Chapter 498
Every Wednesday morning, SHIELD held its regular staff meeting.
Under normal circumstances, it was hardly the sort of gathering anyone needed to dread. Each department gave a brief report, the senior officers offered their assessments, and the general direction for the following week was established. Then everyone went back to work.
That didn’t make the meeting pointless.
Nick Fury ran SHIELD through compartmentalization. Sensitive operations were deliberately kept out of the general chain of communication, and plenty of matters never reached a room like this.
But even a compartmentalized organization needed a plan.
Emergencies could derail that plan, certainly. They couldn’t exactly schedule disasters in advance. But if every single incident caught SHIELD completely off guard, then what exactly was the world’s premier intelligence agency supposed to be doing?
Besides, an organization as enormous as SHIELD couldn’t possibly consist entirely of top-secret operations.
Personnel assignments needed approval. Salaries and benefits needed adjustment. Equipment needed replacing. Departments needed to produce the sort of visible results that would satisfy the World Security Council.
All that mundane machinery had to keep turning somewhere.
Usually, this meeting was where it happened.
Today, however, the agenda was very different.
The atmosphere was grim.
Today, SHIELD was dealing with internal purging.
It all traced back to the information Dottie, the Black Widow, had traded to Agent 13, Sharon Carter.
The Swedish branch had been exposed in spectacular fashion.
Falsified accomplishments. Abuse of authority. Murder to silence witnesses. Fraudulently obtained funds. Embezzlement.
And, worst of all, people at headquarters had been covering for them.
This wasn’t merely a matter of deciding how to punish the individuals involved. The Swedish branch had exposed something much larger, and Fury intended to use the incident as an opportunity to tear through SHIELD’s internal ranks and root out anyone abusing their authority for personal gain.
It wasn’t difficult to imagine how Nick Fury felt about that.
Fury was a strange combination of realism and idealism. He viewed the world with ruthless practicality and had no qualms about using equally practical methods to accomplish his objectives.
But all of it served an ideal.
And once he’d received the Swedish branch’s intelligence and confirmed it was genuine, he had very nearly wanted to pick up a six-barrel Gatling gun himself and personally ventilate every bastard involved.
Unfortunately, there were procedures.
So everyone else had to deal with the consequences instead.
Seeing the director’s expression darken by the minute, the representatives from the various departments wasted no time. One after another, they declared their willingness to cooperate and produced plans for internal audits and self-inspections.
Everyone in the room suddenly had a very healthy appreciation for job security.
Then, in the middle of that tense atmosphere, Nick Fury’s phone rang.
He answered.
A few moments later...
Smack!
Fury slammed the phone onto the table.
Everyone flinched.
They stared at the wreckage beneath Fury’s hand.
The phone had been reduced to a collection of tiny pieces.
Judging by the result, it had definitely not been a Nokia.
Nor was it a Samsung.
Nobody said a word.
No one in the room was suicidal enough to poke Nick Fury while he was in that mood.
Well, almost no one.
Alexander Pierce sat beside him.
As one of SHIELD’s Level Ten directors, Pierce was effectively the organization’s civilian counterweight to Fury’s operational authority. He also handled much of SHIELD’s communication with the World Security Council, which made his presence at meetings like this mandatory.
His expression was grim as well.
And unlike everyone else, he wasn’t pretending.
The Swedish branch had nothing to do with Hydra.
Pierce genuinely hadn’t known about it.
Hydra had been embedded in SHIELD for years. At this point, they had long since outgrown petty schemes involving fabricated expenses and stolen budgets.
Every dollar allocated to SHIELD was effectively a dollar allocated to Hydra.
No matter where SHIELD’s money went, it ultimately served Hydra’s interests.
Which meant the Swedish idiots hadn’t merely stolen from SHIELD.
They’d stolen from Hydra.
And Pierce would not tolerate parasites chewing holes in the organization he intended to use to reshape the world.
His anger was every bit as genuine as Fury’s.
Possibly more so.
Now he had to determine whether any Hydra operatives had become greedy enough to participate in the embezzlement. Then he’d have to figure out whether the coming investigation would expose any of Hydra’s own operations.
Those idiots had stolen his money and dumped an enormous pile of problems in his lap.
If circumstances had permitted it, Pierce would have loved nothing more than to lock every one of them in a separate room and release a hundred toy poodles into each cell.
