Chapter Twenty-Eight
They had brought Howard Hargrave in in hopes that he would stir things up, and from the frustrated voices on the other end of the line it sounded like he had. It just wasn't to the effect that the Keens had hoped for. Everyone held tight to their secrets and hoped for the best as the rest of them jumped into the mess with half the facts, if they were lucky. Ressler didn't have to wonder why Liz was fed up with it, or even why she'd slipped away looking for answers on Ilya Koslov and then by going to Howard. She was never going to get a straight answer from Reddington or the rest of them. That was the only truth she should rely on, not that she would. No, he would keep giving her pieces of information to string her along until one or both or all of them got killed. Maybe that was the truest sense of insanity.
If it was, he was right there with her, because it wasn't like Ressler could just walk away at this point. He had been all in for a long time now.
He glanced at the radio from his spot in the driver's seat of the federally issued SUV, the phone call filtering through the Bluetooth so that he and Liz could both hear. Lucky for Park, she was right behind them in their two-car line with another couple of agents and their gear. Ressler shot the speakers a withering look when Reddington all but commanded Cooper to put a stop to them going in. He wouldn't. He couldn't. This was the job, and if Liz was in danger they would be there to watch her back. That's what they did. After everything, they were more family than partners.
Ressler didn't see the vehicle that broadsided them. They were driving one moment and rolling the next. He felt the impact in his shoulder - still a little sore from where it had been pulled out of socket while fighting for the intel - and then must have hit his head, because the next thing he knew he was hanging upside down from his seatbelt.
"Ress? Ressler? You okay?"
That was Liz's voice. That much he could piece together.
"Hey." He felt something - a hand, he thought - slapping at him. "Open your eyes. They're coming. Hey!" The last word was punctuated with a balled fist to his arm and his eyes popped open.
"What the —"
"I'm stuck. Can you reach your gun?"
He cringed, everything aching as he strained for it. He needed to get loose. They both did. It's be like shooting fish in a barrel where they were.
Ressler wiggled just right and got his fingers around his firearm. He pulled it free, aimed at the approaching boots, and fired. The approaching figure howled and danced out of his line of site as Liz finally worked her seatbelt loose. She landed hard against the roof of the SUV and took hold of her own weapon, shooting at the cracked glass on her door. It shattered and she shot Resler a look. "Go," he barked, taking another awkward shot out of his own window again before scurrying to follow.
Liz was already using the overturned vehicle as a barricade when he pulled himself halfway out, but a bullet striking too close for comfort made him duck back for cover.
"Drop it! Do it now!" someone shouted from the side of the vehicle he thought was covered. They didn't seem to be yelling at him, but as they drew closer he took a shot, the bullet ripping through the man's leg and sending him crashing to the ground. He took aim to take him out, but a voice from the other window stopped him.
"One move and you're dead. Slide the gun out and back out of the car."
Ressler risked a look behind him even as he heard Liz fighting and reluctantly did as he was told, backing out over shattered glass that littered the roof of the car. Once he was out, he straightened to see them shoving Liz in a van. His captor leveled his gun, a dangerous smirk tilting his lips.
"What, just wanted to look me in the eye?" Ressler popped off.
"I wanted you to see you've already lost," the man answered.
A shot rang out, but instead of pain and darkness, Ressler watched the man that had been ready to kill him crumble to the ground.
The others must have seen it too, because almost simultaneously the van door slammed shut and the tires squealed. Ressler jerked around to see a blood-covered Park, gun aimed at the retreating van, but she couldn't stop it. He loosed a curse out on a breath. "You got your phone? Where are the others?" he called as he started towards her.
"Dead. And your welcome," she huffed, leaning against the SUV she had been in.
"Are you hit?"
"Yeah. Phone's in there." She motioned vaguely at the vehicle.
Ressler circled it to grab the phone and start dialing. They needed medical and they needed to try to catch up to the van before they ditched it. He risked a glance at Park as he lifted the phone to his ear. "Thank you."
She snorted, her lips twitching up lopsidedly before she sank down to the ground.
It was everything he could do to keep a calm exterior as he promised Agnes that everything was going to be okay and the grownups just needed to talk. She didn't want to go with Agent Markum. She wanted to stay with him. It didn't seem like that long ago that the tears and the begging wouldn't have phased him, but as he pressed a kiss to his daughter's dark hair and sent her away, it broke Tom's heart.
