PERSON OF INTEREST Recap: Checkmate

Person of Interest 2. 19  Trojan Horse

Over a chess game, Finch and Elias hold a metaphor-laden conversation that basically suggests that Elias is battling with some unknown force and so far is losing.

Reese is already on a number, so Finch takes on the new one that comes in, who conveniently is a computer executive at a company named Rylatech – perfect cover for him to get close. He gets a job working for the company and quickly impresses the number – Monica Jacobs. Jacobs is smart, aggressive, and very good at what she does. Finch stays late to watch her and sees her sneak into a computer storage room after hours to copy some files.

Carter is investigating the deaths of Szymanski and the attorney. She refuses to talk to Beecher when he stops by and asks Fusco to find out his connection to Szymanski’s death. ‘

Meanwhile, Shaw approaches Reese where he’s keeping an eye on her dead partner’s parents from outside their house. They are both worried that the government might try to kill them as well.

Fusco confronts Beecher about the money used to frame Szymanski and tells him to keep away from Carter. Beecher makes it clear that he knows Fusco’s history.

Beecher and  Quinn meet in Central Park. Beecher tells him that he’s getting pressured to reveal his source about the money and he also want to know where the tip came from. Quinn refuses to reveal his source but implicates Elias. Turns out that Beecher is Quinn’s godfather (with all the Hollywood connotations, apparently!).

Finch tries to access Jacob’s computer
Courtesy of CBS

Finch attempts to access the flash drive, that Jacobs used to save the files the night before, but is thwarted by her controlling assistant. He watches her print out some files on a man named Justin Lee – a former employee of Rylatech that has since died. She then takes the files and heads out of the building with Finch following. In a park, she meets Rylatech”s VP.

She tells him that when Lee died a week earlier in a car crash, she sent flowers to his parents’ address, which couldn’t be delivered. She then looked into things a bit more and realized that nothing in his file checked out and she suspects he was a plant for a competitor. She gives him the flash drive – it contains files from Lee’s computer, including encrypted emails. He thanks her and walks off. Reese bumps into him and swipes the flash drive without him realizing it.

Later, back at Rylatech, Jacobs is accused of industrial espionage by her boss and the VP. They found incriminating files (the ones from Justin Lee’s computer) on her office computer. Her assistant tells them that she’s been acting strangely lately. She’s fired and ushered out by security.

Reese follows her while Finch looks into Justin Lee – he was definitely put in place by pros – his cover was excellent. Carter looks into Lee’s death and there was no obvious reason for his car to wreck and burst into flames. The body is also missing from the morgue.

Beecher visits Elias for a game of chess. Elias tells him that Szymanski was clean and he got played by HR. Quinn soon finds out that he visited Elias.

Jacobs confronts her assistant, who lied to her boss and helped get her fired. He drops his cover and gets aggressive with her. Reese shows up and gunfire starts, but this time Reese isn’t the one shooting. The assistant is shot and Reese and Jacobs escape in a nearby car.

Finch meanwhile, has found out that Lee’s encrypted emails were to his father, a leader in the Chinese communist party. It wasn’t just industrial espionage that Jacobs wandered in to, it was international espionage. Before either he or Reese can think much more on the subject, Finch gets a visitor – Shaw has tracked him to the library and let herself in.  She came because she assumed Finch wanted her to come when he gave her his number.

She shows Finch a newspaper article about a CIA operative dying in the line of duty – her partner. The journalist received leaked documents from inside Langley. She thinks someone hacked into the CIA to make a file for Cole. Shaw sees a picture of Root on one of the bulletin boards and tells Finch that she’s going to investigate the situation.

Reese takes Jacobs to a *really* sweet safehouse and tells her about Lee working for China. Finch arrives and they realize that her coworker, Ross, has to be involved in the plot. Finch and Jacobs work together to hack into Rylatech’s system. Their intrusion is detected and soon the laptop self-destructs. (Seriously, Rylatech hacked back and managed to disable a control on the battery causing it to overheat).

