The Blacklist

Chapter 410: Quick Pawn Shop in Cherry Hill
On Tuesday, a new round of hearings in the Reddington case was held at the Eastern District Circuit Court. This time, Judge Roberta directly rejected the prosecutor's application for prosecution and determined that the exemption documents obtained by Reddington were legal and valid...

At this time, prosecutor Sieg proposed that Reddington was carrying an unregistered illegal firearm when he was arrested, and he should be judged to have committed a violation during the agreement period and his valid exemption should be revoked...

Donald, a key witness, submitted directly to Judge Roberta a trial memorandum and complete video footage of the scene when Carrey previously interrogated Officer Baldwin who arrested Reddington on the street.

After quickly reading the memo and the video, Judge Roberta nodded in approval, believing that the interrogator's words prevailed in legal reasoning. Neither the anonymous phone recording, nor the pistol found on Reddington, nor the local arrest operations, could be used as evidence in court due to procedural errors. Moreover, these proved that the NYPD's arrest of Reddington was illegal!

Roberta thought again of the previous arrest of Prosecutor Holt. After learning the inside story, she now felt that the arrest of Reddington was a conspiracy from the beginning, and she decided not to get involved!

Subsequently, Judge Roberta made a ruling: the case was dismissed, Reddington would not be prosecuted and would be released immediately, all files related to the case were sealed, and no one below level five authority was allowed to access them.

The matter was resolved satisfactorily, but of course it will not be announced to the public. We can only hope that time will wear away the public's impression. Fortunately, we have entered the Internet age, and too many things have popped up. No news can occupy the public's attention for a long time - many Americans don't care about the news, and they don't even know who the current president is, let alone continue to pay attention to whether a wanted criminal will be publicly sentenced!
Of course, Reddington has to keep a low profile and be honest for a while. Carrie sternly warns him: he must not appear in public again, he must stay in the car when on the street, and let Felix go to buy burritos, coffee, etc.!
Although Elizabeth laughed with everyone, she still pulled Reddington and told him to be obedient, which made him laugh and cry, and he just nodded in agreement.

However, Reddington, who had been freed, did not leave the post office immediately. Instead, he found Carrie and asked to see Spalding. He also explained that he wanted to turn off the surveillance equipment and asked Elizabeth to speak for him, saying that there was something really important!
Carrie didn't bother to pay attention to him and just threw a document over. It was the bail document that Donald had obtained privately from Judge Roberta. It allowed Spalding to be released on bail under the long-term supervision of CTU. Carrie's name was already signed on it, but the $50 deposit had to be paid by Lao Lei.

Reddington took the document and immediately ran away happily - this was even more perfect than he had imagined! However, before leaving the post office, he left Elizabeth a new blacklist target.
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The next day, when the post office was open, in the SER command hall, Elizabeth introduced the new blacklisted people to everyone - Rod and Delin.

"Rod Ullman and his wife Delin are both long-time members of the Methodist Church and the owners of the Quick Gun Pawn Shop in Cherry Hill, Baltimore," said Elizabeth. "This humble little pawn shop has provided criminals with physical collateral for decades, allowing them to obtain sufficient funds for new crimes! It can be said that they are the invisible supporters of the criminal world, and the consequences of their actions are far more harmful than those of individual criminals!"

The world is so big, there are all kinds of strange things! The detectives of the post office are used to encountering such strange cases from time to time, but to be honest, this kind of pawn shop is really the first time.

Elizabeth arranged for Brian to take Duke, O'Neal and Rosa to Baltimore, find a surveillance point across the street from the pawn shop, divide into two shifts for secret surveillance, take photos of all people entering and leaving the shop for evidence, and then send them to Aram for background check. Soon, Aram found a special customer who entered and left the pawn shop - MIT graduate student Tom Hardkauf, who actually had the government's top secret clearance and nominally worked for a technology company, but actually served the NSA (National Security Agency).

Elizabeth immediately contacted the NSA to inquire about Hardkauf's situation.

Sophia Quayle, director of the NSA's code-breaking and development group, was sent to SER by the bureau to explain Hardkov's situation - Hardkov was employed by the NSA to do research and development work and participated in the development of a new algorithm that can be used to crack the encrypted data transmitted by a certain country's embassy and consulate in the United States. If the algorithm is exposed, the country will change its encryption method, and the previous four years of work will be in vain.

After Elizabeth reported the situation to Carrie, she asked Dembe and Nawabi to follow up on Hadkoff and found that he had been frequenting underground casinos recently and was heavily in debt. This also explains why he went to the pawnshop. He should have pawned things in exchange for cash, and the most valuable thing in his hand was undoubtedly the new decoding algorithm!

The problem becomes serious. Elizabeth doesn't know why Reddington puts the pawnshop on the blacklist. Does he know that the pawnshop accepts the NSA's confidential program as collateral? What she doesn't know is that Carrie has heard that this case involves the decoding of data transmission in a certain country and has decided to act secretly!
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On Thursday, Sophia came to SER again and told Elizabeth that she searched Hardkov's workstation after returning to NSA yesterday and found that a large-capacity working hard disk was missing, and the code data on the server had been deleted and washed. The code on the hard disk in Hardkov's hand might be the only backup! Therefore, if the decoded hard disk cannot be retrieved, the four years of work will all go to waste.

Elizabeth meant to directly seal up the pawn shop and arrest the owners Rod and Delin, so that the hard drive could be retrieved as soon as possible. But Sophia strongly opposed it because she was afraid that Rod and Delin would destroy the hard drive after discovering the danger - and explained that the hard drive was equipped with the only program backup, and the NSA needed it to be absolutely safe!

In this case, we can only find another way to get the hard drive back. Elizabeth said, "Director Quill, according to our investigation, this pawn shop has been in business for decades and has a good reputation. There is a 30-day redemption period for the items. As long as the loan and interest are repaid on time, the collateral can be returned. In other words, as long as we find Hardkov, we can redeem the hard drive, but the money needs to be paid by the NSA."

"As long as we can get the hard drive back, we'll pay for it!" Sophia agreed immediately.

But just two days later, Baltimore police found a burned car with Hardkauf's charred body inside!
(End of this chapter)