The Diplomat (2023) s01e03 Episode Script
Lambs in the Dark
[bugle playing "The Last Post"]
If this was Tehran,
I will rain hellfire upon them.
A lot hinges
on whether we believe this is Iran
or we believe it's someone else.
When it's Hal,
you have to be really fucking sure.
- You're getting divorced.
- No, we're not.
The ambassador says your marriage is over.
You ever been married?
[Carole] There was a call
the day of the approach on a burner.
I called Niccolo. He called Shahin.
That's the whole story.
- Is it?
- Yeah.
My husband snuck out and called Iran?
And then lied to me about it?
They kidnapped my husband
and called off a hit.
The prime minister
has to stop saying it's Iran.
It wasn't Iran.
Ambassador,
Number 10 will walk back nothing.
If you're concerned, I urge you
to speak with President Rayburn,
who clearly has a great deal of influence
over the prime minister.
As soon as this lunch is over,
get on some plane and not be here.
You have so thoroughly fucked
with my head,
I can't do the fucking job
if you are within a 100-mile radius.
Katie, the vice president's gonna resign.
They want you to replace her.
You can't be divorced.
Thank you, guys.
Ambassador Wyler.
More time with me than you ever wanted.
And you. Like a bad fucking penny.
- Welcome to Blighty, sir.
- [Rayburn] Yeah.
Looking good.
[Rayburn] That's because
nobody lets me eat a carbohydrate.
- Well, it's working.
- I'd rather be dead.
[man] Welcome, Mr. President.
Ma'am. You got this.
Mm-hm. Mm-hm.
Mm-hm.
Sharon? Where's the necessary?
Pardon me. May I show you, Mr. President?
This way, sir.
- [man] The PM is ten minutes out.
- [Billie] Great.
Are we your first guests?
We're a real nightmare.
I just told her.
- Now?
- Seemed the time.
- Did it?
- May have been a miscalculation.
- Welcome to Winfield.
- [Billie] You have time to think about it.
You are on a short list.
Doesn't mean you're forced into anything.
- I just told her.
- Just now.
Really?
Cancel the press avail.
He can have lunch, no photos, and then
- Does she need to lie down?
- "Hellfire on Tehran"
got Nicol Trowbridge
the bump of a lifetime.
If he's standing next to the president,
he's gonna say it again.
- [Frances] Thank you, Mr. President.
- Okay.
Now, that's a nice powder room.
Mr. President.
The ambassador wants
to cancel the press avail.
She's concerned
it'll look like an endorsement.
Of a military strike on Tehran.
I'm not sending him MiGs.
His Navy got hit.
I show up and stand next to the guy.
Sir, you're gonna be
pinned like a butterfly
- while the PM is quoting Leviticus.
- Maybe we don't take questions.
- The visual is enough.
- The visual is also not okay.
The British government
still thinks it's Iran.
- Contrary evidence is having no impact.
- [Rayburn] Why would it?
We've got pictures
of an Iranian boat leaving a port in Iran.
- And what on the other side? Some guy?
- A compelling guy.
They're not saying they're still
gathering facts. They're saying it's Iran.
- It's not Iran.
- Because of the compelling guy?
- Yes.
- Not sure you get out enough.
Let's go.
Hal?
Sir
it's me.
I'm the guy.
They kidnapped me.
So, first of all, it was a pull-aside.
They kidnapped me and put me on the phone
with the deputy foreign minister of Iran.
Fucking hell.
He stuck his neck on the line
and his wife's and kids',
of which there are five.
They didn't do it.
- Let me shake your damn hand.
- It's fine. He's a friend.
- Not Iran. That's a fucking relief.
- It hasn't moved the Brits.
- Tell them it was Hal Wyler.
- She did. She told the foreign secretary.
- She told Dennison?
- Didn't move the needle.
[Kate] We should look at Russia
and Saudi Arabia
and unexploded marine ordinance.
- Trowbridge won't get off Iran.
- We should've canceled the trip.
Kate asked the secretary of state
to cancel.
- He wouldn't do it. He knew it was me.
- I swear, that man can hold a grudge.
He thinks I'm the only reason
there's no peace in the Middle East.
- It's not about that.
- I find it flattering.
The secretary made a reasonable decision
in the moment.
State and CIA
can't give unprocessed intelligence
to a president at an inflection point.
That's gone badly for them in the past.
Forty cameras are on their way
and the prime minister is off the rails.
You can't stand next to the guy.
[knocking on door]
[door opens]
Ambassador Wyler,
the prime minister is here.
Don't know why
we don't do this more often.
If I knew we could have you in
and dispense with you an hour later,
we'd have done it all the time.
- If I could have a quick word.
- Of course.
Can you?
[Hal] Gentlemen.
Three courses.
Light, but still, it's a lot.
The press availability
might be gilding the lily.
The press event is the lily.
The president is uncomfortable
with the optics.
The prime minister is uncomfortable
with 41 dead. Perhaps we call it square.
He's had two days to shade that comment.
Shading's not what brought Mr. Trowbridge
to Number 10.
Anything.
"I didn't mean hellfire on Tehran.
I meant hellfire on whoever.
And we don't know who 'whoever' is,
but we are trying to figure it out."
Oh, you're right.
It has a ring.
They can take candids of the lunch.
Then it looks like a delegation of 12
come to scold the prime minister.
How about a couch, conferring
in the sitting room after lunch?
- No.
- They'd look like equals.
He has a short torso
and looks like a troll on a couch.
- If they were to dine, the two of them
- Then it really looks like a scolding.
Looks like everyone else was kicked out
so my guy could whack your guy on the nose
with a newspaper.
I think we should tuck in. Hm?
You must be starving.
- They're still horse-trading.
- I'm producing sound.
I'd always have a sandwich
before every state dinner.
That way I wouldn't land at the table
like a rabid animal.
That's not a terrible idea.
Frances?
[Frances] Sir?
- If it was just the two of them
- [Kate] Yes?
If. And if the president
is convinced it's not Iran
- That's not an if. He's convinced.
- I'd like to reach the end of my thought.
Sorry.
If the president
is convinced that it's not Iran,
a lunch for two would provide him
with the opportunity
- to persuade the prime minister.
- Exactly.
To persuade him
that we're all served by a cooling.
Yes.
- Like I asked you to do yesterday.
- I'm not president of the United States.
- On that, we agree.
- He's persuasive in a way I can't be.
Especially if you don't try.
This is good. I think this is good. Yes?
[door opens]
[indistinct chatter]
What if it was just the two of them?
- And me.
- Or just the two of them.
- William Rayburn, off script, no staff?
- I realize
Shooting the shit
with Nicol fucking Trickle?
- The alternative is
- It's a terrible idea.
I've been floated for VP. There are
a lot of bad ideas on the table today.
- Okay, so we're taking a breath.
- Know what?
Maybe listening
to the evolution of the thought.
It is an opportunity for Rayburn
to explain to Trowbridge slowly
why a human source
on a well-established back channel
is more compelling than a fuzzy drone shot
of an Iranian fast boat.
I understand the thinking.
I just don't agree with it.
It was the least bad idea, so I said yes.
[Frances] Thank you. Just the two.
[Hal] He loved the English language.
He loved idiom. He loved the poetry of it.
So I taught him a phrase a day.
The mission wraps.
I'm leaving Zagreb and I say:
"Pasha, we've been like brothers,
but from now on, we're not gonna see
so much of each other,
just fleeting glimpses
like ships in the night."
So the next day, we're at the palace,
he says to the president:
"Hal Wyler is leaving us.
We have been brothers,
but now we are only lambs in the dark."
Lambs in the dark.
- "Sheeps."
- In the night.
Right? The man's a poet.
[Trowbridge] Sheeps in the night.
- On my best day, disoriented livestock.
- Right on the nose.
- Katherine.
- [Trowbridge] Oh, dear.
He call you that when you've deployed
your schoolmarm glower?
[Rayburn chuckles]
Lunch is served.
Ah.
At last.
- I met John Gage. Do you know him?
- [Rayburn] Oh, no.
He's a motherfucker.
- Pardon me. He is a motherfucker.
- Yeah.
- I'm beginning to get that impression.
- He was a neocon in '03.
Now he's an isolationist.
If you don't like his fundamental values,
wait five minutes.
Prime minister.
Oh, here we go.
- This is a message of import.
- Of course.
