After Berlin, the task force is more or less destroyed. However, Berlin keeps quiet, and life continues…and so does Reddingston's list. There's always another criminal to catch. This one forces Ressler to go undercover, with the rest of the team for backup.

Lizzie distrusts Red, but accepts him as one of the good guys. As this is still the Rinse and Repeat 'verse, she and Ressler are not having a relationship…except that they do, sometimes.

So, we've had Ressler hurt and feverish, we've had him angsty and drunk, we've had sex and hurt/comfort. Now what's missing….ahh, high. Let's see what we can do with that, shall we? And if I can manage, I'll add some violence, misery and mental anguish.

Let's see if I can't make this a proper blacklist case.

RINSE AND REPEAT 3: The Best Made Deals

PROLOGUE

Berlin had left the taskforce, called affectionately the Post office by those belonging to it, shell shocked and adrift…for a time. For the three months following Berlin's violent knock on Reddington's door, all remaining agents walked around with a wild look in their eyes, jumping at shadows, paranoid and constantly afraid.

Lizzie Keen spent hours thinking about changing her last name, taking Sam's again…but her hatred of the man whose name she now carried seemed insignificant compared to the horror she had unwittingly caused her colleagues and everyone she knew. She kept her name and changed address every couple of weeks. During the nights, she dreamed of Tom and Meera Malik, and about fire and bullets ripping apart flesh.

Berlin kept quiet. For weeks, they expected him to show himself in an explosion of terror and flames, but the earth seemed to have swallowed him.

Donald Ressler woke and got up the day after Harold Cooper had regained consciousness, left his apartment and found himself unable to continue halfway his early morning running workout, convinced he was being followed and suddenly terrified to end up in the dewy grass with a slit throat. He wasn't the kind of man who was afraid of the unseen; he didn't have the imagination to spook himself, but standing there, alone in the park, feet frozen to the concrete and fear beating in his throat, he felt so vulnerable and exposed he might as well be five years old and completely helpless. Nothing happened, but he stopped running—for another week.

Meera Malik was buried six days after she was murdered. Harold Cooper was unable to attend, but Aram, Lizzie and Ressler were at her funeral, which was dignified and beautiful, and terrible. A great many people had turned up to share stories of their relationship with Meera, telling Lizzie more about her colleague than she'd ever knew or, indeed, wanted to know. It was so much more horrible to lose a close friend than to lose a colleague you liked, and by the end of the many, many speeches, she felt as if she'd been cheated out of a best friend, instead of a fellow agent. Meera's daughter sang to her mother for the last time in a painfully high, clear soprano, but broke down on the last refrain and had to be led back to her chair by her father. The grief of the widower and two young children crashed over the assembled crowd like a wave: a young, beloved mother who couldn't be missed. Lizzie and Aram stayed behind for the informal gathering afterwards, but Ressler fled, eyes downcast and miserable, haunted by the fact that she'd been killed with him only a couple of yards away, and that he hadn't been able to protect her. The evening following her funeral he went running again, almost hoping he'd be targeted, but all he got was sore muscles. When he got back, he found Lizzie waiting in her car in front of his door. "I want to feel alive," she said. He let her in without another word.

Reddington, like Berlin, had disappeared, but unlike Berlin, did get in touch once every couple of weeks. He was tracing leads, he said, and taking care of things, everything vague and unclear. Lizzie wasn't certain how she felt about him now. She was glad he was still alive, and free, and not being tortured, but sometimes she felt bitter about his blithe waltzing in and out of her life, as if he hadn't torn it to shreds and left her with a handful of pieces. But even the bitterness settled and for the first time in several months, Lizzie found herself able to relax, alone at home, and when he sent her the most outrageous bunch of roses on her birthday, she placed them in a vase and sat staring at them, smiling, for several minutes.

And so, slowly, life righted itself as life was wont to do. The taskforce was reinstated, files were updated, and the search for Berlin continued. Berlin remained stubbornly hidden.

Cooper returned to the Post office, first for a few hours each week, looking old and bent and with a voice sounding like tyres on a pebble beach, but then a few hours each day, and finally full time again. Four weeks after his reinstitution, Reddington sent Lizzie the name of a terrorist and they spent five days hunting the man down. Other cases presented themselves, keeping them unexpectedly busy.

Meera's position remained vacant. There were a few rounds of applications, but because Cooper was disinclined to spend his valuable time interviewing applicants after turning down two agents, no one was added to the team.

Lizzie and Ressler were fine with it. Replacing Malik so soon seemed callous, even though Cooper warned them that he needed more active agents than just the two of them. They realized, somewhat surprised, that it had been three months since she'd been killed and they'd almost lost their boss, and went to Ressler's bar to drink to her memory. And then they ended up in bed again, as was almost tradition by now. Neither of them was exactly comfortable with the morning after, but the awkwardness at work was gone. Ressler had pegged down their relationship as 'co-workers slash sex friends', which he never, ever voiced aloud because he didn't think he'd be able to pronounce the word 'sex friends' without a Japanese accent, and didn't want Liz to know he was aware of the existence of such movies. Lizzie, admittedly after several glasses of bourbon, had them classified as 'no strings attached fuck buddies'. It was odd, she thought, to semi-regularly sleep with a man she liked but had no romantic feelings about, but after the past one and a half year, after killing Tom, common morality didn't feel applicable to her.

Another problem was her paranoia. She'd been betrayed so many times it was hard to start trusting people again. She discussed it with Ressler, during one of those rare post-coital moments they shared without either of them being drunk or in a hurry to leave this depraved scene of intimacy.

