In The Terminal List: Dark Wolf episode 3, Hastings and Edwards were reunited with Farooq and Landry. They had been recruited by Haverford, along with Ish, for a joint operation with Varon and Perash to look into what Danawi was working on. Danawi was supposed to meet a man called Professor Molnar, but since Danawi was dead, Farooq took on the task of posing as him and attending the meeting. His mission was sidelined for a bit by the revelation that Danawi had a daughter. He was ordered to kill her, but he let her live because he was done taking innocent lives. Then he went back to the mission at hand, and the more he talked to Molnar, the more it became apparent that ISIS was working with members of the Iranian government, namely Cyrus and Vahid, to make a nuclear bomb. But since a “third party” was about to move in on him, Farooq paid Molnar what he was due, pocketed the “proof of concept” that Molnar had provided him, and bolted. Edwards, Hastings, and Ish took on this third party. Ish bit the dust, and Edwards killed the guy who killed Ish. Did the fourth episode of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf reveal who this third party was? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Vahid and Cyrus Have a Disagreement
Episode 4 of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf opens with Haverford packing up Ish’s things and Hastings and Edwards trying to empathize with Haverford, because he is clearly in pain. A few moments later though, Hastings calls up an old friend of his father’s to learn a little about Haverford, because there’s almost no information on him. And Hastings is clearly not okay with trusting a guy blindly. This unknown individual assures Hastings that he can be trusted because he has dedicated his life to ensuring that the Iranians never make a nuclear weapon. On top of that, he apparently has an asset working in the Iranian government, called the Shepherd. But since the episode cuts to Vahid, who is attending his brother’s son, Babak’s birthday party in Geneva, I’m assuming he is Haverford’s spy. We see Vahid one-upping the minister, Yousef, in terms of giving gifts to Babak—Yousef gives him the dagger of a warrior, while Vahid gives him an iPhone—much to Cyrus’s discontentment, because he doesn’t want to be in Yousef’s bad books.
While leaving, Yousef congratulates Cyrus for all the work he has done but advises Vahid to head back to Tehran. Vahid says that he’ll do so within a week. Once Yousef is gone, Vahid openly expresses his displeasure at Cyrus’s decision to work with the minister on nuclear weaponry. He says that Cyrus is great at diplomacy, and he should stick to that if he wants to make improvements to his country. He points out that their countrymen have already done so much damage to themselves and others with “sticks and stones.” Therefore the atrocities that they’ll commit if they get their hands on nuclear weapons will be unimaginable.
Haverford’s Plan
Somebody in Munich receives an encrypted message, and, almost at the same time, Haverford informs his team that their plan has been greenlit. What does this plan entail? Look, there’s a lot of yapping about a black market nuclear proliferation group called the Khalid Network, a nuclear deal that’ll “set them back by decades,” hardliners backing this nuclear exchange, a hidden facility in Tehran, a small window of opportunity to bring in new tech, and more, but most of it is irrelevant because, as per Haverford, they don’t have any concrete intel on this stuff. What he does know is that the Khalid Network is moving the bearings (the “proof of concept” that we saw in the previous episode) provided to them by Molnar from Budapest to Geneva by road in the upcoming week. Haverford’s team will hit that shipment, replace the real bearings with fake ones (provided to them by Haverford’s asset), and then watch the centrifuge at the Tehran facility, which is instrumental to the creation of the nuclear weapon, fail gloriously.
Haverford assigns the roles to each member of his crew and then requests Hastings to come talk to him in private because he is the one who has a lot of questions about Haverford’s methods. He informs Hastings that he knows that the latter has been trying to learn about the spymaster’s origins and allegiances and tells him that, instead of doing all that, he can straight-up ask him for clarifications. Hastings wants to know how trustworthy this Shepherd is, and Haverford says that he has worked with him for decades; hence, he trusts him. Edwards and Perash head out to scope the spot where they’ll be hitting the shipment and the route through which they’ll make their escape after switching out the real bearings with the fake bearings. During this process, it becomes evident that Edwards has started to catch feelings for Perash.
