Numb3rs Episode 2-5, Assassin
6:15am, Rancho Verde Assissted Living complex. Don and an LAPD officer enter the building. Upstairs, a man – Henry Korfelt – is forging some passports, and gets nagged at by his mom. Don knocks on the door, with a warrant, but his mom delays him long enough for Henry to burn the documents and escape. Of course, Don never travels alone and David and Colby are downstairs to apprehend the forger as he tries to drive away. Turns out that Henry wasn’t just forging passports – he was doing drivers licences and gun permits as well. Plus he has a book full of what looks to be code – and you know who they’re gonna call to help with that.
Charlie’s office. Larry and Charlie are trying to design paper airplanes as Don comes in with the code book. Charlie immediately notes that it’s a transposition cypher, and that at a glance, it looks like it’s a plan for assassination.
Opening Credits
Back at HQ, Charlie breaks down the basics of the assassination code to the crew, using a Scrabble anaolgy. Later, at home, Alan wants Charlie to come with him to sister-in-law Irene’s 80th birthday, and he wants someone to go with him. But Don’s always busy, and Charlie has plans to go to a concert. If you missed which act he’s planning to go to, don’t worry, they’ll repeat it about five more times during the show.
At HQ, Colby is interrogating Henry, with no success. So Don steps in, and Henry seems afraid to speak, but eventually notes that the assassin’s code was “Condor”, and the target was a Columbian kid whose father and brother were activists in Columbia – before they were killed, that is. They determine that the kid is Gabriel Ruiz, and he’s a film student in L.A.
Meeting with Gabriel, he notes that he’s been exiled from Columbia, and that he doesn’t want to go back. In fact, he wants to forget all about his former life in Columbia.
Charlie is still working on deciphering the code when Amita walks in. Turns out he’s going to the concert with her.
At HQ, Don is talking to Counselor Benavides, who tells him that Operation Condor was a pact enacted by six South American countries to help each other “take out” their political enemies. She also notes that in Columbia, Ruiz holds the same stature as Kennedy does in the U.S. And an obvious murder of Gabriel would cause an outcry, so it would have to be made to look like an accident.
Don and Megan tells Charlie this, and Charlie thinks this will help determine the probability of where Condor will be using Rubenstein’s Game Theory. He uses a Battleship analogy to explain, and thinks he can narrow things down further if they get more information from Henry.
Unfortunately, Henry gets gunned down with a single shot – a .308 tungsten bullet, meaning that they’re dealing with a high-tech assassin who is rather serious about his job.
Charlie and Larry talk, and decide that Charlie needs to talk to Gabriel in order to understand all the possibilities the assassin would have to attack.
At HQ, they track down some info via Henry’s mother’s credit card. Turns out Henry was meeting with someone from the Columbian Consulate, but they don’t know who.
Charlie tries to get Don to go to Aunt Irene’s party instead of him so he can go on a date with Amita. No dice. At Gabriel’s, Charlie manages to make the guy more nervous than he was by noting that there’s no way to keep him entirely safe. Gabriel wants nothing to do with it.
Later, Don and David drop by Gabriel’s, but he’s not there. They spy him in the water, and the man who found him notes that he just saw him there. Idiots, that’s the assassin.
At HQ, a test on Gabriel’s blood notes that he had taken diazapam – a muscle relaxant. Charlie comes in and notes that the guy that rescued him was probably Condor. Everyone looks shocked.
Gabriel doesn’t remember anything, and Don and David notes that it was pretty stupid for him to walk around without the agent assigned to him. They hand him a list of employees at the Columbian Consulate to see if he recognizes any names. Don talks to the Counselor to see if he can get some information that way. She seems relucatant to do so.
At Charlie’s office, Don gives Charlie Gabriel’s new schedule. He also tells him to live his own life, and that dad can take care of himself.
At HQ, Megan has had no luck at the DEA. But Henry’s book uncovers a name – Warren Wells. No info on him, but they decide to check up on his brother.
Meanwhile, at the university, Charlie tells Amita that he can’t go to the concert, and gives her the tickets. But Amita didn’t think that he couldn’t get them, and arranged to go to San Diego to attend a lecture.
At a computer store, David and Colby walk in and nab Warren Wells… with some submachine guns. Turns out that Wells is an arms dealer specializing in some “fast and easy” armaments. They also discover that Wells’ computer shop had recently made some repairs for the Columbian Consulate. Charlie then suggests that they try a ruse to draw out Condor, using chess as an example. To faciliate this, Don tells Benevides that Gabriel is going back to Columbia, and he’ll be under FBI protection until then.
So now the agents and Gabriel are waiting at a safe house for Condor, and sure enough, he shows up. Unfortunately, he’s not too willing to be taken in alive, and Don’s forced to shoot him.
Later, Gabriel tells Charlie that he’s going back to Columbia to try to expose the corruption the only way he knows how – by taking his camera and filming it.
