Slow Horses Recap: Checkmate

If Slow Horses weren’t such a briskly entertaining piece of escapism, then it read as an almost unfathomably bleak assessment of the spy game. In previous seasons, we’ve seen how Diana Taverner has occasionally attempted to manipulate Slough House to her own ends, to the point where Jackson accepts such betrayals as part of the job. This is why he scoffed at Ingrid Tearney’s offer to escort the rogue Tiger Team into the outside facility to look at the Grey Books; he didn’t see it as a career opportunity as River eventually would but as another in a series of traps. For Jackson, Slough House is not some purgatory from which he might emerge if he does his job well. It’s home. And it’s home because the Park’s leadership is so outrageous and venal.

But a word like cynical doesn’t even begin to describe the delicious cartoon villainy of Diana and Ingrid cracking open a bottle of 18-year-old McCallan and waiting to see who will emerge victorious in a deadly firefight between MI5 agents that they’ve engineered. The bottle was a gift from Diana after Ingrid got appointed to First Desk. “My most generous gift by some margin,” says Ingrid. “Which made me think you were trying to cover your envy with your generosity.” That’s certainly true because the spy games they’re currently playing put that coveted seat up for grabs again. “I’m tired of waiting,” admits Diana. “I’ll never get First Desk if I wait for you to retire. They’ll find someone younger.”

And so it goes, this decadent drink between rivals, as their own agents are out in the field killing each other. Not a great look for MI5! Until this episode, we had no idea what Alison Dunn had found in Istanbul that was so important that she was murdered for it, prompting Sean and Alison’s siblings to embark on a desperate, high-risk quest to get to the truth. Now we know: Ingrid had endorsed a device that would hack encrypted computers wirelessly. (“It could penetrate closed systems,” she says. “It would have been a game-changer. If it worked.”) When Ingrid’s plan backfired, and Alison looked to play whistleblower, she had her wiped out, along with hospitalizing other innocents and nearly getting a senior North Korean spy killed, too. Ingrid would lose her job if anyone were to find out.

So this entire season has been about Ingrid and Diana moving pieces around the board. Diana has been working behind the scenes to give all the support she can to Sean and the Tiger Team in getting what they want — including that one crucial moment where she helped River infiltrate the Park as part of the “test” — and Ingrid has been using the resources at her disposal, chiefly meatheads like Duffy and his “Dogs,” to suppress the threat. With River and Louisa joining Sean and Ben in rooting through the outside facility for the incriminating “Footprint” file, Duffy has been ordered to “clean up,” which is the most polite possible way to say “slaughter every last one of your colleagues.”

Until now, Duffy has mainly been a dumb lunk, the sort of henchman a skilled spy like River can work around with comical ease. But he grows into a considerably darker and more formidable presence in “Cleaning Up” because he sets about the task Ingrid has assigned him with no conscience. He knows it’s a cover-up. And he knows his rivalry with River has shifted to an order to flush him out like a rat and murder him. But he doesn’t give it a second thought. In the episode’s darkest scene, Duffy interrogates the poor, stammering file clerk Douglas after his team had captured him unarmed during the raid on the facility. When Douglas, who knows mostly nothing, mentions Ingrid, that’s enough for Duffy to shoot him in the head. Again, not a second thought.

None of this seems to have anything to do with British national security, but it’s unquestionably exciting to watch. It also makes real heroes out of the Slough House misfits, whose exile from the Park reads more than ever like a noble response to toxic leadership. The old MI5 brass was respected, but Diana and Ingrid are engaged in a lethal power struggle where neither of them are concerned about the body count. The big concern about the “Footprint” file getting out is that it will make Ingrid look bad enough to cost her a job, and it’s that threat of early retirement that killed Alison and Douglas and innumerable faceless agents. Slow Horses makes all of it tremendously fun, but MI5 sure looks like one screwed-up organization. What’s the pitch to recruits? “Come work for us! We might kill you!”

The final moments are quite a cliffhanger, with a grenade blast sending River flying behind a stack of file boxes, which here look like the castle walls that might save his life. Alison’s brother Ben is dead — that shot in the neck the instant he picked up a gun is a cruel end — and the other three in the room are facing an assault from the hallway and an exit where they’ll be target practice for professional gunmen. Their only hope? Two Slough House rejects who were just fired.

Naturally, oddsmakers would favor Ingrid prevailing in this situation. “Have they ever saved you before?” Louisa asks Diana of the “slow horses.” Her expression suggests that a reluctant admission that yes, they have, and yes, they may well again.

Shots

• Interesting expression from the escaped Chieftain hostage when he hears of Duffy’s “clean up” operation. He doesn’t look comfortable with the idea despite having no warm feelings toward Sean and his team. Something to file away, perhaps.

• “Lamb, do we kill our own?” It’s a little remarkable, given Catherine’s hatred for MI5, that even she seems aghast at this being a possibility. She’s somehow overestimated management.

• “I hit a shit streak which means a golden streak is coming,” says Marcus about his gambling addiction. Spoken like an extremely successful gambler.

• Spider helped Diana get a job for Sean at Chieftain by honoring her personal recommendation. Diana knew he would, she tells Ingrid, because Spider was “a man of venal instincts and very little imagination.” Is this an excerpt from his eulogy?

• Among the last things Douglas will ever say on earth: “I’ve got very slim stools.” RIP.