Sorcerer in the Marvel Universe

"Sir, what happened?"

The shout from inside the room had drawn the attention of one of the guards stationed outside. He immediately pushed the door open.

The moment he saw Evenson and Malick standing on opposite sides of the room, tension practically crackling between them, the guard instinctively raised the muzzle of his submachine gun and pointed it toward Evenson.

Evenson didn’t even bother looking back.

Thanks to SHIELD’s deliberate information lockdown, a low-ranking guard like him had no idea what Evenson had actually done during the Battle of New York.

He did, however, know that his employer had invited an Avenger to dinner.

The sheer amount of courage it had taken for him to point a gun at that Avenger was almost admirable.

Unfortunately, his courage earned him nothing but a furious roar from Malick.

"Get out! Nobody comes near this room without my permission!"

The guard froze.

"I thought... yes, sir."

He quickly backed out and closed the door behind him.

Malick had risen as high as he had because he understood how to read a situation.

Even now, with the situation rapidly spiraling beyond his control, he was forcing himself to remain rational.

What could one guard accomplish?

What could all the guards in the estate accomplish?

Could they really stop Evenson, the Avenger who had single-handedly turned the tide of the Battle of New York?

Of course not.

Malick’s original plan had been to flatter Evenson, bribe him, and eventually recruit him.

He had intended to make use of Evenson’s abilities for his own purposes.

What he had never expected was that Evenson would already know this much.

Now that Evenson had laid bare secrets that had been protected for centuries, the balance of power had shifted completely.

Malick was no longer controlling the conversation.

But there was something else.

Something much more interesting.

Evenson himself had just admitted that the organization once used and betrayed by the Red Skull belonged to him.

What organization could he possibly mean?

Malick might have disagreed with the Red Skull’s ideology, but even he had to acknowledge the man had been a formidable figure.

The Red Skull had been one of the most extraordinary individuals Hydra had produced in its entire history.

There weren’t many organizations powerful enough to be worth infiltrating and betraying by someone like him.

As far as Malick knew, there was only one obvious answer.

The Nazi Party.

That realization steadied him somewhat.

"So, if I understand you correctly..." Malick said carefully. "You’re a member of the Nazi Party?"

"Of course not."

Evenson drew a slow breath, apparently forcing down his anger, then returned to the sofa.

"I wasn’t even alive during World War II."

That answer came so quickly that Malick’s mind immediately began racing again.

Had he guessed wrong?

Impossible.

Evenson had said the Red Skull had used and betrayed the organization.

The first part was easy enough to explain.

The second was not.

To betray an organization, the Red Skull would first have had to join it.

At the very least, he would have needed to form some kind of alliance with it.

And what organization had been powerful enough to earn that kind of treatment from the Red Skull?

The Nazi Party was the only answer that made sense.

And Malick wasn’t about to accept the excuse that Evenson was too young.

If Evenson really was only in his twenties, then the Red Skull had been dead for more than sixty years.

What possible personal grudge could Evenson have against him?

And why would that grudge provoke such genuine anger?

"My own organization has no direct connection to the Nazi Party," Evenson continued.

"But my magical lineage has a very complicated history with it."

He picked up his wineglass and slowly raised it to eye level, studying the red liquid inside.

Of course, he had absolutely no idea whether the wine was good.

He’d simply seen movie villains do this and thought it looked cool.

"You could say that the organization was established with the support of my order."

"Hitler was simply the man we placed in front of the world."

"A public figurehead."

"Not a particularly ideal one, admittedly."

"I see..."

Malick considered this carefully.

The Nazi regime had been destroyed more than sixty years ago, but stories about its hidden survival had never completely disappeared.

Some claimed secret Nazi bases still existed beneath the Antarctic ice.

Others claimed the Nazis had constructed an enormous iron fortress on the Moon.

That last one was questionable.

Especially considering some rather interesting information Malick had received recently.

Then there were the legends surrounding Hitler himself.

Some claimed he had been nothing more than an incompetent madman.

A neurotic fool.

A pathetic weakling.

Others insisted that he had been little more than a puppet controlled by mysterious figures hiding behind the scenes.

That particular theory had proved remarkably persistent.

It appealed to the human appetite for conspiracies.

And, considering how American politics often appeared from the outside, it wasn’t exactly difficult to understand why people found the idea believable.

"My order once supported the Nazi Party because we believed it might advance our own beliefs and ideals."

Evenson lowered the glass.

His expression became solemn.

"But the Red Skull was a snake that burrowed into its flesh."

"He stole its resources."

"He stole its power."

"And then he betrayed it without hesitation."

Evenson’s eyes hardened.

"Do you honestly think we would simply let that go?"

"How could we not investigate him?"

Malick listened quietly.

"What an interesting story."

Evenson had admitted everything with remarkable ease.

Almost too easily.

Malick wasn’t convinced.

Not entirely.

There was still a possibility that the entire story was fabricated.

Yes, Evenson clearly knew the origin of Hydra.

He knew its original purpose.

He even knew secrets that should have been confined to Malick’s family.

But Hydra had existed for centuries.

It wasn’t merely one family.

There were countless branches and factions.

What if Evenson was deliberately feeding him a story to see how he reacted?

What if Nick Fury’s one-eyed bastard had sent Evenson here with instructions to squeeze Malick for information?

What if this entire conversation was designed to make him expose the other Hydra factions?

No.

That couldn’t happen.

Hydra’s secrets had to remain protected.

Because secrets had value.

And anything with value could be traded.

Malick was already preparing for the worst.

If tonight’s gamble had gone disastrously wrong, he would still refuse to reveal anything else.

He could use what he knew to pressure the other Hydra factions into rescuing him.

Or perhaps he could negotiate with Nick Fury.

Offer to become a cooperating witness in exchange for protection and immunity.

There were still options.

He simply needed to keep his mouth shut.

"The Nazi Party was extraordinarily powerful in its day," Malick said slowly.

"Supporting and manipulating an organization of that scale wouldn’t have been simple."

He leaned forward.

"Even if your order intended to remain behind the scenes, wouldn’t you eventually have become intertwined with it?"

"It’s rather like the relationship between American politics and Wall Street."

"The people controlling enormous amounts of capital can influence and manipulate the government."

"But at a certain point, they’ve become intertwined with the country itself."

"If America suffered a catastrophic collapse, those people might survive physically, but they would still suffer enormous losses."

Malick watched Evenson carefully.

"So after the destruction of the Nazi Party..."

He paused.

"I have to wonder."

"How could your order possibly have retained enough power and resources to investigate everything about me?"

"That kind of investigation would require an extraordinary amount of information, money, and manpower."

"And I’m not convinced your so-called order still possesses that kind of power."

Evenson’s eyes narrowed.

The question hung between them.

For the first time that evening, Malick felt that he had managed to push the conversation back onto ground he understood.

He had no intention of surrendering another secret until he knew exactly who was standing across from him.

...

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