To get into the system they will need to be onsite, so they come up with the plan of using Bear with Jacobs’ ID to distract security while Reese sneaks Jacobs into the server room. They plant a transmitter on the servers and soon find out that the Chinese are using Rylatech to spy on all its clients – the US Government, banks, and others.  Apparently half of the staff is in on the plot. Things get hairy and Reese has to shoot a few kneecaps.

Finch tracks all the activity between the agents that Reese shot and it all leads back to the office of Jacobs’ coworker, but turns out his name is not on the list. Sure enough, he’s dead when they arrive. It wasn’t him – it was the Jacobs’ boss, and he’s got his gun trained on Reese and Jacobs. He denies spying for China – he’s just been doing it for the money, not for any political principles. They have a bit of a Scooby Doo standoff (“you won’t get away with this”) and then the boss gets a phone call. It’s the well-dressed man who hired Kara. He tells him that the “time has come and [his] family will be well provided for”. After hanging up the phone, the man shoots himself.  Finch sends all the evidence that he’s collected to the FBI. Just then the payphone outside Finch’s car rings.

Jacobs meets Bear
Courtesy of CBS

Fusco approaches Carter and plays her a tape of the conversation between Beecher and Elias. He apparently managed to bluejack Beecher’s phone during their confrontation in the bathroom.  Carter wants to turn the recording over to IAB, but Fusco disagrees and warns her that Beecher is likely a dangerous person to be around, even if he’s honest.

Beecher is in a car with an informant, watching a drug deal go down. Carter calls and asks him to have a drink with her later. He agrees. His set-up goes awry and he follows his informant into a building where he is gunned down. It was his number that came up, but Finch couldn’t get him help in time.

All Rylatech products are replaced for security issues while the FBI investigates. Finch and Reese meet up with Monica, who tells them about her new job (which may or may not be a company that Finch owns).

Finch confides in Reese that he recognized that the encrypted files had a lot in common with the virus that Kara uploaded and that only a small portion of the data actually went to the Chinese government. Most went to another entity. That entity, Descima Technologies,  is the source of the virus and the intent of the virus is to infect The Machine.

Reese doing what Reese does best
Courtesy of CBS

Not far from Finch and Reese, the well-dressed man talks on his cell phone. They had to leave Rylatech, but otherwise things are still running on schedule. They did detect an intrusion from a single individual and they are working to find out who and eliminate him. He looks down at his phone which has a countdown on it: 0541.50.40

My Thoughts:

Oh boy, when Kevin Chapman tweeted this week that things were going to get dark, he wasn’t kidding! Beecher’s dead, and Carter seems like the next one at risk.

Shaw going after Root is an awesome development – they seem pretty evenly matched in poor social skills, lack of moral compass, psychosis  and general badassery. I’m not sure why Shaw cares, other than as revenge because Root tried to torture her the last time they met, but I can’t wait to see another confrontation between the two.

That Kara’s virus is out to infect the Machine is not new news, but the connection between Reese, Kara, Finch, and that ill-fated mission in China becomes even more fascinating. Finch was the one who sold the laptop to the Chinese, which was the reason that Kara and Reese almost died, which lead to the production of the virus to infect the Machine and the search for Finch. And the well-dressed man doesn’t know that the same person who hacked into their encrypted files also sold the laptop. I’m definitely going to need a few days to mull it all over.

541 hours is 22 days, 541 minutes is 9 hours. It seems more likely that the countdown is referencing days versus hours. What is going to happen when it ticks down to zero??

Memorable Quotes:

You’ve got a crush on this number, don’t you Finch? – Reese

You think I should have a hobby. Now what would that be? Hanging around a derelict library with you, your poorly socialized guard dog, and Bear here? – Shaw (talk about the pot calling the kettle black!)

Please, we’ve bridged firewalls together, call me Monica! – Jacobs

Watch Person of Interest on Thursdays 9/8c on CBS!