He has to drop the Iran thing.
He can't even say the word again.
- Yeah.
- They didn't do it.
- Yeah.
- Don't "yeah" me.
People are throwing rocks
at the Iranian embassy.
If we were home,
they could sidle up with an AR-15.
Right, it's the perfect time
for American sanctimony.
- Don't know why I bother.
- [Trowbridge] I abandoned a drink.
Perhaps a fresh one.
No, for the good of the planet, waste not.
Toss it out, and I'll have
radical hausfrauen torching my home.
[Kate sighs]
I'm so sorry, sir, your deputy is asking
if you can join him
Do you know the last time
he was alone in a room with anyone?
- I don't.
- [Billie] I don't either.
The secretary of defense
is gonna lose his shit. Find Leiber.
You know, if you wanna have a talk
with the ambassador
about the vice presidency
now is not a terrible time.
Grace Penn recently learned her husband
misplaced a $6.3 million NIH grant.
We tried to keep a lid on it,
but some relentless ferret
from The Wall Street Journal
is putting it together,
and when he does, she's done.
The list of people
who can replace her is very short.
It features
four identical-on-paper female legislators
who'd all kill for the job and use it to
launch their own presidential campaigns.
It's something
that makes the president extremely ornery.
You're not cut out
for campaigning, clearly,
but governing is something you've managed
to pull off under live artillery fire,
which is not unlike a chat
with the U.S. Congress.
It's entirely possible
that you could be a reasonable lieutenant
to help a lame-duck legacy-build overseas,
which is the only way possible
given the polarized deathmatch
that is today's Washington.
That is the worst marriage proposal
I ever heard.
Sorry. Ms. Park's looking for you.
Can you step out?
I'd love to.
Any idea why some CIA base
in ass-fuck northern Iraq
is making NSA requests
about cell calls in London?
I don't.
- Did she ask you for an NSA search?
- No.
Nothing about SIGINT? Or GCHQ?
Can you just talk about
what you're talking about?
A request was filed by Carole Langetti,
a CIA analyst in Iraq
who worked with Kate Wyler in Baghdad.
She put in an order for a signals
intelligence collection from GCHQ.
- That's not normal?
- No.
Why was the ambassador
14 inches up my ass about vetting a tip
that came in through her husband?
She just got here.
She wants to be careful.
She ambushed the foreign secretary
yesterday. Is that careful?
- It wasn't my favorite.
- Yeah. She's careful with my work.
- But not her own.
- We do the same thing.
All the time. We know people
in other countries, we ask for favors.
[Hal] You've got six months.
That's plenty of time.
[Billie] If the story breaks,
we don't have plenty of anything.
Hi.
Quite a day, huh?
- Eidra would like to speak to you.
- Which one is that?
CIA.
When you're done.
You knew.
About the VP? Yeah.
That she was leaving or that I was
on a shortlist to replace her?
Both.
Anyone else around here know more
about my life than I do?
[Stuart] I don't think so.
A handful in Washington.
Five.
Actual hand.
It's been a busy few days
since you touched down.
My introductory briefing
on the intelligence relationship
between the U.S. and the UK
hasn't made it onto the schedule.
- I'm sure we'll get there.
- The relationship is unique.
We share almost everything.
More than with any other country.
We don't spy on them,
they don't spy on us.
MI6 and CIA share intelligence.
We run ops together.
- Mm-hm.
- NSA and GCHQ share hardware.
There's a traffic control system
for information the NSA swaps with GCHQ.
It's called Sorting Hat.
- Like from Harry Potter.
- Cute.
When you request intelligence
from your friend in northern Iraq,
and your friend orders a collection
from GCHQ about a target in London,
MI6 gets an alert from the Sorting Hat.
And then MI6 is confused,
because when CIA London makes
a request of GCHQ, we tell them.
So now MI6 wants to know
why I'm keeping things from them.
Which is tough to answer.
Because of course there are,
between ourselves,
a number of things I'm keeping from them.
Managing them isn't easy. It's even
less easy when I don't know what they are.
I'm sorry.
- You should've come to me.
- I did.
You acted like I was the nosy neighbor.
- If you don't trust me enough to tell me
- I trust you.
I'm sure you don't.
I don't trust my spouse.
It's worse, right?
- Wanna give me some context?
- I really don't.
Hal contacted Shahin first.
Not the other way around.
He started it.
He hates all the ideas.
He liked Grace Penn.
Doesn't wanna be married to somebody else.
But it's not gonna be nobody.
At some point, you gotta pick a horse.
Yes. Go.
What was that?
Salt.
- The president would like more of it.
- If he hears anything
substantive
Sometimes the president
mutters something like, um,
"Find out what bric-a-brac means."
From country to country,
it can mean different things.
Okay.
I'm wasting my breath.
- The vice presidency.
- I think you sold it.
- It's supposed to sell itself.
- How about you try again with enthusiasm?
- After this debacle?
- You said you wanted a doer.
I changed my mind.
[Pensy] Sir?
The ambassador was hoping
you could join her and Ms. Park.
In the library.
Iran has moved an infantry battalion
from the Pakistan border to the coast.
God.
So it was one call to a contact in Italy,
a nation that does have
diplomatic relations with Iran.
I asked my contact
to tell Shahin that I was in London.
Information he could have gotten
from a newspaper.
But he didn't.
You offered yourself up,
and then lied about it.
She can't corroborate this
with anyone else. She has one source.
This thing has legs
because of your reputation,
and once you've established yourself
as a liar, liar, pants on fire,
you undermine game-changing intelligence.
So I'm the first guy ever
to make clandestine contact
without reporting sources and methods?
You aren't a member
of the clandestine services.
- You don't work for the U.S. government.
- If this falls on friendly ears
But if someone wants to fuck with you,
like the secretary of state
because he hates the fucking sight of you,
it's a 951 violation,
and they can put you away for ten years.
Even Ganon doesn't want me in jail
for ten years.
- Yeah, but I do.
- You should go.
- I'll stop.
- [Eidra] We're okay without you.
No, it's She's had a tough day.
Let her stay.
Okay, this is new to me,
this both of you at the same time.
I could use less of it.
I'll stop. I'm sorry.
The ambassador is correct.
You making contact with Shahin first
changes the entire analysis.
Yeah.
Your story is the best tool we have
to de-escalate a situation
that is quickly spinning out of control.
It'd be great if it held water.
Here to help.
Write down every word of your conversation
with the deputy minister
and his interlocutor.
He was an assassin. The interlocutor.
On the paper.
- You don't wanna just talk and record it?
- I don't.
Okay.
You tried to tell me yesterday.
A bunch of times.
Yeah.
I'm really sorry.
Ma'am, coffee has been served
to the gentlemen.
Okay.
[indistinct chatter]
[Billie] step up UAV surveillance
They're wrapping up.
I'll have the defense secretary
give you a call.
Okay, thank you.
- They're on coffee. Won't be long.
- Mm-hm. Tea, right?
Uh, they serve coffee. It's not great.
But if you ask
- Did he?
- Who?
- Did the president order coffee?
- I don't know. She served coffee.
- Motherfucker. Andrew!
- What's wrong?
He can't have coffee.
It sets his heart in A-fib.
He fucking sneaks it. Coffee.
- Should we get?
- [Rayburn] What did I tell you?
- Sir, put it down!
- You see?
- That's extraordinary.
- Isn't it?
[sniffs]
It's tea.
Unbelievable.
My cardiologist is sure
I'm gonna die on his watch.
- The list of things I can't ingest.
- This one is serious.
I ordered a cup of coffee in Madrid,
it came in this 400-year-old porcelain,
which they had pilfered
from the Chinese in 1882.
He batted it out of my hand.
It hit the ground, turned to dust.
Incredible. I can't get a rise out of my
lot unless I strike a child with my car.
- I only do it because I love you.
- I don't want your love.
Tehran has sent an infantry battalion
to the coast.
He'll back off Iran
once his guys are out of there.
We're gonna send a carrier group
to the Gulf, give them a ride to Bahrain.
His ship is sinking.
- [Trowbridge] There it is. See?
- What am I looking at?
The hags tell the Scottish king,
"You shall ne'er be vanquished till
Birnam Wood remove to Dunsinane." Macbeth.
The play.
Some sneaky Winfield groundskeeper knew
Barbara Hutton loved the Scottish play,
so he lopped a cutting off the last
Birnam Oak and planted it in the garden.
