The Blacklist Episode 2.19 Leonard Caul

We pick up where the last episode left off: Red lies on the street, having been hit in the chest by a sniper's bullet. Dembe and Liz return fire, killing a man, then drag Red into his Mercedes and take off. A panicked Liz calls Cooper, asking for escort to the nearest hospital, but before she can get direction, Dembe throws her phone out the window. He hands her a burner phone, then instructs her to call *77. Mr. Kaplan answers, hangs up, then calls back with an address, where she has summoned a crack surgical unit and assembled a high-tech portable OR. Meanwhile, The Director receives word that his target lives on. Intent on extinguishing Reddington once and for all, he sends his men to cover up the crime scene and find Red. Little does he know, the man who has been surveilling Liz for months, Leonard Caul, is already on the scene. He climbs into his 30-year-old station wagon, types a code into a laptop and within seconds has the location of the warehouse where Red is about to enter surgery. Barely able to speak, Red grabs Liz's wrist and coughs out a few words. Find Leonard Caul.

Neither Reven Wright nor soon-to-be Attorney General Connolly is happy to hear Liz and Red have gone AWOL. Connolly notes that his appointment isn't confirmed yet, then offers Cooper whatever he needs to contain the situation. That's when Liz calls to report back, telling the Task Force all about Leonard Caul, The Fulcrum and the cabal, which is trying to kill Red. She reminds Aram that he once traced a call to Caul's apartment - they need the location now. Cooper promises to send a protective detail as Liz hangs up, while Samar quickly locates two severed fingers, left at a local ER by the man they believe to be Caul. Red's surgery is well underway by the time the protective detail arrives at the warehouse, unaware they're being photographed by Caul. Just as the two guards enter, Mr. Kaplan whips out her .357 and shoots them both dead; clearly these men are not FBI. Liz wants to move Red to another safe house right away, but sadly, there's been collateral damage: a stray bullet has killed the surgeon. With an artery still needing cauterization, Liz puts a nurse in charge, ordering her to close up Red's chest in the next 15 minutes. Then she calls an old friend - flame? - surgeon Nik Korpal, to beg for his help... and moves Red to Tom's safe house, having nowhere else to go.

With little to go on, the Task Force follows the trail of bodies until Liz calls, refusing to share her location, insisting she's protected by Red's team. After hanging up, she turns to Tom. She thought he was planning to leave town? He was, but then he thought that maybe if he stayed, he'd have a shot at a normal life. Nevertheless, Tom's not too happy to see Liz in her current straits; if she doesn't get out of his orbit, Red will devour her. Liz insists she's staying by Red's side until she gets some answers about her past. Claiming he knows more about Reddington than she thinks, Tom offers to help. Just then, Nik exits the OR to report on Red's condition. His lung has been reinflated, but the bullet is still lodged in his chest, and its percussive cap means it's essentially a time bomb. Nik is perfectly happy to do the surgery, but he's no dummy - and he has around $370,000 in student loan debts outstanding. Prepared for all contingencies, Mr. Kaplan slaps a pelican case filled with $500,000 in unmarked, untraceable bills on the table, and Nik wordlessly gets on with the job at hand.

Samar manages to ID Leonard Caul, real name Joseph McCray, in the Mossad's database. He was once part of Operation Harwood, run by Helen Jubal, an associate of Tom Connolly, until the Senate Intelligence Committee shut it down after Iran-Contra. Cooper trades in a favor with Connolly to summon Jubal. Once she hears that anyone obstructing the inquiry will answer to Connolly, she agrees to give up a location on Caul - but only if the information is used as means to find Reddington. Meanwhile, Dembe asks Liz to do something for Red. Liz is to proceed to his secret apartment in Bethesda. Of course, Red must never ever know she was there. In the desk, she's to retrieve a key and a pelican case, then return to the safe house. Back at the FBI, the mood is contentious. Both Wright and Connolly are wondering whether their whole dance with Red has been a manipulation. Could Red have chosen Liz because she had The Fulcrum? Do they share a past?

Liz looks around Red's secret apartment in wonder, especially when she spies her graduation photo, a photo of a soldier and a blurry photo of a woman with a little girl, which she snaps with her phone. Finding what she came for, Liz opens the door to leave when she's confronted by Leonard Caul, gun drawn. They re-enter the apartment, where Caul convinces Liz of his identity, and explains that the cabal tried to kill him to keep him away from Red, a meeting Alan Fitch wanted. When Caul realized the FBI was looking for him, he knew it was a signal from Red to find Liz. If she trusts Red, she should show Caul what she's got... Liz offers the pelican case, the skeleton key and The Fulcrum. Within moments, Caul has it all rigged up and spewing out images of encrypted data on the cabal that's been hidden for years.

Back at Tom's safe house, Red wakes up to tell Dembe that he was right; Red should have told Liz the truth. As Nik gets ready to leave, Tom warns him not to take Red's money, but Nik won't listen. The way he speaks to Tom, it's as if his own romantic relationship with Liz was supplanted by Tom's. And now look: the clandestine surgery, the case full of cash, the SS tattoo on Tom's neck... whatever happened to the notion of settling down and adopting a kid with Liz? After Nik takes off, Tom has plenty to say to Red. He talks about the first time they met: the day Liz's stepfather Sam died. Since Tom had already gone to work for Berlin, he was terrified, but he knew then that the person who hurts Liz the most is Red. Tom knows he played a part in that, but now he wants Red to know that he told Liz the truth, in hopes of fixing things.

Driving back to the safe house, Caul explains to Liz that Fitch called him when The Director - who is actually the Director of Clandestine Services - cut him out of the loop. That's when Liz notices two separate vans offloading men surrounding Tom's safe house. Hyperventilating, she calls Tom to warn him, then calls Cooper, asking him to dispatch units, despite the earlier debacle. Dembe, Tom and Mr. Kaplan get ready to fight, but Red insists Mr. Kaplan leave, so that she can do what she needs to do in the case of his death. Mr. Kaplan gives Red her .357 and slinks out, while Caul makes plain to Liz his intention to just keep driving. As a ferocious gun battle commences, Liz finally understands what she has to do. Barging into The Director's office, Liz demos The Fulcrum's rich data set, a maelstrom of devastating blackmail, demanding that he call off the attack on Red right now. Just as a woozy Red finds himself inchoate and surrounded, his would-be murderers evaporate. Back in his office, The Director threatens, "You have no idea the enemies you just made," Liz protests. She does know. As she strides out, The Director offers a deeper, darker, yet unknowable threat: "I never saw it before... how much you look like your mother."

Liz returns to Tom's where Red is back on a gurney and finally in safe hands. Desperate and vulnerable, Red launches into an explanation of why he hired Tom in the first place. Liz had outgrown her father Sam's protection. Red knew that his life would eventually jeopardize Liz's, so he hired Tom in a futile effort to keep her safe - as a friend, from a distance. When Red discovered their relationship had become intimate, he fired Tom, which is when Tom shifted his allegiance to Berlin. It was partly an act of self-protection - and partly an act of inextricable commitment to Liz. Once Liz and Tom were married, Red couldn't stay away any longer. Liz is disgusted to learn that this is only part of the truth. Stone-faced, she walks off to meet Tom in a deserted park. He was right - Red's world will devour her. Tom claims that he meant it would devour most people, and Liz isn't most people. Liz is finally ready to accept his help... so what is it that Tom knows about Reddington?