State of Affairs Episode 1.07 Bellerophon

Someone is taking pictures of American landmarks with cards bearing the symbol of Ar Rissalah in the frame. The Liberty Bell, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Monument all flash by. The last picture is fuzzy, just three columns of light in the distance. The photographer climbs an iron fence and runs across a vast lawn. Perhaps he's trying to get a better shot?

The three columns of light turn out to be the White House. The masked photographer dashes across the lawn to the doors of the Oval Office. Inside, he spray-paints the Ar Rissalah symbol across a portrait of Lincoln. The door bursts open and Secret Service agents take down the man as he calls out in Arabic. They slap handcuffs on his wrists and pull off his ski mask to reveal... a blond, white American man. Looks like Fatah's warning about a worldwide network is really true...

CIA Director Navarro briefs the PDB team members on the intrusion and orders them to work on finding out whether the intruder, James Wilcox, is part of an active terrorist cell. The team could really use Charlie's help. Unfortunately, Charlie's still in Qatar, confessing to President Payton everything she knows about Fatah: he was her CIA asset, and he was the one who shot the president's son during the Kabul ambush a year earlier. Furious, Payton reminds Charlie of her promise to kill every last person involved in Aaron's death. Charlie is to find Fatah and use him to reach Sheikh Hakam with the end goal of destroying Ar Rissalah.

Someone has left open the door to Nick's prison cell. He breaks out of his cuffs and grabs his clothes. On his way out, he picks up a hotel key with Arabic writing on it. Out the door, Nick quickly figures he's been imprisoned in a shipping container in a yard full of them. In Yemen. Now what?

Lucas teams with the FBI to investigate James Wilcox, who was briefly a student of a professor the FBI suspects of laundering money for Middle Eastern terrorists. So the authorities pull Professor Ahmadi out of a class and bring him in for questioning.

In Yemen, Charlie checks in with the CIA station at the U.S. embassy. An operative hands her a fake passport, a gun and a hotel key similar to the one Nick found. Sure enough, he turns up in her hotel room, leaving them both to wonder who is putting them together... and why. A most-wanted man in Yemen, Nick knows it's no coincidence - and there's no official protection, no backup. Nick and Charlie argue about how to proceed while in the car. A tense moment at a checkpoint is resolved with a bottle of scotch and a bribe.

Back in Washington, Senator Green has hit the media, criticizing Payton for jailing Professor Ahmadi, an abuse of power, especially when it comes to the CIA. At the CIA, the hunt for Al Moosari - now believed to be the point man for Ar Rissalah's American cell - is going nowhere. Clues are so scarce, the team has been reduced to cold-calling medical facilities all over Egypt to get a line on the clinic where he might have had his corneal transplant performed. Kurt fears Ar Rissalah has gone to ground, which may mean an attack is imminent. As the FBI questions Professor Ahmadi, his student Wilcox paces his cell, trying to pull apart his bed. Looking for a weapon he can use to escape? Called out of the interrogation, Lucas and an FBI agent race to the cell to find Wilcox's dead body slumped on his cot, blood pooled underneath him. It looks like Wilcox sliced his own neck with a piece of metal from the cot's frame.

Nick and Charlie grab a table at their old meeting spot with Fatah, a tea shop in the city of Sana'a. If Fatah planned to show up, he's beaten to the punch by Yemeni police. Nick and Charlie split up and run through a market to throw off their pursuers. They meet up back at their car and peel out.

Desperate for intel and shaken up by Wilcox's death, Lucas takes a hard run at Professor Ahmadi, who proclaims his innocence and swears the $2.1 million he's moved into the Middle East is for his anti-terrorist campaign. The FBI reluctantly backs him up. They have no evidence to indicate otherwise. The interrogation is over. Lucas goes back to CIA headquarters to tell the team they are back to square one. In more good news, after Senator Green's press conference, Americans have picked up with Ar Rissalah symbol as an internet meme. Now, instead of 25 photos, there are hundreds of thousands and climbing.

And then, a break. Two CIA agents in Cairo follow a boy on a bike as he delivers anti-rejection drugs to a compound in a small Egyptian town. And who should take the drugs from the boy but Al Moosari himself. The president sends a small team of SEALs to raid the compound and grab him. Back in Yemen, Nick tells Charlie about the raid, which he thinks is bad news. It seems Charlie reached out to Fatah using a coded ad in a newspaper, the oldest trick in the book... which worked. Charlie calls the White House begging Payton to call off the attack. The coded message from Fatah set up a time for a meeting in two days... with Al Moosari as the go-between. But the SEALs are at Moosari's door. If they take him, the CIA loses its link to Fatah, to Sheikh Hakam, to the entire Ar Rissalah network - Charlie's willing to bet the house on it. With the SEALs waiting on her order, the president hesitates... then tells them to stand down.

There's something else about Fatah's coded newspaper ad message. He doesn't want to meet Charlie. He wants her to send Nick, the man who tortured him five years ago. It's like walking into the lion's den, but of course, Nick's going. Then he and Charlie pick up where they left off in her car in Washington just before he was kidnapped, shedding clothes and going to bed.

At CIA headquarters, Director Navarro drops a bomb on the PDB team, telling them that Fatah is Charlie's asset. They've been assigned to support her in her search for Fatah and Sheikh Hakam, but no intel is to leave their cone of silence. The compartment has been designated Bellerophon. Just then Navarro's phone rings; it's Nick, who wants approval to go after Al Moosari. Once confirmed, Nick gives Charlie a kiss, and she flies back to Washington. Navarro briefs the president, then asks if she wants to reinstate Charlie as her daily briefer. She doesn't. Mo's surprised by the news, which puts her off agreeing to go out for a drink with Kurt. After he leaves, there's a knock on Mo's door... it's a disheveled Lucas, who promised Kurt he'd stay away.

President Payton calls Senator Green into her office. Green's immediately on the offensive and unwilling to back down, despite the risk of an Ar Rissalah attack. She's convinced Payton is acting out of a desire for revenge for Aaron's death. Green refuses to stop until anyone but Payton is sitting in the Oval Office.

At the compound in Egypt, Moosari - an American - has his men bind Nick's hands. Then Moosari slugs Nick in the face. This is not starting well. One of the men slaps a hood over Nick's head, plunging him into darkness.