Michael Westen was now the worse thing that a spy could be: somebody's asset; all because he had broken a top rule of spy-ness: don't get attached. To him, there was no other choice now than to let himself be Anson Fullerton's minion. It was either that or Fiona would go to prison "forever" on trumped up charges Anson had created. Michael was deposed by Agent Pierce in order to recover his security clearance and was told only that the CIA liked working with him just as they always had: a non-acknowledged, burned spy. She asked: "we are aware of your past affiliation with a network of burned spies. To the best of your knowledge does any trace of that network still exist." And, with an engaging smile he answered like Max had told him he should, and Anson wanted him to: "No. All of that’s over now." Later, when Anson butted in and was told "it's none of your business" he warned "while there may be some doubt whether you work for the CIA, there is absolutely no doubt that you work for me." "What do you want," Mike asked. Anson blamed Mike for putting him back on the radar and demanded that he go to Puerto Rico and capture Oswald Patterson, the inventor of "Voidbot" which would erase all traces of someone from legal databases undetectably – and he wouldn't listen to the fact that the CIA was watching his travel. "Don't do it for me," Anson advised, "Do it for love… for Fiona." At the Carlito Sam used a great deal of finesse to get Mike to say the words "You mean my mother?!" and twist it into pretending he had actually suggested using Madeline for a "little scheme" that he and Jesse had cooked up to see what evidence the cops actually had on Fiona. Then the writer played his usual dumb as a stump routine and had Fiona argue that Mike shouldn't help Anson… duh, what plan "B" did she have in mind? Mike agreed to take Fiona along to extract Oswald.
Jesse convinced Madeline that their job was "not stealing. It is more like borrowing without asking." Jesse had set her up with a fake ID, so it wouldn't blow back on anyone, and had listed her age a lot younger which flattered her in to helping. They needed to teach her how to extract information from the DRAM chip so she could do it on the laptop of the lead detective on Fiona's case. Madeline pretended to have been walking near the crime scene and to have talked about it to her hair-dresser, who was the girlfriend of Jesse, a former CIFA guy. Jesse got him out of the room while Madeline looked at mug shots; but, they returned just as she was putting the chip reader back in her purse so the detective challenged her. She quickly confessed that it was only her cigarettes and he let her off. She acted like she was confused whether it was a black guy or while guy that she saw so the detective told her that he had heard enough. At the Carlito, Sam and Jesse were going over what they had found when Anson sent drinks over to their table. He butted in to their conversation to let them know that HE knew what they'd done and what they found - "I prefer to think that the police are just one key clue away from solving the case and arresting Fiona." He told them to tell Mike that the police had nothing yet but could have if he didn't cooperate. He also warned them that they shouldn't have any ideas of following him. "It's official," Sam said when he left "the guys a dick."
In Puerto Rico they spotted Oswald's heavily fortified compound. Fiona agreed to go set up an explosive "diversion" at the front gate along with a gun battle. Michael waited at the back for the guards to exit then sneaked in and snatched Oswald. He was a frantic little weasel who tried every excuse to avoid going back to Florida and claimed that his name was Carlos Manuel which was really only the cover ID the government gave him and Mike knew it. Mike pushed him in front of him through doors then put a life-jacket on him and threw him in the ocean. They all met further up the beach and got back to Miami where Oswald completely refused to talk; until that is, Mike said
"Ok, I'll let you go and call the police to confess I brought you back. And I should probably call the newspapers to let everyone know you are ok." That got him to finally reveal that he had been hired for $10 million by a drug king-pin, Xavier, to create a viral program which would erase his name from all databases so he could go
"all cash." He received half the money up front but just as he had it ready the feds busted him and Oswald agreed to give the feds the program in exchange for protection and a new ID. He revealed that the feds now had the program in one of their labs, but that he had built a "back-door" way to get in and retrieve it should he ever need to. The keys and codes, unfortunately, had been given to "an associate" (really his girlfriend) for safe keeping. When they arrived at Sherry's house they found that she had put the TV in her storage shed across town; unfortunately, she had also called Xavier to tell him that Oswald had returned. She told Oswald that she was sorry but Xavier had found her and threatened to kill her if she didn't call him when Oswald returned. Mike had to pretend to "capture" and threaten to kill Oswald in order to get past Xavier. Back at the loft Oswald asked if they could get Sherry out of town and Fiona called in a favor from Lewis, one of her smuggler friends to take her to the Dominican Republic. At the boat, Sherry told Fiona that she met Oswald by hacking into his credit cards. When he traced her down he asked her on a date.
Mike tied Oswald to a pipe as lookout while he went into the storage to get the key cards. Oswald began screaming that Xavier had found them and instead of untying Oswald, Mike ran to a fork lift and drove it into Xavier's car, dumping a container on its roof. Oswald was very impressed and when Mike was exiting the car at the secret lab where the virus was kept, Oswald stopped him and confessed that the vault was secured by micro-rfid tags which would attach to his clothes and activate once out of the building. He said that when Mike was capturing him, he wanted Mike to get caught. But Mike told him that he was being made to retrieve the virus and was trying to do it without anyone getting hurt. Back at the loft, and now that Sam and Jesse were done with their chore, Oswald was introduced to them.
"Don't any of your friends ever smile," Oswald asked. They devised another scheme: they were going to let Xavier get it for them. Mike said
"we let Xavier get the keys and when the FBI grabs him that solves the 'wanting me dead' thing too." Then all they had to do was grab Xavier and copy the disk under a bridge or somewhere that the Feds couldn't watch from the sky. Oswald was supposed to call and say that he escaped from Mike and offer to give Xavier the keys for $200,000. It happened just that way and Xavier never realized he was tagged. Mike intercepted him under an overpass in a dump truck and Fiona held them at gunpoint while the disk was copied. She told him
"don't think of it as robbery, think of it as sharing at gunpoint." Just after Xavier drove off every Fed in every car, hum-vee and helicopter in Florida converged on his car. When Fiona took Oswald to the smugglers boat he told her to tell Mike that the virus was
"not a good thing and whoever he's getting it for is not a good person." He said
"tell him that I found out some roads you go down, you can't get back from." "Yea, we know," she told him.
Mike told Madeline thanks for helping and she said that she had already talked to Sam and asked if he was really going to turn over this virus to that man. Mike told her that Anson had Fi dead-to-rights so he had no other choice. He said that Anson would probably then disappear and he would track him down some day. He told her that the CIA was beginning to trust him just when they shouldn't – she said
"for what it's worth, they should trust you." In voice-over Mike said that when a spy lost track of the noble purpose which guided him through the darkness, then
"the darkness is all there is." Pierce told him that the agency gave him his security clearance and that they would have some jobs for him soon, so in the meantime:
"go celebrate. Just remember, from now on only tell the lies we want you to tell." On a bench at the beach, Anson told him
"you know what the secret to happiness is? Wanting what you have." Mike told him
"I want everything you have on Fiona" and was rebuffed with
"having the virus in your hands doesn't help me. I want it in the CIA computer system." He already knew about the security clearance. Mike thought that was incredible and Anson countered with
"I know you (i.e. He sounds like he's channeling now-dead-Larry). The martyr complex, the daddy issues, the problems with authority all tell you to fight this. But you've got to realize how smart I am. Why do you think I'm so comfortable with telling you that I own you? Because it's true. Unless you are willing to see your girlfriend go to prison for the rest of her life you will do exactly what I say." Anson merely got up and left saying he'd see Mike soon.
