Absolution - Recap

An antiques dealer named Sebastian Renner was preparing for a trip out of the country when his chauffeur came to tell him the limousine was ready. Renner said that he could bring the car round and walked toward the front door of the posh mansion set high in the Hollywood hills of Los Angeles, complete with a breath taking view of the city. The chauffeur helped Renner into the long vehicle and began the long drive down the winding private driveway. In the limo's back seat, Renner was going through some papers in his briefcase, speaking to the chauffeur when he heard a gunshot and saw bright red blood appear in a spatter on the windshield. He called the chauffeur's name frantically, and receiving no reply, panicked and lunged for the car's steering wheel, bringing it to a sudden emergency stop. More shots were fired through the car's windows as Renner scrambled out of the back seat and hit the ground running, still clutching his expensive leather briefcase containing those important papers. Another shot brought Renner down to his knees as he ran back up the hill toward his mansion, causing him to hit the pavement. He was dead before his head hit the ground as the two gunmen got to him, looking through the briefcase and not finding what they were after, ran toward the mansion. Once there, they rifled through the big house, trashing it quite thoroughly, then leaving in a rush.

Hetty Cole, NCIS boss, filled the agents in on what had happened up on the hill, telling them that Renner seemed to have used the antiques business as a front for his real business of being an arms seller, and she wasn't sure what those foreign operatives had been after, but she had a hunch that she was keeping to herself. She sent agents Sam and Callen to search Renner's mansion, to try to figure out what the operatives might have been looking for. Meanwhile, Hetty disappeared on a mission of her own, not telling anyone at NCIS headquarters what she was about. At the Renner mansion, Sam and Callen found the house trashed and while they were in the front room talking, they heard a commotion upstairs. Suddenly, two large German Shepherd dogs appeared on the landing overhead and chased the agents to the front gate, which the men climbed over. Callen pointed out to a frustrated Sam that Sam's car was still in the mansion's driveway; how were they to get back to headquarters?

Hetty walked into a well kept comfortable large nursing home to see her husband, Bertram Cole, who had suffered a stroke caused by blood loss from two bullet holes, two bullets fired by Hetty at him in 1981. She had been a Cold War American operative then and had managed to capture and nearly kill Cole, but had not been able to get the information she needed, wanted, from Cole at that time. Being a warm hearted woman, she had put Cole into the nursing home under an assumed name and pretended to be his wife. She had been coming to the facility for years now, reading to him every week, looking after his needs in hopes of perhaps being able to gain the needed information from the man, but having no success so far. He was doing as well as could be hoped by now, but Hetty suspected that he had Alzheimer's now. Back in the day, she had been trying to locate Cole's little black book of foregin operatives and the information it contained, but had never found it nor managed to convince Cole to give her its' location, but she was persistent. Hetty suspected that this was what the operatives had killed Renner for. When she questioned Cole about the matter on this occasion, he said that she would never find it, that he could not recall whee it was and for her to just give it up. She left Cole in the care of a nurse when he became very angry with her and returned to headquarters.

A man's name was found on Renner's cell phone which connected him with The Pacific Design Center, and it was suspected that this man had been Renner's gay lover. When Sam and Callen went into the Center, they walked toward an office and overheard a man trying to revive the same man they went to interrogate. This man was unconscious, having been given something that was meant to kill him, but it was unsuccessful. Sam and Callen exchanged gunfire with two men and one man was killed, the other taken into custody and to the hospital where he survived surgery. The two men proved to be the same foreign operatives who had assassinated Renner. The surviving gunman told agents that he was after the information book that Renner was purported to have in his possession, but they hadn't found it, either.

Hetty sent agents Deek and Bligh back to the Renner mansion to see what they might find. A tiny Victorian book of the Gospel of Mark was found and investigated at the lab. It was discovered that Renner had put microdots into this small volume which bore Cold War information that proved too out of date to be of use to the FBI, so where was the vaunted information?

Hetty asked agents Sam and Callen to go talk to Cole at the nursing home. Maybe they might be able to get something out of him that Hetty could not. Cole was legally blind and could see nothing, but sometimes his wits were still sharp and when the agents asked him where the book was, he told them that he was not about to reveal its location to them, to Hetty or anyone. It would do them no good to ask. He told them that he had kept that book while he had been a Cold War spy in Germany and had given it to Renner in exchange for being smuggled into the US. Hetty had told the agents back at headquarters that she did not think Cole actually knew where the book was.

Coming up with a last gasp idea, Hetty met up with a German male spy from her Cold War days in a large open air theater in the hills above the city. She asked him When she asked him if he knew the book's location, he said he didn't know and where was Cole? Hetty told him that Cole had died long ago on that day in 1981, but the spy said he knew better and that they two were remnants of a world long past and wasn't it sad? Hetty smiled wryly and said that she did know where old man Cole was, but that he would be of no use now to anyone. Some days Cole did not even know his own name. Nevertheless, the spy pulled out his gun and told Hetty that he would exchange her for Cole, so why not just give him to him? Hetty said, go ahead, shoot away, and sat back down to await her fate. He aimed the gun and was going to fire when several agents appeared on the steps surrounding the amphitheater with guns. The spy was shot in the hand by Sam as the agents closed in on him and he gave up. He was taken into custody.

Hetty went to visit Bertram Cole that night, opening the door to his dark, quiet room and found him dead in bed, his bedclothes and pajamas covered in blood. Gasping in shock, she backed quietly out of the room and went back down the darkened corridor. This episode will be continued next week.

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