The moment Nick Fury placed the sheet of paper on the table, Evenson recognized the symbol printed on it.
The Umbrella logo.
His own fabricated organization.
He didn’t need to guess where it had come from.
Horwyst, you slippery old fox.
The Umbrella Corporation didn’t actually exist. Evenson had invented it from thin air as a convenient alias during his dealings with Horwyst. Aside from the two of them, no one should have known the name.
Which meant there was only one explanation.
Horwyst had deliberately thrown him under the bus.
Figures.
A man capable of becoming a HYDRA regional director doesn’t survive by being stupid.
Evenson had barely managed to expose a hint of the man’s tail, and Horwyst had immediately redirected suspicion somewhere else.
Straight onto Evenson.
Still...
Perhaps this wasn’t entirely a bad thing.
The identity might prove useful again someday.
He could always make the shell company real later.
"...Yes."
Evenson nodded calmly.
"I recognize it."
For the first time since the meeting began, Nick Fury was genuinely caught off guard.
He had only produced the logo because Evenson had spoken with such confidence about his mysterious information network.
Fury had intended it as a test.
The symbol belonged to an organization S.H.I.E.L.D. knew almost nothing about.
It revealed no classified information by itself.
Even if Evenson failed to recognize it, he wouldn’t learn anything.
And if Fury threw the paper into Times Square, no passerby would ever guess it belonged to a company secretly researching enhanced humans.
At most, he’d hoped for a lucky lead.
Instead...
Evenson admitted he knew it immediately.
Fury silently surveyed the room.
Coulson.
Natasha.
His two most trusted agents.
Satisfied, he pressed the intercom.
"For the next hour, no interruptions."
"Yes, Director."
The line clicked off.
Only then did Fury return his attention to Evenson.
"Mr. Richter."
"What can you tell me about this symbol?"
Evenson took a slow breath.
"To explain that..."
"We have to go back more than seventy years."
"To Germany."
"Before the Second World War."
He paused just long enough to build anticipation.
"There was a man who believed himself destined to stand above all humanity."
"Hitler," Fury answered immediately.
"Exactly."
Evenson nodded.
"He led Germany’s rise."
"He plunged the world into the largest war in human history."
"And, as history records, he possessed an obsessive fascination with the occult."
He leaned back.
"Some practitioners of dark magic chose to assist him."
Several pairs of eyes settled on Evenson.
He sighed.
"Not Warlocks."
"Dark wizards."
"Different profession."
Natasha finally spoke.
"So that makes you..."
"A white wizard?"
"No."
Evenson shook his head.
"If anything..."
"A Warlock’s magic is even darker."
"Far more dangerous."
Fury wasn’t especially convinced.
Dangerous?
Compared to nuclear weapons?
Compared to chemical agents?
Compared to engineered plagues capable of wiping out entire populations?
Humanity already possessed countless ways to destroy itself.
Magic was simply another form of power.
Power itself wasn’t evil.
Only the person wielding it could make that distinction.
And from everything he’d seen so far, Evenson had remained firmly on the right side of that line.
"You were saying," Fury prompted.
Evenson continued.
"Once the war turned against Germany..."
"Especially after Stalingrad..."
"Hitler’s inner circle realized the future they were publicly promising no longer matched reality."
"The United States entering the war only accelerated that realization."
"They began preparing for defeat."
"What kind of preparations?" Fury asked.
"Their escape plan."
Evenson spoke calmly.
"They weren’t thinking about how to win anymore."
"They were thinking about how to survive."
"How to ensure their ideology endured even if the Reich collapsed."
"And how, someday, they might rise again."
He picked up his teacup and took an unhurried sip.
No one interrupted.
"My sources included an elderly dark wizard."
"He served as one of Hitler’s trusted occult advisers."
"Because Hitler placed enormous faith in both magic and the man himself..."
"He learned fragments of those contingency plans."
"One of those fragments..."
Evenson tapped the paper.
"...was this symbol."
Fury leaned forward.
"Go on."
"They understood one thing."
"After the war, the Third Reich would never survive under its own name."
"They would need new identities."
"New organizations."
"But surviving wasn’t enough."
"They also needed a banner."
"A symbol capable of gathering the remnants."
"A banner people could rally behind."
"And that..."
He looked down at the page.
"...became this."
Fury frowned.
"You’re saying..."
"This organization replaced the Third Reich?"
"’Umbrella?’"
Evenson let out a quiet, dismissive laugh.
"So they call themselves Umbrella now."
"Still as arrogant as ever."
"They continue imagining themselves the protectors of humanity."
He slid the page back across the table.
"Director."
"Ignore the white."
"Only look at the red."
Fury studied the emblem closely.
Printed on white paper, isolating the colored portions wasn’t difficult.
Slowly...
Recognition dawned.
"The Iron Cross..."
Evenson nodded.
"Exactly."
Suddenly, puzzle pieces Fury hadn’t even realized existed began locking together.
The advanced enhancement technology.
Red Skull.
Dr. Erskine’s earliest research.
The countless inhuman experiments conducted by Nazi Germany during the war.
The bizarre propaganda leaflet ending with "Victory."
One by one, seemingly unrelated mysteries aligned into a coherent narrative.
It all fit.
Perhaps too well.
Then another thought struck him.
A glaring hole.
He looked back up at Evenson.
"There’s one problem."
"As Germany collapsed, the Allies captured countless high-ranking Nazi officials."
"Himmler among them, before his suicide."
"We interrogated everyone we could."
"If a contingency plan of this scale really existed..."
Fury narrowed his eye.
"Why didn’t anyone ever hear a single word about it?"
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter