The Old Man (2022) s02e06 Episode Script

XIII

1
[JULIAN] Can I help you with that?
Thanks.
[HARPER]
Morgan Bote gave me your number.
Are you good at this?
[JULIAN] Yes.
I know what I'm doing.
[ZOE] A Russian named Pavlovich
ordered Morgan Bote's murder
to protect a business deal
of his in Afghanistan.
He also ordered
mercenaries to Afghanistan
to protect that deal.
[ANGELA OVER PHONE] Dad?
Can you take me off speaker?
Shit. Shit, shit.
- No, wait! Wait!
- [RAPID GUNFIRE]
[ZOE] The men that killed Emily
were his men.
[CHASE] Morgan Bote
wasn't his only target.
[ZOE] Who was his other target?
The Dixons.
- Marcia and Henry.
- Why?
[CHASE] Hamzad's lawyer,
she wanted to tell you something,
something she was afraid
to say over the phone.
- Maybe she knows.
- Then we're going to London.
Because fuck him.
I want to hurt him. Don't you?
[RAIN FALLING]
[THUNDER RUMBLING]
Hey.
It's you.
Hey.
- You're
- I am.
We-we met.
When I had crutches from my thing.
- You helped me onto the bus.
- I did. [CHUCKLES]
Was wondering if I was ever
gonna run into you again.
Is this your way home from work?
No, no, no, it's not.
Got you.
I It was.
- But I quit my job.
- Oh, congratulations.
Did I just say "Congratulations"?
It's okay.
[LAUGHS] Let me try that again.
So, you quit your job.
What a wide variety of
experiences that might involve.
How are you feeling about this?
Seems like someone else
might want to quit their job.
Can you tell?
[BOTH CHUCKLE]
What do you do?

And you want to make a difference,
so you pour all of yourself into it
and you make the sacrifices,
but eventually
it gets hard to tell where
the work ends and you begin.
It's hard to feel good
about participating
in your own erasure in that way.
But it's hard leaving something
that may cost pieces of you
in the leaving.
I lost my best friend.
Recently.
Just before the end,
he started to have the same questions.
Is this the only way to live?
Is this all we are?
I couldn't hear him back then.
And now
it's the only thing
I can think about.
We don't live in a place
that makes it easy
to ask those kind of questions.
- Yeah.
- But, hey,
you got out.
Maybe that's the first step
towards something.
So
Congratulations?
[CHUCKLES]

[PHONE BUZZES]
[DROPS BACKPACK]
What do you want?
Wasn't easy to find you.
What do you want?
I think Morgan Bote sent you an email
just before he was murdered.
I need you to show me what it said.

[RECEPTIONIST]
Mr. and Mrs. Dixon. Welcome.
I have you checked into room 1409.
You have anything on the 12th floor?
- Let me check.
- [TYPING]
Actually, we do. I can put you in 1231.
Hmm. Lower.
I beg your pardon, sir?
Anything, uh, between 01 and 05,
please.
- [TYPING]
- Odd.
Not even.
[TYPING]
[SIGHS]
- Thank you very much.
- Thank you, sir.
[PANTING]
[SOBBING]
[ANGELA] Dad?
Can you take me off speaker?
Shit. Shit.
No, wait! Wait!
[RAPID GUNFIRE]
[YOUNG ANGELA] Promise me, Daddy.

