Baron Strucker badly wanted specifics. What was the relationship between the two women? How were they communicating? What was the conspiracy behind it all?
But his informant inside Viper's organization was too low-ranking to access anything close to the inner circle. Daisy and Viper's contacts had been meticulously discreet, and the fact that someone had managed to connect them at all was already an impressive feat.
For the Baron, this was no longer about money. He'd never heard the Chinese proverb about trouble brewing within one's own walls, but the underlying principle needed no translation: an internal enemy was ten times more dangerous than an external one.
Viper was a consummate operator. She maintained close ties with major organizations across the globe, both legitimate and criminal, and served as one of HYDRA's most important faces to the outside world. Strucker couldn't afford a falling-out with her—certainly not over pocket change.
He issued his final directive: agree to Daisy's demands. The Baron would watch and wait, let events unfold before making his next move.
When the boss says "handle it," the people below run themselves ragged.
The lower ranks knew nothing about Viper, nothing about the big man's concerns. All they knew was that the Baron's order made absolutely no sense. But orders were orders, and a parade of HYDRA officials, businessmen, and fixers threw themselves into smoothing over every obstacle in Daisy's path—on their own dime.
They also sacrificed a high-level asset inside the Department of Defense, deliberately stalling the Pentagon's scheduled inspection of Hammer Industries' powered-armor program. That bought Hammer an extra two weeks of modification time.
Three days later, Daisy signed the mutual stock-swap agreement in Hammer Industries' boardroom.
It was a purely internal exchange—no public market shares involved. Under HYDRA's pressure, Justin Hammer surrendered five percent of his personal stake. In addition, Typhon Group, the world's largest pharmaceutical conglomerate and another holder of Hammer shares, gave up ten percent of theirs.
A global enterprise with a quarter of a million employees, Typhon Group's board had long since been captured by HYDRA. The company's operating executives couldn't fathom why the board would approve such a lopsided deal—by the numbers, the two sides weren't remotely comparable.
But the entire board had acted as though their brains had been squeezed through a doorframe. They insisted, unanimously, that this was their collective decision. Understand it or not, execute it.
That said, Typhon's board members weren't thrilled about looking like fools. Trading a car for a toy car didn't sit well with anyone's dignity. They imposed a reasonably harsh condition on Daisy: she'd have to pay cash, at half the market valuation, for Typhon's Hammer Industries shares.
Hammer Industries had a market cap of at least twenty billion. A ten-percent stake at half price came to one billion dollars.
Baron Strucker tacitly approved the condition. He wanted to see just how far Viper's support for Daisy extended. After all, one billion in cash wasn't something a regular agent could scrape together—even a senior agent would need five hundred years of paychecks.
Did Daisy have a billion in cash? Of course she didn't. The eight hundred million she'd pocketed from the helicarrier retrofit hadn't even had time to warm up in her account, and the thought of spending real money physically hurt.
After rounds of negotiation, requests for approval up the chain, and haggling, the final agreement looked quite different from the opening terms.
Daisy exchanged five percent of Skye Data for Justin Hammer's five percent of Hammer Industries—a straight swap.
Then she traded thirty-five percent of Skye Data plus three hundred million dollars in cash for Typhon Group's ten percent of Hammer Industries and three percent of Typhon itself. Daisy had taken a keen interest in this HYDRA-controlled conglomerate. She wanted to see what a pharmaceutical giant's internal records could reveal, tracing the breadcrumbs to map HYDRA's commercial footprint.
Typhon Group kept a low profile. Its valuation didn't match Stark Industries, but it still sat close to fifty billion.
Daisy's side of the exchange was essentially a toy car and a bag of postcards for a real car and a house.
Under normal circumstances, Typhon's executives would never have agreed to something this absurd. But Daisy had used her hacking skills to eavesdrop on their internal discussions and picked up on the delicate dynamics among the parties. She offered Typhon's negotiators a sedative formula as a sweetener.
The formula itself was genuinely elegant—a valuable addition to any pharmaceutical portfolio. But that wasn't what sealed the deal.
What sealed it was that Baron Strucker recognized Viper's signature style in the formula. An exclusive compound like that, handed over freely, said volumes. He filled in the blanks himself: a gesture of goodwill? Submission? An overture for collaboration?
If he could bring another HYDRA faction leader into the fold, Strucker's grip on power would only tighten. He barely hesitated before approving the deal.
Daisy had the technology, the money, and—as far as Strucker's imagination was concerned—the backing of a powerful ally. Cooperation was a no-brainer. In the Baron's eyes, this was the beginning of real cooperation between two HYDRA factions.
The boss was thinking politics. That left the subordinates thinking in economic terms to suffer for it. They wanted to keep breathing, which meant they couldn't dig their heels in. They held their noses and signed off on the arrangement.
Daisy wore a serene smile as she put her name to a mountain of documents. In the end, she'd traded forty percent of Skye Data plus three hundred million dollars in cash—paid on the spot at signing—for fifteen percent of Hammer Industries and three percent of Typhon Group.
Combined with the loose shares she'd been scooping up on the open market, her personal portfolio now included: sixteen point one percent of Hammer Industries, three percent of Typhon Group, two point two percent of Stark Industries, sixty percent of the unlisted Skye Data, and thirty percent of Skye Pictures.
The Hammer Industries stake alone put three billion on her balance sheet, and the Typhon shares added another 1.5 billion. All paper wealth, of course—none of it liquid in the short term. If Hammer Industries went bankrupt, her shares would be worth exactly nothing. That was, in fact, the main reason the other side had agreed to the deal in the first place: everyone was in the same boat now, and she'd better start rowing.
Daisy had her doubts about letting Justin continue running the company. In her view, the former mob consigliere was better suited for the job—let Justin handle marketing and public relations, which was where his talents actually lay. But swapping leadership at this stage would be premature.
The company name wasn't changing either, not yet. Daisy wanted to gauge the outside world's reaction to her entry into the arms market. After all, weapons dealers didn't exactly enjoy sterling reputations.
Once Typhon Group's representatives had left the building, she got down to business.
"Let me see your contract templates with the military." She was imperious about it, sending Justin to fetch the files like an errand boy.
His face was pure bewilderment. When exactly had he become an employee? But given the current power dynamics, he didn't have much room to push back. He went to the safe, opened it, and handed Daisy the preliminary letters of intent signed with the military.
She flipped through them at speed, building a rough picture.
"The military isn't actually asking us to build Iron Man suits, is it?" she said. "From what I know, every one of Tony's suits costs upward of five hundred million. There's no way to mass-produce them."
Justin thought she was getting cold feet. A flash of anger crossed his face. Daisy went on: "We don't have enough time. The Stark Expo is in fifteen days. You want me to modify twenty armored suits in that window? Forget me—you could dig up Howard Stark himself and he couldn't do it either."