In our last episode of FBI: International, we were able to see how much Forrester cares about the people in his life, and see the team assist in a case that every parent would consider to be an unimaginable nightmare. It was also a great commentary on our current society and how many individuals with significant means feel they can skip the usual channels to buy whatever it is in life they want. This is a sad commentary on the capitalism that now invades into personal matters in all parts of the world, and not just in business transactions any longer.
We then move to a medical clinic in Bucharest, Romania, where a woman is getting an ultrasound. There is noise in the hall way and the technician says she will be right back. The technician goes out to the desk where a man and woman are yelling at the receptionist. They are upset because they are being told they do not know where their surrogate is. They are told by the clinic staff that their surrogate had a change of heart, and the man and woman ask what this means, because they have waited 9 months and their child is due to be born any day. The man is arrested by security while his wife weeps, and he is still yelling “where is our baby”.
Scott is leaving his apartment and sees Zsolt on the stairs. He asks if Tank misses him and Scott tells him that he is in Tank’s inner circle of people he loves. Scott asks if everything is ok and Zsolt says it is his father. Scott sees blood on his sweater and asks whose it is.
We move to Scott at the office with Jamie and he is telling her that Peter was beaten up pretty badly. They hypothesize if this was a message from the mafia, and Scott says the family is too scared to go to the police. They agree that a 12-year-old kid should never have to answer for his parents mistakes. They are interrupted by Andre, who taps on the window to call them into the briefing area. Jamie says she knows he cares about the kid, so she is in for whatever he needs. This is a great demonstration that despite the fact they are no longer involved, they are still solid colleagues who will help each other to get the job done.
Raines, Garretson and Kellett meet with Amy Palmer, who says that all of the attempts at conceiving really took a toll on her and her husband, and that a genetic link was important to them, so they found an agency in Bucharest, met with Cosmina over skype and liked her. Smitty asks if because the fertility rules are more relaxed in Romania that it was more affordable to have a surrogate this way and Amy says they thought that would be the case, but many unforeseen expenses stacked up and they are now in a financial hole of almost two hundred thousand dollars. She says this really took a lot for them to afford, but they had fallen in love with the miracle that was growing inside of their surrogate. They last heard from her 3 weeks ago, and she was always very responsive so when they could not get ahold of her they panicked. Now the clinic is telling them they have no info on Cosmina and she is missing but the clinic had them arrested. She says she has not even been allowed to speak to her husband and Raines says they are working on that right now.
They go to speak with the man who he assaulted, Howard Greyson, who says he was only trying to help. Vo asks if he is okay and asks why he was there, and he says he was there to visit the facility as he had heard good things about it and the woman who owns it, Felicia Zamfir, but he ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. He says the police asked for his account, which he gave, but he feels it is clear that the police are blowing things out of proportion. Vo clairifes that he is not pressing charges, and he says definitely not and that he cannot imagine how betrayed they feel. Scott asks what he means and he tells them that he has been reading up and that it is not uncommon for the surrogate to become attached to the baby inside of them. He says that he thinks she decided to keep the child for herself. From the reaction on their faces, it seems like Forrester and Vo are puzzled as to why he would offer this statement, and validates for the viewer that this team truly misses nothing when it comes to their interviewing and investigations.
Kellett and Raines go to speak to the clinic owner, Felicia Zamfir, who says it is a shame that Cosmina’s selfishness ruined what should have been the Americans Happiest memory. Raines asks with all the surrogates under her care how she protects herself from this kind of thing happening, and she says you can’t 100% of the time, and that they do have a screening process but sometimes things slip through the cracks. Jamie asks about the fact that Cosmina was young and that they brought her on anyway and Felicia says that demand is high, and sadly now everything she has built over 8 years may be ruined. She gives them Cosmina’s file and says the last time she saw her was 2 weeks ago and that she was 9 months into her first pregnancy so naturally she was a bit distressed. Raines says the family says her being out of contact was unusual and Felicia asks if they think she was kidnapped. Jamie asks how thorough her background check was, because there is no listed address or emergency contacts in her file, and Felicia says all she knows is that she is from a small farming community in northern Romania. Jamie points out that it says in the file the girls are paid in cash, and Felicia says they have to come to the clinic to pick up payment. Jamie points out that Cosmina missed her pick up in June and asks how they got payment to her, and she says she can check with billing, but typically in those cases a cheque is mailed. Jamie asks for the address it was sent to.
At the train station, they search for Cosmina. Vo tells them she already picked up her meds, and Scott says she is 9 months pregnant so to keep her eyes peeled. Kellett says she bought a coach ticket under a fake name to Muldova, and Raines says the train is on platform 6. They find her before she boards the train and she is no longer pregnant.