[CHASE PANTING]
This feeling just doesn't want
to be turned off.
Maybe it's okay to be angry.
- [SIGHS]
- [DRINK POURS]
Yes, there's a time when angry can help.
This isn't it.
We need answers we don't even understand
the questions for yet.
We need our wits.
Pavlovich
he dies before this is
all said and done.
That much is certain.
When it's time for the anger
to play its role in that,
it won't be hard to find.
Scorched earth.
Yeah.
Okay.
We've got 24 hours
before this meeting's
supposed to go down.
Want to catch a show?
That was a joke.
That was funny.
Maybe we should talk about the meeting,
how to manage it.
Morgan talked to me about it a little.
- Yeah, what'd he say?
- He said that
Pavlovich is connected somehow
to this deal
for Hamzad's mineral deposit.
[CHASE MUTTERING]
We don't know how.
Nina Kruger, Hamzad's lawyer,
knows something about it,
and we have to figure out
what she knows.
That's what you have to get from her.
What we should talk about
is how you plan to do that.
He said there were
three kinds of lawyers.
The kind that would do
anything for a client,
and the kind that would do
anything to be a client,
and that I should figure out
which one she is, quickly.
What was the third?
He said that only an idiot
would accept that there's only
two kinds of anything in this world,
even if we can't imagine the third yet.
Oh, yeah, right.
What else did he say?
He said all tradecraft is waged
wielding two weapons in concert.
Mm.
See, in your left hand
you have your empathy, and
Uh-huh.
I told him that
sounded awful familiar.
He may have been an asshole,
but that asshole
understood the game better
than anyone I ever knew.
- He taught me well.
- It's a scary idea.
This weapon that I've been given.
In order to wield it,
you have to be okay
never trusting anybody ever again,
never getting close
to anybody ever again.
Ah, I didn't say that exactly.
No, I did.
Oh.
I see you think
that if we get close again,
I might be ruthless with you?
Maybe.
But I know I might.
I'm someone who breaks things, remember?
I think maybe I always have been.
Except now I'm armed.
I think you're in
the wrong house, friend.
You might want to leave
before you get hurt.
[HARPER] You're not Julian Carson?
Morgan Bote's personal field operative?
Let's assume I'm in the right house,
and let's assume whatever it is
that you wish I didn't know
about you, I know.
The email that Morgan Bote sent
- I didn't get an email
- It's critical that I see it.
Even if it weren't
a national security issue,
which I'm pretty sure it is,
there are lives at stake here,
the lives of people
who are counting on me.
I didn't get any email.
I don't know what the fuck
you're talking about.
Now please leave my house.
How did I find you?
The old man took care of the people
he needed to take care of.
He built a wall around you,
around your name, your life
so that nothing you did for him
could blow back on you
or the people you care about.
So how on Earth did I find you?
That wall was built
out of his influence.
The moment he was gone,
the cracks appeared.
There'll be more.
I imagine you have
plenty of enemies out there.
They'll show, and you won't be safe.
And neither will the new girl
that you're seeing right now.
I am fucking certain
you did not just threaten her.
- Because if you did
- It's not gonna be me
you need to worry about.
I'm fucking certain you're
smart enough to know that.
[GRUNTS] I spent a long time
living behind one of those walls,
so trust me when I tell you,
when they fall,
and the things you thought
were safe behind them
are exposed to the world,
there's nothing worse.
Help me,
and I'll help make sure that
your wall holds for a long time.
Don't, and you're on your own.
[DOOR OPENS]
[DOOR CLOSES]
The right ♪
To hold you ever so tight ♪
And to feel ♪
I feel very exposed right now.
Is that normal?
[CHASE OVER PHONE] I don't know
what "normal" means in this context.
I mean, I
understand that not everyone
in this restaurant
is looking at me, but it feels
[OVER PHONE] like everyone in
this restaurant is looking at me.
[CHASE] Yeah, that's normal.
She's gone from very late
to extremely late.
All right, you want to split?
Go catch a show?
Ah. I see what you did there.
Hoisted on my own
- Petard.
- Y-You know, I knew that, it just
sounded weird as I was gonna say it.
- It's a bomb.
- It's from Hamlet.
- Is it?
- I mean, it's a bomb,
but the line is from Hamlet.
Which part?
What part of what?
Well, the play. What part's it from?
I-I don't know. Somewhere in there.
The revenge-y part.
[LAUGHS SOFTLY] Yeah.
Yeah, once you're in a revenge story,
there are no other parts.
Uh, you should read
that play again.
First chance I get.
All my wildest dreams ♪
Come true ♪
Can I ask you a question?
- Shoot.
- Where's our money from?
Well, your half, you stole from me.
No, no, I'm-I'm serious.
How did you make all this money?
Yeah, you do what I do
long enough,
you come across information
a lot of people
wish you didn't have,
and I got lucky.
Found a couple of guys
who had some cash to invest.
Right time, right place.
Who is Lou Barlow?
Where'd you hear that name?
Morgan was talking about
how he couldn't believe
the stuff that you got away with.
He mentioned the money and
he mentioned that name, and
it was the only moment
I spent with him that
I could tell he was being
untruthful with me.
Well, a lot of money
changed hands.
That, uh, can bring out
the worst in people.
Lou Barlow
is the worst in people.
Yeah, he's a person I wish
I'd never crossed paths with.
Can you tell me what that means?
Oh, someday.
Oh, Jesus. Really?
- We're leaving.
- Are you blowing off my question?
No, we're just wasting time
sitting here.
Need to keep our heads in the game.
You don't think she's coming?
- I don't.
- You don't sound surprised.
- I'm not.
- Who are you calling?
[LINE RINGING]
[ANNA OVER PHONE]
Nina Kruger's office.
[CHASE] Nina Kruger, please.
Oh, she's unavailable
at the moment.
May I take your name and number,
and someone
- will return your call?
- Is this Anna?
It is. May I ask who's calling?
Uh, Anna, this is time-sensitive.
I'd like to know
where to reach her, please.
I'm sorry,
she's out of the office
attending to a personal matter and
won't be checking messages, but
[SIGHS]
She's definitely not coming.
We're gonna need to go find her.
Her assistant just said
she doesn't know where she is?
Well
I'm gonna ask her another way.
[SCANNER BEEPING]
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
[SCANNER BEEPS]
- [CLICKS KEYPAD]
- [REGISTER BEEPS]
[TV PLAYING INDISTINCTLY]
That thing actually gonna work?
[CHASE] Mm, theoretically.
Long as it's kept close enough
to the target, yeah.
[ZOE] And we're sure that's her place?
Yeah, pretty sure.
So, you just
figured this all out
before we even left the U.S.?
- Yeah.
- You found Kruger's assistant,
you found her place, you-you
constructed this whole plan
without me even noticing.
Yeah, it wasn't like there were
state secrets involved.
I actually felt like I was
starting to understand all this.
Which seems a little silly
at this moment.
Why?
All these moving parts
that I didn't even know existed
until I noticed that
they had been moving for days.
I mean, you're sitting there
building a laser rifle.
I-I understand it's not
a laser rifle, I just
I'm pretty sure you understand my point.
Mm. You understand the hard parts.
The rest is just bells
and whistles, long division.
The part that smart people hire
people like me to do for 'em.
[INHALES]
Or used to do for 'em, at any rate.
[FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING]
- [UNZIPS BAG]
- [HEAVY FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING]
[KEYS JINGLING]
[CHASE] Excuse me.
Uh, I think I might be a little lost.
I'm looking for my friend.
Uh, can you help me?
Who are you looking for?
Really appreciate it.
It's been a long day.
Thought I'd be wandering
these halls all night.
The friend I'm looking for
is named Nina Kruger.
[KEYS JINGLING]
Anna, look at me.
This was a courtesy.
The next time, whether it's me
or someone else,
you aren't gonna see it coming.
Are you sure it's worth it?

