- Dan Chase: How long has it been since your divorce?
- Zoe: About the same as you. Five years.
- Dan Chase: Hmm. What happened? I mean, we don't have to talk about that.
- Zoe: No, no, no, it's fine. He...
- [scoffs, chuckles]
- Zoe: Is it strange that you have an easier time talking about your wife passing away than I do about my husband leaving me?
- Dan Chase: No. No, it's not.
- Zoe: No, it's not, is it? Uh... Well, we... we married in our 20s, and, you know, it made sense. Um, we... I supported him however I could. Enjoyed his company, he enjoyed mine. We picked up slack. We hosted and fought and apologized, and... laughed and compromised.
- Dan Chase: Mm-hmm.
- Zoe: And had a son.
- Dan Chase: Mm-hmm.
- Zoe: Loved him, cared for him, and... We had a life, you know. We worked at it. And it... it made sense until one day I woke up and it didn't. And then there was a woman... much younger than me. And then it was over. And my house got very, very quiet.
- Dan Chase: Oh. You didn't deserve that.
- Zoe: Thank you.
- Dan Chase: I mean it.
- Zoe: Oh? You sure about that?
- Dan Chase: Yes, I am.
- Zoe: [inhales sharply] Then let me tell you the story a different way. When we got married in our 20s, it made sense to everyone. I was pretty sure it made sense to me, too. We enjoyed each other's company. We had a life. Until one day, I woke up, and I couldn't breathe. I dragged myself to the mirror, and I... I recognized the eyes but not the face. It wasn't my face. It was my mother's face, or... a stranger's face. Nothing made any sense. So, I got the courage to talk to my husband, and I said, "Something is very wrong, I am living the wrong life." But I wanted to fix it somehow. I wanted to fix it with him. I wanted to live the right life with him. And he agreed, and he sacrificed, and he supported, and he picked up slack, and he compromised, and...
- [scoffs]
- Zoe: I didn't get any happier. But I tried. I tried. I tried. So, eventually, he couldn't sacrifice anymore. Eventually, he found a life that made sense with a woman who, when she tried to get happy, she succeeded. And the happier he got with her, the more and more resentful he got towards me, and spiteful. And my life got really, really quiet.
- Dan Chase: Why would you tell the story that way?
- Zoe: I tell it to myself both ways. Honest to God, I don't know which one is the truth.
- Dan Chase: I don't, uh, I don't think what happened was your fault.
- Zoe: Well...
- [interrupted]
- Dan Chase: Oh, you can't control how you feel, you know?
- [exhales sharply]
- Dan Chase: You're not the villain here.
- Zoe: [tilts head, smiles and looks skeptically at Chase] I hope that's true. I think that's true. But here's what I do know. Nobody ever sees themselves as playing that role. Right? But there they are. There's a villain in every story. Maybe that's why. Maybe the only one who can play that role is the one who can't see it happening.
- Zoe: [Chase is cooking] Who taught you?
- Dan Chase: Oh, this guy I served with.
- Zoe: You were in the army?
- Dan Chase: Yeah. A long time ago. He was a local. Uh, very... very well-respected. And he took his kitchen very seriously. I... I found that rather odd. I talked to him about it. And he told me this story that he was told as a young boy about this wise old man and his garden. This, uh...
- [exhales]
- Dan Chase: this wise old man, he never spoke. And, uh, it wasn't because he couldn't or because he had nothing to say. It was because he believed that language deceived. That by its very nature, it clouded the truth, so it made the world harder to know. And, uh, this... this wise old man, he believed that the truth... the truth lived only in silence. Communicated by other means. That the food he prepared from his garden, that conveyed, you know, his affection, his gratitude or his indifference... far better than any words could convey. And it was said that this wise old man...
- [chuckles]
- Dan Chase: He could change minds in that way. He could soften the hardest of hearts... without ever saying... one word.
- [plates food, chuckles]
- Dan Chase: [Zoe takes a bite, looks at Chase, smiles and softly chuckles] Am I getting anywhere?
- Harper's Driver: [picking Harper up on the tarmac] Office or home, sir?
- Harold Harper: Neither. I got to go see a friend.
- [Harper is ushered into the mansion by the butler, walking past photographs of Bote with Reagan and Gorbachev, and Bote with Nixon]
- Morgan Bote: [Harper enters a room, a man is sitting at an easel, facing a bay window with his back to Harper] Just a moment. The light's perfect right now. The New York Times called today to read me my obituary. A very nice girl named Janine read it to me. I quite enjoyed it. Like peeking through the curtains into some forbidden room.
- Harold Harper: I'll bet. What did she say?
- Morgan Bote: I don't really remember. Mm, the things you'd expect. It wasn't what she said so much as how she said it. But how nice it will be, in those final moments as the light is dying, knowing what everyone will read in the paper the morning after and knowing it will be good.
