FBI: International – Glimmers and Ghosts – Review

In this episode, we not only get a chance to reunite with some past colleagues, but also learn more about their backstory and see Forrester and the team possibly help them to move forward from the past.

The episode opens in Berlin, Germany as an old man is walking home. He enters and he hears music playing. As he looks around all the photographs and pictures are upside down. A young man enters and asks him if his family knows who he really is and aims a gun at him. The man clicks a button and the young man tells him he can get in the noose and do it himself or he will shoot him and his whole family will learn who he really is. The man climbs up and hangs himself.

The team arrives and Raines tells them they have a case, Tobias Ganz, a 75-year-old German national. Kellett asks what that has to do with them and Katrin Jaeger enters on the screen to tell them. Katrin tells Scott she heard about him and Dandridge and that she can see she is not the only one who has dealt with “friendly fire”. Scott says the good thing is they are both still standing.

Katrin asks how Megan is doing and she tells her it is big shoes to fill but she is hanging in there. Katrin tells them the case is interesting as the main suspect appears to be an American male. They do not have his name or prints but have an audio recording of him. It was so wonderful not only to see Jaeger again, but clearly she has not forgotten her time with the Fly Team or their high skill set for investigation.

The team arrives in Berlin. Katrin introduces them to Detective Kai Drexler, who is leading the investigation. They ask how there is a recording of the murder and Katrin takes them inside. Tobias Ganz was a retired math teacher and widower. There were signs of forced entry in a window in the back but no signs of a struggle. Raines asks if there were security cameras and Drexler says no but when officers arrived, they heard a hissing sound inside of the console and they found the vintage recording device. It recorded a man with an American accent forcing Ganz into the noose. Katrin says they figure that when Ganz encountered the American man and realized he was in danger, he clicked the button to trigger the recording. Garretson says that she is guessing from the set up that Tobias Ganz was not just a retired math teacher and Katrin nods. She tells them he was Stasi.

Garretson gets the file from Europol and presents to the team. Tobias Ganz was an asset of Stasi, the secret police in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin wall, when Stasi had a huge network of informants and East Germans spying on their friends, families and neighbors. They also had a huge number of sleeper agents in West Germany, most who were never identified after the war. Kellett asks if they think he was one of these agents and Garretson says it is worse than that. Indigo was an elite Stasi unit that went after their opponents in the West with assassinations, torture and psy-ops. Europol always thought that Indigo was a myth, just stories of old men but now clearly that was incorrect.

Vo asks if there is anything on the tape that could help them identify the man, but Raines says of the 23 minutes, only the first 6 are useable as the rest is to fuzzy. It is clear though that the assailant forces Ganz into the noose and also he makes a statement that he is just the first, so he is not done killing yet. Vo asks how he even found Ganz in the first place and why would an American be targeting him, and Katrin says that that is the question.

Forrester says that first they need to identify the suspect and do that solely off his voice and asks Raines if he has any ideas. Raines says not really but he will give it a try and asks Vo to help him. Scott asks Katrin to get him everything she can on Indigo, and she says she knows someone who may be able to help. Kellett goes with her for back up. It was wonderful to see that Scott still has the same degree of trust he always had for Katrin and her knowledge and sources throughout Europe.

They go to meet Simon Ballack, who worked intelligence for West Germany before reunification. Katrin tells Kellett he was a spy hunter and part of the reason she became a police officer. He even gave her a watch when she graduated from the academy. He says he gets the impression this is not a social visit and Katrin says it is the old days they need to talk about. They ask him what he knows about Indigo and he says it was a Stasi team of 5 men working in West Berlin, and it was compartmentalized so each man reported to his superior only. Simon says this means only one person knew the identity of the entire unit. Indigo focused on psychological warfair and the destabilization of the person’s life. He said they would sneak into someone’s home and put the stove on, tilt paintings on the wall, plant evidence of crimes and break up families. Rumors were they even went after children. He says the Stasi were ruthless and efficient and they never made mistakes, and that Indigo was the worst of the worst. Simon says they spent years looking for them but only found glimmers and ghosts.

Katrin tells him that they found a member of the unit, and Simon asks if he has admitted to it, but Kellett says he did not have a chance because he was murdered by an American. They ask for everything he has on Indigo so they can work to find this American or who his next target may be, but Simon says no, which is definitely a surprise given his relationship with Jaeger, and definitely suspicious. Katrin says that people are still in danger but Ballack says that the past is a dangerous place, and that she should know that better than anyone. Katrin asks again and he agrees to send them what he has. It does leave however the question of what he meant by she should know better than anyone.

Vo and Raines use special voice analysis from Quantico and run the analysis against passport photos for Americans staying or living in Berlin. Forrester also asks them to run it against anyone with priors. They narrow it down to one man. Paul Kennard is a 39 year old from Illinois with previous minor drug offences who was born in West Berlin, but his citizenship was revoked when he was adopted by an American couple and he reapplied to have it reinstated last month. The address listed on the application belongs to an Anna Dahns, 35, who is on probation.

