In a low-rent apartment, cute sorority girl Stacy Dover slips into last night's dress, then picks up a phone on the nightstand and starts typing. The guy in bed stirs - what the hell is she doing with his work phone? Stacy claims she's entering her number, but her face says she never wants to see Brian again. She rushes back to her sorority house, changes clothes and slings on her backpack, then hops a cab to a gated house on a quiet suburban street. Fingering her horsehead necklace and declaring, "Ar Rissalah is here," Stacy pulls something from her pocket - a detonator. Then she pushes the button. The nice college girl disappears in a fireball, blowing up herself and everything else around her.
Five hours earlier, Charlie sits in her office, having worked all night. She tells Mo that Lucas is working on getting the FBI to pick up Stacy, the key to cracking Ar Rissalah. The real reason she stayed all night? Nick still hasn't checked in. Charlie's worried; she can feel something bad is about to happen. Lucas tells the team that the FBI won't pick up Stacy - insufficient evidence. Furious, Charlie lashes out, blaming him for not pushing hard enough. Are his personal issues impacting his performance on the job? When Lucas fights back, she quotes the team's iron rule - nothing trumps a threat to the homeland - and puts the Stacy Dover story at the top of the PDB. The President needs to weigh in - and she can be expected to break the scales. Afterwards, Lucas asks Mo why Charlie laid into him for "having a hard time" on the job. Mo has absolutely nothing to say.
As it happens, the President agrees with the FBI, represented at the briefing by Agent Markey, much to Charlie's chagrin. Get more evidence, she tells them. Payton pulls Charlie aside: The report on the Kabul convoy attack that killed Aaron Payton is about to be released. It could be very dangerous for them, once the fact that Aaron was killed by CIA friendly fire goes public. They need to protect the truth. Charlie insists Bellerophon is a clean operation. Only her team knows Fatah is their asset. You shouldn't trust the team, the President says. Betrayal always comes from those closest to us.
Back at the CIA, Charlie tells Navarro about her blackmail texts and that she's sure someone from her team sent them, since the texter's cell phone was found in a PDB burn bag. Navarro is furious, especially when he sees the photo the texter sent of Charlie, Nick and Fatah on the black site boat. If that comes out, Bellerophon - and Nick Vera - are over. On a cargo plane over the Middle East, Nick tries to guess where he's going. Al Moosari tells him they're not going anywhere. The cockpit door opens and Fatah enters. Nick still believes Fatah isn't playing for the U.S. - and he's not. But he knows the CIA's goal is to find Sheikh Hakam, and it's his goal too. Yes, Fatah orchestrated the attack on the convoy and gave the interview that launched Ar Rissalah, but now he has gained Hakam's trust. And he knows where he is...
Navarro is on his way to a safe house to oversee polygraphs of Charlie's entire team. As he exits his SUV, he chats with his driver, Brian, about... college girls? When Brian turns around, we recognize him as the guy who woke up with Stacy Dover - and the safe house is the house she blows up, a few hours from now. The team can't find anything on Stacy - no psychological problems, no links to White House intruder James Wilcox or Al Moosari. She doesn't use the so-called dark web, that deep part of the Internet that criminals and terrorists use because not even the NSA can track it. Charlie orders the team to check Stacy's Internet activity on high-traffic websites. Maybe the sorority girl and her jihadis are using them for the same reason the CIA safe house is in a suburban neighborhood: They're hiding in plain sight.
Senator Green visits Bob Burke, the Senate majority leader. She's furious he decided to release the Kabul convoy attack report. As the chair of the committee that wrote it, she thinks that's her job. Besides, there's still more of a cover-up to uncover, so Green begs for more time. The Majority Leader isn't having it. The President's poll numbers are way down, and it's time to take advantage of that. On the way out, Green sends a text: "Marshall, we're running out of time." But Marshall can't get into the Oval Office to see his wife. Her schedule is too packed.
One by one, the team members take their polygraph tests. Pre-empting the polygrapher, Lucas admits to falling off the wagon and sleeping with a co-worker - twice - who now won't give him the time of day. Later, Charlie and Navarro review the test results. Mo was the only one who failed her test, but Charlie sees something else in the results... Back at the office, Charlie and Navarro confront Kurt with the photo from the black site boat. He quickly breaks down and confesses: He got the photo from Senator Green and sent it to Charlie to get her to confess the truth - which she did, so he stopped texting. In the Oval Office, Marshall is confronting his wife with the same photo. He's surprised at her lack of surprise and furious that she kept the news about Fatah and Charlie from him.
On the plane, Nick asks for details on Ar Rissalah and Hakam's plans. Fatah makes a point about power to Nick by slicing Al Moosari's throat. "Power is a myth," he hisses as the life drains out of his lieutenant.
Kurt cleans out his desk and is escorted from the building as his betrayed teammates watch from Charlie's office. They don't have much time to grieve, though, because the FBI has made a breakthrough in the Stacy Dover case. Charlie was right: Stacy, and James Wilcox before her, received coded messages through innocuous junk email from Redwood Books. The FBI raids Stacy's sorority house, but she's already gone.
At the safe house, Navarro meets with Senator Green to confront her about the black site boat photo. It's a classified picture; even a senator who possesses it is committing a felony. When he asks whether she's working with The Krieg Group, Green huffs out. Back at the CIA, the team finds another coded message Stacy received. They quickly decipher it: Stacy has been activated to kill Director Navarro. As they scramble to alert him, Senator Green storms out of the safe house, past Brian... and almost runs into Stacy as she detonates her suicide bomb. Moments later, Navarro stumbles out of the front door. He finds Brian's body just before collapsing with a shard of glass jutting from his abdomen.
Charlie briefs the team. Navarro is in bad shape, but they still need to find the rest of Ar Rissalah's American cell. At that moment, Nick calls in from the plane. When Charlie orders Nick to take Fatah out, he explains that Al Moosari kept a listserv of all contacts of the American cell on his person at all times. The only way for Fatah to get the listserv was to kill him. Al Moosari thought that list was power, and Fatah showed him otherwise - and he has proved he's still Charlie's asset. Charlie's torn; it all seems too easy. But in the end, she activates the listserv, which allows the FBI to track the cell members and arrest every last one. The threat is neutralized. After being lectured by her husband for being too hard, and by DP for not being hard enough, President Payton issues a message from the Oval Office. The dogs of war have been unleashed, and they will not be reined in. She will protect the United States at all costs. Payton and DP run into Senator Burke after the speech. She thanks him for redacting the more "sensitive" (read: damaging) material from the convoy report. Now she owes him a favor, and Burke makes it clear, he intends to collect soon.
Charlie takes Lucas to her house to detox. While she believes Navarro will recover, the agency is going to look to Lucas as his de facto proxy, especially in the matter of Sheikh Hakam. Across town, Kurt reports for a meeting with Miss Anchez, surprised to find Victor Gantry in her place. He's heard Kurt is suddenly looking for a job...?
In the Philippines, Fatah prepares Al Moosari's body for burial. He has one more thing for Nick: a picture of Sheikh Hakam. No one has ever seen a photo of him before, and Fatah knows he'll be attending a meeting outside of Isabella City. Back at the CIA, Charlie shows the photo to the team. Killing Sheikh Hakam is the number-one priority of the Agency now. Time for the endgame.
