking about something like…” He paused, waving a hand as if looking for something to complete his comparison.
“Like the Abraham Erskine’s serum?” Peggy dropped the one question she wanted to get at.
“Yes, well…” He paused, frowning vaguely at her. “Wait...Erskine’s serum. The super soldier serum?”
He knew what it was at least. “You do know why SHIELD would be interested if MST was trying to recreate that.”
Suddenly, the mood changed. His affability dimmed quite a bit, his expression turning stern. “Director Carter, if you are suggesting we are playing with recreating that…”
“Sir Kyle, I am not suggesting anything,” she quietly assured him, despite the cool formality she addressed him with. “This only came up because of the bombing. This Mandarin had no motive to attack your facility in London, and yet he did. Why? What is it that MST is working on that would be of interest to him?”
“Well, it’s certainly not Erskine’s formula,” he insisted, irritation edging his voice. “Every major government since World War II has tried to recreate that formula and everyone has failed horrifically. Much like that ridiculous Iron Man suit, it’s not reproducible. Frankly, people should stop trying.”
His response was intriguing. “I don’t disagree with you, Sir Kyle. The serum worked once and only once. That was good enough. Every time people tried to play with it since then, it’s gone badly. But you can see why SHIELD would be nervous. Imagine if the Mandarin did find out someone had been researching it, that someone might have a formula, even a potential one. He stages a terrorist attack to keep everyone distracted while sending an operative in to gain access to the MST files and see what he gets. If he isn’t using it to develop his own super soldier army, he’s certainly selling it to the highest bidder to get his own. And if you don’t think a man like this Mandarin wouldn’t do that, I would like to point out that the Iron Man suit exists because he captured Tony Stark in order to make him build weapons for him. Why wouldn’t he look for evidence of the super soldier serum.”
That caught Sir Kyle’s attention. “You know for certain that’s what he did?”
“It’s the most plausible theory,” Peggy hedged, knowing she was stretching that truth to its fullest, hoping he would buy it.
Whether he did or didn’t, he at least seemed willing to entertain the possibility. “I can assure you, Director Carter, MST wasn’t involved in the recreating of Erskine’s work.”
“So your work in human cellular regeneration was completely new work?”
“Some of it,” he replied, sighing, rather unhappily. “Though I suspect you wouldn’t be pushing this so hard if you didn’t already know we were, in fact, at least studying the serum enough to understand what Erskine was doing with it.”
And there they finally cut to the chase. “So you were trying to, what, recreate the effects?”
His frown deepened, clearly unhappy he was giving this much away. “More to understand what Erksine’s original work was. You know he wasn’t actually out to create super soldiers at all, but to help humans thrive, to heal wounds that wouldn’t fix themselves, to strengthen their systems. It was only after his work came to the attention of the larger scientific community, particularly Johann Schmidt, that anyone actually paid him any attention.”
“I know,” Peggy said, a trifle painfully. This man couldn’t possibly know her connection to Erskine, now long dead, or that she had been the one to save him from Schmidt's clutches.
“That was what interested us,” Sir Kyle admitted, frankly, leaning back against the padded back of their booth. “The hope was that we could recreate something, maybe several somethings to take into the field and help those who needed it most. Some of the experiments worked, some riffed off of Erskine’s ideas to do new and different things. None of them were super soldiers. Frankly, I believe it is the sort of work Erskine would approve of with his serum, something good and right being done in this world with his work, rather than…”
He trailed off, flushing as a hint of a guilty look crossed his face. “I apologize, if you are working with the Avengers, you know Steve Rogers, then.”
Peggy only just managed not to flush bright red at that. “Rather well, yes.”
“He strikes me as a very good man. I have to say, I was impressed with his leadership in New York. I don’t want to cast aspersions on someone I don’t know, and I don’t mean to, just that not every intention with that serum was good, and not every outcome was Captain Rogers.”
“That I am well aware of, Sir Kyle,” she agreed, wholeheartedly. “So how did you get a hold of Erskine’s formula for study?”
Here he rolled his eyes in mild disgust. “I don’t know if I should tell you this, seeing as you are SHIELD and it would only horrify you how easy it was.”
In fairness, she was afraid of that. “You might be surprised.”
He nodded, gamely, perhaps realizing how true that statement was. “When our research board agreed to the proposals made by the team, discreet inquiries were made into how at least some of his notes could be obtained. We thought that SHIELD held the proprietary claim on Erskine’s work, given that they claimed it all when the agency was formed. However, it was discovered that there was a source in the US willing to negotiate with us on the matter.”
Peggy felt her teeth grind almost on instinct at that. “It wouldn’t happen to be the US Army, would it?”
“No,” he said, much to Peggy’s stunned surprise. “As a matter of fact it was the CIA.”
She hadn’t expected that. “The CIA? Why them?”
“I don’t know for sure,” he admitted, holding his hands up. “They are the ones who approached us. Perhaps they are working with the Army, it’s hard telling with Americans. Whatever the case, they gave us the file of Erskine’s work and a sample from a human test subject, an old one from the looks of it.”
