Chapter Twenty-Nine
Twenty-seven. That had been it, and even if the Cabal had found the information somehow - even if they had managed to piece it together with the knowledge that Katarina had wiped from Elizabeth's memory - it would have been a couple of drops in a very large bucket of possible meanings. Scottie and Katarina clearly knew what Tom meant, even if he didn't know himself. It took some prodding, but they finally acknowledged that it was an old address to a safe house that hadn't been used by either the KGB or the Cabal. It was - and evening this took a little more prodding - the house that Scottie had lived in when she and Katarina had met as teenagers. Boston was their next stopping point and as Reddington waved them off to go give Edwards the coordinates that he would need, he took the moment of reprieve to make a call.
The phone rang and rang, each round building the anxiety that years of discipline managed to keep from showing on his face. Finally it connected.
"He hasn't moved," Dembe's voice filtered through the line, and he sounded just shy of irritable that he had been disturbed.
"He wouldn't need to," Reddington answered him in hushed tones. "They're bringing Elizabeth to him."
"She's been taken?"
"Yes. I don't need to tell you how important it remains that he doesn't find out who she is."
There was a beat of silence before Dembe asked the question that had been gnawing at Reddington's soul. "Will that protect her?"
The older man loosed a breath and risked a glance to see Tom's gaze finding anywhere else to focus. "I don't know," he confessed. "All of this… I had hoped to shield her from it."
"Is that it?"
"By shielding me, I shielded her," Reddington answered lowly, but the old words tasted false on his tongue. If they were or if it was just the guilt souring them, he couldn't be sure. "Do you have a way to know when they bring her in?"
"Yes."
"Good. Get her home safely." He ended the call and found Tom Keen next to him. He suppressed the urge to jump. "Yes?"
"That's where Dembe is, huh?"
"Yes," he breathed.
"You think he can get to her."
"I hope he can."
"And if not?"
"Then Katarina and your mother are right in thinking that the Archive is our last card to play."
Nez had always been good at slipping in and out of personas at a moment's notice. She enjoyed the high of playing a part that, if she slipped up, could land her in a brawl for her life. She was sure that said something about her as a person - competition bred from being the only girl in a family of boys only to move on to the male-driven and highly competitive nuclear department of the US Navy or the fact that she had never had time to settle into an existence before it was abruptly and often violently disrupted - but it had served her well in Halcyon. It had taught her to read her opponent and to react with a flexibility that they could rarely adjust for quickly enough to counter. Now, though, it was going to go a step further. It was going to provide her with access to Mattie's killer.
It was strange. She couldn't even pinpoint when she'd developed feelings for the man, let alone feelings that would drive her to take risks like she was taking to infiltrate Bauer's security. It had only been a few years before that they had had guns trained on each other, either of them choosing their Hargrave to side with in the messy fallout that had been Tom's choice to work for Halcyon. Nez has chosen Howard as the man that had pulled her from the downward spiral that had been her addiction and Solomon had chosen the woman that had pulled him from the clutches of death. If they'd both been right, both wrong, or somewhere in between was still something Nez had wrestled with even after Howard's betrayal had come to light and she had returned to Scottie's side. She respected Scottie. She admired Scottie. That didn't mean that everything Howard had done for her was negated by what he'd done to his wife or to the company. It had been nice to side with Matias Solomon again, even if the two notoriously careful individuals had taken it so slow that they hadn't gotten beyond the occasion flirt, which was where Solomon had lived anyway. Somewhere in there it had become more, though, and that somewhere had led here right there.
Nez hadn't had a great deal of experience working with Reddington's right-hand-man, but Dembe was proving himself to be a valuable asset. Everyone had a weakness, and while Dembe had been able to find Bauer's, it didn't match a role that he could fill. Nez, on the other hand, fit it like a glove with her new slinky dress that made her skin crawl and six inch spiked heels that took more concentration than she would have preferred to stay upright in. It did do the trick to get her through the front door, and that was closer to the man that had ordered the hit on Solomon than she had ever hoped to reach this quickly. She could play a hooker for a little bit.
Her phone buzzed and she risked a brief glance down to find the text she's here scrawled across her phone. Nez deleted the message before stuffing it back in her purse, straightening in the middle of the room in which she had been left. She. That didn't narrow it down a lot.
The doors at the far end of the room opened to reveal the most cliché German that she had ever seen. Blond, blue eyed, and rigid, all he was missing was a swastika he could have marched goose step in Hitler's army a couple of generations before.