Did he say "sinking"?
- It's sinking?
- Sorry?
The president said he's sending
a carrier group to the Gulf
to rescue your crew before they drown.
How do you not tell me
the ship is sinking?
Because it isn't.
Where can we speak privately?
- Ah, we could go in
- [Austin] Not in the house.
- Walls are pretty thick.
- Not in the house.
- Is it bugged?
- Can we choose an outdoor venue?
I moved in five minutes ago.
I haven't scouted the grounds.
- What's that over there?
- The garden?
- Yes.
- It looks like a garden.
Okay. Let's meet on the other side of it.
You go that way,
I'll cut through the house.
[whispering indistinctly]
A couple M48 Patton tanks
outfitted with Russian smoothbore guns.
I'm so sorry to interrupt, ma'am.
Could I? Just for a moment?
Ambassador Wyler asked if you'd ask the
secretary of defense for a keel report.
From the carrier.
- A keel report.
- Yes. Thank you.
And it's an honor to meet you.
What the hell is a keel report?
The carrier is taking on water,
which is not unexpected
given the yawning gash in its hull.
HMS Courageous is designed to take fire,
seal off the debilitated compartment,
and remain afloat.
Why does the president think it's sinking?
Presumably someone told him.
Because?
What did the president pledge to send
on this rescue mission?
A carrier group.
Warships.
Had the prime minister asked
for an American show of force in the Gulf,
the president would have refused
because it could launch both our countries
into a catastrophic regional conflict.
But a distress call
He's luring a strike force
into the Persian Gulf.
- Yes, he is.
- And you're okay with that?
- What suggests I'm okay with this?
- Tell him to fucking stop it!
What do you think I've been doing
for three years?
Telling Nicol Trowbridge
to fucking stop it!
I begged you to have Rayburn intervene.
You When?
Yesterday. And today.
You didn't.
Uh, "If the president could share
his perspective, his wisdom
- with the PM, perhaps"
- That's what begging looks like to you?
- I didn't drop to my knees.
- If the house is on fire, tell me.
The house is on fire!
You know, Iran is the best thing
that ever happened to Nicol Trowbridge.
- Iran didn't happen to him.
- Does that matter?
Did you tell him?
About your husband's tale?
Of course I did.
If you call it a tale,
it kind of undermines the intelligence.
He believes
Mr. Wyler provided interesting evidence,
but not incontrovertible
and nowhere near actionable.
We have to stop trying
to prove a negative.
We need to figure out who it was,
not who it wasn't.
What an insight.
I mean, really like a bolt
from the heavens.
You're kind of an asshole.
Something about your charmingly foul mouth
makes me feel like
you appreciate the unvarnished.
Are you saying that you like me?
I'm saying that I would like to trust you.
I thought I could manage this,
but I can't.
What?
I drank the Kool-Aid,
like a fucking child.
The husband.
Ah.
Was it bullshit?
No. It was incomplete.
And she tried to warn me.
- Well, look, even you can make mis
- No, this is not a small mistake.
By the way,
I asked you to come to Cairo
It's a terrible idea.
Being a tandem couple
has fucked both of them.
But mostly her.
- Well, how?
- He lies to her,
regularly enough that she expects it.
It's fucked her career.
Well, I think her career's going okay.
She doesn't wanna be here.
Why is she here? She's frontline material.
Yeah. Exactly.
Ma'am? Could you join the ambassador?
Of course.
[man] No concrete intel on Riyadh
[indistinct chatter]
[Billie] We can't afford to piss them off,
but at this point, there isn't
a credible threat to our interests.
[sighs] In the meantime, what's
the secretary of defense saying?
I asked. Says it's time-sensitive.
Find me when NSA weighs in.
We have to come to some agreement
with the Saudis not to make this worse.
Were you able to get the report?
Keel report.
- Still working on it.
- Can we? For a minute?
Rayburn can't send ships to the Gulf.
Trowbridge played him.
He lied to his face.
He wants the visual
of American warships buzzing Iran.
- The aircraft carrier is not sinking.
- How do you know that?
I'd know for sure if I had a keel report,
but I have it on very good authority.
Shit.
We're getting flares from the Brits.
They can't shut Trowbridge down.
The president needs to say
our ships can't get there in time to help.
He won't renege on a rescue mission.
This is a distress call
coming from a senior government official.
Named what?
We can't do anything.
When we had a dangerous head of state,
we relied on our allies to respond
when we made distress calls.
You know why I didn't want this job?
I spent a decade
building a reputation in a community
such that when I say something,
people fucking listen to me.
- I have none of that here.
- Not none.
Not none.
The prime minister is setting the stage
for an attack on American hardware
and American troops.
He wants this to be our problem
as much as his.
We need to talk to that source.
- Shahin?
- If we have to.
- You talked to?
- Yeah.
You wanna go back to Shahin?
If you think the president should renege,
we need more to bring to the Brits.
You can't. It's too dangerous.
[Rayburn] That's a Birnam Oak.
From Shakespeare.
Go take a look.
We will.
It's Iran's backyard.
If we wanna know who did this,
they'll have better intelligence
than anyone.
Shahin's own regime will go after him.
He will be killed.
If we go to war with Iran,
a lot of people will be killed.
Shahin wants to modernize his country.
He's one of the only people in the regime
who gets along with the reformists
and the military and the mullahs,
because his father rode bikes
with the supreme leader when they were 10.
And inexplicably, he doesn't believe
we're the great Satan.
- I understand he's valuable.
- You don't.
An Iran Deal can be revoked.
Clearly.
What we're really doing when we
negotiate with them, or with anyone,
is looking for one or two friends we can
call when the world is truly fucked.
It is a flimsy web of relationships.
But sometimes it holds.
Do not tear it.
Do not be an infinitely ravenous American.
Use what he already gave you.
Danny?
Get me Stuart Hayford.
Can we get the president out of the woods?
- Tell Langley to go at it another way.
- Okay.
I need a drink.
- That was moving.
- What?
A spiderweb.
You gotta have a couple of those in
your pocket when things get existential.
[chuckles] Yeah.
We're waiting for someone.
[knocking on door]
- We doing this?
- Maybe.
I sent you here to be with him.
For a lot of reasons,
but he's checking you out.
That's creepy.
Five U.S. presidents were
formerly ambassadors to this country.
It's the right place to learn.
You'd melt on a campaign trail.
You'd call your donors corrupt
to their faces.
But there's no campaign.
Imagine if your frankness
were actually a plus,
if your only goal was to keep
the president relentlessly on track.
[Billie]
The president needs someone to stop him
from rambling about chicken tariffs
when he needs an arms deal.
The VP spends more time in the Oval
than anyone who doesn't have a desk there.
- First in, last out of every meeting.
- Guys
- You wanna know why you're on the list?
- Uh, I have a uterus.
That's not Not the only reason.
You spent seven years building a ticket
where an elderly guy could
hand the baton to an electable woman
and deliver us the first female president.
Now you want someone with
no voting record, no baggage, no opinions.
Clean me up, put me in a dress,
and hope I never speak.
Yeah. I had a plan.
Turned to shit.
But as far as rebounds go,
you don't have to survive a campaign.
We air-drop you in to govern,
maybe you catch fire.
She thinks you'd be good at the job.
I called nine people and said,
"If it looks like the apocalypse is now,
who's your first hire?"
Five said you.
What you did in Lebanon.
What I'm not supposed to know
you did in Baghdad.
Makes a great poster.
"Iraq. Could have been worse."
No campaign. No posters.
We'd put you in the lead
on foreign policy.
You get the Middle East. You can deal
with Russia without freaking out.
You know cobalt is the only thing
we're really gonna be talking about
for the next 25 years.
You'd be doing it for the country,
not the power.
[Billie scoffs] If I'd thought about it,
- I'd have planned it this way.
- Mm-hm.
Really. It's almost embarrassing.
Never even occurred to me.
Pick someone good at the job,
not the interview?
[Billie] I mean, it's bad for the guys,
but for the women? Fuck me.
Is she pretty but not too pretty?
Appealing but not hot?
Confident but not bitchy?
Decisive but not bitchy?
Cute bitchy, but not "bitchy" bitchy.
We had to come to an agreement
about how many days a week
the VP would wear a thong.
She doesn't like them.
Her team doesn't like panty lines.