Granted, the heartbreak was almost immediately replaced with terror and rage when the news came through that Liz had been taken.
"She never should have been there," Reddington growled and Tom shoved hard at the urge to deck him again.
"Cut the bullshit, Reddington. All of you." All eyes tired on Tom and he met each of them as he spoke. "Your secrets - all of your secrets - are what got us here. Howard said Scottie and Katarina used us. How?" Silence met him. "Floor's open, but one of you sure as hell better start talking."
"The Archive," Scottie said quietly, receiving a look from Katarina, but the other woman didn't try to stop her. "We were… tasked to find a way to keep it safe for the Cabal."
Howard looked vindicated at the words, but miraculously kept his mouth shut as Cooper asked, "What is in the Archive?"
"A collection of information," Katarina chimed in. "There was a database set up by what you call the Cabal. Since the organization was made up of intelligence officers from all over the globe, they syphoned information from governments and pooled resources. Files were brought in from all the major world players, but there were also files stored on the Cabal itself. Operatives, leadership. They had to have a way to protect it. They brought Scottie and I in."
"I knew it," Howard huffed. "You married me for the intelligence you could have gotten from Halcyon."
"You and Scottie can handle your marital squabbles when Elizabeth's life doesn't hang in the balance," Reddington said tightly.
"What does this have to do with Liz and me?" Tom asked, hoping to redirect the conversation. He looked to Katarina first, but nothing in her carefully curated expression instilled any sort of trust. He turned to his mother and found a much more open, pain filled expression that tore at the edges of his memories.
"They knew Katarina was over the project," Scottie answered, her voice trembling ever so slightly. "The moment that remote access was shut off - when she took the Archive - they would look at her, and if they looked at her, they'd look at me. We couldn't know where it was hidden. We couldn't even know full pieces. We had to hide them away somewhere safe."
"Us," Tom breathes, feeling like someone had just kicked him in the gut. "But how? If you both had pieces… someone must have had the final one to know how to access it. Someone must have hidden it with us."
"Brigitte," Katarina said. "Another double, another so-called trusted ally."
"For you or her?" Aram asked to the side, his tone accusing.
Katarina shrugged. "She played her part."
"Like Lia," Reddington said sourly. He straightened from where he'd slouched further and further against a desk, the posture strange on him. "They used Brigitte to hide it, had her deliver the final piece to you and Elizabeth, and then they killed her after setting the retrieval cues in place."
"And that's what we need now," Katarina pressed. "Tom, if we're going to save Masha - if we have any hope of saving my daughter - we need the Archive. You must have seen the Fulcrum at some point. It was a stagnant piece. It never updated. This - the Sikorsky Archive - has everything. We can leverage it to get her back."
Tom felt like the room was spinning as she struggled to look at every angle. "How? Even if we could recover my memories, it wouldn't give us a location. We need Liz too. She has the other piece, right?"
"I have her piece."
Scottie whipped around to look at Katarina. "How?"
The redhead averted eye contact for the briefest of moments, but she never looked around to Reddington. "Several years ago Masha uncovered certain truths that she shouldn't have found. They put people in danger and would have done immense damage if I hadn't handled it."
"Handled it how?" Cooper asked, his tone icy.
Katarina heaved a sigh. "She doesn't remember it and I do. That's all that matters."
Reddington's expression darkened. "Krilov. You're the one."
"Not the time or place," Katarina snapped and turned to Tom. "How far are you willing to go to save your wife?"
Tom pushes a frustrated breath out through his nose. "You know that answer. It's why you tracked me down. Why you hired me."
"Now that you remember her, I want to hear you say it."
There was a long moment where both operatives studied each other. She knew. He'd already proven how far he'd go. "I'd die for her," he answered, the confessions riding out on a breath.
"Good man. Then we need to take a trip."
As soon as they had gotten ahold of her and shoved her in the van a bag had been dropped over her head, cutting off any chance of catching a glimpse out of the window as they drove. Liz sat and listened, noting as they drove over railroad tracks, took a turn, or the little bit of light that made its way through the bag snuffed out, signalling a tunnel. At one point when the lights went out, they stopped, and she was shuffled into another vehicle and sat on what felt like a hard bench. Another van, just with different plates and colour, she imagined.
