- When an Iranian nuclear scientist is suspiciously assassinated, a revenge ploy begins against a valued American. Red informs agents Keen and Navabi that a dangerously conniving hitman "The Scimitar" has been sent to the job. Liz and Ressler find themselves in a tricky predicament as they investigate a surveillance lead. Agent Keen attempts to gather information on Berlin, while Red finds company with a woman working at a food truck.—Jiilo_Kim
- "The Blacklist" - "The Scimitar (No. 22)" - Nov. 3, 2014
We open in Dubai at a swanky bar. Navabi is enjoying a drink and a man comes over and hits on her. They end up making out in the hallway and heading to a hotel room. We cut to outside where he lands on a car parked outside the hotel.
Liz interrogates Tom in his chains. He says he can only do so much trapped in this room. She keeps asking for a name to help get to Berlin. He says if she lets him out he can give her info. He asks what month it is and says he's going to freeze to death down there. Liz says it's November. He wishes her a happy anniversary and finally gives up a Russian name, Volkoff, the man who works as an arms supplier for Berlin. Liz goes to Red to set up a meeting, of course, in the hopes that he will kill Berlin. Red is suspicious of her CI and says if he didn't know that she killed Tom he'd think Tom was her source. She said she did kill him though and looks him right in the eye.
Liz and Navabi, both requested, go to see Red in a record store where he's digging through the crates. Navabi is worried that Red asking for both of them means she's encroaching on Liz's territory. Liz says it's fine. Red says he wanted them both and then tells the story of an Iranian man who was thrown off a balcony in Dubai. The man was one of Iran's top nuclear scientists and he was assasinated in a joint CIA-Mossad effort to undermine Iran's nuclear program. Red knows she killed him but she can't confirm of course. He says the bad news is that Iran plans to retaliate by killing the U.S.'s top nuclear scientist and are dispatching a notorious assassin named the Scimitar. He's very deliberate and cunning and according to Red's sources already in the U.S.
Cooper goes to the head of security on all nuclear matters and he is skeptical. But Cooper convinces him to tuck away the top three U.S. scientists who, if they fell into the hands of a rogue nation would advance that nation's nuclear programs by decades overnight. The guy takes two of them into protective custody, but one of them, named Amelia Collins, is giving a speech that night and they feel if they cancel it will draw attention so they plan to have her watched.
Liz pulls Ressler aside to ask about his problem and says she wants him to get help. Ressler hasn't used in a week and says he can kick it on his own and if he can't he will tell Cooper himself. Liz gets a 911 text to go to the Pier.
Ronaldo alerted Liz that there have been random checks by marine biologists and they'll soon need to move the boat or Tom. Liz brings Tom some food. He says he delivered on his word and wonders when she will deliver on hers. She says once she gets Berlin thanks to his intel this will all be over and walks out leaving him yelling at the door.
Liz goes to meet Volkoff and confronts him saying she knows he runs guns for Berlin. He says she knows he can't say anything and just arrest him already. She says nope, she doesn't want him rotting silently in a cell with an expensive attorney. Instead she put him on the FBI's Most Wanted list which will alert Berlin that they are looking for him and may find him and then Berlin will probably come after him himself since he has intimate details about Berlin and his business affairs. This works.
Volkoff gives her some kind of information and Liz goes to Red to set up a meeting, of course, in the hopes that he will kill Berlin. Red is suspicious of her CI and says if she hadn't told him she killed Tom he'd think Tom was her source. She said she did kill him though and looks him right in the eye.
At the Post Office Aram gets a hit on a construction trailer where it would appear the Scimitar was setting up shop, getting video feed information from an important government building. Liz and Ressler go there and find a photo and a dossier on a man named John Reese who is apparently head of security for the scientists. They figure out that he'll be taking a Park n' Ride home shortly and race to get there before the Scimitar.
They arrive and grab him but shots ring out from a sniper. They hop in their SUV and speed off. Two people on a motorcycle pull up alongside and begin shooting. They then throw a stun grenade in the car and it crashes, flipping several times. Before Liz passes out she sees feet and guns outside the window.
Liz wakes up in a hospital in a room with several patients and writhing with pain. The doctor tells her she has a fractured arm and we'll need surgery to repair it. She sees Ressler across the room. The doctor says they are waiting to get him an MRI since he had head trauma. He says no third patient was brought in so Liz knows the Scimitar has him. She asks for a phone.