"Fraulein Richter," he greeted her by the name she had given him. "Herr Bauer will see you now."
Nez let a small smile tilt her lips, letting the thought of the sharp chopsticks in her thick hair and the way that they would look stuck in the man's jugular fuel the expression as she followed the unsuspecting lackey back.
It was a private residence. Ornate and old. The wood was polished and the antiques were set so that anyone passing through wouldn't be able to ignore just how much the owner had spent on the decorations. She followed the rigid valet with her head held high and her gaze sweeping the hall. It snapped around as they passed an adjacent corridor, a familiar figure being led down it, and it was everything that Nez could do not to look startled by the unexpected sight of Elizabeth Keen.
She's here.
Nez was shuffled into the room at the far end of the hall and told to wait there before the door closed with a resounding echo behind her.
They had loaded her onto the plane with only a little more care than they had loaded her into the van, but at least she hadn't been expected to wear a bag over her head for the duration of the flight. Once they landed she had been moved to a town car with windows so dark that she couldn't see out of them and she would have bet no one could see into either. All in all, Liz was fairly certain that anyone that might have been able to track her couldn't find her at this point.
That was until she spotted Nez Rowan down the hall.
She had only met her husband's partner a few times over the years, but she was hard to forget. Dangerously striking, she had acknowledged once, even if only to herself. How Scottie had tracked her, she would have to ask her once she was free. Until then it was about finding the opportunity that would get her out of there.
Schmitz had escorted her to a study with floor to ceiling bookshelves filled with dusty, old tomes. Her wrists were bound together. Liz leaned in to pretend to observe them as she went over their route from the private, underground garage to where they stood and counter her blessings that Townsend had parted ways with them at the airport. The man had had his beady gaze fixed on her for what had felt like the entire flight.
The door to the study opened, revealing a broad shouldered man with none of his white hair remaining on the crown of his head. Bauer. He sauntered in, his expression already bored. "Emilia," he greeted, but spoke to her in German.
Liz thought she heard Townsend's name mentioned, but couldn't be sure until Schmitz responded, saying it again and chuckling. The man turned piercing blue eyes on Liz. "Masha Rostova."
"Like I told your friend here, it's Special Agent Keen," Liz countered, and she thought she saw a hint of amusement flicker across his expression.
"Please," he said in English, "take a seat. Has anyone offered you tea?"
Liz held her bound hands up. "I'd much rather have these removed."
"I'm sure you would, but as I once knew your mother very well, I think not." Liz did her best to school her expression, but he must have seen something. She watched his lips quirk up. "She worked with me once, many years ago. I brought her into the organization that you call the Cabal."
"You recruited her?" Liz murmured softly.
"I did, but I knew her years before that. Her father - your grandfather - let his love for her hamper his ability to push her. I knew what she was capable of."
"What's that?"
"Violent and terrible things," Bauer chuckled and moved to a decanter in the corner. "I never questioned the reason she rocketed to greatness in her field, but our leadership at the time - an American - underused her just as her father had and she betrayed us all."
Liz had spent the better part of a decade desperate for answers about her mother, but even as she stood and listened to them tumble from this man's lips, she knew they didn't come free. "Schmitz said you wanted her. Why? To get what she stole from you?"
"There are those that are interested in the Sikorsky Archive. You must have met Townsend. He's one. Devil of a man, but his pockets are almost as deep as mine, and that makes him useful." His gaze snapped to her before he crossed the space with two glasses of scotch and offered her one, utterly ignoring Schmitz who had all but faded to the background. She took it, but didn't drink. "I don't care about the Archive. I want Katarina Rostova because Imshe worked for the man that I believe helped steal my son away."
Well, that hadn't been what she expected. "Your son?"
"Is that so hard to believe?"
She adjusted her grip on her glass. "What happened?"
Bauer took a long sip of his own, nearly draining the amber liquid. "Nicholai - my son - was a troubled boy after his mother passed. One day he was simply gone. I searched for him, but every sign pointed to an accident. Staged - I discovered many years later - I believe by your mother's handler. If he knew where Nicholai went and who he became, Katarina will know."
As well as he told the story, and as hard as it tugged on every emotional string that it was meant to, something wasn't adding up. "Why would she know?"