She struggled to keep track of all the turns, but after a while she was certain that this was not an A to B type of drive. They knew what they were doing, and by the time they stopped, she had no idea where they had taken her.
The doors to her right opened and they shuffled her out. Her boots hit solid concrete and as the bag was pulled away Liz found herself in an open warehouse. A quick glance around didn't provide her with any definitive evidence as to where she'd been driven to, not that she was up-to-date on whatever New Jersey warehouse district they were likely in. By this point, she wasn't sure what city it was.
Heels tapped against the hard floor and echoed through the space, drawing Liz's attention. A woman that she recognized as Emilia Schmitz strode towards her. She looked more like a business woman than a field operative in her heels and skirt suits. Her pale blue eyes narrowed as she stopped. "Masha Rostova." The name left her lips, the pronunciation flawlessly Russian rather than what her file would indicate was her native German.
"Special Agent Elizabeth Keen," Liz corrected. "You kidnapped a federal agent."
"Is that supposed to intimidate me?" Schmitz asked, slipping into a general American accent like one might find in one of the larger cities. "I expected more from Katarina's daughter that has been trained by Raymond Reddington himself."
"And what did you expect?" Liz growled lowly.
The other woman's gaze swept her up and down, disappointment etched into her expression. "Just… more."
Liz let her own gaze drop, mumbling indistinctly under her breath.
"And you think that will change my mind?" Schmitz scoffed, leaning closer. "What are you —?"
She didn't stop to second guess it as she pitched forward, her head colliding with Schmitz's and sending the other woman reeling back. Safeties gave audible clicks as guns were trained on her and Liz let a slow, dangerous smile draw her lips out. "You can threaten me all you want, do whatever you want, but I'm not giving you anything."
Schmitz wiped at the trickle of blood at her split lip. "Everyone has a price."
"I don't have what you're looking for."
"And what do you think that is?"
"The Archive. You want to find it."
The blonde woman snorted, amusement lining her voice. "I didn't go through all of the trouble of taking you for your price. Your hers, and she'll come for you. All the way to our doorstep." She turned, shouting orders in German over her shoulder and the bag slid down over Liz's face again.
Raymond Reddington pushed a breath out through his nose as he felt the plane level off for the short flight from DC to Ocean City where they hoped to recover a piece of key buried deep in Tom Keen's memory that would lead them to the Sikorsky Archive. He didn't have long and this might be the only opportunity that he had for a while to confront Katarina on the terrible truth she had dropped so casually at the Post Office.
She was seated folded up at one end of the bench opposite of Scottie and Tom, the younger Hargrave with his gaze fixed on the clouds outside. She didn't look up as he approached, but he saw a small twitch of recognition when he spoke. "A word?"
There was a beat and then another, and he felt frustration flood through him before she finally heaved a sigh and stood. She motioned dramatically and he led her to two facing seats in the back of the plane to afford them as much privacy as he could.
"You're not going to let this go, are you?"
"You took her memories," he snapped, hating that he sounded as on edge as he felt. Elizabeth was missing - taken - and their current plan hinged on sparking something within a man who might never remember that day again.
"It's nothing you haven't done," Katarina argued. "You couldn't wait to wipe me away."
"She was traumatized. You heard Sam. She woke crying and screaming. Inconsolable. I took a horrific memory from her in hopes that she wouldn't grow up thinking she had killed her own father, for what little good it did in the end."
"And you think I would have taken memories if not to protect her? To protect you?"
Reddington met her gaze steadily. "What did she find?"
"The name Nicholai Yahontov."
The name hit Reddington like a blow to the gut. He couldn't quite catch his breath. "How?"
"That took a little more digging. Turns out Howard found her and set her chasing down leads. Whatever she found, it led her to that name. Worse, it led her to Alexei."
Reddington had known that Howard had sunk a tremendous amount of resources into finding his son over the years. If he had found Elizabeth but not Tom, he might have even convinced her to tell him where he was if Katarina hadn't intervened. Katarina would never admit to it, of course, but Red would wager she was the one that had sabotaged Howard's plane a few years before rather than Scottie. That was likely when she had found out that it had been Howard that had tipped her off, but if it took her that long that meant that she had had to track down the answers. That meant someone else could know she was following those threads. "Schmitz isn't after the Archive."