- [STATIC CRACKLING]
- [ANNA BREATHING HEAVILY]
[RUSTLING]
[PHONE OPENS]
[LINE RINGS]
[AUTOMATED VOICE] The person
you are calling is not available.
Please leave a message
after the tone.
[BEEPS]
[ANNA THROUGH COMPUTER]
I'm sorry.
I know you said
I'm-I'm not to call, but
there's a man looking for you.
He came to my home tonight.
Please tell me what I should do.
Please tell me.
[ANNA CRYING]
- [DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES]
- [FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING]
I think it worked.
Yeah?
[GRUNTS]
[CHUCKLES]
Well, you did good. There it is.
There's the location of Kruger's phone.
How did you know that that woman
would make that phone call?
[GRUNTS]
Lucky guess.
How did you know?
You look someone in the eye,
you show 'em
that you're capable of doing
what they're most afraid of,
almost everyone will do
what you want 'em to do.
But not me.
You looked at me that way once.
I had a different reaction.
I found out what you feared the most,
and I used it to hurt you right back.
I know.
'Cause I'm a person who breaks things.
You okay?
I wish it hadn't been so easy
to do what we just did.
I wish it had been
harder to do that.
[DOOR OPENS]
[DOOR CLOSES]
[CHASE SIGHS]

Near the end, with Abbey
you know, when she
couldn't tell what was real
from what wasn't,
she said things that
were hard to hear.
Uh, because they were mad.
But, I don't know, maybe
because they were true.
I once broke this dish,
you know, dropped it in the kitchen.
She glared at me so
so angry, so dark.
She said, "A person
who can't help but break
everything they touch"
"shouldn't be allowed in the house."
"They should be outside
with the animals."
What part of that felt true to you?
The worst parts.
If you're sitting there,
thinking awful things
that you don't want to say
because you can't imagine
anyone else understanding,
about what sort of person you are
just want you to know
that someone else does.
I don't want to have to live
outside with the animals.
Well, me either.

[ENGINE SHUTS OFF]
Keep an eye out.
Give me a minute.

