The Blacklist

Chapter 420 Proving Lao Lei's Innocence

Although Reddington has decided to tell Elizabeth the truth, he still carefully organized his wording. He doesn't want her to regard Katarina as a cold-blooded and ruthless agent. But after Carrie's reminder, he also understands that some things will cause more problems the more they are covered up, so he can only tell the truth!
"Liz, you already knew about the secret society, and you've seen the images in the 'Fulcrum' yourself, and you know what kind of organization the secret society is..." Reddington said, "But what you don't know is that from the very beginning, Katarina who was in the KGB was a member of the secret society!

"It was a long time before I knew about this. I once questioned it and asked Katarina to leave the organization, but she told me not to ask about it because the extremely powerful secret society at that time had brought disgrace to the enemy!

"Soon, I saw the secret society's methods! Before the Gideon was sunk, the secret society had arranged everything - in order to protect Katarina, who actually stole the secrets, and help her gain a higher position in the KGB, the secret society planned to push the blame on Reddington.

"All the key information revealed in the whole incident, the KGB internal bulletin, plus the remittance of 600 million US dollars... Under a series of plans, Reddington, the best intelligence officer of the US Navy at that time, was successfully framed as a traitor!
"And after I took over his identity not long after, I had no choice but to accept this fact!"

The amount of information was a bit overwhelming. Elizabeth thought for a while before saying, "Old Lei, do you mean that it was actually Katarina who leaked the submarine intelligence, and Reddington was just a scapegoat, and all this was instigated by the secret society?"

Reddington nodded and said with emotion: "Liz, I admit that I have done many terrible and illegal things in the past twenty years, but now I can confidently say that neither the previous Reddington nor the current me has done anything treasonous!
"The tape I came to Lee for today is a key piece of evidence. You can listen to it... This was recorded by Minister D on December 1990, 12."

Gina got an old tape recorder from the technical department and played the recording, which contained a conversation between a man and a woman. From it, it could be heard that the man was Alan Fitch, then Director of National Intelligence, and the woman was Katerina Rostova.

In the recording, Katarina asked Allen, the former Minister of National Intelligence, how to deal with Reddington. Allen asked her to kill Reddington to silence him or destroy his reputation. Katarina chose the latter and used the KGB to frame Reddington for leaking the submarine's whereabouts, making him bear the charge of treason...

After listening to the recording, Elizabeth felt mixed emotions. It was her mother who ruined Reddington's reputation by framing him, and then let her father impersonate Reddington. Why did she make it so complicated?
Carrie gave Elizabeth time to think, and asked Reddington: "When Minister D got such important information, didn't he use it to blackmail?"

"Of course he did!" Reddington said, "This guy is greedy for money. When he couldn't find Katarina, he blackmailed Allen. But a few days later, his home was bombed, his wife died, and he was hospitalized with severe burns. Since then, he never dared to do anything with this recording. However, seeing that he has collected this recording, I'm afraid he still has some ideas in his mind!"

Kerry, Gina and Elizabeth all expressed their "admiration" for Minister D's fearless spirit! ——
On the SER side, Aram and others have already determined the true identity of "Minister D" from the seized items - retired Army Corps of Engineers Corporal Jordan Lowen, who used the skills he learned in the army to come up with a unique way to make money and put it into practice! Tens of thousands of tapes and a lot of text materials that have been sorted out are enough to keep Abby and Aram and their respective teams busy for a long time, and the large number of secret crimes involved will also be revealed one by one!

Because it may involve politicians, officials and big capitalists, and even many of them may involve confidential matters, Carrie specifically requested that confidentiality be kept. All new cases revealed will first be reviewed by Elizabeth and the level of confidentiality will be set. Cases above level three will be reviewed by Carrie.

No matter what, the harvest this time is extremely huge, and everyone in CTU is extremely satisfied with it! ——
December 12th, Christmas Eve. Kerry announced that starting from that afternoon, in addition to arranging people to take turns on duty, the SLR and SER departments would have a two-week holiday, resting until January 24th after the New Year, and officially return to work on the 1th; and an additional year-end fund of two months' salary and a $6 Walmart shopping voucher would be issued to each person!
The entire post office cheered, and shouts of "Long live the boss" rang out one after another! Who wouldn't like such a leader?
At three o'clock in the afternoon, Carrie, Gina, Elizabeth, Dom, and Kaplan boarded a Gulfstream G650 and flew to China for their long-awaited "hometown tour"; the others also had their own arrangements, some went home, some traveled, and began their holiday life.

Although Kerry and his delegation were traveling in a private capacity this time, they were greeted by local officials as soon as their plane landed at the Capital International Airport. They were also provided with travel vehicles and tour guides.

After visiting the Forbidden City, the Great Wall and other attractions, the group split into two teams. Carrie, Gina and Elizabeth drove a large Ford SUV to the west for a self-driving tour; Kaplan accompanied old Dom to continue visiting the Forbidden City. They were particularly interested in the cultural relics there and decided to see a little bit every day and stay here for the holiday.

Kerry has never liked driving, but after arriving here, he took the initiative to hold the steering wheel, and took the two girls with the attitude of a host, starting from the capital, all the way west, passing Datong, Hohhot, Baotou, Yinchuan, Xining, then turning east, passing Lanzhou, Xi'an, Luoyang, Zhengzhou, Handan, Shijiazhuang, and returning to the capital, filling the entire holiday!

This trip was actually something he had always wanted to take in his previous life, but had never been able to realize it. Unexpectedly, he was able to complete it this time, which made him very happy throughout the whole process.

Elizabeth and Gina were both visiting China for the first time. They found that this place was completely different from what they had imagined. They shouted in surprise every time they arrived at a place and were curious about everything they saw. In particular, the delicacies from various places made their mouths full of delicious flavors...

During the whole tour, two official vehicles accompanied them. At the beginning, they were prepared to help with the tour guide and arrange food and accommodation, but they were surprised to find that the senior executive of the US Counterterrorism Agency was fluent in Chinese, and there was no problem with shopping and eating!

(End of this chapter)