Better Angels

Isodyne Energy has a body to bury and a name to drag through the mud. Jason Wilkes died in the blast that gutted their laboratory, or so the world is told. A Russian passport, a one-way ticket to Moscow, a stack of cash, and a Soviet pistol all surface in his home. The papers brand him a Communist before the rubble stops smoking. Peggy does not believe a word of it. A single tie pin links the dead man to the Arena Club, and to Dottie Underwood, the Soviet agent who once tried to lift its twin. Jack Thompson arrives from New York, declares the case closed, and orders Peggy back east. She misses her flight on purpose.

Howard Stark has traded the weapons trade for a movie studio and a Kid Colt western, and he lends Peggy his genius anyway. Together they breach the men-only Arena Club by marching a crowd of women through the front doors while Stark plays the outraged suffragette. Peggy slips out with information of newspapers dated for tomorrow, their headlines announcing an election already decided in Calvin Chadwick's favor. A chill clings to her afterward. Howard reads it not as contamination but as a gravitational disruption, and traces it to Wilkes, alive but invisible and adrift outside the visible spectrum. Stark's photographic chemistry drags the doctor back into sight, though not into flesh. Wilkes names Whitney Frost as the woman who reached for the zero matter the night the lab died. Daniel Sousa digs up the rest. "Whitney Frost" is a stage name, and the face of America's sweetheart hides Agnes Cully, the true mind behind Isodyne. That night a man named Hunt comes for Peggy in the dark, and leaves with a bullet through his hand.