Frank Winter, imprisoned by a dead man, fights for his life.
I want to apologize while you still have sound mind and body.
So says Avram Fischer, the X-4 government agent charged with hunting spies in the Los Alamos project.
Credit: Greg Peters/WGN
Hes a dead man walking, but he doesnt know it yet.
Its a strange hour of television, certainly the most unusual and offbeat episode of the show so far.
Winter is being held captive by a ghost.
We saw Fischer killed in the previous installment after discovering that Meeks (Christopher Denham) was anactualtraitor.
Hes wrong about Frank, but he has good reason to be suspicious.
Its a shock to see Avram again after watching him be so brutally murdered.
Winter finds himself accused of killing the U.S. mole who was embedded in Hitlers own atomic bomb program.
Fischer departs, saying hell be back.
Maybe in three days.
But of course, there will be no resurrection for him.
NEXT: The girl in the atomic equation…
Winter soon begins to hallucinate.
Theres a spy at Los Alamos.
But ones there, for sure.
He begs for someone to free him, promising to talk.
Yep, I hear that a lot, the warden says.
Anybody who winds up here, off the books?
Thats someone Uncle Sam wants to disappear.
Who am I to argue?
Outside the prison, he sees Japanese citizens and realizes hes locked inside an internment camp.
Music is playing in the empty cell block.
A lilting, haunting melody.
Winter isnt able to place it.
He seems to be going out of his mind, which is all the scientist has left.
D-Day is coming, and he says the government is scanning enemy territory to locate their atomic program.
Its up to us to tell the Army what to look for, Isaacs says.
Helen (Katja Herbers) is pestering Charlie for information about Winter.
Frank is implosion, she says.
The project needs him if it has any hope of going forward.
Isaacs has about as much time for her as the warden did for Frank.
Justin Kirk (best known forWeedsandAngels in America) is filthy, panicked, and ready to fight.
He says the guards are manipulating prisoners to fight to the death.
Thats insane, Winter says.
If the dogs wont fight, heat up the cage, Kirks character says.
He calls Winter Houdini the mystery man who has somehow broken into this prison but cant get out.
He claims hes there because he went to the wrong meeting.
We just have to trust each other, Winter says.
Game theory: Trust is the strategy, and the plan is escape.
He promises not to kill his mystery friend, who identifies himself as Joseph Beuker.
Charlie Isaacs, Frank replies as they shake hands.
Game theory is a tip-off.
Beuker recognizes Winter as a fellow college educator.
I assume youre not a plumber.
Beuker says hes a history professor and asks if hes Jewish.
I was born that way.
Ill die an atheist, Winter says.
Weve got that in common, too, Beuker says.
The music starts again.
You really dont hear that?
Winter pinpoints it: Mourning Cantata for King Frederick.
Give a listen below.
When they lift the covers, they find a gun on one plate.
A bullet on the other.
Beuker takes the weapon.
Frank takes the ammunition.
Abby offers some surprisingly cold-hearted advice.
Say you wanted to end a baseball season.
You could look for the stadiums, try and shut them all down.
Or you could just get rid of the New York Yankees.
These German scientists are friends of many of the researchers on the Hill.
If the Nazi gadget goes off…will they spare our friends?
You must have photographs of the German scientists.
The names of their wives and children.
Give those to the Army.
She, Fritz, Meeks, and Crosley are sitting around a campfire.
Meeks, who watched Fischer get garroted in front of him, swallows hard: Whered you hear that?
Hes having flashbacks to the murder, but his exterior is still.
Inside, hes coming apart.
He helped carry the body and stashed it away in the trunk of Fischers car.
His Soviet contact rips a Hershey wrapper in half and gives him one piece.
His next contact will have the other.
Off in the wilderness, they find a dead coyote.
We should bury him, Meeks says.
His friends ask if hes all right.
I dont know what were doing here anymore, he answers.
In the prison, Winter keeps vigil.
If Fischer has been gone for two weeks, hes been detained for at least that long.
Beuker doesnt trust him with the pistol.
Then the music is back.
Frank turns his ear toward the sound.
Youre hearing it again?
Your heads a mess, but when you mentioned the piece earlier, I was surprised.
Thats Johann Adolf Scheibe.
How do you even know Scheibe?
No, Winter says.
It was somebody I used to know.
She played him a lot.
Beuker offers him the gun but wants something in return: the truth.
Scheibe was Bachs only real critic, you know.
He found Bach abstract, degenerate, like the negros and their jazz.
You must know where Scheibe is experiencing a resurgence right now.
Youre…an American Nazi?
Have I misjudged you?
NEXT: Yes, he has …
What if I had been a Jew?
Would you have bashed my skull in that first night?
I part with Hitler there.
I have no complaints with the Jewish people, per se.
I ask only for some open debate about their effect on their host cultures.
Youve seen it, in academia.
The conspiracy against good Aryans like us.
Who played Scheibe for you?
Did you get your heart broken by a German girl?
Is that where all this angers coming from?
Trust me, Joe, I know the Nazis a lot better than you do.
Theyre a gang of killers who brainwashed their own people.
Why am I angry…?
He storms off in disgust.
Winter keeps trying to break into the phone box.
But then Beuker says its a sun gun that can boil oceans and scorch continents.
Winter needed a good laugh.
Last year it was a freeze ray, the year before that it was a death ray.
Its a nation of liars.
Says the man who lies about his own name, Beuker says.
What did she do to you?
Your Nazi love… Who played Scheibe concertos for you.
She wasnt my goddamn girlfriend!
Winter screams as the phone box cracks open.
No, Beuker says.
She was your mother.
Winter says he barely knew her.
His parents met through a service connecting farmers from the Midwest with available brides.
He tracked her down in 1936, during his long mystery trip.
She was a concert pianist, fulfilling her dream.
He went to her dressing room to introduce himself.
She called the Gestapo on me.
Winter is ready to give up.
He asks Beuker to pass along word that the German scientists are using American equations in their research.
Beuker cries, and the door immediately opens.
I believe you, Frank, he says.
It was all a ruse, meant to determine Winters loyalty.
Who the hell are you?
The United States of America, Darrow replies.
Are you from Los Alamos?
We dont use that name.
Beuker was an agent the whole time.
And they seem indifferent to Franks concern about the stolen math.
Mr. Fischer thought you were the Nazi spy, Darrow says.
Youre simply ashamed of who you are?
What you came from?
We all come from sin.
Its up to us to rise.
Winter realizes the game is bigger than he thought.
You tell them Germanys going to end the world tomorrow.
Adolf Hitler is after a bomb, Frank.
And Winter ends this long, strange journey back underground and behind bars.