Weeks of my life.
And then an agreement.
Yes, she will wear ass-floss,
but only two days out of seven,
and days cannot be banked week to week.
Can you imagine hiring someone
for a key governing position
just because you think
they'd be good at it?
[door opens]
Don't say anything.
She's actually thinking about it.
- Are you?
- Shh.
Are you?
That's progress.
Give it time. When Hal and I first spoke,
it sounded ridiculous,
but a month later
it seems kind of brilliant.
[door opens]
[Andrew] Ma'am, he's asking for you.
[clears throat]
A month?
Listen Let
Let me just tell you how
Kate. Kate.
Kate. Katie.
Kate, stop.
I'm going for a walk.
- Can I come?
- I don't think that's a good idea.
- When Billie called me
- She called you a month ago.
Yeah, and at that point,
it was talk, that's all.
She wanted advice, the Grace Penn thing
- The vice president.
- Yeah.
You should call her the vice president.
The issue with the vice president
and her husband,
and the $6 million NIH grant
that went missing had just surfaced.
So Billie called you.
Uh, yeah. As a friend of the
Friend of the court.
At that point, she wanted the VP to stay.
She was just trying out ideas
for damage control.
So the notion that the vice president
might be replaced didn't come up.
We tossed around a couple names.
Including mine?
- Who else, your mom?
- There aren't a lot of names, Katie.
I mean, they need a woman.
They need someone clean.
Abby Shotkin's too old.
Stella can't keep her mouth shut.
He promised the first lady
he wouldn't pick Rachel Beer,
'cause he fucked Rachel Beer in college,
and he told his wife she wasn't the best
lay of his life, Rachel Beer was.
And if he picks Laurie Davis,
we lose the House.
Okay, so at that point, someone says
You.
Who says me?
Uh, me, Billie, I can't remember.
It wasn't a plan. We were spitballing.
You were on your way to Kabul.
You weren't ready for prime time.
It wasn't realistic.
Definitely not.
- But now?
- Well, once the London thing happened,
it was like, maybe she could spend
six months in a more public post,
get your sea legs,
get used to the spotlight, you know.
So at that point, you called Billie.
- Billie called me.
- Like Shahin did?
- Katie, Billie called me.
- Was there a point at which you thought
I should come into this conversation?
What would you have said? I'm serious.
One month ago, on your way to Kabul,
would I have got halfway through
the sentence trying to pitch this to you?
Fair. That is a fair point.
- So the London thing happens.
- Yeah. And it didn't matter.
This place is a shit show.
VP or no, it's good you're here.
We figured, you know
- What? What did you figure?
- Well
Listen, I was trying
to find the right time to tell you.
And
I
I didn't find it.
Now, two weeks ago
- I swear to fucking God.
- Two weeks ago you said, "Call Rick."
Yeah.
- And I
- You called Rick.
- I did.
- Katherine.
You know the chessboard,
you are undaunted by complexity
I called our attorney.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance
to get someone into the White House
with a preternatural ability
to un-fuck clusterfucks.
I called Rick and said,
"Get us a mediator.
Because this is gonna be the cleanest,
loveliest divorce anybody ever had."
You have an orchard.
The president of the United States
is in it.
You need to have a conversation with him.
Hear what he's thinking.
You need to, in a chill way,
get to know the guy before he leaves,
- which is in ten minutes.
- You didn't tell me a lot of things.
- Katie
- You had your reasons. It's okay.
But when you said
- "Yes, we can be done"
- Yeah.
"we had ten good years, we're done,"
you were crying.
There was snot.
Kate, it's the vice presidency.
- You want me to think about it, right?
- Yeah, I do.
- Can you?
- Yeah.
- Really?
- Yeah.
- Katie
- If you answer one question, truthfully.
Really truthfully.
Sure, okay. Yeah, anything.
When you said, "Call Rick,"
when you said, "We're done,"
did you think we were done?
No.
[shouts]
What the fuck?
[grunting]
Kate. Kate, take a breath
- [shouting]
- [grunts] Jesus!
- Fuck.
- [Kate] Shit!
What the fuck? Kate!
Jesus.
- You are killing me!
- [Martin] Huh.
- Thoughts?
- We're not his detail. We're hers.
Not going well for him, is it?
[Kate shouting]
[panting] Kate.
- Kate, put it down.
- Shit. Stop. No!
- Fuck! You fucking shit!
- I swear to God
Fucking Kate. Ow! Stop.
Okay. Okay.
- This marriage is
- Jesus! Kate, stop!
killing me!
- You are killing me!
- Yeah, I'm trying, it's not working.
- Fucking shit!
- [Byron] Ma'am?
The chief of staff
would like you to speak to the president.
[panting]
- What the fuck happened?
- I tripped. Where's the president?
- Forget it.
- [Hal] She can change.
Her clothes.
President's not budging on the ships.
It's a rescue mission.
I thought maybe you could turn him around,
- but this isn't gonna
- [Kate] No.
- This is perfect.
- Kate.
[Kate] Okay.
Is she gonna be okay?
I don't know.
They could've rerouted to Diego Garcia.
Everybody wants to know why I didn't
warn them we were going after the tanker.
Give me a minute.
Marla Dane has a lot of experience.
She took a year off to take care
of her dying mother who is now dead.
- So
- She's available.
She can be ambassador.
She will love this
whatever this is on the walls.
And she's the one you want
for the other thing too.
Where are you going?
I am not cut out for this.
I'm stepping down.
Good news is,
that makes me the one person in the world
who isn't trying to kiss your ass,
but still knows a lot about Iran.
A man named Saman Karimi
was removed from the command
of a Quds Force unit in Syria
when even Bashar al-Assad said
he was a guy who took things too far.
- But you can't fire a Saman Karimi.
- No.
So they gave him command
of a Fishing Industry Safety Regiment.
Complete with 14 boats and a lot of RPGs.
You think
they're gonna swarm the Fifth Fleet?
I think they're gonna load an RPG
onto a fishing trawler
and see what they can hit.
A couple of Americans die,
and then we're in it.
Not rescuers.
Combatants.
- I told Billie
- You told her Russia's watching?
That everyone's watching?
That it's a litmus test?
Because it is.
Of course it is.
The minute Russia savaged Ukraine,
every NATO state's been waiting to see
if I meant it when I said,
"An attack on one is an attack on all."
One just got attacked.
This is not the straw
that will break the alliance.
Why not? An alliance is nothing.
It's a pinkie promise like I made
with Jason Slavick when I was 10.
- "You get hit, I show up."
- You're here.
In this case,
I show up with a carrier group.
Or judgment.
Fifty thousand British soldiers marched
on Baghdad because we asked them to.
And we chased that with an era
defined by a profound lack of interest
in anybody but ourselves.
Sir, you're not doing this
to restore our reputation in the world.
This ought to be good. Why am I doing it?
You're scared your enemies think
you're too old and frail
to put Americans in the line of fire.
Do people like you?
You're right to worry about it.
That smug Brazilian guy who kept offering
you pee breaks every 15 minutes at the G20
revived all the rumors about incontinence
your team spent six months trying to kill.
And it's not nothing, particularly when
you're dealing with Russia and China.
Any leader who looks at you
and sees his own age,
it makes them wanna crush you.
But that is like 49 percent disastrous.
And potential for war with Iran is 51.
Which means I win by two.
A wise man once said,
"Decisions don't get to the desk
of the president unless they're 49-51.
I spend my days splitting hairs,
but that's the job I raised my hand for."
I said that.
Did you?
I thought you were the only one
in the world who wasn't kissing my ass.
Billie.
- President would like the chief of staff.
- I'm here. His voice carries.
- How are we doing?
- [Rayburn] No ships. Bring the car around.
[Andrew] We're wheels up in two.
- [Billie] Give me more on "no ships."
- She wins, I lose.
And someone should wash her.
She looks ridiculous.
Find the secretary of defense.
Tell him no ships go to the Gulf.
Make sure he doesn't fly back with me.
He's gonna be a real turd about this.
I need a car for the secretary of defense
going back to Heathrow.
This one tried to quit.
Tell her to sack up.
Hey.
Call me on Tuesday.
We'll talk about the other thing.
Ma'am, I'm sorry, it's not gonna work out.
What?
I have to say no.
Yeah. I know.
[Rayburn] You're doing great.
Just knock off that "I resign" shit.
