Valediction

After the tragedy of a New York movie house filling with a colorless gas from a planted Item 17, also known as 'Midnight Oil', the SSR is called in. Forty-seven people dead. Bashed in heads, gouged out eyes, and all manner of unspeakable acts until not one is left alive. The SSR learns that this is the work of Dr. Ivchenko, who is in truth the psychiatrist Johann Fennhoff, and realizes he holds enough of the compound to turn half the city into a killing mob. Howard Stark comes back to New York and confesses the poison is of his making. He built Midnight Oil to keep soldiers awake for days. Instead, it drove them mad to the point of murder. General McGinnis's men stole it and dropped it on Soviet troops at Finow. Fennhoff found his own brother there, eyeless and torn apart, and has hunted Stark ever since. Stark offers himself as bait.

Stark stages a splashy public conference on the steps of City Hall. Dottie Underwood sets up a rifle rigged to miss, and in the confusion Fennhoff spirits Stark away via a mind-controlled police officer. Hypnotized into reliving his greatest shame, Stark climbs into a plane loaded with Midnight Oil and turns toward the crowds gathering in Times Square. Peggy reaches him by radio while Jarvis flies escort with orders to shoot Stark down over the water should it come to that. Peggy manages to pull Howard back to reality with the truth that Steve Rogers is gone and cannot be brought home. Sousa, ever clever, ignores Fennhoff's hypnosis with the use of earplugs and the doctor is captured and muzzled. Dottie slips away into the night yet again.

When all is said and done, Jarvis hands Peggy the last vial of Steve Rogers' blood, having saved it without even Stark's knowledge. Peggy is touched and able to say her final farewell as she pours it into the river.