The Blacklist Episode 2.07 The Scimitar

Samar drinks champagne at an upscale hotel bar, where she catches the eye of Kian Nouri. In fairly short order, they're grappling down a hallway on their way back to his room. Moments later, Nouri's body plummets several stories to the ground, flattening a luxury sedan.

Tom is still shackled to the floor of an abandoned ship, where Liz drills him for the name of Berlin's arms supplier. After taunting Liz about their anniversary and claiming he'll freeze to death if she leaves him there, Tom offers the name of Sevan Volkov, earning a thin, tatty blanket from Liz, who moves out to collect Samar, since Reddington has asked to meet them both. He's heard about the death of Nouri, one of Iran's top nuclear scientists. Calling it suicide, Samar says she can't commit on a Mossad operation, so Red moves on, explaining MISIRI plans to retaliate. They've already dispatched an infamous hit man known as The Scimitar to start taking out American nuclear scientists, tit for tat. Cooper gives the news to Vice Admiral Evan Mullen, who runs point on all U.S. nuclear matters. He doesn't believe the threat, but allows that if any of their three top scientists on project Cloud Top fell into enemy hands... disaster. The security protocol for their protection is simply hiding them in plain sight with false identities. Cooper wants to pull them off the street, but Mullen's confident this would raise red flags for the Iranians. Mullen agrees to put two of his guys on lockdown, but senior engineer Amalia Collins presents a problem, since she works as a professor of astrophysics at Duke, and she's scheduled to deliver a talk that night at the Granville Hotel. When Cooper orders his team to find The Scimitar first, Liz pulls Ressler aside. She wants to make sure he's getting help for his addiction, but he intends to kick on his own.

Liz receives a text: "Pier 911," just as an Iranian man with a tattoo of a scimitar on his hand accepts a photo of Agent Jonathan Reese of the DSS. Armed with warm clothes for Tom, Liz meets with her man - we'll call him The Samoan - who's been guarding Tom on the abandoned ship. It seems Fish and Game is conducting random inspections for zebra mussels, and The Samoan can only hold them off for so long. The jig is almost up, but Liz has no intention of letting Tom know anything. Their deal remains the same. Once Tom helps her eliminate Berlin, the whole thing is over. Liz leaves to meet with Sevan Volkov to ask him where to find Berlin. Rather than arrest Volkov, Liz has arranged for him to join the FBI's Most Wanted list, which means he's going to give her the location of an overdue arms delivery when Berlin calls to arrange it. Red doesn't believe Liz got the information about the deal through the FBI, suspecting she's hiding her own source. She'd rather see Berlin dead than arrested... which Red takes to mean Liz is happy to see him carry out such violence on her behalf. If Liz hadn't told him she killed Tom, Red would think Tom was her source. Nevertheless, he promises to show up when Volkov delivers the location of his meet with Berlin.

Back at the Post Office, Ressler tells Liz that the DOD discovered an Iranian surveillance camera at their Annapolis field office. Aram pinpoints the location where the camera is transmitting, a construction trailer near New Carrollton. Liz and Ressler rush to the scene with a TAC team. The trailer's empty except for photos and data on Jonathan Reese of the DSS, tasked with protecting the nuclear scientists. Since Reese is due to get off a train from Annapolis, they have to get to his park-and-ride before the Iranians. Liz and Ressler are just loading Reese into their SUV when shots ring out, and two armed men on a motorcycle give chase. When they throw a flash grenade into the SUV, Ressler loses control, and the crash leaves both Liz and Ressler unconscious. Liz wakes up in a hospital recovery room with her arm in a cast in a bed across from Ressler, who's still unconscious. Kindly Dr. Rivera explains Ressler experienced significant head trauma; he'll have an MRI shortly. Her arm is fractured in three places, and Reese has disappeared. By this time, Aram has learned of the crash - but again, only two victims were evacuated to Bethesda National. Liz calls Cooper to explain the Iranians must have Reese; the DOD needs to get their hands on Collins now. Liz is just noting something like makeup on her hands when Mullen tells Cooper that neither the DOD nor the DSS have an employee named John Reese. Furthermore, Bethesda National has no record of Liz or Ressler.