They interview her at the station and she says being a surrogate is the hardest thing she has ever done. Vo says they know she was carrying the Palmers baby and ask where it is, and how they have her skipping town on a train. She says there should have been a baby, but she went into labour last week and she was stillborn. The Palmers are watching the interview and Amy begins to weep. Cosmina says she panicked and ran because she did not know what to do. Vo asks why she did not tell the clinic and she said she was afraid if the Americans and Felicia found out, she would be burned at the stake. Vo says if the baby was stillborn, it was not her fault, but they need to know what happened to the baby’s body. Cosmina says she laid the child to rest in the tumbleweeds by the river, and that she is in God’s hands now. She says she did this six days ago and Vo asks why a week later she decided to leave the city. She said that she needed time to come to terms with this and put it behind her. She says this is her sin and now she has to live with it.
Smitty says the Palmers are in shock, and it seems Cosmina might be too. Scott says they need to get the info from the small clinics and midwives as there is no record of her giving birth, and it may have happened when she was alone in her flat like she says, but there is no evidence or DNA to support that. Vo asks if they retrieved a body but Smitty said the river spans almost 300kms. She says the odds of recovery are slim. Vo says not to hate her for this, but Cosmina is not the first teenager who has lied when they landed in hot water. Kellett says seeing the state she was in, there is a line between looking for proof of her story and saying she is playing them, but Vo says a social circle or even one friend to back up her story would go a long way in backing up her story. Raines said he had the same thought and after they brought her in the police had turned over her phone to them. Raines says in terms of calls, she had five unidentified calls in the last few days, and nothing from the clinic or Felicia. This was a new phone and none of the five callers numbers are active anymore. Raines says he thinks it is an app that replaces legitimate numbers with fake burner numbers. Raines says retracing the numbers is possible but takes time, and Forrester says it seems like these people don’t want to be linked to Cosmina. Forrester says to loop in OTD for help and in the mean time, they need to piece together a timeline of Cosmina and how she spent the last 9 months in Bucharest.
The Palmers ask to speak to Cosmina and Jamie says it is not possible. Dennis asks why she cannot just face them and that she had their little girl inside of her and they loved her before she even had a heartbeat. Scott says that is why they are pursuing the investigation. Dennis says they want to take their daughter back to the US for a burial, because they need closure. Scott says the best way for them to get closure is to seek and find the truth of what happened, no matter how deep it is buried, and Scott says they are doing everything to get them that.
Vo discovers that Cosmina’s name was not the primary name on the lease of her apartment, and it is under Nadia Belan, born and raised in Bucharest. Vo and Forrester go to her home and ask to speak to her about Cosmina. Nadia is also pregnant. She says they met at the clinic and that it is difficult to make friends in this line of work. Nadia says she was new and young in Bucharest so safety is important and asks if it is a crime to help someone else. She says she was happy to offer her guidance as the first pregnancy comes with so many questions. They ask when the last time it was that she and Cosmina spoke and she says it was a few weeks ago and she seemed quite troubled. It was almost as if Cosmina had a crisis of conscious about parting with the child. Scott asks in all her time doing this if she has ever become attached to any of her pregnancies and she says no, but she says she can see why it happens. Nadia says it is easy to forget that this is a transaction, and it is all subject to the contract. Vo says it seems like she had a soft spot for Cosmina and asked if she had asked her to help undermine a contract, would she. Nadia says a baby is the ultimate gift to hopeful parents. Nadia asks if Cosmina is okay, and they tell her that she is, but the baby was lost during childbirth. Nadia says she did not think anything of it, but remembers Cosmina did contact her a few days ago. She says she forgot because usually their calls are long but this one was short, and Cosmina was asking about coconut oil. She says sometimes babies have dry skin and there is one oil she really likes as sometimes babies stay with them a few days until the parents arrive. She says it is strange she would have asked about that if the child did not survive. Vo says Cosmina said she gave birth 6 days ago and they ask when she reached out again to confirm the day.
Raines says he was able to crack the records and they all trace back to one number that belongs to Howard Greyson, who is the man who was in the clinic. He apparently knew Cosmina and did not want his number linked to her. He is as salesman for his families huge conglomerate company, and Smitty says they are like the British Rockefellers. Overall, he has no criminal history other than a drunk driving charge, and neither does his wife.
However, Raines finds a blog that his wife kept on their fertility journey. They used all their resources and still were not able to conceive. They discuss how he said that he was at the clinic to check out the facilities and wonder why he would have been contacting Cosmina and was it to interview her for the future or to try to get the baby she was carrying. Scott says clearly Cosmina is not telling them everything.
Forrester tells Cosmina that they spoke to Nadia and find it strange that she did not mention someone she considered her fairy godmother. She says she was protecting her friend but Scott says he thinks she was protecting her story. He says she is smart enough to know Nadia could corroborate her story or poke holes in it. She says she did not tell her about losing the child because she did not want anyone coming after Nadia to get to her. Vo asks her about the coconut oil, and she says it was for her, not the baby. Vo says in their line of work, running is usually a sign of having something to hide. Cosmina says surrogacy was her choice but she did not sign up for becoming a rat in a cage, and she ran because she was scared. Forrester asks why did she not just go home, and she says not everyone is blessed with good parents, and she came to Bucharest to escape hers. Forrester asks her about Howard Greyson, and she says she has never seen him before, but Vo says they have the records that he called her. Forrester tells her that one call lasted over a minute and it was after she gave birth and before she headed to the tracks. Cosmina asks if they ever considered perhaps she was being harassed. She says after everything she has been through for them to question her this way is beyond cruel. Vo offers a solution and asks about a medical exam so that they could determine at what point in the pregnancy the child was lost, and they can put any last questions to bed, and bring the Palmers some closure, but she refuses.
