Marvel: A Lazy-Ass Superman

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Romania, a country with four distinct seasons, sat at the northern end of the Balkan Peninsula along the Black Sea, boasting a long and storied history and culture.

Although it had once been part of the Red Bloc, it had always maintained a certain political and diplomatic distance from its former big brother. It was precisely this ambiguous estrangement that led S.H.I.E.L.D. to establish its Eastern European base there.

Compared to the Soviet Union’s KGB, the famous CIA, the cunning MI6, or the ruthless Mossad, Romania’s secret police—the Securitate—had once created NATO’s largest security breach in history. They were a force not to be underestimated in the world of intelligence.

As such, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s development in the region had hardly been smooth sailing.

Even though S.H.I.E.L.D. nominally operated under the authority of the United Nations Security Council and claimed neutrality, in practice it inevitably leaned toward the Western Bloc, placing it in opposition to Romania.

After all, the UN member states’ contributions were already stretched thin just supporting the organization’s operations and peacekeeping forces.

So the funding for affiliated organizations was usually raised separately, often through public donations.

Take UNICEF, for example—its public fundraising accounts never closed year-round.

But for some affiliated organizations, who provided funding, who refused, whose money could be accepted, and whose could not—all of it became invisible diplomatic tug-of-wars hidden from public view.

Although all five permanent members of the UN Security Council belonged to both Eastern and Western camps, and S.H.I.E.L.D. should theoretically have answered to them collectively, the reality was that only the United States, Britain, and France consistently provided funding.

The other two maintained ambiguous attitudes.

To demand that S.H.I.E.L.D. remain completely neutral while relying financially on only part of the world was no different from expecting a horse to run without feeding it.

But from the perspective of the opposing bloc, the intelligence agency that evolved from America’s Strategic Scientific Reserve—the S.S.R.—was still firmly controlled by white Americans under the Stars and Stripes, even after others contributed manpower and money.

Who would willingly accept that?

At its core, the U.S. government simply refused to relinquish control. The United Nations was merely a convenient façade, while dragging a couple of suckers into helping foot the bill.

That was S.H.I.E.L.D.’s true position.

After losing HYDRA as an enemy—

Though later events proved HYDRA had merely gone underground—

—and being unable to publicly disclose the limited information they possessed about extraterrestrials, S.H.I.E.L.D., as an intelligence agency that required enemies to justify its existence, naturally shifted its focus toward the Eastern Bloc.

The head of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Eastern European operations, John Garrett, had once been lured into Sarajevo in the Balkans in 1990 and nearly killed in a bombing orchestrated by the head of Romania’s secret police, Mihai Caraman.

In that operation, every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent died except John Garrett.

S.H.I.E.L.D.’s European branch had not dared send reinforcements, leaving Garrett with deep resentment at having been abandoned by the organization.

How exactly John Garrett survived remained unknown to anyone but himself.

But it was also a fact that no one besides him had managed to maintain a foothold in Romania.

At the end of 1991, the Red Empire collapsed, and Romania swiftly pivoted toward the Western world, hoping to join NATO and eventually integrate into the European communities that would later become the European Union.

It was during this period that Garrett’s Eastern European operations finally saw a turning point.

Leveraging geographical advantages, he began funneling the Soviet Union’s abandoned and forgotten weapon stockpiles into the Balkans—the powder keg of Europe.

The Yugoslav Wars becoming Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II owed no small debt to arms brokers like John Garrett.

With both manpower and money under his command, it would not be an exaggeration to say this was the height of Garrett’s glory.

But no ship sailed forever with favorable winds.

An unconfirmed piece of intelligence had recently left this veteran spy utterly overwhelmed.

The former Soviet super soldier—the Red Guardian—had appeared within his territory.

One major reason the name Alexei Shostakov lacked the fame of Captain America Steve Rogers was that the Red Guardian never had a grand battlefield upon which to shine.

Instead, his active years had been spent in the shadow wars where spies operated.

And in a battlefield where heavy weaponry couldn’t easily be deployed and troop mobilization came too slowly, a super soldier was enough to crush everything.

One could easily imagine how much of a headache intelligence operatives got from hearing that name.

And that was exactly how John Garrett felt right now.

Looking at the report in his hand, he cursed,

”That damned polar bear. Didn’t Nick Fury have him locked away by his own people? How the hell did he get out again? Any idea what he wants?”

The one briefing Garrett was a subordinate he had personally recruited from within S.H.I.E.L.D.—a passionate young man named Kaminski.

Unlike others who acted timidly around Garrett, he spoke with the confidence of youth.

”He seems to be searching for something. But he’s being careful—never revealing his destination. Should we deal with him?”

”You?” Garrett looked at the young man with a strange expression. ”Kaminski, I think highly of you. But not that highly. You want to take on a super soldier? Believe me, he could crush you with one hand.”

”Oh, come on. No chance at all? Even a super soldier isn’t bulletproof, right?”

Garrett shook his head.

”The only time he was ever taken down was by his own people—and that only happened because he didn’t resist. If the Red Guardian were that easy to handle, he wouldn’t have survived this long.”

”Fair enough. I was just saying. Fundamentally, we don’t really have a conflict with him. We just don’t know where he’s headed.”

”That all you came to report?”

After handing over the printed reports regarding sightings of the Red Guardian, Kaminski—now empty-handed—continued:

”There’s actually something else. The others didn’t think it was worth mentioning, but I figured you should hear about it.”

”What is it? Just say it. Don’t look like you’re tattling.”

”Alright. Those twenty-three people we extracted from Russia earlier…”

”What about them? Didn’t we place them into Cybertek’s Deathlok program? Problems at work?”

”Not problems. Twelve of them are dead.”

”Twelve?” Garrett frowned. ”How did they die?”

Kaminski began counting on his fingers.

”Three residential accidents. Two drunk-driving incidents. One got into a fight with a stripper inside a strip club and was shot dead by the club’s enforcers.

”One died in a restaurant fire. While escaping, a collapsing wall pinned him down. He was the only fatality.

”Two others were speeding, refused to surrender to police, shouted in Russian, and threatened officers with weapons. The cops emptied their magazines into them.

”The last three were the really bizarre ones. One slipped while going down stairs and cracked the back of his skull open.

”One got crushed by an old signboard that fell while he was walking down the street.

”And the last one was the craziest. A construction vehicle forgot to retract its crane arm and snagged some electrical wires. The whipping cable wrapped around his neck and hoisted him into the air. Hard to say whether he died from electrocution or hanging. Either way, he definitely died from bad luck.”

John Garrett stared blankly at the young man he practically regarded as a son.

”You remembered all that?”

”Their deaths were so weird they stuck in my mind.”

”Murder?”

Kaminski shook his head.

”No. The police investigations afterward—including inquiries by our own people—found no signs of third-party involvement.

”There are detailed forensic reports for every incident. The Russians who are still alive have complained nervously about it, but everyone else thought it wasn’t a big deal. That’s why nobody felt the need to report it to you.”

”And you believe they were accidents?”

Kaminski shrugged.

”What else can I believe? Every one of those things could happen. They were just unlucky.

”I just figured hearing something amusing might help improve your mood.”