"I doubt she'd toss it away, but if she's working for Jonas Bauer these days, they'll have Masha on a plane to Bonn before either of us could stop them."
"Even if we find the Archive, there's no guarantee he'll release her for it."
"We both know he won't. The stubborn old bastard only wants one thing, but if we get it, we can end this once and for all. You and I can finally walk away. From all of this. We'll win the war, Raymond."
"And risk Elizabeth in the process. I'm not willing to risk her life for mine."
"You knew this could happen and you trained her well. This is our best chance at protecting her and her child now."
"Or we could give him Nicholai," Red said softly.
"Don't be absurd," Katarina snapped. "This is our best course of action."
Reddington didn't counter her as he felt the plane start their descent.
The cool ocean breeze hit him as soon as he stepped from the car, the exit bringing with it all the sights and sounds of a private beach devoid of anyone else walking along the sand. Tom looked out, images and voices teasing at the edge of his memory and he felt a chill run up and down his spine. There was a rhythm he could feel, quick and steady, conflicting wildly with the crashing of the waves. He though he heard Scottie's voice behind him, but he found himself inching towards the waves.
The trip to the Jersey shore had been tense and mostly silent. Reddington fumed over what was apparently new knowledge to everyone that Katarina had stolen her daughter's memories away - what was it with these people? - and they spoke lowly through part of the flight until lapsing into silence all over again. Tom, for his part, had said nothing as he wrestled with his own fears that he wouldn't be able to remember what was needed to protect Liz. He should have gone with her. He should have protected her.
Thoughts of the woman he loved stirred up memories like the ones Katarina had been so desperate for him to recall. He could see a beach similar to that one - or perhaps even the same one years before - and two children building a sandcastle. He focused on the memory, trying to follow it down to what they needed, but all he could recall was the sound of Liz's - Masha's - laughter and the spray from the ocean.
A hand touched his arm and he jumped a little, startled to find Scottie by his slide. She offered a thin smile. "We met them several times here. You were always…. shy until you got to know new people. You never had that problem with her."
He drew in a trembling breath. "When did Brigitte meet us?"
"The last time. Everything was put into motion after that."
"Was this what you wanted to tell me?"
Scottie didn't answer him for a long moment, and when Tom turned towards her, he saw tears standing in her eyes as she looked out on the ocean. "Pieces. I wish I could tell you I would have told you everything, but I would have at least told you pieces."
Tom nodded solemnly and turned back to stare at the horizon. He let his eyes slip closed, and instead of trying to remember Liz, he struggled tug at a memory with Brigitte in it. "Tell me about her. Brigitte, I mean."
"She was young. We all were. Young and dedicated. She thought she was helping to hide the central database that would have helped them achieve their goals. She believed in them."
He listened, eyes closed and he sank down to sit in the sand as she continued to describe how Brigitte had met them there, how she had been read in to the plan as if their superiors knew about it too, and how she'd never been given the chance to verify that intel. She'd been young and idealistic, with a soft voice and green flecks in her blue eyes. Her red hair had been dyed and Tom could almost feel the woman he'd conjured up in his mind's eye take a seat with him and lean in close as if telling him a secret.
"Tom!"
He jolted, wondering vaguely when he had pitched forward against the sand and his breathing was strangely ragged for such a mild memory. Maybe because it had only been mild on the surface. "I remember what she told me," he gasped, the weight of the words hanging in the salty air between them.
TBC
Notes: Who's excited for the bucketload of answers that you got in this chapter? Now I need you to hold onto that feeling because next Thursday is Christmas Eve and there's a better than even chance there won't be an update because I'll be traveling and spending time with family. There MAY be something else that I'm working on for a gift exchange, though, so keep your eyes open ;)
For those celebrating Hanukkah right now, I hope you have had a fantastic and peaceful Hanukkah! For those gearing up for Christmas next week, Happy Christmas! If you celebrate in another way and in whatever way you celebrate this time of year, I hope you're safe and happy and doing very, very well in this chaotic year. Here's to 2021 being a thousand times better, right?
Next Time: Liz meets Jonas Bauer, Dembe and Nez find themselves positioned for a rescue, and Red doesn't always get to take on the world alone.