All the moisture in Peggy’s mouth dried up as she stared at the man for several long, uncomprehending seconds. It took her forever to find her words, anger, shock, and disbelief all mingled into a single word. “What?”
“They gave us a sample of blood from a human test subject. I don’t know who or where from, none of the particulars, and they weren’t keen on sharing.”
Howard had told her that he had the last vial. She had believed him. Peggy had poured Steve’s blood into the East River believing that was the end of it.
“How long ago was this?”
He frowned, pulling up the memories that obviously weren’t top of mind. “Uhhh...must have been seven, eight years ago now? Unfortunately, whatever sample they did give us was not particularly useful to us in the end. The traces of serum left were degrading at a fairly high rate, which is why we suspected the sample was old. Whatever the case, the American government offered us a great deal of money to look into it, which we took, saying only we would see what we could do. That money went to good research and helped to fund key programs. But we never were able to make anything of the sample and in the end our research went in different directions.”
If there was a silver lining in this, at least there was the knowledge that they never got far with it. “And you know the US government had this sample.”
“Well, I know that’s where it came from, and I’ve heard things through the grapevine.” He gave her a doleful look. “Considering who you have on that team of yours, I think you know some of it. The serum is something like the holy grail of medical research, everyone has had a crack at it since Erskine died, and the US has paid top dollar for it. Most of those projects didn’t get particularly far off the ground. Those that did had horrific consequences. MST isn’t interested in playing God, Director Carter. We are interested in saving lives, which sometimes is a rarity in this field, where making money is king. I’d like to think we have a bit more moral integrity than that.”
Peggy felt somewhat chastened by his words, all the while thinking it must be nice to stand on a moral high ground of helping the world when one is spending weekends hunting at a two-hundred-year-old manor house on a thousand-year-old estate. She reminded herself that she had interjected herself into this man’s weekend and that he didn’t have to talk to her or be as candid as he was. “What is MST Pharmaceutical to Darkmoor?”
“Tied only by the fact that Lady Siobhan oversees us both?” It clicked with her why she was asking. “MST is a wholly separate company from the research facility. I don’t even know if she was completely aware of the serum or that it was used for some of our work, particularly as we didn’t end up using it. I do know something of what her father did. I don’t think I could work where I do if I didn’t. But she’s not a horrible woman. She’s been left with a legacy that she wasn’t alive for and didn’t want, and tasked with doing something more with it, something better, to help the whole world. Whatever SHIELD might make of the Darkmoor affair or any of that, know she is one of those people out there in the world trying to make a difference with what she has.”
Sir Kyle’s quiet defense of Lady Siobhan was sincere and earnest...and left Peggy with loose ends. The one lead, this grand conspiracy she had built in her head of what was going on with the Mandarin bombing, MST Pharmaceutical, and Darkmoor began to unravel, as if someone had grabbed the end of a string and tugged. She sighed, staring at the well scrubbed table between them, realizing she had come all this way on what was amounting to nothing more than a wild goose chase.
“Thank you, Sir Kyle,” Peggy held out her hand across the table to him. He took it in his larger one, shaking it firmly.
“I hope I’ve been some use to you. It would be a relief to know why our company was targeted, if they were. And perhaps, under different circumstances, we can connect on other things. SHIELD is always sending forces as peacekeepers and to help in crises scenarios. Perhaps our foundations can work with them.”
Peggy nodded, knowing she wasn’t the one to organize that. “I’ll keep it in mind and let people at SHIELD know. Thank you.”
With that, they both rose, Sir Kyle to his party, and Peggy back to Sharon. Judging from the expression on Sharon’s face, she had already sussed out the outcome of the conversation.
“Nothing on the serum?” Food had come while Peggy was in conversation, and Sharon had already helped herself to a sausage roll and half of the chips.
“Worse, it seems that the American government has more samples of Steve’s blood than they let on.” Peggy glowered at their food, playing through every conversation she had with Howard on the matter. "How, I don't know, I thought they were all gone even by 1946."
"Maybe they found some squirreled away in a lab somewhere?" Sharon replied, looking as if she wished she could be more helpful. "Has MST been working on it?"
"Not in the way you might think. They've been trying to do something good with it for a change." Peggy toyed with a a butter knife on the table, listlessly. "And they haven't done that for years. Nothing really came of it. So, there is that theory down the drain."
She had dragged both of them back here for nothing.
"You tried," Sharon said, firmly, but looking as dispirited as Peggy felt. "We'll head back to London, follow different leads."
Peggy shook her head, slowly. "You will follow different leads. This is your case, I just horned myself in on it. I think it's more than time that I headed back to New York and returned to the work I actually do. Stop chasing the ghosts of my past all over the Yorkshire moors."
Sharon looked as if she wanted to say something to protest or reassure her, but instead simply nudged the plates of food in her direction. "Eat, then we will call it an early night."
It was a gesture that reminded Peggy very much of Sharon's mother. "A sausage roll won't fix everything."
"Mmmm, no, but neither will not eating, and you are grumpy when you haven't."
Sharon did know how to break her out of her own self-indulgent pity-parties. "I survived a war on rations, you know."
"How Steve put up with you, I will never know," she responded cheekily.