Smitty dug in deeper to the Greyson drunk driving charge, and found out his 6 year old nephew was in the back seat, and although he survived, because of this, he would also have been charged with child endangerment. This would keep Howard and his wife from being able to adopt a child. Raines also looked into their finances and they withdrew 700,000 pounds from their offshore accounts, which is more than 6 times the usual surrogacy fee. It was sent to an unidentified cryptofund. From all of the evidence, it appears they planned to buy the baby but no one counted on the Americans who had spent their life savings to show up looking for their baby. Raines says the Greyson’s had a chauffeur service and identified what hotel they are staying at. Forrester says to go get Howard Greyson.
Smitty and Raines go to the hotel, and the room has been cleared out, although they were not supposed to check out until the next day. They find the coconut oil, and realize the Greysons have the baby. Vo does a search and sees they arrived on a commercial flight but does not see anything similar for their departure. Smitty asks her to look for private airstrips, and there are 17 in and around Bucharest, so Smitty says for her to start combing. Raines shows Smitty hotel surveillance, which shows the clinic director Felicia coming to the hotel, and they have the make and model of her car. Raines says he can track her navigation system in real time. Smitty tells Vo to pull out all the stops to find the car. Scott and Jamie go to Deputy Chief Hofer to present him the evidence of the conspiracy right in their own backyard, and that Felicia and the Greysons orchestrated the unlawful sale of a newborn, and used Cosmina to perpetuate the cover up. They say Cosmina has been lying to keep the parts of the puzzle from unravelling. Hofer asks how they know who the child’s real parents are and Scott says he can tell him for sure it is not the Greysons. Jamie says it is time for Policia Romana to pick a side, and are they helping them or not.
Vo finds a private airfield where a customs agent was dispatched to for a UK jet that had landed. Kellett points out that the Greysons have enough resources to go anywhere. She says once airborne they can reroute to anywhere in the world they want. The Deputy Chief says that the airfield is 35 minutes away. He says he will have units intercept and Forrester says they cannot let that plane take off.
The jet is preparing to take off and the team is 5 minutes out. Scott tells the team that there is a hostage onboard and that they are not to fire unless given the authorization to do so. The plane is preparing to take off and the team surrounds the aircraft and they get the baby and arrest the Greysons. Mrs. Greyson says they had been told that the original family had backed out and did not want the child and the teenager who was the surrogate was not able to care for the child, and they were helping by giving that child a home and adopting it.
Howard Greyson said that because of the blemish on his record, they wanted to skip some of the red tape with the adoption, and that they could give the baby a comfortable life with no financial hardship. Kellett says now that their plan had blown up they are ready to throw Felicia under the bus, and Howard says that she gave them a false story and that he and Elizabeth are good people and she played them. Raines asks him about using the burner app and that they have the records of the calls to Cosmina, and he insists that he have a lawyer present moving forward.
Kellett tells the team they are stonewalling them and that they knew exactly what they were doing, and that Howard was not there to scope out the facilities, he was there to meet with Felicia. Forrester says it was all coordinated to cheat a family out of their newborn. Felicia is also not speaking and the papers she had in her car would have legitimized the Greysons as the baby’s parents wherever they went. Forrester says this is going to be a long legal nightmare for the Palmers unless they can extract a confession. Forrester send Vo in to speak to Cosmina.
Cosmina says that originally the deal was she was giving the baby to the Americans, but 3 weeks before she was due, Felicia contacted her and said that another opportunity had come up. Cosmina said this was a lifechanging sin for her so she could not turn the money down. So she had to make the Americans go away.
Forrester confirms that at first she ghosted the Palmers, but when that did not work, she had to tell them it was a stillbirth to send them packing. Forrester asks if Howard Greyson was aware that the baby belonged to another couple, and Cosmina says she is not sure and she wish she knew. She says she can confirm that Dennis and Amy are the biological parents. Kellett says this was likely a trial run for Felicia, and if it worked there could have been repeats of the same. Forrester tells Hofer that they just pulled the plug on a new black market and saved thousands of young women from being exploited. He says unfortunately Greyson has an army of lawyers and that they are sticking to their story. Kellett confronts the Greysons as they are leaving the station and warns them that if Felicia flips and says it was they who approached her, they would be coming for them next.
Raines comes to tell them the Palmers just arrived. They bring them in the baby. They smile and you can see the joy on the faces of the team to see such a positive conclusion to the case.
Back in Budapest, the team is at the bar and Smitty asks the team if they ever see themselves having kids. Kellett is not sure, but Raines says that will make her a great mom, and Andre seems to be a yes. We then see Scott outside the store that Kellett had told him about watching men exchange money. So just as we would expect, even when one case is done, Scott is still helping out someone in need.
