It's not a story he tells very often. Most of the time, he doesn't think it's anyone's business, though he's tried to make exceptions for any curious members of the ITF, letting loose relevant information if they ask for it. Peggy's different, someone from a version of home and important to Steve. If she wants to know, he'll tell her.

"I was captured by the Soviets in '45," he says, listlessly pushing his food around. "They were still our allies at the time, but things had already begun to change. They thought I was like Steve, another super-soldier, so they were eager to revive me, using bleeding edge medical technology to treat what wounds I'd sustained and thaw me out from the ice. The process worked, and I turned out to be something more useful to them than a super-soldier, because I was the perfect spy. I couldn't tell you my name or who I was, but I remembered all my languages and training. They exploited my amnesia and turned me into a tool... Only after a while, I started to remember things, fight against the conditioning. I became too difficult to control, so they'd put me on ice between missions, wiping my mind each time. I operated as an assassin for decades, my existence more or less a myth in the intelligence community. I was... very good at my job."

There's no pride in the words. Just simple fact.