Hastings Has Some Doubts
Hastings and Varon meet Mordechai Ofer, who gives them the fake bearings. Hastings brings up an interesting point: they learned about what Molnar was making for Danawi just a few days ago. Then how did Mordechai come up with hundreds of fake bearings in such a short amount of time? Mordechai doesn’t give a believable answer, but I suppose in the age of 3D printing, it’s not that difficult to make fake versions of a real object. You just need a detailed scan of the original thing, and Bob’s your uncle. As for whether or not Mordechai is the Shepherd, I don’t think so, because he doesn’t look like a guy who has worked with Haverford for decades. After getting back to their base, Hastings and Varon see that Farooq and Landry have successfully secured a huge cache of weapons that’ll come in handy during the mission. Hastings, like any sane person, is suspicious about how they have managed to pull that off in such a short period of time, and all the answers he gets are not the least bit satisfying. While discussing their game plan for attacking the convoy, Hastings points out that the collateral damage will be immense. Nobody listens to him, not even Edwards. So, a frustrated Hastings goes out for some good old wood-chopping. That’s when he is approached by Edwards, who wants to know what’s on his “brother’s” mind. Hastings doesn’t mince his words and explicitly states that their job was done the moment Danawi dropped dead.
Their work against Iran is something that both of them didn’t sign up for, and it seems like Haverford is using them because they are desperate to get an honorable send-off. This prompts Edwards to go on a long rant, which ends once Hastings agrees to his opinion on this whole mission. While prepping for the attack, Landry, who has been acting creepy since the beginning of this episode, enters Varon’s room under the garb of giving her a gun that he thinks is perfect for her and then proceeds to sexually harass her. This leads to a scuffle between the two, which spills out into the corridors, causing Perash to pounce on Landry and almost slit his throat. Edwards and Hastings manage to de-escalate the situation, but they don’t reprimand Landry; they just stare at him until he feels ashamed and leaves the scene for the moment. Why? Because Edwards is more concerned with how Perash is doing.
Edwards Is Shot in the Back
At the end of The Terminal List: Dark Wolf episode 4, the convoy from Geneva sets out for Budapest with the authentic bearings, which are in a briefcase. Upon reaching the tunnel, Haverford’s crew attacks the car and steals the briefcase, while Haverford kills Molnar and stages it to look like a suicide. However, before the crew can make it to the safe zone, they are attacked by some unknown assailants. None of them are killed, but they find themselves getting cornered in that tunnel that everyone except for Hastings had signed off on, by the way, as the best place to stage this assault. Since securing the bearings is of utmost importance, Edwards is forced to let his teammates fend for themselves and enter the pre-planned exit route with Perash. But he is betrayed by Perash, who literally shoots him in the back and runs off with the bearings. When Haverford returns to base and checks out the phone that he uses to talk to Shepherd, he sees that his phone’s charger has a listening device in it. I guess I should address four things.
Firstly, no, Edwards isn’t dead. He was wearing a bulletproof jacket. Perash shot at that to incapacitate him so that she could steal the bearings. I think the show is going to establish some kind of toxic romance between these two, which’ll probably end with Perash dying or a “heartbreaking” break-up between the two. Secondly, why did Perash steal the bearings? Because Mossad, or whoever she is actually working for, doesn’t care if Iran fails or succeeds; they want to use those bearings to make their own nuclear weapon. I have a feeling that, in anticipation of this betrayal, Edwards must’ve already switched out the authentic bearings with the fake ones during the chaos of the shootout. So, what Perash has stolen are the fake bearings, and her bosses will make her pay for this betrayal. Thirdly, who were those unknown assailants? I don’t know. It could’ve been a setup by Perash, or it might be that third party that tried to infiltrate the meeting between Farooq and Molnar. And finally, who bugged Haverford’s charger? Well, we saw Varon working on a device that looked exactly like the one that was in Haverford’s charger. If Perash is capable of betrayal, then so is Varon. I suppose we’ll know more about this “plot twist” next week. If you have any thoughts on this week’s episode, feel free to share them in the comments section below.