[SPORTSCASTERS SPEAKING
INDISTINCTLY ON TV]
[SPORTSCASTERS CONTINUE INDISTINCTLY]

[BREATHING SHAKILY]
[CLATTERING]
[CLATTERING CONTINUES]

[MUFFLED GRUNTING]
[BOTH GRUNTING]
[PAINED GROANING]
[GUNSHOTS]
[PANTING]
- Oh, wait, wait, Zoe.
- What happened?
- She's been poisoned.
- What?
Something airborne in the house.
I have to assume I'm hot.
Just just keep your distance.
What-what-what can we do?
The guy I found in there,
he's got an antidote,
but it's destroyed.
[PANTING]
They're gonna be coming soon.
We don't have much time.
[KRUGER WHEEZING] You came.
W we got lucky.
They didn't find it.
[KRUGER WHEEZING]
In the study.
On the middle shelf.
[EXHALES]
[KRUGER OVER RECORDING]
Hello, Zoe.
This is, uh, all so unfamiliar.
I wish I knew how to start.
I have some
very troubling information.
I'm trusting you to enlist
the help of Mr. Bote
to address it and to persuade
him to provide me with protection,
of which I believe
I am in most urgent need.
A man named Suleyman Pavlovich
has used his mercenary army
to seize control
of an important mineral deposit
in the Panjshir.
In the process,
his men were ordered
to murder the Hamzad family.
This much, I believe you know.
Now let me tell you
what hardly anybody knows.
The Meshbahar deposit
is very large,
but there are others
around the world.
Unfortunately, most are
located in places
that are not friendly
to my government or yours.
I have learned that
a number of those parties
are engaged in a secret plan
to organize themselves.
A cartel
conceived to control access
to the world's markets
of rare earth metals.
If successful,
it would constitute a weapon
capable of bringing any
Western economy to its knees.
Or all of them.
Pavlovich's membership
to this cartel
promises to be
incredibly lucrative,
but it is hanging on by a thread.
Threatened
by you.
By the two of you.
Henry and Marcia Dixon possess
both a stake in his firm
and past ties to the CIA.
The cartel have begun to doubt
his trustworthiness
because of this.
He will do anything
to eliminate any trace
of the connection.
You and me.
Please
help me.
[COMPUTER CHIMES]
So, what do we do?
We separate.
- No.
- Yeah. No choice.
We need to put you someplace safe.
You're gonna go to the police.
We're gonna call Harold. He can help.
I thought we were past this.
- Zoe
- You running off
- and jumping off cliffs to protect me
- Zoe
as if that
is something that I wanted.
There's an antidote
to whatever I walked into,
but they've got it.
My only chance
to avoid what happened to her
is to let 'em take me.
I will make it back.
You get anywhere near Pavlovich,
you are not gonna be thinking
about anything
but killing Pavlovich.
I'll make it back.
I don't believe you.
I need you to.
Zoe
I need you to.
["CRESCENT CITY BLUES" BY
BEVERLY MAHR PLAYING OVER RADIO]
I hear the train a-comin' ♪
It's rollin' round the bend ♪
And I ain't been kissed, Lord ♪
Since I don't know when ♪
The boys in Crescent City ♪
Don't seem to know ♪
I'm here ♪
I don't want to do this work anymore.
I don't want to be in any more
of those situations.
That's why I left. I was clear.
Well, that's between you and him.
I didn't ask to be here.
In a moment when
I think he believed that his life's work
was about to be undone,
he put its survival in your hands.
I don't care about his life's work.
Hey, I don't either.
I'm here because I want my life back
and I don't know any other way to do it.
Why are you here?
But I'm stuck in Crescent City ♪
He sent an email
the other night.
I deleted it,
and it felt good.
I was free from it all.
I closed my eyes
and tried to go back to sleep.
And then what did you do?
I undeleted it.
And why do you imagine
I would do something like that?
You're asking me?
I think you know what
it's like to be in my shoes.
I think you partnered with him once
and tried to leave.
So, yeah, I'm asking you.
May I?
Why couldn't you just let it go?
Maybe it was because
you knew he was trusting you
with something important,
and it was very hard
to walk away from something
that was a part of who you are.
I just said, I don't want it anymore.
Maybe want has nothing to do
with something like that.
And then maybe you just
don't like the idea
of someone taking a shot at the old man
and getting away with it,
and you'd like to be the one
to do something about it.
When I opened it,
I thought maybe he sent it by mistake.
I mean, the man was really old.
This wasn't a mistake.
You know who that is?
This
is Suleyman Pavlovich.
And that
is my ex-wife.
[ROOSTER CROWS]
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