It really pisses me off.
I don't have that kind of time.
[theme music playing]
If this was Tehran,
I will rain hellfire upon them.
A lot hinges
on whether we believe this is Iran
or we believe it's someone else.
When it's Hal,
you have to be really fucking sure.
- You're getting divorced.
- No, we're not.
The ambassador says your marriage is over.
You ever been married?
[Carole] There was a call
the day of the approach on a burner.
I called Niccolo. He called Shahin.
That's the whole story.
- Is it?
- Yeah.
My husband snuck out and called Iran?
And then lied to me about it?
They kidnapped my husband
and called off a hit.
The prime minister
has to stop saying it's Iran.
It wasn't Iran.
Ambassador,
Number 10 will walk back nothing.
If you're concerned, I urge you
to speak with President Rayburn,
who clearly has a great deal of influence
over the prime minister.
As soon as this lunch is over,
get on some plane and not be here.
You have so thoroughly fucked
with my head,
I can't do the fucking job
if you are within a 100-mile radius.
Katie, the vice president's gonna resign.
They want you to replace her.
You can't be divorced.
Thank you, guys.
Ambassador Wyler.
More time with me than you ever wanted.
And you. Like a bad fucking penny.
- Welcome to Blighty, sir.
- [Rayburn] Yeah.
Looking good.
[Rayburn] That's because
nobody lets me eat a carbohydrate.
- Well, it's working.
- I'd rather be dead.
[man] Welcome, Mr. President.
Ma'am. You got this.
Mm-hm. Mm-hm.
Mm-hm.
Sharon? Where's the necessary?
Pardon me. May I show you, Mr. President?
This way, sir.
- [man] The PM is ten minutes out.
- [Billie] Great.
Are we your first guests?
We're a real nightmare.
I just told her.
- Now?
- Seemed the time.
- Did it?
- May have been a miscalculation.
- Welcome to Winfield.
- [Billie] You have time to think about it.
You are on a short list.
Doesn't mean you're forced into anything.
- I just told her.
- Just now.
Really?
Cancel the press avail.
He can have lunch, no photos, and then
- Does she need to lie down?
- "Hellfire on Tehran"
got Nicol Trowbridge
the bump of a lifetime.
If he's standing next to the president,
he's gonna say it again.
- [Frances] Thank you, Mr. President.
- Okay.
Now, that's a nice powder room.
Mr. President.
The ambassador wants
to cancel the press avail.
She's concerned
it'll look like an endorsement.
Of a military strike on Tehran.
I'm not sending him MiGs.
His Navy got hit.
I show up and stand next to the guy.
Sir, you're gonna be
pinned like a butterfly
- while the PM is quoting Leviticus.
- Maybe we don't take questions.
- The visual is enough.
- The visual is also not okay.
The British government
still thinks it's Iran.
- Contrary evidence is having no impact.
- [Rayburn] Why would it?
We've got pictures
of an Iranian boat leaving a port in Iran.
- And what on the other side? Some guy?
- A compelling guy.
They're not saying they're still
gathering facts. They're saying it's Iran.
- It's not Iran.
- Because of the compelling guy?
- Yes.
- Not sure you get out enough.
Let's go.
Hal?
Sir
it's me.
I'm the guy.
They kidnapped me.
So, first of all, it was a pull-aside.
They kidnapped me and put me on the phone
with the deputy foreign minister of Iran.
Fucking hell.
He stuck his neck on the line
and his wife's and kids',
of which there are five.
They didn't do it.
- Let me shake your damn hand.
- It's fine. He's a friend.
- Not Iran. That's a fucking relief.
- It hasn't moved the Brits.
- Tell them it was Hal Wyler.
- She did. She told the foreign secretary.
- She told Dennison?
- Didn't move the needle.
[Kate] We should look at Russia
and Saudi Arabia
and unexploded marine ordinance.
- Trowbridge won't get off Iran.
- We should've canceled the trip.
Kate asked the secretary of state
to cancel.
- He wouldn't do it. He knew it was me.
- I swear, that man can hold a grudge.
He thinks I'm the only reason
there's no peace in the Middle East.
- It's not about that.
- I find it flattering.
The secretary made a reasonable decision
in the moment.
State and CIA
can't give unprocessed intelligence
to a president at an inflection point.
That's gone badly for them in the past.
Forty cameras are on their way
and the prime minister is off the rails.
You can't stand next to the guy.
[knocking on door]
[door opens]
Ambassador Wyler,
the prime minister is here.
Don't know why
we don't do this more often.
If I knew we could have you in
and dispense with you an hour later,
we'd have done it all the time.
- If I could have a quick word.
- Of course.
Can you?
[Hal] Gentlemen.
Three courses.
Light, but still, it's a lot.
The press availability
might be gilding the lily.
The press event is the lily.
The president is uncomfortable
with the optics.
The prime minister is uncomfortable
with 41 dead. Perhaps we call it square.
He's had two days to shade that comment.
Shading's not what brought Mr. Trowbridge
to Number 10.
Anything.
"I didn't mean hellfire on Tehran.
I meant hellfire on whoever.
And we don't know who 'whoever' is,
but we are trying to figure it out."
Oh, you're right.
It has a ring.
They can take candids of the lunch.
Then it looks like a delegation of 12
come to scold the prime minister.
How about a couch, conferring
in the sitting room after lunch?
- No.
- They'd look like equals.
He has a short torso
and looks like a troll on a couch.
- If they were to dine, the two of them
- Then it really looks like a scolding.
Looks like everyone else was kicked out
so my guy could whack your guy on the nose
with a newspaper.
I think we should tuck in. Hm?
You must be starving.
- They're still horse-trading.
- I'm producing sound.
I'd always have a sandwich
before every state dinner.
That way I wouldn't land at the table
like a rabid animal.
That's not a terrible idea.
Frances?
[Frances] Sir?
- If it was just the two of them
- [Kate] Yes?
If. And if the president
is convinced it's not Iran
- That's not an if. He's convinced.
- I'd like to reach the end of my thought.
Sorry.
If the president
is convinced that it's not Iran,
a lunch for two would provide him
with the opportunity
- to persuade the prime minister.
- Exactly.
To persuade him
that we're all served by a cooling.
Yes.
- Like I asked you to do yesterday.
- I'm not president of the United States.
- On that, we agree.
- He's persuasive in a way I can't be.
Especially if you don't try.
This is good. I think this is good. Yes?
[door opens]
[indistinct chatter]
What if it was just the two of them?
- And me.
- Or just the two of them.
- William Rayburn, off script, no staff?
- I realize
Shooting the shit
with Nicol fucking Trickle?
- The alternative is
- It's a terrible idea.
I've been floated for VP. There are
a lot of bad ideas on the table today.
- Okay, so we're taking a breath.
- Know what?
Maybe listening
to the evolution of the thought.
It is an opportunity for Rayburn
to explain to Trowbridge slowly
why a human source
on a well-established back channel
is more compelling than a fuzzy drone shot
of an Iranian fast boat.
I understand the thinking.
I just don't agree with it.
It was the least bad idea, so I said yes.
[Frances] Thank you. Just the two.
[Hal] He loved the English language.
He loved idiom. He loved the poetry of it.
So I taught him a phrase a day.
The mission wraps.
I'm leaving Zagreb and I say:
"Pasha, we've been like brothers,
but from now on, we're not gonna see
so much of each other,
just fleeting glimpses
like ships in the night."
So the next day, we're at the palace,
he says to the president:
"Hal Wyler is leaving us.
We have been brothers,
but now we are only lambs in the dark."
Lambs in the dark.
- "Sheeps."
- In the night.
Right? The man's a poet.
[Trowbridge] Sheeps in the night.
- On my best day, disoriented livestock.
- Right on the nose.
- Katherine.
- [Trowbridge] Oh, dear.
He call you that when you've deployed
your schoolmarm glower?
[Rayburn chuckles]
Lunch is served.
Ah.
At last.
- I met John Gage. Do you know him?
- [Rayburn] Oh, no.
He's a motherfucker.
- Pardon me. He is a motherfucker.
- Yeah.
- I'm beginning to get that impression.
- He was a neocon in '03.
Now he's an isolationist.
If you don't like his fundamental values,
wait five minutes.
Prime minister.
Oh, here we go.
- This is a message of import.
- Of course.
He has to drop the Iran thing.
He can't even say the word again.