He studied her carefully, but a crash outside the door drew his attention. It was followed by the door itself slamming open and Schmitz drew her weapon on an empty hall. She started forward, eyes narrowed, and two shots went off from beyond where Liz could see and Nez Rowan in her dress and bare feet leaned around the doorframe to take a third that left Emilia Schmitz lying on the floor, eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling. Nez trained the gun on Bauer who raised his hands slowly. "You just know you'll never make it out of the city - let alone the country - alive."
"But you'll be dead," Nez growled.
Liz felt dread slam into her like a freight train. Nez wasn't a rescue party. She was here to avenge Solomon, which would get them both killed. She thought fast, emptying the liquor from her glass as she swung it around hard, the thick tumbler colliding with the man's head and he crumpled to the floor.
Nez looked ready to explode, but Liz was already moving towards the exit. "Would he really want you to die just to say you took the man that killed him down with you? If we're getting out of here, we have to leave now."
There was only the briefest of pauses before Nez loosed a growl of frustration and followed Liz into the hallway.
While a private jet made hopping from one city to another infinitely easier, it didn't do anything to get an update on Liz to them any quicker and Tom was starting to think that the waiting would be what finally did him in. He hid the raging anxiety behind a long-perfected mask of calm, careful not to let everything he was turning over in his head show on his face. Reddington had said that Katarina and Scottie should be focused on getting to and accessing the Archive. They didn't need the distraction of knowing that Dembe would be staging a rescue mission. The excuse rang hollow, but pushing back on it was pointless now and only heightened the chances that Red would try to cut him out further.
They arrived at a narrow, old home in East Boston that was tucked away off the beaten path. While it didn't look abandoned, per se, it certainly didn't look lived in either. "It's just a few blocks away from where we met," Scottie breathed as Katarina worked casually at the lock with a set of picks. It didn't take much to jimmy the door open and the four of them filed in.
A layer of dust showed no one had been inside the home in a while now, but it was fully furnished, including what looked like a security camera in the corner that was pointed so that it would have spotted anyone coming in through the window or the front door. Both Scottie and Katarina's phones buzzed simultaneously and Tom tilted his head a little. "What?"
"An agency that we've used for years was set up to watch the feed. We just got an alert," Katarina explained, her voice distracted as she started through the house.
Great. No matter how dedicated an agency might seem, there was always a price that they could be bought at. Bud had sworn for years that he would never be willing to betray a client, but the moment Tom had given him the proposed figure Berlin had reached out with, his old mentor had been the number one supporter of the allegiance switch. "How much time do we have?"
"Even if they wanted to betray us, they can't trace that signal," Scottie explained. "We'll be long gone by the time they could figure out where we are."
"That doesn't mean we have time to waste," Katarina snapped. "We're looking for a mainframe."
Tom's gaze followed the sound of her footsteps heading upward on the stairs. "Here?"
"That's what the code meant."
He pushed a long, frustrated breath through his nose and Scottie looked like she was going to offer him something, but her cell buzzed again and she signalled for just a moment. As she disappeared down a short hall, Tom turned to find Reddington looking at his own phone. "I'll start in the garage," he offered and didn't wait for an acknowledgment before brushing past him. Tom waited half a beat before following.
Reddington strode forward with a purpose, replacing his fedora on his head as he started to round a corner back out to the street. "Reddington!" Tom called as quietly as he could so he wouldn't draw either of the women's attention.
The Concierge of Crime clenched his jaw. "If you want to help her, help them."
"What's your plan?" He waited, holding the other man's gaze. "If you can convince me that you can go in alone without getting her killed, I won't stand in your way."
He watched the struggle play out in the small twitches of his muscles and subtly behind his eyes. Whatever plan he had, even Raymond Reddington couldn't lie and tell him he thought he could do it alone. He straightened. "You will do what I say, when I say it, is that understood, Tom?"
"Sure," the younger man tossed back and apparently it was enough. Red turned to leave. "What about Scottie and Katarina?"
"They're resourceful. They'll figure it out."
TBC
Notes: Happy New Years, everybody! I'm hoping to take this evening and tomorrow to get some good writing done on this. I'm just a few chapters away from the end (but don't worry, I'm also writing several chapters ahead of what I'm posting, so you've got more heading your way!) and everything's coming together. If you have any theories about who Nicholai is, who Bauer really is, or anything like that, I'd love to hear them. Curious to see if anyone's figured it out yet :)
Next Time: Liz and company make their escape, Tom pushes for the truth about Bauer, and Agnes helps bring Samar and Aram a little closer together.
