"You think our organization suffered such devastating losses that we’d be crippled, unable to uncover the truth behind what happened all those years ago?"
Evenson leaned back, his expression unreadable.
"You’re mistaken, Mr. Malick. You have no idea how large our organization is, or how many resources we command."
Go ahead. Guess.
Guess as hard as you want.
If you can actually figure out what the organization I lead looks like now, then congratulations. There’s apparently nothing left between your ears but a hole.
Fortunately, Malick’s imagination wasn’t quite that powerful.
He had no way of imagining that the organization currently investigating his family’s thousand-year-old secrets was, in reality, little more than a shell company.
"I see..." Malick nodded slowly. "I never expected that, after suffering such a devastating blow, you could still conceal such tremendous strength."
Of course.
They had to be incredibly powerful.
They had somehow gathered an absurd amount of information about his family without him noticing. That required manpower, money, intelligence networks, and resources on a scale he could barely comprehend.
What other explanation was there?
Evenson certainly wasn’t going to tell him that he had somehow reached the age where saving the world sounded appealing, had a prophetic dream one night, and woke up knowing everything.
If that worked, Evenson would start an organization full of children and put them to sleep with sedatives every night.
"Cut off one head, and two more grow in its place."
Evenson paused, then smiled.
"That’s one of Hydra’s favorite sayings. You’ve survived for so long because you’re exceptionally good at hiding. Whenever one head emerges, the other eight remain buried. That’s why Hydra always manages to crawl back from the grave."
His smile sharpened.
"We survived for a different reason. We had foresight."
Stephanie and Malick listened in silence.
"Hitler was an unreliable puppet," Evenson continued. "Or perhaps he was simply too ambitious. He was desperate to prove his worth to us, so he made the mistake of invading the Soviet Union at the wrong time."
Stephanie and Malick both shook their heads.
Launching the invasion in June had been a terrible decision. If the Soviets could endure the initial assault for a few months, the Siberian winter would do the rest. Combined with the Soviet Union’s enormous strategic depth, they had more than enough room to absorb the attack and counterstrike.
Of course, everyone knew that now.
It hardly qualified as brilliant insight.
"But if you didn’t want Hitler to invade the Soviet Union, that wasn’t exactly a flawless plan either," Malick pointed out. "Stalin had been actively preparing for Operation Thunderstorm."
Operation Thunderstorm was supposedly the Soviet military’s plan to launch a preemptive war against Germany and establish Soviet dominance over Europe. Stalin had approved the plan in May 1941, only a month before Germany invaded.
If that was true, then a German-Soviet war had been inevitable. The only real question was who would strike first.
By that logic, Hitler’s invasion could still be considered a preemptive attack.
"That was false intelligence," Evenson replied without hesitation.
Malick blinked.
"Our organization had already investigated it thoroughly. Operation Thunderstorm was fabricated by British intelligence. The entire thing was designed to provoke Germany into opening an eastern front and relieve the pressure Britain was facing while fighting Germany alone."
Malick’s eyes widened.
They did what?
If Evenson was telling the truth, then the Soviets had essentially been used as cannon fodder by the British.
And, when he thought about it, it wasn’t entirely implausible.
The Soviet regime had long been regarded by the Western powers as an existential threat. Winston Churchill certainly wasn’t known for losing sleep over Stalin’s discomfort. In fact, Churchill had once gone so far as to publicly joke that if Hitler invaded Hell, he would be happy to say a few good words about the Devil in the House of Commons.
Britain had been desperate.
Desperate enough to use anyone available to take some of the pressure off.
"So..." Malick gathered his thoughts. "Your organization believed Hitler had fallen into a British trap by invading the Soviet Union. You predicted he would lose, and that’s when you began preparing an escape route."
"More precisely, we began preparing after the defeat at Stalingrad."
Evenson made the correction casually.
"That was when we began actively preparing for our return."
"Oh."
Malick nodded.
Somehow, the explanation sounded strangely familiar. He felt as though he had heard a story very much like this somewhere before.
"Then the..."
"The old organization is a thing of the past."
Evenson cut him off smoothly.
"We rebuilt it. New name. New structure. New organization."
He looked directly at Malick.
"You can call us Umbrella Corporation."
Malick’s right hand tightened around the armrest.
That’s it.
How had he forgotten?
There had been intelligence circulating inside Hydra for some time about a powerful biotechnology company operating from the shadows.
No one knew how large Umbrella actually was.
No one knew what its true objective was.
As far as Hydra had been able to determine, only two of its members had ever been exposed to the outside world: an executive director and a security chief.
Hydra had spent a long time investigating the company.
They had found absolutely nothing.
It was almost as if Umbrella Corporation didn’t exist.
And the most important part of the intelligence was that Umbrella had apparently been founded by survivors of the old organization.
Damn it.
Malick cursed inwardly.
He should have realized much sooner that they were talking about Umbrella.
"You’ve heard the name before, haven’t you?"
Evenson studied Malick’s increasingly grim expression and deliberately made his question sound uncertain.
"No. Never heard of it."
Malick denied it immediately.
His initial shock and regret had already vanished, replaced by caution.
Just as before, he couldn’t afford to take Evenson’s words at face value.
What if Nick Fury had put him up to this?
If Malick admitted that he knew about Umbrella, the obvious questions would follow.
How did you learn about it?
Who told you?
Information this sensitive could only have reached a handful of people. If Fury knew Malick had heard the name, he might be able to trace the information back through the chain and discover which of his contacts had been communicating with a senior Hydra operative.
Malick had spent years serving on the World Security Council.
He had crossed paths with Nick Fury countless times.
He had absolutely no doubt that the bald bastard was capable of pulling something like that.
"Never heard of it?"
Evenson frowned as though genuinely puzzled.
"Werner Reinhardt. Oh, right. He goes by Daniel Whitehall these days. He never mentioned us?"
Malick’s expression darkened another shade.
Whitehall too?
Had Whitehall been exposed?
Could this really mean that they were...
No.
Peggy Carter was now one of the Avengers, and Whitehall was the man she had personally captured and sentenced to life imprisonment all those years ago. S.H.I.E.L.D. could have recovered him as well.
"I suppose that makes sense."
Evenson suddenly looked as though he had reached an obvious conclusion.
"You and Whitehall aren’t exactly part of the same faction. And I don’t believe the two of you have much of a personal relationship."
He shrugged.
"So it makes sense that he wouldn’t have told you."
Then Evenson’s eyes narrowed slightly.
"But what about Director Alexander Pierce? He hasn’t informed you either?"
Malick’s stomach tightened.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. knows our company exists. Didn’t Pierce have Brock Rumlow pass the information along?"
Evenson continued before Malick could respond.
"Or perhaps using an ordinary field operative to contact someone like you would have looked suspicious."
His smile widened.
"So maybe he sent one of his trusted agents instead. Jasper Sitwell, perhaps?"
A beat.
"Or John Garrett?"
Malick’s face had gone completely still.
Evenson simply watched him.
For a moment, neither man spoke.
Then Evenson smiled.
"Interesting."
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