- Yeah.
- They didn't do it.
- Yeah.
- Don't "yeah" me.
People are throwing rocks
at the Iranian embassy.
If we were home,
they could sidle up with an AR-15.
Right, it's the perfect time
for American sanctimony.
- Don't know why I bother.
- [Trowbridge] I abandoned a drink.
Perhaps a fresh one.
No, for the good of the planet, waste not.
Toss it out, and I'll have
radical hausfrauen torching my home.
[Kate sighs]
I'm so sorry, sir, your deputy is asking
if you can join him
Do you know the last time
he was alone in a room with anyone?
- I don't.
- [Billie] I don't either.
The secretary of defense
is gonna lose his shit. Find Leiber.
You know, if you wanna have a talk
with the ambassador
about the vice presidency
now is not a terrible time.
Grace Penn recently learned her husband
misplaced a $6.3 million NIH grant.
We tried to keep a lid on it,
but some relentless ferret
from The Wall Street Journal
is putting it together,
and when he does, she's done.
The list of people
who can replace her is very short.
It features
four identical-on-paper female legislators
who'd all kill for the job and use it to
launch their own presidential campaigns.
It's something
that makes the president extremely ornery.
You're not cut out
for campaigning, clearly,
but governing is something you've managed
to pull off under live artillery fire,
which is not unlike a chat
with the U.S. Congress.
It's entirely possible
that you could be a reasonable lieutenant
to help a lame-duck legacy-build overseas,
which is the only way possible
given the polarized deathmatch
that is today's Washington.
That is the worst marriage proposal
I ever heard.
Sorry. Ms. Park's looking for you.
Can you step out?
I'd love to.
Any idea why some CIA base
in ass-fuck northern Iraq
is making NSA requests
about cell calls in London?
I don't.
- Did she ask you for an NSA search?
- No.
Nothing about SIGINT? Or GCHQ?
Can you just talk about
what you're talking about?
A request was filed by Carole Langetti,
a CIA analyst in Iraq
who worked with Kate Wyler in Baghdad.
She put in an order for a signals
intelligence collection from GCHQ.
- That's not normal?
- No.
Why was the ambassador
14 inches up my ass about vetting a tip
that came in through her husband?
She just got here.
She wants to be careful.
She ambushed the foreign secretary
yesterday. Is that careful?
- It wasn't my favorite.
- Yeah. She's careful with my work.
- But not her own.
- We do the same thing.
All the time. We know people
in other countries, we ask for favors.
[Hal] You've got six months.
That's plenty of time.
[Billie] If the story breaks,
we don't have plenty of anything.
Hi.
Quite a day, huh?
- Eidra would like to speak to you.
- Which one is that?
CIA.
When you're done.
You knew.
About the VP? Yeah.
That she was leaving or that I was
on a shortlist to replace her?
Both.
Anyone else around here know more
about my life than I do?
[Stuart] I don't think so.
A handful in Washington.
Five.
Actual hand.
It's been a busy few days
since you touched down.
My introductory briefing
on the intelligence relationship
between the U.S. and the UK
hasn't made it onto the schedule.
- I'm sure we'll get there.
- The relationship is unique.
We share almost everything.
More than with any other country.
We don't spy on them,
they don't spy on us.
MI6 and CIA share intelligence.
We run ops together.
- Mm-hm.
- NSA and GCHQ share hardware.
There's a traffic control system
for information the NSA swaps with GCHQ.
It's called Sorting Hat.
- Like from Harry Potter.
- Cute.
When you request intelligence
from your friend in northern Iraq,
and your friend orders a collection
from GCHQ about a target in London,
MI6 gets an alert from the Sorting Hat.
And then MI6 is confused,
because when CIA London makes
a request of GCHQ, we tell them.
So now MI6 wants to know
why I'm keeping things from them.
Which is tough to answer.
Because of course there are,
between ourselves,
a number of things I'm keeping from them.
Managing them isn't easy. It's even
less easy when I don't know what they are.
I'm sorry.
- You should've come to me.
- I did.
You acted like I was the nosy neighbor.
- If you don't trust me enough to tell me
- I trust you.
I'm sure you don't.
I don't trust my spouse.
It's worse, right?
- Wanna give me some context?
- I really don't.
Hal contacted Shahin first.
Not the other way around.
He started it.
He hates all the ideas.
He liked Grace Penn.
Doesn't wanna be married to somebody else.
But it's not gonna be nobody.
At some point, you gotta pick a horse.
Yes. Go.
What was that?
Salt.
- The president would like more of it.
- If he hears anything
substantive
Sometimes the president
mutters something like, um,
"Find out what bric-a-brac means."
From country to country,
it can mean different things.
Okay.
I'm wasting my breath.
- The vice presidency.
- I think you sold it.
- It's supposed to sell itself.
- How about you try again with enthusiasm?
- After this debacle?
- You said you wanted a doer.
I changed my mind.
[Pensy] Sir?
The ambassador was hoping
you could join her and Ms. Park.
In the library.
Iran has moved an infantry battalion
from the Pakistan border to the coast.
God.
So it was one call to a contact in Italy,
a nation that does have
diplomatic relations with Iran.
I asked my contact
to tell Shahin that I was in London.
Information he could have gotten
from a newspaper.
But he didn't.
You offered yourself up,
and then lied about it.
She can't corroborate this
with anyone else. She has one source.
This thing has legs
because of your reputation,
and once you've established yourself
as a liar, liar, pants on fire,
you undermine game-changing intelligence.
So I'm the first guy ever
to make clandestine contact
without reporting sources and methods?
You aren't a member
of the clandestine services.
- You don't work for the U.S. government.
- If this falls on friendly ears
But if someone wants to fuck with you,
like the secretary of state
because he hates the fucking sight of you,
it's a 951 violation,
and they can put you away for ten years.
Even Ganon doesn't want me in jail
for ten years.
- Yeah, but I do.
- You should go.
- I'll stop.
- [Eidra] We're okay without you.
No, it's She's had a tough day.
Let her stay.
Okay, this is new to me,
this both of you at the same time.
I could use less of it.
I'll stop. I'm sorry.
The ambassador is correct.
You making contact with Shahin first
changes the entire analysis.
Yeah.
Your story is the best tool we have
to de-escalate a situation
that is quickly spinning out of control.
It'd be great if it held water.
Here to help.
Write down every word of your conversation
with the deputy minister
and his interlocutor.
He was an assassin. The interlocutor.
On the paper.
- You don't wanna just talk and record it?
- I don't.
Okay.
You tried to tell me yesterday.
A bunch of times.
Yeah.
I'm really sorry.
Ma'am, coffee has been served
to the gentlemen.
Okay.
[indistinct chatter]
[Billie] step up UAV surveillance
They're wrapping up.
I'll have the defense secretary
give you a call.
Okay, thank you.
- They're on coffee. Won't be long.
- Mm-hm. Tea, right?
Uh, they serve coffee. It's not great.
But if you ask
- Did he?
- Who?
- Did the president order coffee?
- I don't know. She served coffee.
- Motherfucker. Andrew!
- What's wrong?
He can't have coffee.
It sets his heart in A-fib.
He fucking sneaks it. Coffee.
- Should we get?
- [Rayburn] What did I tell you?
- Sir, put it down!
- You see?
- That's extraordinary.
- Isn't it?
[sniffs]
It's tea.
Unbelievable.
My cardiologist is sure
I'm gonna die on his watch.
- The list of things I can't ingest.
- This one is serious.
I ordered a cup of coffee in Madrid,
it came in this 400-year-old porcelain,
which they had pilfered
from the Chinese in 1882.
He batted it out of my hand.
It hit the ground, turned to dust.
Incredible. I can't get a rise out of my
lot unless I strike a child with my car.
- I only do it because I love you.
- I don't want your love.
Tehran has sent an infantry battalion
to the coast.
He'll back off Iran
once his guys are out of there.
We're gonna send a carrier group
to the Gulf, give them a ride to Bahrain.
His ship is sinking.
- [Trowbridge] There it is. See?
- What am I looking at?
The hags tell the Scottish king,
"You shall ne'er be vanquished till
Birnam Wood remove to Dunsinane." Macbeth.
The play.
Some sneaky Winfield groundskeeper knew
Barbara Hutton loved the Scottish play,
so he lopped a cutting off the last
Birnam Oak and planted it in the garden.
