A twenty-four year old interpreter with that kind of money ain’t routine …
Summary: The FBI investigates the death of a Chinese interpreter.
Original air date: October 13, 2006 (US)
Teleplay by: Robert Port
Story by: Robert Port and Louis St. Clair
Directed by: Stephen Gyllenhaal
Opening numbers:
2000: Foreign operatives
1200: Targets
200: Counter-intellegence officers
1:Mole
Family Concepts: Character development)
- Colby was trapped and injured when his Humvee was attacked during his tour in Afghanistan
- Larry has an article published in Physics Weekly titled “Zero Point Energy and Quantum Cosmology”
- Larry taught at Princeton when Charlie was a student there.
- Charlie graduated Princeton at age 16
- Larry graduated college at age 19
- Charlie: [regarding students and Senior Ditch Day] This year I have a peace offering for the hungry natives.
- Don: That’s right, big brother is always watchin’.
- David [to Megan]: Now that you’re done staring we might be able to get the job done.
- David: I need more time!
Megan: How about forty-five seconds?
David: Do i have forty-six?
Megan: Forty-four - Alan [to Larry]: There is also something called pride and I’ve never found that a great justification for anything.
- Don: Never been in combat, but I’ve been in my share of fire fights and you know what scares the hell out of me? It’s not the dyin’, it’s letting my guys down.
- Charlie: You want me to be honest with you? [regarding Larry’s recent paper]
Larry: No I don’t; I want to remain a blithering idiot. Yes, of course I want your honesty.
A young woman, Michelle Kim, is killed outside a local night club, the FBI is asked to investigate the case as she was an interpreter for the Chinese consulate. Early indications at the crime scene make it hard to tell if she was murdered or not; everything points to a simple hit and run. However, some simple checking into her life starts to make Don and the rest of the team suspicious about what she was doing.
Colby goes to see an old Army buddy who now works in counter-intelligence when the buddy’s name pops up in Kim’s file. Dwayne Carter and Colby served together in Afghanistan and Carter saved Colby’s life after their Humvee was attacked. He tells Colby the background check he performed on Kim was a standard procedure considering she had been in mainland China for a number of years and was now returning to the States. The check didn’t turn up anything out of the ordinary, but Carter promises to call Colby if he can dig anything else up.
Charlie is shocked when Amita shows him an article Larry has written for Physics Weekly; the article takes an interesting look at quantum mechanics and Charlie is surprised Larry chose not to collaborate with him on the paper. Charlie drops by Don’s office and seeing the file on Kim, says he can help figure out if she was murdered or if she was the victim of an accident. He comes back to Don and says he can prove she was murdered, that the car that hit her was accelerating at the time of impact.
Kim gets even more interesting when it’s discovered she had a second apartment. Colby starts going through security tapes and finds his friend Carter entering the lobby several times. He confronts Carter who tells him he was intimate with Kim and suspected she was a spy, but he never had anything to do with her besides a private relationship. He swears to Colby that if he needs to he will come clean about the affair, and that he had nothing else to do with her. Colby does not tell Don or the rest of the team what he’s discovered.
Charlie gets wind of the security tapes and offers to help narrow down a possible suspect using facial recognition techniques. He shows Don the results of his search and pulls up Dwayne Carter as someone who visited Kim eight of the twenty-four times she was at the apartment; Megan also discovers several withdrawals from Kim’s bank account matched deposits made into Carter’s. Don confronts Colby with the information Carter is dirty and wants throws Colby off the case.
Carter’s bank inadvertently tips him off that the FBI is looking at his accounts and runs. Don’s team can’t find him through the usual routes, and a surveillance of him selling information to a member of the Chinese consul turns up empty when Carter slips away. Colby confronts Carter at his boat and asks what’s going on. Carter admits he sold unimportant information to Kim but that she then blackmailed him to get higher level material, so he killed her. Carter tries to get Colby to leave the country with him, but Colby is wired and the rest of the team arrest him.