Episode 19: Snowman
In the
safehouse in the Arkhangelsk forest, Sydney sleeps against
Noah's body...their bliss interrupted when Khasinau's soldiers
storm the house. Escaping through a secret crawlspace below
the floorboards, they get away on a motorcycle -- seconds
before the cabin is riddled with bullets.
Meanwhile,
Vaughn confirms that K-Directorate has hired a known assassin
-- a.k.a. "The Snowman," for his favored use of
an ice-pick as a weapon -- to take out Khasinau. He suggests
that by following the hit man, they can find Khasinau.
When Sydney
returns to SD-6, Noah makes her an interesting proposition.
While working undercover, he opened some secret bank accounts
and now wants to run away, leaving the spy world behind...and
he wants her to come with him. She refuses, insisting that
she must find her mother first. But Sloane has uncovered Noah's
questionable banking practices and wonders if the agent is
still loyal.
Jack is
visibly upset; he tells his daughter that the information
on the data-core is useless for tracking down Khasinau. However,
it does contain video files of Laura Bristow...video recorded
after her car crash, and supposed death.
Sydney
watches the grainy video, and learns the unpleasant truth
about her mother. Laura Bristow -- using her real name "Irina
Derevko" -- answers questions from Khasinau and another
man. Derevko states how she came to America for the purpose
of seducing Jack Bristow. During their years of marriage,
she had gone through his briefcase and monitored his conversations,
reporting everything back to the KGB.
The other
man on the tape, Igor Valenko, looks familiar, so Sydney investigates.
She discovers that this man once worked undercover at the
FBI under an alias..."Calder." She concludes that
he was the agent who was, allegedly, chasing Laura Bristow
before her fateful crash, and that he also must have faked
his own death.
Sydney
uncovers that Valenko currently does business with a bank
in Cape Town, South Africa, and she speculates that he might
still be connected to Khasinau. Using her input, Jack outlines
a mission to Sloane -- to send Noah and Sydney to Cape Town
to recover bank records to create a trail. Sloane is reluctant
-- he no longer trusts Noah, and expresses concerns about
Jack defending yet another male figure in Sydney's life --
but ultimately, he agrees.
Following
a separate path to Khasinau, Vaughn travels to Bogota to meet
with a man who once worked with The Snowman. This agent --
scarred and disfigured from an encounter with the assassin
-- had formerly declined to help the CIA, but time has changed
his mind, and he now offers to help.
With a
mixture of curiosity and dread, Jack finally summons the courage
to watch the recovered video of his wife. Although he already
knows the truth, he is crushed to see her treachery in such
light.
Using
Marshall's ingenious op-tech, Noah and Sydney break into the
South African warehouse and successfully hack into the computer
using a wireless modem. They download all the files onto a
laptop, but a sophisticated security system thwarts their
mission...When they return home, they learn that the hard
drive's memory was wiped as they escaped.
One evening,
Will and Francie finally confront Sydney about the mysterious,
unexplained plane ticket to Italy. Under pressure, she confides
that the bank has been doing business with extremely private
and sensitive clients as of late...and this is why she must
keep secrets from her own friends.
Just when
Sydney is beginning to trust Noah again, she is surprised
to learn that he has accepted another deep cover assignment.
Before he departs, he again pleads with her to run away with
him. She finds the offer quite attractive... ultimately, she
must decline, once again.
After
further tinkering, Marshall is finally able to recover low-level
sector information from the reformatted drive. According to
the records, Valenko is in Mackay, Australia. Dixon and Sydney
are immediately dispatched to capture him, hoping that this
will bring them one step closer to Khasinau.
Vaughn
receives a call from the source in Bogota. The Snowman has
been spotted in Mackay, Australia, and he desperately wants
to alert Sydney, to warn her, but he has no way to contact
her.
When Sydney
enters Valenko's mansion, she finds no bodyguards...and a
trail of dead bodies. She stumbles into the kitchen and finds
The Snowman standing over a fresh corpse -- and she fights
the assassin in a brutal bout of hand-to-hand combat. During
the melee, she impales The Snowman onto his own ice-pick,
and he lies bleeding on the floor. She pulls back the mask
and discovers his true identity... Noah... who mumbles a sad
good-bye to her as he dies.
- description
from ABC.com
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