Liz hops out of bed to check Ressler's chart - which is filled with blank paper! When a nurse finds her out of bed, Liz feigns wooziness, then palms a pair of scissors from the woman's pocket - only to discover her arm isn't broken at all. Meanwhile, Red, calling himself Kenneth, shares anchovies with Zoe at her food truck. He admits that his relationship with his own daughter is complicated, so Zoe shares that her father did unforgivable things she hated him for. Sensing what's about to happen, Zoe asks Red, "What have you done?" as Dembe pulls her into a car.

Cooper and Aram realize The Scimitar conned them, creating Reese to expose Collins - and in fact, when Liz called Cooper, she called out Collins. None of them see The Scimitar - aka Dr. Rivera - removing the makeup covering the tattoo on his hand and moving out, telling his men to dispose of Liz and Ressler. But Liz has been busy, using the scissors to remove the cast. When the nurse returns to inject Liz with a sedative, Liz makes her move, plunging the needle into the woman's neck and knocking her right out. Liz wakes up Ressler, just as Aram calls Samar - it will take hours to trace the call Liz made to Cooper. Samar calls Dembe, and Red picks her up. Red plays hardball, insisting Samar reveal the Mossad's ultimate target, Ali Hassan. If he's exposed, all the Mossad's work will be for nothing, but he may well know the location of The Scimitar. Even though Samar claims her interest is personal, focused on Liz and Ressler, Red knows what she's really after. One of The Scimitar's little known aliases is Walid Abu Sitta - the man who killed her brother. That's why Red brought the case to her in the first place.

After taking out a would-be assassin, Liz hauls a groggy Ressler down the hall to discover they're in an elaborate fake hospital set in the middle of a warehouse. Meanwhile, Red is chipping golf balls, breaking windows at the Hassan estate, bringing a half-naked Hassan onto the front lawn, so Samar can disarm him. After hearing what Red and Samar have to say, Hassan admits The Scimitar contacted him, asking to use one of his warehouses - which is of course the warehouse that Liz and Ressler are trying to escape. Things are looking pretty bad when Samar and a SWAT team rush in for the rescue. Unfortunately, The Scimitar already has his hands around Collins' neck at the Granville Hotel, and they're both gone by the time Cooper reaches the hotel suite. The front of the hotel is swarming with FBI when Liz and Ressler arrive. Liz notices a bellboy with a tattoo on his hand wheeling a large suitcase away from the hotel, then remembers the makeup from the hospital. Putting it all together, she pulls out her gun, recognizing Dr. Rivera/The Scimitar. Just then The Scimitar's men roll up in an SUV to shoot up the place, allowing him to disappear and leaving Collins behind in the suitcase.

The Scimitar repairs to Hassan's estate, where Red waits for him, in a lawn chair overlooking the bay. Red sends for Samar then offers The Scimitar to her as a gift. A call from Liz prompts Red to take his exit, leaving Samar to question The Scimitar. If she thinks her brother, Shahin Navabi, was just another faceless name in the crowd, she's wrong. Moreover, The Scimitar knows she murdered Nouri in cold blood.

Back at the Post Office, Ressler tells Liz that with all the drugs pumped into him at the fake hospital, he's feeling better than he has all week. That's when Cooper sends them to Anacostia to check a body matching The Scimitar's description found by Harbor Patrol. Liz positively IDs the corpse, nothing The Scimitar was shot point blank to the head, an execution. Then she returns to the ship to talk to Tom, who insists he gave her good information. Red will kill Berlin - and then what is she going to do? The only way to get Tom out of her life for good is to let him go. Because if she kills him, they'll be linked forever. Nevertheless, he knew the first second she brought him to the ship that she could never let him go.

Red finds Berlin surrounded by his men at an industrial garage. Volkov sold Berlin out to Liz, and surprisingly, Liz came to Red instead of the FBI. The tragedy? Berlin's vendetta has been based on a misunderstanding. Red did not kill Berlin's daughter. Berlin's not buying it; he still intends to find Red's daughter and kill her the way his own daughter was killed. That's when Red pulls Zoe out of the car - Zoe is Berlin's daughter.