……
“Hahaha, don’t worry, eat as much as you want, even if you order ten more servings, it’s no problem!”
Nick Fury waved his hand at that.
With S.H.I.E.L.D. currently undergoing rapid development and expansion, there were too many areas requiring funding, and his current financial situation could have been tight, but not to the extent that he needed to save money on a meal.
“Really? Mr. Fury, you’re such a good person. Hey waiter, bring me a hundred of those two dishes we just had… to start… to whet the appetite.”
Bruce Banner’s face instantly lit up with a radiant smile.
An hour later, Nick Fury watched Bruce Banner, who was still eating at an unabated pace and couldn’t help but twitch at the corner of his eyes.
Such a big eater; even pigs can’t eat this much!
This is a high-end French restaurant known for its exquisite dishes and high prices, and with Bruce Banner’s way of eating, he was going to bleed money today.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford it, but the money spent on this meal could have equipped a small team of elite agents.
But he couldn’t say anything, as the guest had initially ordered modestly only twenty Black Widow sausages and Grilled Eye of the Flatfish, and it was he who had told the guest to eat his fill.
Now realizing it, he fell for the young man’s trick.
There was no way around it. Even knowing that Bruce Banner’s mental maturity wasn’t that of a typical child, his childlike appearance still had a natural deceptive effect, making it hard to be wary of him.
The main thing was he didn’t expect Bruce Banner to eat to this extent.
“Ding ding ding ding…”
Just as everyone focused on Bruce Banner, who was gobbling up his food, Nick Fury’s communicator suddenly rang at his waist.
“It’s Maria Hill.”
Seeing the caller ID, Nick Fury pressed the answer button.
But just moments later, his expression suddenly changed, and he stood up abruptly from his seat.
“What? You’re saying Colonel Strucker was poisoned to death!”
And his words made everyone present to reveal a surprised expression.
But the surprise was different for each person.
Others were surprised about Strucker’s death, while Magneto and Mystique were surprised that Bruce Banner managed to carry out this traceless poisoning.
If they hadn’t known that Bruce Banner did it, they couldn’t have connected Strucker’s death to Bruce Banner.
However, being experienced, despite the surprise, they did not look towards Bruce Banner, avoiding drawing the attention of the few agents present to anything unusual.
“Sorry, I have something to take care of. I’ll go back first. Let Coulson handle the bill after you’re done eating.”
After a brief communication with a frown, Nick Fury turned off the communicator.
According to Agent Hill’s report, Strucker had suddenly died of poisoning during an interrogation by agents.
From the moment they took Strucker into custody, they had conducted a comprehensive examination of his body, ruling out the possibility of being pre-poisoned by Professor X, Magneto, and others.
And since these individuals were still dining with him.
Therefore, Hill suspected that among the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who had later come into contact with Strucker, someone had taken the opportunity to poison him.
Who exactly it was, since Hill wasn’t sure, she had them all taken in for interrogation and unexpectedly discovered that one of the agents, who had just graduated from the S.H.I.E.L.D. academy, appeared to be a spy planted within S.H.I.E.L.D. by a secret organization.
Thus, the situation was even more severe than Strucker’s death, indicating an internal issue within S.H.I.E.L.D. that he needed to handle immediately.
“Don’t worry, Director Fury and everyone else, go ahead with your business. We’ll take care of the bill ourselves later.”
Professor X replied with a smile.
For him, the money spent on Bruce Banner’s meal wasn’t a big deal, and there was no need to burden Nick Fury, who had just recently established a good relationship.
“How can we let our guests pay? Coulson will stay, and the rest of you will return to the headquarters with me.”
Nick Fury’s face stiffened momentarily, and he disagreed with Professor X’s proposal. As the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., he could not afford to lose face.
At the same time, he couldn’t help but lament that the Xavier family, which generations had operated, was damn wealthy.
While Nick Fury was leading Captain Marvel and others to leave the restaurant in a hurry, in the office of the Security Council Minister of the Triskelion, the former S.H.I.E.L.D. director Alexander Pierce was also having a headache.
“Sitwell, you’re saying Hill is interrogating a newly transformed agent?”
“Minister, it was an accident, but fortunately, that agent doesn’t know we are Hydra. Just joined because of money…”
S.H.I.E.L.D. senior agent Sitwell quickly reported the entire situation.
As Hydra’s leading recruiter, he would organize his subordinates every year to recruit and convert a batch of suitable agents from the graduates of the S.H.I.E.L.D. academy to join Hydra.
However, for secrecy, these initial-level Hydra spies do not know their organization is Hydra.
The agent caught by Hill was just one of Hill’s subordinates, who had been newly converted to Hydra this year.
He just didn’t expect to be so unlucky, got involved in the poisoning and killing of Colonel Strucker, and couldn’t withstand the interrogation, leading to the current awkward situation.
“Nick Fury is brilliant and cautious. Before he comes back, quickly deal with that subordinate of yours, cut off this thread, and then shift the clues towards those terrorist organizations we have disguised.
Also, stop all activities for now, including those targeting mutants.”
Pierce paced back and forth in his office for a while, then quickly issued orders.
He handed over the position of S.H.I.E.L.D. director to Nick Fury instead of his own Hydra members, mainly because he felt Nick Fury was too excellent and capable.
Although not Hydra, some of his philosophies and ways of doing things coincided with Hydra.
Indeed, in just a few years, the scale of S.H.I.E.L.D. had expanded several times than it was in his hands.
This also allowed Hydra, parasitizing inside S.H.I.E.L.D., to grow significantly.
But at the same time, he had to be vigilant not to let Nick Fury discover the existence of Hydra, so now everything had to be focused on appeasing Nick Fury. Other things could be put aside.
Currently, Nick Fury was the most valuable existence for them.
But this incident was like an uninvited disaster.
Why did he send someone to kill Strucker?
He was also waiting for Nick Fury to interrogate Strucker and extract information about mutants and those experimental data.
Whatever Nick Fury interrogated, he could take a copy for Hydra to study.
Unfortunately, he had to bear this blame, not let the incident escalate, and let Nick Fury discover a problem inside S.H.I.E.L.D.
Guiding Strucker’s death towards those fictitious, S.H.I.E.L.D.-hostile terrorist organizations was the best.
He was also puzzled now: who exactly poisoned Colonel Strucker?
At the moment, Hawkeye, who was eagerly eating, didn’t know that using a transformation curse to poison Strucker almost prematurely detonated the Hydra bomb.
………..
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