Anslo Garrick - Brainstorming

While Liz and Ressler attempted to come to terms with the idea of a compromised task force, Red decided to deal with the stress and emotional upheaval of the day the best way he knew how—by ordering enough room service to feed a small army. There was always time for food, he argued, and they could all use a little fuel if they were going be at their best while they figured out how to handle the situation. He took it as an opportunity to push one rare delicacy after another on Ressler, who didn't seem half as amused as either of his companions.

Liz had learned early in their relationship not to take all of Red's recommendations at face value; he was just as apt to encourage a person to taste something abjectly disgusting as he was to offer something delicious. It wasn't even mean-spirited or mischievous—Red could find something to appreciate about damn near any experience, good or bad, because he valued the knowledge those experiences offered about the world and himself. Others, he thought, could benefit from being nudged outside of their comfort zones and he was uniquely positioned to do the nudging. Liz thought he might just have a point.

"Whoever hired Garrick," Red said, after swallowing a mouthful of food, "has a knowledge of my movements and my activities that could put at risk the secrecy of my agreement with the FBI."

"It's worse than that," Liz said. "Whoever ordered it must already know about your agreement with the FBI. They know about the Post Office, they know the people who work there well enough to have turned at least one of them—they have to know you're our CI. There must be corruption somewhere pretty high up the food chain for all that to reach someone like Garrick and for no one to order the task force moved or disbanded. There's more to this than we're seeing."

Red nodded in agreement while he sipped at his drink, with that faint crinkle around his eyes that spoke of approval and pride in her assessment of the situation. Ressler, however, was more skeptical.

"You think it's an inside job," he said flatly.

"Well, it has to be, doesn't it? If Garrick was hired by one of Red's enemies who discovered that he's an informant, why would they risk breaking into a government facility when they could grab him literally anywhere else? And if this was truly someone who was only out for his blood, he'd be dead already. No. There's something weird about this."

"OK. Say you're right and there is a mole in the Post Office and someone higher up is compromised, too. How are we gonna fix this? Where do we go from here?"

"Elizabeth is not setting foot anywhere near the Post Office until we find out who's responsible for this," Red said, with a finality that seemed to take Ressler by surprise at least as much as the abrupt, almost non sequitur. Liz's chest tightened at what he had left unspoken, a visceral reaction that went far beyond the bristling she felt at him making a definitive decision for her.

"Excuse me? Neither are you!"

Red absently swirled the liquor around in his tumbler, studying it as it flowed around the tinkling ice cubes. "Lizzy…"

"No, Red. I'm being serious, here. Come on, I need you to look at me." Reluctantly, he met her eyes. "The second you walk into the Post Office, you trigger everything. I don't care if you think you can handle it or that it'll expedite things; it's too big a risk and if something went wrong, I can't lose you. Especially not now."

Liz swallowed hard and blinked to clear her eyes. She wished her voice hadn't trembled when she spoke. Her fears and vulnerabilities were personal. Sharing them with Red was one thing. Sharing them with Ressler, or even just in front of him, was another.

Red reached down and took her hand. "OK. No Post Office for either of us," he agreed, his voice gruff.

"You realize you two can't just skip town and go into hiding until this blows over, right? Cooper wants Reddington in the Post Office as soon as possible. He expects to hear back from me even sooner. Besides, there's a record of his location; no one's gonna buy it if I tell them he wasn't here when I showed up. And obviously they have every intention to keep tracking him."

"It doesn't matter what Harold wants. It doesn't matter what anybody at the FBI wants. We're going to have to do this my way, Donald, whether you agree with that or not. Even if we avoided the Post Office itself, any official or unofficial FBI facility is suspect until we find out who hired Garrick.

"We'll have to go through the motions to start with. Make it look like I'm going along with you in good faith. We'll take my jet back to the States tomorrow—you tell them I refused to fly FBI Air and the first chance I got once we landed, I disappeared. While they try to track me down, we track them. Once we have some actionable intel, my people will contact you so we can regroup and figure out how to handle it from there."

Red set his glass down and shifted forward on the couch, tilting his head to catch and hold Ressler's skittish gaze.

"I want to make this very clear, Donald—not one word of this speculation gets back to Harold Cooper. Not that I suspect he's our culprit, but if the culprit is someone higher up the food chain, the intel is still finding its way upstream somehow. Harold's a potential point of contact, whether he's aware of it or not."

Ressler nodded slowly; he looked vaguely green and when he cleared his throat, he used it as an excuse to break eye contact. "What about Liz?"

"What about her? As far as they know, she's in Nebraska reconnecting with family and she's incommunicado for another couple weeks. If they try to find her like you did, then we'll worry about pushing a story that once I got wind of the plot, I hid her for her protection. For now, it's better if she's not on their radar at all."

"Speaking of radar," Liz said, "you're pulling your chip tonight. If there's a mole with access to the Post Office, who knows how long it'll take for them to get impatient? If we just assume they'll stick with the plan and wait around for Ressler to make contact, we could be blindsided.

"Just think about it… If Ressler takes too long getting back and they start going down the same path he took to get here, they find out not only where you are; chances are they can connect enough dots to point them back to me, too. We can't afford to let anybody who's compromised know about us."

Red considered Liz for a moment, long enough for her to begin to feel slightly antsy. "Can you perform minor field surgery or should I get Dembe?"

"You want me to do it?"

"I trust you. Besides, it wouldn't be the first time you put a hole in my neck." She narrowed her eyes at him and gave his shoulder a gentle shove; he held up his hands in mock surrender. "I'm sure Donald can back you up if you need a second pair of eyes. Or hands, if absolutely necessary, but I'd prefer if you're the one who—"

"Oh, for God's sake," Ressler said, pushing himself to his feet. "You two go ahead and bicker with each other for another twenty minutes; I'm using you're bathroom." He stormed out of the room, stopping just short of slamming the door behind him. Small courtesy.

"By the way, Lizzy…" Red said, examining his fingernails with feigned nonchalance. "Did you happen to put away the, uh—"

"Oh, God. He's never going to make eye contact with either of us ever again."