Unfortunately, circumstances did not permit it.
"What’s happened?"
Pierce asked the question casually, as though he hadn’t just been handed a crisis with no opportunity to complain about it.
Fury took several slow breaths.
He scraped the shattered remains of his phone into a little pile with one finger before quietly asking, "Did something unusual happen last night?"
Pierce frowned.
"Last night?"
He thought it over carefully.
Nothing had been reported to him.
Not that unusual incidents always went straight to the top. Agents and department heads had their own authority. Minor problems were investigated at lower levels first and only escalated if they exceeded someone’s jurisdiction.
But still...
"Nothing comes to mind," Pierce said. "Why?"
Fury lowered his voice.
"How bad has the gang situation in New York gotten lately?"
Pierce’s heart skipped.
Gangs.
Again?
Memories of how Hydra had once been exposed came rushing back.
A tiny New York gang had nearly unraveled years of careful work.
And now Fury was bringing up New York’s gangs again.
Surely history wasn’t about to repeat itself.
Pierce immediately stood.
"World peace is built from peace in every individual region!"
The sudden declaration made several people look at him.
"I understand that certain parts of the world remain trapped in conflict for complicated reasons. That’s regrettable, but understandable."
His voice sharpened.
"But New York is one of the largest cities in the world. If criminal gangs are operating openly, if ordinary people don’t feel safe, if residents have to endure extortion and fear being caught in gang wars, if even basic public order cannot be guaranteed..."
He swept his gaze across the room.
"Then I have to ask everyone here a simple question. How are we supposed to guarantee peace on a global scale when one of the world’s most important cities can’t even guarantee peace on its own streets?"
Silence.
Pierce didn’t wait for an answer.
"Rumlow. Sitwell."
Brock Rumlow and Jasper Sitwell immediately rose.
"Yes, sir."
"I want a special task force established immediately. Work with the local authorities and conduct a comprehensive crackdown on organized gang activity in New York."
Pierce paused.
His expression hardened.
"Eliminate every potential threat."
"Understood, sir!"
Rumlow and Sitwell answered simultaneously.
Sitwell understood perfectly well what had prompted his superior’s sudden enthusiasm.
Once bitten, twice shy.
Pierce was terrified that another insignificant criminal organization might somehow stumble into something it had no business discovering.
Rumlow, meanwhile, didn’t question the order at all.
His worldview was simple. Hydra’s vision for the world was one of order, not chaos. Criminal gangs were parasites feeding on disorder.
They needed to be eliminated.
Simple as that.
The entire exchange had happened so quickly that Fury could only stare.
Was Pierce overreacting?
Fury had mentioned New York’s gangs exactly once.
Did that really justify mobilizing a special task force?
Then again, Fury reconsidered.
As the director of SHIELD, he’d brought the matter up during an official agency meeting.
Of course everyone would take it seriously.
With that little detour settled, the meeting finally returned to its original subject.
Fury looked around the table.
"Everyone involved in the Swedish branch scandal will be investigated thoroughly. Anyone who can be handed over to the local authorities for prosecution goes to them."
His voice turned cold.
"If there are circumstances that prevent judicial action, then you know what to do."
Nobody needed clarification.
"Send them on their way."
Fury’s gaze swept across the room.
"And one more thing. If anything like this happens inside SHIELD again, everyone involved will be dealt with swiftly, severely, and without exception."
He slammed his palm against the table.
"No leniency."
"Understood!"
Every officer rose and answered as one.
At last, the grim meeting came to an end.
Chairs scraped back. Papers were gathered. Department heads filed out of the room.
Fury watched them leave.
Then he called out.
"Melinda. Stay."
Melinda May stopped.
A small jolt ran through her.
After transferring to administrative work, she’d ended up in the financial division.
That wasn’t exactly the safest department to be working in when SHIELD was conducting an anti-corruption purge.
The Swedish branch’s crimes had happened before she’d taken over, but she hadn’t caught them during the transition.
That meant she couldn’t exactly claim complete innocence.
Everyone else left.
The doors closed.
May waited.
Fury’s expression remained stern.
Then, in a much quieter voice, he said,
"About that proposal you made last time."
May blinked.
"The one about improving benefits for certain... special personnel."
Fury rubbed his temple.
"I think we should put that proposal on hold."
He paused.
"Indefinitely."
May stared at him.
Then she understood.
Apparently, this was going to be one of those days.