It took nearly twenty-four hours, but Coulson had finally gotten the courage up to ask Captain America to sign his card. “I mean, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“No, it’s fine,” Captain America said. He was spending a lot of time on the Helicarrier’s bridge, watching how the flight crew operated. He liked to know things like that. You never knew when they would come in handy.

“It’s a vintage set. Took me a couple of years to collect them all. Near mint. Slight foxing around the edges, but...”

“We got a hit!” called Agent Jasper Sitwell, one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. officers who worked closely with Fury and Hill. He was in charge of the search for gamma radiation, keyed to the search procedures Bruce had designed. “Sixty-seven percent match. Wait . . . cross-match . . . seventy-nine percent.”

That was pretty decisive. Either Loki was at that location, or someone else had some of the power of the Tesseract and was carrying it there.

“Location?” Coulson asked.

“Stuttgart, Germany,” Sitwell said. “28 K.nigstrasse. He’s not exactly hiding.”

A map appeared on one of the monitors close to Coulson and Captain America. That address looked to be a museum of some kind, facing a large open plaza. There would be lots of civilians. A tricky place to operate . . . but they didn’t have a choice.

“Captain,” Fury said, “you’re up.”

The benefit at the museum in Stuttgart was quite a high-end affair. A string quartet played for the gathered donors and local celebrities, who milled around in their best clothes making small talk. Outside, Barton infiltrated security without breaking stride. He handed off his bow to a member of his support team and cracked the side door’s access panel.

Inside, Loki had been mingling with the crowd, taking on the appearance of an ordinary man with a walking stick. But as the president of the museum, Doktor Heinrich Schäfer, began his welcoming speech, Loki decided it was time to make a dramatic entrance. He tapped the walking stick on the floor and it became his scepter. Immediately, to get the crowd’s attention, he aimed it at the nearest museum security guard and fired. Screams echoed through the vaulted museum lobby. Loki strode the rest of the way down the stairs and manhandled Schäfer over to a stone altar that was one of the museum’s prized ancient Norse relics. He slammed Schäfer onto his back, forcing a machine over his face. Schäfer cried out in pain and surprise as the machine shone blinding light into his face, holding his eyes open.

Outside, Barton held a portable holographic projector over the access panel. A three-dimensional model of Doktor Schäfer’s eye appeared in the projector field. The door opened.

Inside, people screamed and fled the sudden violence. Loki strode through the museum’s great hall, his appearance transforming. He had walked in wearing a suit and tie like everyone else. Now he was garbed in the golden cloak and armor of his Asgardian heritage. The twin horns of his helmet gleamed in the streetlights as he followed the crowd outside. A police car, alerted by the commotion, raced toward him. He blasted it with his scepter, and it spun out of control and crashed.

The crowd had clustered in the plaza in front of the museum. Loki willed himself to be in their midst, and he was, appearing magically to stop them from fleeing any farther. “Kneel before me,” he commanded.

They scattered away from him. Loki multiplied himself, creating illusions that looked just like him all over the plaza. “I . . . said . . . KNEEL!” he roared, and the sound came from all of the copies of him as well, booming through the open space.

The crowd froze. Slowly the crowd knelt, and Loki reveled in their submission. “There,” he said. “Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It’s the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life’s joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.”

An old man in the middle of the crowd stood. Loki paused in his speech to regard this individual. Around him, all the copies of himself also looked at this old man.

“Not to men like you,” the old man said.

“There are no men like me,” Loki said.

“There are always men like you,” the old man said.

“Look to your elder, people,” Loki said. “Let him be an example.” A wolfish grin spread over his face, and he leveled the scepter at the old man.

As the blast discharged from it, someone dropped from the sky and blocked it with a shield! The bolt of energy reflected back and knocked Loki down.

Loki looked up to see a muscular costumed hero, wearing blue with stripes of white and red. His shield was also decorated in those colors, with a five-pointed star at its center that matched the star on the hero’s chest. “You know,” he said, “the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing.”

“The soldier,” Loki spat. He knew of this one. The so-called Captain America. He got to his feet. “The man out of time.”

“I’m not the one who’s out of time,” Captain America said. There was an engine whine, and a Quinjet hovered into view over the plaza. From its belly hung a mounted gun.

Agent Romanoff’s voice came over the Quinjet’s speakers: “Loki, drop the weapon and stand down.”

Instead, Loki fired a blast from the scepter at the Quinjet, which rolled out of the way. Captain America flung his shield, striking Loki in the arm and knocking him briefly off balance. The shield returned to him, and he followed it up with a right cross to Loki’s jaw.

But Loki was tougher than he looked. He struck back with the scepter, forcing Captain America to parry until Loki found an opening and slammed the butt of the scepter into Captain America’s mid-section, knocking him down. Captain America threw the shield again, but this time Loki was ready. He knocked it aside. It fell ringing to the stones of the plaza, and Loki had the tip of the scepter against the back of Captain America’s neck before the soldier could get back to his feet.

“Kneel,” he said.

Captain America pivoted into a leaping spinning kick that knocked Loki flat. “Not today,” he said.

The battle was rejoined, as Agent Romanoff tried to maneuver the Quinjet into position for a clean shot at Loki. “Guy’s all over the place,” she complained.

She couldn’t fire without possibly hitting either Captain America or one of the bystanders running all over the plaza.

Her communications system squawked, and she heard a familiar song . . . and a familiar voice. “Agent Romanoff. You miss me?”

It was Tony Stark.

The music blared over the Quinjet’s speakers, echoing through the plaza, as Iron Man blazed down out of the sky. A twin blast from his repulsor gauntlets smashed Loki to the ground. Iron Man landed and made a show of deploying every weapon the Iron Man suit had: repulsors, minimissiles, unibeam, the whole works. “Make your move, Reindeer Games,” he said.

Loki didn’t move. He returned to his civilian appearance and held up his hands.

“Good move,” Iron Man said. He retracted all of his armaments.

Captain America came up next to him. “Mr. Stark.”

“Captain.” qKCbPuBhXt9ZvwvsZ1B2ykVY0i8FYMyoI2Z+U4CI46UtF/cJtvLziVmTq8yMEkFq