Raines, Garretson and Drexler go to the apartment. Drexler goes to speak to the neighbors while Megan and Andre search the apartment. There is a note on the table that says “Anna, I am sorry”. Garretson finds Anna at the elevator. Anna attacks her and runs away but Smitty catches her and they take her to the station.

She is not talking and Forrester says they will need some kind of leverage and asks Raines if there was anything on her phone and he says there was a video of Kennard and they ran the voice and it is a full match to the recording from the crime scene, but he also found something else. Raines discovered that Paul and Anna are siblings. They do not know who their birth parents are but they know that in 1989 they were orphaned. The only family they had was an uncle living in America but he refused to accept both children so Paul was shipped off to Illinois at 6 years old, and after his uncle died he was shuttled through the foster care system, abused and suffered addiction and was homeless. Anna was 3 and placed with a family in Hamburg but she has been in and out of jail since she was 14.

Forrester asks how they found each other and Vo says they found each other on an ancestry app about a year ago. Raines says they are still missing something and why did he reconnect with his sister but then come to Germany to hunt down ex-Stasi spies, and Kellett says they also need to know how he got the names and wonders if Anna is helping him somehow. Garretson says they may have an answer to that. They tracked down footage from near Ganz’s house and discover that she was near the crime scene shortly before the murder and Scott says he has the leverage they need to get her to start to talk to them.

Scott and Katrin go in to question Anna and show her a picture of Tobias after he was killed by her brother. They ask if she was in on it and that is why she was at Ganz’s house and she says she does not know what he is talking about. They ask her why Kennard is targeting Stasi men and she says if he was Stasi he got what he deserved. Scott asks what Paul deserves for killing him or what she deserves for helping him and she says he has no idea what he is talking about and that she was trying to stop him but she got there too late. They ask where he is going next and ask her about the note. Katrin says Paul is angry and she does not know why but that anger destroys everything in its path, and if she cares about him she will tell them what is going on. Anna tells them it is because of what the Stasi did to them, and what they did to their father.

Simon tells them that Ewald Haverts was an economics professor at the University of Berlin and was a critic of communism. He had a young family and right before the wall came down, he was accused of harassing a female student and his wife Elsa died in a drunk driving accident. He says he could never prove it, but he felt it was a covert operation and it broke Haverts mentally and emotionally and he hung himself in his own home. His son found him.

Forrester says that somehow Paul Kennard identified the 5 members of the unit and is now hunting them down for what they did to his family. Kellett says if the harassment complaint was part of the covert op then the woman who made it may have had direct contact with Indigo, so Raines says he is on it to find her online. This was such a great example of the out of the box thinking that the team uses to find leads to solve their cases.

Forrester says for the team to check in with shelter and clinics as Kennard spent half his life on the street and knows how to stay off the grid. Raines finds the person who made the complaint, Dr. Lena Volen, who is a professor now, and Raines and Kellett go to speak with her.

Scott goes to check on Katrin, who left as they were discussing Dr. Volen, and she says this case is bringing things back. She tells him she grew up in East Berlin, the “wrong side of the wall” and she remembers skipping meals and stuffing newspapers in her pyjamas to stay warm, but that her family was happy despite this until the day her father found a listening device in their living room. She says she can understand how Paul Kennard feels. This was not only a moment where we can really see Scott’s softer side and how much he cares for his teammates, but also was evidence of what it was that Simon was talking about earlier, and a glimpse into what makes Katrin who she is.

Raines and Kellett go to speak with Dr. Volen and she says Haverts was her professor, a good man and a fierce critic of the soviet system. They ask why she accused him of harassment and stalking in 1989 and she says a man approached her that fall before classes and he knew her name and that she had a half-sister in East Berlin, and if she didn’t do what he asked they would send her sister to an East German prison, so to protect her sister she said she ruined a good man’s life and destroyed his family and she has had to live with that every day since.

Raines tells her to make it right and help them find the people who did this and she says she did not get the name of the man who approached her because he was too careful for that but she says she remembered his face and ten years ago she saw it again. She pulls a file from her desk and says she was reading an article about a fundraiser and saw him and shows them the picture. Raines does a search and they find out his name is Michael Berkoff and he is an Austrian financer for the charity whose photo he was in. Kellett and Raines go to his home and find the door open. They search the house and find him with his wife, who has been shot.

They ask him if Kennard is the one who attacked them. Berkoff says he was in the house when they got home, they fought and he shot her and then seem scared and ran away. Berkoff admits that he was Indigo and that he was not in charge and that Haverts did not kill himself, they killed him and staged the scene, and it was the same with his wife also. He said he has no reason to hide his secrets anymore and that he reported to Tobias Ganz, who was second in command. They tell him Ganz is dead and that the man who shot his wife is the same man who killed Ganz. He says that Stasi had them document all operations and it is all in the Indigo file.