Did he say "sinking"?
- It's sinking?
- Sorry?
The president said he's sending
a carrier group to the Gulf
to rescue your crew before they drown.
How do you not tell me
the ship is sinking?
Because it isn't.
Where can we speak privately?
- Ah, we could go in
- [Austin] Not in the house.
- Walls are pretty thick.
- Not in the house.
- Is it bugged?
- Can we choose an outdoor venue?
I moved in five minutes ago.
I haven't scouted the grounds.
- What's that over there?
- The garden?
- Yes.
- It looks like a garden.
Okay. Let's meet on the other side of it.
You go that way,
I'll cut through the house.
[whispering indistinctly]
A couple M48 Patton tanks
outfitted with Russian smoothbore guns.
I'm so sorry to interrupt, ma'am.
Could I? Just for a moment?
Ambassador Wyler asked if you'd ask the
secretary of defense for a keel report.
From the carrier.
- A keel report.
- Yes. Thank you.
And it's an honor to meet you.
What the hell is a keel report?
The carrier is taking on water,
which is not unexpected
given the yawning gash in its hull.
HMS Courageous is designed to take fire,
seal off the debilitated compartment,
and remain afloat.
Why does the president think it's sinking?
Presumably someone told him.
Because?
What did the president pledge to send
on this rescue mission?
A carrier group.
Warships.
Had the prime minister asked
for an American show of force in the Gulf,
the president would have refused
because it could launch both our countries
into a catastrophic regional conflict.
But a distress call
He's luring a strike force
into the Persian Gulf.
- Yes, he is.
- And you're okay with that?
- What suggests I'm okay with this?
- Tell him to fucking stop it!
What do you think I've been doing
for three years?
Telling Nicol Trowbridge
to fucking stop it!
I begged you to have Rayburn intervene.
You When?
Yesterday. And today.
You didn't.
Uh, "If the president could share
his perspective, his wisdom
- with the PM, perhaps"
- That's what begging looks like to you?
- I didn't drop to my knees.
- If the house is on fire, tell me.
The house is on fire!
You know, Iran is the best thing
that ever happened to Nicol Trowbridge.
- Iran didn't happen to him.
- Does that matter?
Did you tell him?
About your husband's tale?
Of course I did.
If you call it a tale,
it kind of undermines the intelligence.
He believes
Mr. Wyler provided interesting evidence,
but not incontrovertible
and nowhere near actionable.
We have to stop trying
to prove a negative.
We need to figure out who it was,
not who it wasn't.
What an insight.
I mean, really like a bolt
from the heavens.
You're kind of an asshole.
Something about your charmingly foul mouth
makes me feel like
you appreciate the unvarnished.
Are you saying that you like me?
I'm saying that I would like to trust you.
I thought I could manage this,
but I can't.
What?
I drank the Kool-Aid,
like a fucking child.
The husband.
Ah.
Was it bullshit?
No. It was incomplete.
And she tried to warn me.
- Well, look, even you can make mis
- No, this is not a small mistake.
By the way,
I asked you to come to Cairo
It's a terrible idea.
Being a tandem couple
has fucked both of them.
But mostly her.
- Well, how?
- He lies to her,
regularly enough that she expects it.
It's fucked her career.
Well, I think her career's going okay.
She doesn't wanna be here.
Why is she here? She's frontline material.
Yeah. Exactly.
Ma'am? Could you join the ambassador?
Of course.
[man] No concrete intel on Riyadh
[indistinct chatter]
[Billie] We can't afford to piss them off,
but at this point, there isn't
a credible threat to our interests.
[sighs] In the meantime, what's
the secretary of defense saying?
I asked. Says it's time-sensitive.
Find me when NSA weighs in.
We have to come to some agreement
with the Saudis not to make this worse.
Were you able to get the report?
Keel report.
- Still working on it.
- Can we? For a minute?
Rayburn can't send ships to the Gulf.
Trowbridge played him.
He lied to his face.
He wants the visual
of American warships buzzing Iran.
- The aircraft carrier is not sinking.
- How do you know that?
I'd know for sure if I had a keel report,
but I have it on very good authority.
Shit.
We're getting flares from the Brits.
They can't shut Trowbridge down.
The president needs to say
our ships can't get there in time to help.
He won't renege on a rescue mission.
This is a distress call
coming from a senior government official.
Named what?
We can't do anything.
When we had a dangerous head of state,
we relied on our allies to respond
when we made distress calls.
You know why I didn't want this job?
I spent a decade
building a reputation in a community
such that when I say something,
people fucking listen to me.
- I have none of that here.
- Not none.
Not none.
The prime minister is setting the stage
for an attack on American hardware
and American troops.
He wants this to be our problem
as much as his.
We need to talk to that source.
- Shahin?
- If we have to.
- You talked to?
- Yeah.
You wanna go back to Shahin?
If you think the president should renege,
we need more to bring to the Brits.
You can't. It's too dangerous.
[Rayburn] That's a Birnam Oak.
From Shakespeare.
Go take a look.
We will.
It's Iran's backyard.
If we wanna know who did this,
they'll have better intelligence
than anyone.
Shahin's own regime will go after him.
He will be killed.
If we go to war with Iran,
a lot of people will be killed.
Shahin wants to modernize his country.
He's one of the only people in the regime
who gets along with the reformists
and the military and the mullahs,
because his father rode bikes
with the supreme leader when they were 10.
And inexplicably, he doesn't believe
we're the great Satan.
- I understand he's valuable.
- You don't.
An Iran Deal can be revoked.
Clearly.
What we're really doing when we
negotiate with them, or with anyone,
is looking for one or two friends we can
call when the world is truly fucked.
It is a flimsy web of relationships.
But sometimes it holds.
Do not tear it.
Do not be an infinitely ravenous American.
Use what he already gave you.
Danny?
Get me Stuart Hayford.
Can we get the president out of the woods?
- Tell Langley to go at it another way.
- Okay.
I need a drink.
- That was moving.
- What?
A spiderweb.
You gotta have a couple of those in
your pocket when things get existential.
[chuckles] Yeah.
We're waiting for someone.
[knocking on door]
- We doing this?
- Maybe.
I sent you here to be with him.
For a lot of reasons,
but he's checking you out.
That's creepy.
Five U.S. presidents were
formerly ambassadors to this country.
It's the right place to learn.
You'd melt on a campaign trail.
You'd call your donors corrupt
to their faces.
But there's no campaign.
Imagine if your frankness
were actually a plus,
if your only goal was to keep
the president relentlessly on track.
[Billie]
The president needs someone to stop him
from rambling about chicken tariffs
when he needs an arms deal.
The VP spends more time in the Oval
than anyone who doesn't have a desk there.
- First in, last out of every meeting.
- Guys
- You wanna know why you're on the list?
- Uh, I have a uterus.
That's not Not the only reason.
You spent seven years building a ticket
where an elderly guy could
hand the baton to an electable woman
and deliver us the first female president.
Now you want someone with
no voting record, no baggage, no opinions.
Clean me up, put me in a dress,
and hope I never speak.
Yeah. I had a plan.
Turned to shit.
But as far as rebounds go,
you don't have to survive a campaign.
We air-drop you in to govern,
maybe you catch fire.
She thinks you'd be good at the job.
I called nine people and said,
"If it looks like the apocalypse is now,
who's your first hire?"
Five said you.
What you did in Lebanon.
What I'm not supposed to know
you did in Baghdad.
Makes a great poster.
"Iraq. Could have been worse."
No campaign. No posters.
We'd put you in the lead
on foreign policy.
You get the Middle East. You can deal
with Russia without freaking out.
You know cobalt is the only thing
we're really gonna be talking about
for the next 25 years.
You'd be doing it for the country,
not the power.
[Billie scoffs] If I'd thought about it,
- I'd have planned it this way.
- Mm-hm.
Really. It's almost embarrassing.
Never even occurred to me.
Pick someone good at the job,
not the interview?
[Billie] I mean, it's bad for the guys,
but for the women? Fuck me.
Is she pretty but not too pretty?
Appealing but not hot?
Confident but not bitchy?
Decisive but not bitchy?
Cute bitchy, but not "bitchy" bitchy.
We had to come to an agreement
about how many days a week
the VP would wear a thong.
She doesn't like them.
Her team doesn't like panty lines.
Weeks of my life.
And then an agreement.
