The Blacklist

Please hurry, Ms. Keen. He doesn't like to be kept waiting.

Is this how it works around here?

He snaps his fingers

and everyone just trembles?

If they have any sense.

- Aren't you coming? - Mm.

Ah. Thank God you're here.

The boys and I were chatting about failed expectations.

I'll catch you up. First I said...

"Kansas was an awful bloodbath,

and, sure, that was fun,

but you let Reddington get away."

Then they said, "So sorry.

We promise to do better next time.

Please, Neville, what about my wife and kids?"

To which I said, "Wife and kids?

What about my wife? What about my kids?"

- -

You're insane!

Why? Because I stabbed a man who was suffocating?

I suppose that was rather crazy of me.

Almost as crazy as partnering with an FBI agent.

No... No!

You find him at his girlfriend's.

You have him at gunpoint, but somehow he gets away.

Why is that? Why don't I have

everything you promised me, Agent Keen?

I have a lead.

On Reddington.

I can prove he's N-13

and that he's in communication with the Russians.

- - Do you, now?

I suppose there's only one way to find out.

Go. Pursue. Live the dream.

But, Elizabeth...

Don't disappoint me again.

Anne? Stay with me.

Belsky reached out. He said it's urgent.

Anne had a daughter.

Has a daughter.

You must put that behind you.

Belsky has information

that concerns Townsend and Elizabeth.

Then I suppose we'll act on it.

Raymond, there's something else.

Paula called.

Glen's mother, Paula?

Yes. She wanted you to call or come by the house.

And then she said something about "new irons in the fire."

Hot ones, she said.

Oh, my God. Sounds like she's dating.

That's what I said.

And she laughed and said, "No, nothing like that.

This is business.

Serious business."

And then she said, "Alright, then, Dembe.

I'll see you and Raymond at the house."

What happened to Bill and Steven?

She knows, Raymond.

Oh, my.

Histiaeus.

What's to be learned from him,

other than tyranny and duplicity?

There you have it. The history of mankind...

Tyranny and duplicity.

You've come a long way

from the 8th Directorate, comrade...

Uh, Professor Belsky.

Although I see your affinity

for authoritarians hasn't changed.

Histiaeus wanted to organize a revolt

but feared discovery by the Persians,

so he shaved the hair of his favorite slave

and had the treasonous message tattooed on his head.

When the hair grew back,

he sent him off to spread the word,

which became the first recorded act

of steganography in warfare.

Of course, my KGB ciphers

are no more relevant today than tattooing a head,

so you can imagine my surprise

when I stumbled across this.

I don't understand. Are you getting leads

- from a psychic now? To predict the future?

I don't know, Harold. At $5.99 a minute,

Madame Zorba might be a bargain at twice the price.

If there was a Madam Zorba. But there isn't.

You're showing me a fake ad?

It's not an ad. It's a message.

A code that I believe Townsend and Elizabeth may be using

to communicate with an associate.

"Love is a knot that even death cannot untie."

It sounds more like a Hallmark card than a code.

Having failed to kill me,

I suspect Elizabeth and Townsend may be planning

to move against those around me...

In my world and possibly in yours.

Her fight is with you, not us.

Yes, but you're with me,

and she's with Townsend,

who takes great pride in displaying

his utter disregard for human life.

"Love is a knot" isn't an aphorism.

It's a clue to decrypting the code.

As you well know, during the Cold War,

nobody mastered the art of clandestine communication

better than the Soviets,

their pièce de résistance being a cipher machine

capable of encrypting or decrypting text

into 10 different languages.

The Russkiy Uzel... The Russian Knot.

The Kremlin destroyed most of them

just prior to the fall of the Soviet Union,

so Lord knows how Townsend got his hands on one,

but clearly he did, and if we want to decrypt that message,

we need to get one, too.

Somehow I don't think this is something

we can order on Amazon.

The only other machine I know of

is on display in a museum in Minsk.

Beautiful city. Amazing opera house.

I'd forgotten how beautiful until yesterday.

- You were just in Minsk? - Yes.

In order to make a generous donation to said museum

from a private collection.

Nana was born in Minsk.

I can think of no better way to honor her passing

than with this gift.

You gave the museum a Cézanne?

A stolen one,

which, like all good and greedy bureaucrats,

they're trying to decide whether to report.

Imagine their embarrassment

when the FBI finds it in their possession.

You donated the painting.

Now you want us to go and get it back.

Yes. Along with the Russian Knot.

And why would they give us that?

Last I checked, your country had sanctions in place

against both the president of Belarus and his son.

They're not giving you anything.

- You want us to steal it. - Of course.

What the hell do you think we've been talking about?

Okay, this cipher machine

is actually The hpretty fascinating.

You use the little keyboard to type up your message,

which it then jumbles into a random series of letters.

Then, on the receiving end, you need another machine

to turn the gobbledygook back into regular text.

Okay, but this thing's like 50 years old.

I mean, can't you crack the billboard code without it?

Well, it's not exactly Orphan Annie's decoder ring.

The complexity of the Knot's algorithm compounds

every letter after it is entered,

netting us a trillion, trillion, trillion...

- - ...different possibilities.

I know we'd like to find out what Keen

and Townsend are up to, but are we really

talking about robbing the Belarusian War Museum?

I, uh... I feel like we've done worse.

Reddington made it clear there's no diplomatic angle here.

Townsend has illicit relationships

with the Council of Ministers.

If we reach out for help, he'll be tipped.

Yeah, but to what? We don't even know what Keen's planning.

Okay, Ruddiger, what do ya got?

This bores through rock

using ultrasonic vibrations.

Ha ha! Hell of a lot quieter, too.

It's not very deep.

Don't we need to get through two feet of concrete?

Only needs to be deep enough for the SCDA to do its thing

and to keep me out of the boss's heavy bag.

Of course, what you gain in noise reduction,

you lose in predictability.

It takes time to heat up and expand,

for the pressure to build, until finally...

Boom.

Talk to me about access.

Once we're in, we need a way to smuggle the cipher device out.

The lab's mocking up a fake to leave in its place as we speak.

We'll need to loop the security feeds to make the swap.

Okay, but how do we gain entry into their security passage?

Silva Terzian.

Immigrated from Armenia.

Gets a tea at the same café

every morning before she goes to work.

She's our in.

Ho-ho!

Pack it up. It's time to go.

Wait. Like, now? Why so soon?

The breach happens Friday night.

That's when the museum is hosting its fundraiser.

Staff won't like the FBI presence,

won't want to cause a scene in front of the donors,