Forrester goes to see Anna and asks where the Indigo file is, and ask if Paul still has it. Anna asks how they know about it and Raines tells her that he just tried to kill another person. She asks if Paul is okay and they tell her that he killed Berkoff’s wife and she says he would never do that, but they tell her he already did. Anna says they have no idea what he has been through and Forrester says he has killed twice now and if she doesn’t want a third murder on her conscience she needs to help them.

Anna says after they found each other, Paul started to clean up his life, saved some money and came to Berlin. She said after he arrived here and they started researching they found out their father had left them a safety deposit box. They found the file in there and they did not know how he had it but it is how they learned the truth about what happened to him and them. Before he disappeared, Paul gave her the file for safe keeping.

They get the file and go through it. There are 5 Stasi names and 2 have died of natural causes. The only name left that they do not have on the list is the director. His name is missing from the file. Berkoff said all the info was in the file so the sooner they find the directors name the better, as he is likely Paul’s next target. They all continue to review the file pages, and Kellett comes in to say Anna got a text from an unknown number that says 3 minutes. Forrester asks Raines to set up a trace.

Scott confronts her about lying to him and says they are still communicating, but Paul is using burner phones and tells her to call him. They tell her this is the only chance to help him. She asks Paul if he is okay and he says he is. He tells her that Ganz told him the name of the director. She tells him to walk away while he still can. She says she got his message. She tells him to get out of Berlin and that the FBI is listening. Raines was not able to get a trace and Anna says she can’t lose him again, but Scott tells her she already has, and he is trying to stop her going down with him.

Forrester returns to the team and says that Kennard has his final target and who that is in the pages of that file and does anyone have anything yet. Vo and Katrin say there is nothing they have seen so far that identifies the director. Scott tells them all to stay on it because the clock is ticking and goes to speak with Katrin.

Katrin tells Scott a story about when she was 7 her father took her to a park and told her to wait, and he abandoned them and escaped over the wall. Her mother was subsequently arrested for complacency and that was the end of her family. She says she was so angry for so long. She went to her aunt’s in West Berlin, who was Simon Ballack’s maid. This not only was some very interesting insight into Katrin, but also showed a possible reason why she has always been able to demonstrate empathy for some of the criminals they hunt who have a traumatic past.

Garretson comes to speak to them and says they found something. Vo found microscopic information hidden in the messages. They find out the Director is Simon Ballack, and that the former head of counterintelligence was a sleeper agent. Katrin goes with them and they break into his home and he is holding a gun to Kennard’s head. They tell him to drop the gun. Simon says that Paul tried to kill him and that he is crazy. Katrin tells him to put the gun down and that they found the Indigo file. Simon says in some ways he knew this day would come and he is glad it is her. He tries to shoot himself in the head but there are no bullets in the gun and they take him and Kennard into custody. Kennard says his sister had nothing to do with it and it was all him. Clearly this moment was heart-wrenching for Jaeger, who has to accept that someone she has looked up to for many years is a criminal too.

Forrester goes in to speak with Anna and tells her it is over. He says Paul is in custody and is going away for a long time, and she asks about the man that did this to them and Scott says different justice. He tells her the next few years will be difficult but to hold onto the family she has and that he got her five minutes to speak to him. This scene really showed Scott’s compassion for Anna, and you have to wonder if this has to do with his past experience with his mother, which allows him to better understand how Anna might be feeling.

Scott tells them that Paul is being charged with the murders of Ganz and Berkoff’s wife and Katrin says that the German system will not go easy on him. Raines says in a way he is a victim too and that should count for something. They ask about Anna and Katrin says she will be charged with conspiracy and aiding and abetting, and so there are no winners here. Vo says there was a lot more in the micro dot about Anna and Paul’s parents and that Ewald and Elsa Haverts were Stasi spies and they spied for East Germany for years and then switched sides and stole the Indigo file for leverage. Forrester asks after all they went through, do Paul and Anna really need to know this. This showed again Forrester’s strong leadership within the team but also that he has compassion for people who are also victims.

Katrin goes in to speak to Simon. She says she is not there for an explanation and he apologizes to her for lying and hurting her. He says the world will pass judgement on him soon enough but the only person who’s opinion he cares about is hers. She says eventually when she looks back, it will be like he was never there, like another piece of lost history. She also returns to him the watch he gave her when she graduated. Clearly, this was an extremely difficult conversation for Jaeger, but also shows her professionalism and the fact that perhaps she wanted closure.

Katrin goes back to visit the bench she was sitting on when her father disappeared and Scott finds her, and brings her a hot chocolate. Again, this is such a great example of what a compassionate and kind leader and friend Forrester is. They see a father and daughter walk by. He asks if it is how she remembers it and she tears up.

There is no doubt that this episode was a very difficult case for Katrin, and it was so wonderful to see the support and expertise the Fly Team provided not only to bring closure to the case, but to perhaps help support her to move forward from this incident, and how it has changed her past.

Let us know what you thought about this episode in the comments below.