Yes, she will wear ass-floss,
but only two days out of seven,
and days cannot be banked week to week.
Can you imagine hiring someone
for a key governing position
just because you think
they'd be good at it?
[door opens]
Don't say anything.
She's actually thinking about it.
- Are you?
- Shh.
Are you?
That's progress.
Give it time. When Hal and I first spoke,
it sounded ridiculous,
but a month later
it seems kind of brilliant.
[door opens]
[Andrew] Ma'am, he's asking for you.
[clears throat]
A month?
Listen Let
Let me just tell you how
Kate. Kate.
Kate. Katie.
Kate, stop.
I'm going for a walk.
- Can I come?
- I don't think that's a good idea.
- When Billie called me
- She called you a month ago.
Yeah, and at that point,
it was talk, that's all.
She wanted advice, the Grace Penn thing
- The vice president.
- Yeah.
You should call her the vice president.
The issue with the vice president
and her husband,
and the $6 million NIH grant
that went missing had just surfaced.
So Billie called you.
Uh, yeah. As a friend of the
Friend of the court.
At that point, she wanted the VP to stay.
She was just trying out ideas
for damage control.
So the notion that the vice president
might be replaced didn't come up.
We tossed around a couple names.
Including mine?
- Who else, your mom?
- There aren't a lot of names, Katie.
I mean, they need a woman.
They need someone clean.
Abby Shotkin's too old.
Stella can't keep her mouth shut.
He promised the first lady
he wouldn't pick Rachel Beer,
'cause he fucked Rachel Beer in college,
and he told his wife she wasn't the best
lay of his life, Rachel Beer was.
And if he picks Laurie Davis,
we lose the House.
Okay, so at that point, someone says
You.
Who says me?
Uh, me, Billie, I can't remember.
It wasn't a plan. We were spitballing.
You were on your way to Kabul.
You weren't ready for prime time.
It wasn't realistic.
Definitely not.
- But now?
- Well, once the London thing happened,
it was like, maybe she could spend
six months in a more public post,
get your sea legs,
get used to the spotlight, you know.
So at that point, you called Billie.
- Billie called me.
- Like Shahin did?
- Katie, Billie called me.
- Was there a point at which you thought
I should come into this conversation?
What would you have said? I'm serious.
One month ago, on your way to Kabul,
would I have got halfway through
the sentence trying to pitch this to you?
Fair. That is a fair point.
- So the London thing happens.
- Yeah. And it didn't matter.
This place is a shit show.
VP or no, it's good you're here.
We figured, you know
- What? What did you figure?
- Well
Listen, I was trying
to find the right time to tell you.
And
I
I didn't find it.
Now, two weeks ago
- I swear to fucking God.
- Two weeks ago you said, "Call Rick."
Yeah.
- And I
- You called Rick.
- I did.
- Katherine.
You know the chessboard,
you are undaunted by complexity
I called our attorney.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance
to get someone into the White House
with a preternatural ability
to un-fuck clusterfucks.
I called Rick and said,
"Get us a mediator.
Because this is gonna be the cleanest,
loveliest divorce anybody ever had."
You have an orchard.
The president of the United States
is in it.
You need to have a conversation with him.
Hear what he's thinking.
You need to, in a chill way,
get to know the guy before he leaves,
- which is in ten minutes.
- You didn't tell me a lot of things.
- Katie
- You had your reasons. It's okay.
But when you said
- "Yes, we can be done"
- Yeah.
"we had ten good years, we're done,"
you were crying.
There was snot.
Kate, it's the vice presidency.
- You want me to think about it, right?
- Yeah, I do.
- Can you?
- Yeah.
- Really?
- Yeah.
- Katie
- If you answer one question, truthfully.
Really truthfully.
Sure, okay. Yeah, anything.
When you said, "Call Rick,"
when you said, "We're done,"
did you think we were done?
No.
[shouts]
What the fuck?
[grunting]
Kate. Kate, take a breath
- [shouting]
- [grunts] Jesus!
- Fuck.
- [Kate] Shit!
What the fuck? Kate!
Jesus.
- You are killing me!
- [Martin] Huh.
- Thoughts?
- We're not his detail. We're hers.
Not going well for him, is it?
[Kate shouting]
[panting] Kate.
- Kate, put it down.
- Shit. Stop. No!
- Fuck! You fucking shit!
- I swear to God
Fucking Kate. Ow! Stop.
Okay. Okay.
- This marriage is
- Jesus! Kate, stop!
killing me!
- You are killing me!
- Yeah, I'm trying, it's not working.
- Fucking shit!
- [Byron] Ma'am?
The chief of staff
would like you to speak to the president.
[panting]
- What the fuck happened?
- I tripped. Where's the president?
- Forget it.
- [Hal] She can change.
Her clothes.
President's not budging on the ships.
It's a rescue mission.
I thought maybe you could turn him around,
- but this isn't gonna
- [Kate] No.
- This is perfect.
- Kate.
[Kate] Okay.
Is she gonna be okay?
I don't know.
They could've rerouted to Diego Garcia.
Everybody wants to know why I didn't
warn them we were going after the tanker.
Give me a minute.
Marla Dane has a lot of experience.
She took a year off to take care
of her dying mother who is now dead.
- So
- She's available.
She can be ambassador.
She will love this
whatever this is on the walls.
And she's the one you want
for the other thing too.
Where are you going?
I am not cut out for this.
I'm stepping down.
Good news is,
that makes me the one person in the world
who isn't trying to kiss your ass,
but still knows a lot about Iran.
A man named Saman Karimi
was removed from the command
of a Quds Force unit in Syria
when even Bashar al-Assad said
he was a guy who took things too far.
- But you can't fire a Saman Karimi.
- No.
So they gave him command
of a Fishing Industry Safety Regiment.
Complete with 14 boats and a lot of RPGs.
You think
they're gonna swarm the Fifth Fleet?
I think they're gonna load an RPG
onto a fishing trawler
and see what they can hit.
A couple of Americans die,
and then we're in it.
Not rescuers.
Combatants.
- I told Billie
- You told her Russia's watching?
That everyone's watching?
That it's a litmus test?
Because it is.
Of course it is.
The minute Russia savaged Ukraine,
every NATO state's been waiting to see
if I meant it when I said,
"An attack on one is an attack on all."
One just got attacked.
This is not the straw
that will break the alliance.
Why not? An alliance is nothing.
It's a pinkie promise like I made
with Jason Slavick when I was 10.
- "You get hit, I show up."
- You're here.
In this case,
I show up with a carrier group.
Or judgment.
Fifty thousand British soldiers marched
on Baghdad because we asked them to.
And we chased that with an era
defined by a profound lack of interest
in anybody but ourselves.
Sir, you're not doing this
to restore our reputation in the world.
This ought to be good. Why am I doing it?
You're scared your enemies think
you're too old and frail
to put Americans in the line of fire.
Do people like you?
You're right to worry about it.
That smug Brazilian guy who kept offering
you pee breaks every 15 minutes at the G20
revived all the rumors about incontinence
your team spent six months trying to kill.
And it's not nothing, particularly when
you're dealing with Russia and China.
Any leader who looks at you
and sees his own age,
it makes them wanna crush you.
But that is like 49 percent disastrous.
And potential for war with Iran is 51.
Which means I win by two.
A wise man once said,
"Decisions don't get to the desk
of the president unless they're 49-51.
I spend my days splitting hairs,
but that's the job I raised my hand for."
I said that.
Did you?
I thought you were the only one
in the world who wasn't kissing my ass.
Billie.
- President would like the chief of staff.
- I'm here. His voice carries.
- How are we doing?
- [Rayburn] No ships. Bring the car around.
[Andrew] We're wheels up in two.
- [Billie] Give me more on "no ships."
- She wins, I lose.
And someone should wash her.
She looks ridiculous.
Find the secretary of defense.
Tell him no ships go to the Gulf.
Make sure he doesn't fly back with me.
He's gonna be a real turd about this.
I need a car for the secretary of defense
going back to Heathrow.
This one tried to quit.
Tell her to sack up.
Hey.
Call me on Tuesday.
We'll talk about the other thing.
Ma'am, I'm sorry, it's not gonna work out.
What?
I have to say no.
Yeah. I know.
[Rayburn] You're doing great.
Just knock off that "I resign" shit.
It really pisses me off.
I don't have that kind of time.
[theme music playing]