The Post Office hears about a crash and monitors chatter to see that two patients were brought to Bethesda National.
The doctor brings Liz a phone and she calls Cooper and says they're in the hospital and that the Scimitar has Reese so they'll need to protect Amelia Collins post-haste and call off the speech. Liz notices the phone and her fingers have some weird brown residue on them and starts to get suspicious.
She gets up and looks at Ressler's chart and under the first couple of pages they're all blank. She realizes it's a scam. Simultaneously, the gang at the Post Office realizes the same thing. The Scimitar played them, faking documents and locations-- Reese was not a real government employee-- so they could get the car to crash get Liz and Ressler into the incredibly fake hospital, give them fake injuries and sedate them, have her make the call and then figure out where Collins was. It's insane but it worked. The doctor, who is actually the Scimitar-- who wipes make up off his distinctive hand tattoo-- hears the recording of Liz's call, figures out where Amelia Collins is and heads out.
After disabling the fake nurse, Liz's gets Ressler out of bed and they try to find their way out of the fake hospital.
Red is chit-chatting with "the girl" and they talk about how he hasn't seen his daughter in many years and how she hasn't seen her father in many years because he did things she hated him for. It would seem like we're about to find out that Red is her father when she starts acting oddly and asks what he did. He has drugged her. He has Dembe come put her in the car and that is when most people probably realized that Zoey is not Red's daughter but Berlin's, the one he accused Red of sending to him in pieces.
Meanwhile, Navabi calls Red to help figure out another way to find them Liz and Ressler. They figure the Scimitar must have had help. So they go to yet another international criminal who is the target of a Mossad hunt named Ali Hassan. Red says she will get in trouble with Mossad if they follow this lead. She says she doesn't care because with Liz and Ressler in danger this has become personal. Red says it's actually even more personal for her because the Scimitar ordered the bombing that killed her brother.
They go to Hassan and force a confession out of him that he gave the Scimitar money, a warehouse to work in, and building materials. He doesn't know why. (To build an elaborate fake hospital in a warehouse silly.)
And luckily, Navabi and the gang show up just in time to this warehouse to shoot the man menacing Liz and Ressler as they try to escape.
Amelia Collins wasn't so lucky, however, as the Scimitar's men knocked out Amelia Collins' security detail and kidnapped her and promised to make her pay the price for the crimes of her government but first she will help create the weapons that will help Iran bring the U.S. to its knees. Cooper arrives and she's gone so they try to lock down the building.
Liz and Ressler drive up in the madness and try to control the crowd. Liz sees what looks like a belllman moving a large piece of luggage. She notices his hand tattoo, remembers the brown residue and realizes that her doctor was the Scimitar. She draws down on him but his men pull up in an SUV guns blazing and rescue him and drive off. Liz and Ressler free Amelia Collins from the suitcase.
The Scimitar is on the phone looking for some assistance and walking up the steps at Hassan's house when he sees Red. Red knew he'd come back for more help. Red hands the Scimitar over to Navabi to do with as she chooses. She says she'll call it in, Red says if she wishes and leaves. Navabi confronts him about killing her brother. The Scimitar intimates that her brother was no faceless name in the crowd and if she thinks he was she didn't know him. She tries to figure out what to do. He says if she kills him it won't be in the name of country but cold-blooded murder so she should the CIA or Mossad and be done with it. When his body washes up later, one bullet in the head, we learn what she decided to do.
Liz goes to Ressler and says she thought for a second she might lose him. He jokes the prospect must've been terrifying. She says it was. He says the irony is with all the drugs they pumped into him means this is the best he felt since he stopped using. She asks if that's going to be a problem and then Cooper walks in and says they found Scimitar's body. Liz goes to the scene and wonders aloud to Navabi "Who would've done this?"
Ressler pours out his drugs.
Liz goes to Tom and he says the info that he gave her will be good and then Red will kill Berlin and then his value to her will be over. But will she turn him in and go to jail? He thinks she thinks she's going to kill him but he doesn't think she has it in her to live with that decision even if she gets away with it. She says he'll be the first to know when she makes her decision. He asks her the favor of looking him in the eyes when she kills him. She leaves.
Red goes to meet with Berlin, not to kill him as Liz would like, but to deliver a package to him: his daughter. Both Zoey and Berlin are gobsmacked.
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