- Zoe: [Carol saunters out and sits alertly to Dan's right]
- [apprehensively]
- Zoe: I see you have a dog.
- Dan Chase: I do. Yeah, I do. Is that a problem?
- Zoe: The listing should have said no dogs.
- Dan Chase: Oh, did it? I...
- Zoe: The listing definitely said no dogs.
- Dan Chase: Oh, I see.
- [Dave saunters out and sits alertly to Dan's left]
- Dan Chase: That's it.
- Zoe: I'm sorry, I... I don't... I don't think this is gonna work out.
- Dan Chase: Oh, they're exceptionally well-behaved dogs.
- Zoe: I'm sure they are. But it... My ex-husband and I, he... I just... I just can't have them eating his sofa, and then he, uh, thinks that I let them do it. I just... I can't have that in my life right now.
- Dan Chase: I can make a security deposit if that would help. In cash.
- Zoe: Help... I'm so sorry. I, uh... I'm sorry. It was nice meeting you. Good luck.
- Young Harold Harper: You know it's going to be me, right? When the wrong people find out what it is you're doing out there and they want for there to be no you anymore I'm the one they're gonna order to do it.
- [Dan mounts his horse, turns and rides off]
- Angela Adams: Is this what they teach you at Langley? That no matter how much you fuck up, you just cultivate an asset and use that to blame somebody else for it? If you think I'm gonna turn on Harold Harper, you're not very good at your job.
- Raymond Waters: For what it's worth, the thing they teach you at Langley is when a mark brings up being cultivated first... even if they say they'll never turn, and I mean especially when they say they'll never turn... Well, you seem pretty good at your job, right? I'm guessing you can fill in the rest.
- [rises to leave, exits]
- Morgan Bote: One day, a nice young lady from The New York Times is going to call you. And she'll pull back the curtains, and I hope you see that all the work you've done, all the things you've built they mattered. They're appreciated. They'll survive. I hope you'll see tears and reverence and love. Believe me when I tell you that moment is what every moment that preceded it has been for. What you don't want to see is doubt. Ill regard. Gossip and indictments and your wife's shame and your grandson's confusion about what kind of man his grandfather truly was. Do what you must to protect that moment. Do anything you must.
- Harold Harper: If I even touch that piece of paper and anyone ever finds out, I have a pretty good guess what the headline on my obituary will be. And it's not gonna be good.
- Morgan Bote: The light's perfect. Would that it might stay that way forever.
- Young Harold Harper: I don't have the luxury of pretending I'm someone other than who I actually am.
- Young Dan Chase: Good one. So, are we gonna argue now before you eventually agree to get me what I need?
- Young Harold Harper: Johnny, do you have any idea how dangerous it is for me to even be here?
- Young Dan Chase: I guess so.
- Young Harold Harper: You are fighting a war your country has ordered you not to fight. And within that war, you've taken sides with one of our enemies.
- Young Dan Chase: He's fighting against our enemies. How do you figure that makes him our enemy?
- Young Harold Harper: He's not fighting it the way we want it fought. He's not gonna win the fight the way he's fighting it. And he's making the guys who are going to win it weaker for having to fend him off.
- Young Dan Chase: None of that matters.
- Young Harold Harper: None of it matters?
- Young Dan Chase: There's no one else out here, is there? This is where the decisions get made, okay? It's just you and me. Regardless of what Langley wants you to think, you know I'm right. You know I'm right. He's smarter than you and me put together. All he wants is for his people to live their lives without getting raped and murder by Russian teenagers. In a war where it's getting increasingly difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys, I'm telling you. This guy is the good guy. That's what matters. That's all that matters.
- Young Harold Harper: The United States government, its entire intelligence apparatus, all her regional allies and all their intelligence apparatuses they're all wrong about this guy. And you're right?
- Young Dan Chase: Yes, exactly. So, can I have my rifles now, please?
- [leaving daughter Emily a voicemail]
- Dan Chase: I know you've got questions, questions you want answers to. I know it seems like I'm shutting you out. I know it seems like this is the end of us. It isn't.
- [protracted pause]
- Dan Chase: I've discarded Dan Chase and everything that ties me to him. I'm leaving it all behind, but the answers that you want and the solutions that I need, they're in L. A. and I'm not gonna make it all the way out there in this shape. I need to... I need to find a quiet place. I need to take a little time. I need someplace that isn't connected to anyone or anything that I'm supposed to be.
- [protracted pause, sighs]
- Dan Chase: I need to heal up. I got to remember what it takes to be someone new. I'll call you when I can. I love you, kiddo.
- Harold Harper: Faraz Hamzad is back.
- Morgan Bote: I know.
- Harold Harper: Yeah, I thought you might. And I was hoping that maybe you'd know why.
- Morgan Bote: Does it matter?
- Harold Harper: Well, I think it matters. For 30 years, uh...
