Tuesday 8 April at 9.00pm on Fiver
The US espionage drama continues. This week, Nate ropes his brother into helping yet another friend in need. Westen’s new client has become entangled with a family of illegal arms dealers and wants out, but as far as his paymasters are concerned, he is either with them or dead. Meanwhile, Westen discovers that the FBI has forced Sam to betray him once again.
Nate contacts his older brother to inform him that he has a ‘situation’ on his hands – in other words, he needs to be rescued. “There’s a good reason covert operatives keep their work a secret from their families,” Westen says. “Best case, they’re scared. Worst case, they figure they can get into trouble and you will get them out of it.” He finds his brother beaten and bloodied at a private airport out of town. Once again, Nate has attempted to emulate Westen’s work in order to earn a quick buck, but his plan has backfired.
Westen steps in to take up where his brother left off. His new client is Jake, a security worker at the private airport and a friend of Nate’s. It transpires that naive Jake has unwittingly been taking bribes from a family to change the arrival times of planes in the airport’s flight log. While Jake initially assumed that the Zamar family were just being friendly when they took him to basketball games and gave him gifts, he realised the truth when they asked him to leave a plane out of the flight log altogether. Ever since he refused to comply, the Zamars have been threatening Jake. “I know I screwed up,” he tells Westen. “I just don’t want my family to pay for it.”
Westen’s first move is to find out what the Zamars are so desperate to hide. He sends Fiona to the airport to gather intelligence and, while her dumbblonde act initially looks as if it has failed, she comes back with the goods. Fiona’s experience in the field enables her to deduce that the Zamars are illegal arms dealers, and boss Eli’s gun marks him out as being a former Israeli spy.
Eli’s special ops training means that Westen needs to tread carefully – if and when the Zamars go down for arms dealing, it must not be traced back to Jake. Westen shows Jake an old newspaper cutting. “This is how your job opened up. The old security manager died in a car accident,” Westen tells him. “All of his brakes just happened to fail at the same time,” he adds, wryly.
Westen decides that the safest way to bring down the Zamars is to persuade one of their own to betray the family. His target is youngest son Ari, who is flash, arrogant, a little bit dim – and desperate to impress his father. With the help of Fiona’s bomb-making skills and some icing sugar, Westen sets himself up as a shady international man of mystery. He befriends Ari in a bar, using knowledge gleaned from a bug in the unsuspecting arms dealer’s car to charm his way into his inner circle. Westen’s plan initially succeeds when his new friend agrees to purchase a batch of plastic explosives from him. But, just as Westen starts to relax, Ari turns on him. “You’ve lied to me from day one!” he screams, holding a gun to Westen’s head.
Elsewhere, Westen learns that Sam has bugged his car. And the FBI agents Sam works for make a disclosure of their own – they are off the case, but the government is about to set some heavyweights on Westen’s trail.
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