Episode 2

The plan comes apart almost before it begins. Famy, the youngest of the surviving terrorists, has to admit to a disbelieving McCoy that he has no idea how the assassination was meant to be carried out — the men who held the plan are dead, and he is improvising from nothing. Matters get worse when a woman stumbles across the pair at their safe flat and starts rifling through their belongings, and the panicky Famy kills her. The murder sends the two men on the run and hands Jones exactly what he wanted: fugitives, he reasons, are in no shape to hit a protected scientist. Jimmy is not convinced, and Jones reads the disappointment in him at once, accusing his agent of wanting a ringside seat while the terrorists do their worst. For Jimmy the chase is the point.

The episode gives Sokarev one of its smallest, most human beats. Before flying to London, he says goodbye to his wife, forbidden from travelling with him; in the embrace his eyes dart with fear before a brave face snaps into place. Elsewhere, the ideological chasm between the two terrorists widens. Famy speaks of the suffering of his people and the honour of martyrs; McCoy tells him to shut up. The Irishman is Provisional IRA, but he has no appetite for a suicide mission — a distinction Famy cannot begin to understand, though the older man keeps a grudging sympathy for him anyway.

Norah's world intrudes on the violence too. We meet her stifling suburban home: the father who, hearing the news of the flat murder, mutters that the culprit deserves to hang, the mother who knows nothing of her daughter's boyfriend. Norah now understands exactly what kind of man McCoy is, and it changes nothing — her love overrides every warning. Whether McCoy feels anything for her in return, or is simply using her as cover, the episode deliberately leaves open.

The climax is an assassination attempt that feels decades out of date, which is rather the point. Famy's plan is a rifle through a ground-floor window of the lecture hall where Sokarev is due to speak. The street has been cordoned, but the windows themselves are left unguarded — a lapse Jones blames on stretched resources. Famy and McCoy sprint across the road, McCoy boosts his partner through the glass, and Famy opens fire. He is a poor shot: he sprays the room, hits nothing, and in desperation hurls a grenade inside. Mackiewicz, one of Sokarev's own men, throws himself on it and dies protecting his charge — a chilling reminder that a bodyguard's job is sometimes simply to be the one who takes the blast.

Wounded in a brief gunfight outside, McCoy drags himself back to the getaway car, only to discover that Famy cannot drive. The badly injured Irishman takes the wheel, with Jimmy in pursuit close behind. The hit is botched, the partnership fractured, and the hunt enters its final act with two damaged men and one obsessive agent still in the race.