- [chuckles]
- Harold Harper: No one could've cared less about him or what he wanted. Now he's asking for help settling some 30-year grudge, and some fool has agreed to provide it. He can ask for anything he likes, anything at all, and he's gonna get it.
- Harold Harper: [bewildered] Why?
- Morgan Bote: From the moment Johnny betrayed him, one imagines he was consumed with two things and two things only: imagining revenge and acquiring the means to make it real. Opium. Guns. K and R. Influence. He had no problem acquiring means. It was just a matter of time before he figured out how to apply it. Who knows what leverage he holds over whom and how, but in this moment, he's using it for all it's worth, and it's working.
- [Bote turns to face Harper]
- Morgan Bote: I loved you and Johnny both as I would sons. I warned you both that the choices you were making would have consequences. And I watched as you did whatever the hell you wanted, as sons will. Him leaving the Agency to be Lawrence of Arabia and you leaving it to be a policeman. The only surprise is that it took so damn long for any of this to catch up to you.
- Harold Harper: I spoke to him.
- Morgan Bote: Spoke to who?
- Harold Harper: Johnny. I called him. And I tried to help him escape.
- Morgan Bote: When did you do...
- [overlapping Harper]
- Harold Harper: Just before he was about to get caught. Last night.
- Morgan Bote: Why would you...
- [overlapping Harper]
- Harold Harper: Because in the process of pulling out his fingernails, maybe Faraz Hamzad learns that Johnny had some help screwing him over. And then all kinds of stories crawl out into the light. And then maybe the next name on Faraz Hamzad's revenge list is mine. This thing has been buried in the ground for 30 years. I wanted it to stay there.
- Morgan Bote: Well, you should've called me first.
- [Bote turns back to his painting]
- Harold Harper: What, you would've told me not to call him?
- Morgan Bote: I would've told you that Johnny doesn't fucking listen no matter how much sense you think you're making. And I might have told you that there are better ways of keeping things buried in the ground than trying to wish them away.
- [pulls a scrap of paper from his smock pocket and places it on the adjacent table top]
- Harold Harper: Is that what I think it is?
- Zoe: Tell me more about the dogs.
- [flatly]
- Dan Chase: Oh, they're sweethearts. Yeah.
- Zoe: They've been sitting absolutely still for 20 minutes. Is that because they listen really well or because they're giving each other ideas?
- Dan Chase: Oh, well, they're exceptional listeners. I asked them to sit. They're sitting.
- Zoe: And if you ask them not to eat the guest house, would they listen to that, too?
- Raymond Waters: With your permission then, sir, there is one question from last night I'd like to start working on.
- Harold Harper: What's that?
- Raymond Waters: Well, there was a point where he'd lost my guys. He could have just disappeared, but instead, he came back to do all this. I'm wondering why.
- Harold Harper: Maybe he wanted to make it messy so we'd have to play by the rules.
- Raymond Waters: Or maybe he wanted to make it messy, sir, so that you would be the one in charge of the rules we play by. Sir, it is hard for me to see what I saw last night and not suspect that this situation is personal to you in ways that may be detrimental to the mission.
- Harold Harper: You get to be my age in this business, and one way or another, you'll have something personal with just about everyone.
- [turns and exits]
- Raymond Waters: Where you going?
- Harold Harper: Can't have gotten far. I'm gonna find him.
- Harold Harper: I've got another name that we have to track down, but I want you guys to do it. No one else.
- Joe: Okay. What's the name?
- Harold Harper: I don't know. Dan Chase has a daughter. I don't know anything about her, but I know she exists. And I know if I can find her, I can get control of him.
- Joe: Well, if you don't know anything about her, how do you know that she exists?
- Harold Harper: I know him. *Knew* him, at least. We served together.
- Angela Adams: Jesus. So that's why they called you in.
- Harold Harper: Yeah. It was a long time ago, but yeah, I have some skin in the game on this one, so I want to see it through.
- Harold Harper: Then tell me you've found something, Agent Adams. Tell me you got some good news.
- Angela Adams: I do, and it's not. We found the daughter. She's dead. Emily Anne Chase died, 2003. suicide. It looked like they kept it quiet. CIA must not have thought to look for it, but it wasn't hard to find. There was a police report.
- Angela Adams: Can I ask you something?
- Harold Harper: [reviewing documents] Yeah.
- Angela Adams: Waters got into my ear today. He told me some stuff about Faraz Hamzad. And about you.
- Harold Harper: Mm-hmm.
- Angela Adams: Well, is it true? I mean, what the hell is this really all about?
- Harold Harper: [stops reviewing documents, turns to face Adams] This is the end of a very long story, in which I'm not sure anyone's ever really known the answer to that question. Right now, I just want to make sure the damn thing ends, so I can go home. Make sure you get some sleep, you hear?