She'd asked him "How do I know if I can trust you?" and was somewhat surprised by his answer.

"Why would you want to trust me?"

"Because there isn't anyone else anymore."

Ressler had smiled self-deprecatingly. "Then you'd better start looking for someone else fast. Look, no offence, but I'm not really the kind of person you want to rely on."

Lizzie had frowned. If anyone was reliable, it was Ressler. Neither Audrey nor Meera Malik's death had been his fault, and not even his responsibility, no matter how he saw it. And she did trust him, always had, she supposed.

Somehow, he had read her mind and scowled. "Don't go trusting me because I told you you couldn't. I don't use reverse psychology."

Despite herself she'd laughed. "You know, Ressler, you manage to surprise me every time."

"Every time?"

"Every time I think I have you pegged down. You're not…you don't…you're not who I think you are."

He'd shrugged. "I'm a very simple man, with very simple needs. Last year, I wanted to bring Reddington down. Then I found out that there are even more despicable people and that he can help me bring them down. So, at the moment, I'm forced to work with him. Fine. When the time comes, I still want to be the one to clap him in irons and toss away the key."

Lizzie hadn't been certain she agreed with him. Neither, she'd thought, was Ressler himself. Red had saved his life twice, and Ressler wasn't past working with Reddington if the situation demanded it. She'd said so: "But you make use of him."

"It'd be stupid not to. Berlin is out there. Reddington's here, or at least reachable; he's not going away, his status isn't going to be revoked any time soon, and he has resources no one else has. I try to see him as an asset."

"An ASSET! Reddington?" She'd laughed, then sighed. "I trust him as well, you know. But only that he doesn't want to hurt me. That he wants what best for me in the end. But I don't know why, and he won't tell me."

"Then don't trust him, or trust him as far as you yourself are concerned."

"And what about you?" She'd turned to look up at him. "What are your intentions as far as I am concerned?"

He'd looked studiously blank. "I don't have any, really."

"None?"

"No. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying this…" he'd shrugged the shoulder she was lying on and tightened his grip on her hip, indicating her, and the bed, and the fact that they were both naked beneath the sheet, "but it's not leading anywhere. Is it?" he'd asked, suddenly anxious.

She had done some soul-searching. Nope, she still didn't love him and while she liked having sex with him, she was in no hurry to take whatever it was they had any further.

"No."

"Well then. No intentions. That's not to say I don't want to keep you safe. That's a bit of a prerequisite to continue doing this."

"What if I find someone new?"

"Then we stop having sex."

Now that was somewhat disappointing, somehow. Males should display a certain degree of possessiveness, in her opinion, if only to make their mates feel appreciated. But that was the whole crux now, wasn't it? They weren't mates, they weren't even friends, and they actually took pains to appear the opposite.

Why can't it be less complicated? It would be so much easier if I did love Ressler. Fat chance there. At that moment she hadn't even liked him. At all. Trust him, yes, like him, no. Much like half a year ago. Some things remained the same even if everything else changed.

One evening she went out on a date with a cute young lawyer she'd befriended at the gym and who'd asked her out with an honest to god rose in a cellophane wrap, but while she had a pleasant time, she was unable to relax and take anything the poor man said at face value. Ressler was completely supportive of her dating another man, encouraging her to do it more often, but after spending the next morning obsessively digging up Jordan Mavy's personal records, she concluded she wasn't ready for another relationship. Three days later she found herself sleeping soundly next to Ressler, who hadn't ever been able to create as much as a single butterfly—not even a caterpillar, really—in her stomach, might not be funny or charming (unless he was drunk or hung-over, when she thought he was hilarious), but dependable, trustworthy and really good in the sack, and decided that she and Ressler were both a bit fucked up after everything that had happened.

Berlin remained elusive. One time, Reddington sent the Post office information about his possible whereabouts, but the trail was cold by the time they arrived in Russia. And then Reddington began showing his face in person again, leading several operations unrelated to Berlin himself. Once, Lizzie asked him whether he thought that Berlin might be her father, mistakenly thinking she'd been cut into small pieces and sent to him bit by bit. "Your father is dead," he repeated. "Please believe me that you are better off not knowing who he was, but trust me, he is dead."

Slowly, the name Berlin began to drop down their hit list. He was never gone, but other names bumped themselves up, more urgent threats reared their ugly heads.

They disposed of several of the names on the Blacklist.

Lizzie was clipped in the arm by a criminal named Cavalles. Ressler shot him down twenty-four hours later.

Life, in all its strange, horrific, boring, insane normalcy, continued. Reddington still had his Blacklist and his reasons for keeping it, and Lizzie still had to find out who he was to her. She was wary of him the way she'd been when she'd just met him, but she no longer hated him. After all, he had given himself up for her. If there was one thing he had proved to her, it was that he wanted to protect her, even if that meant she would hate him for it. But she no longer hated him. The status quo had re-established itself.

1.

Donald Ressler was an orderly man. He liked his life to be ordered, and took pleasure in carrying out his routines to keep both himself and his house well-maintained and orderly as well. It started with his hair. He was what doting mothers and fiancées would call 'strawberry blonde', what artistic people liked to label 'pale ginger', and what he himself thought of as a nondescript 'fair' but had to admit was really 'reddish'. As long as he kept it short and gelled back, it covered his scalp like a dark blondish, copper-in-the-sunlight cap; once he let it grow longer than two inch, it became lighter and redder and had a tendency to curl, which he hated. His facial hair, if he let it grow, which he only did when he was sick or on holiday, and then only because Audrey had liked it, was a shade darker with a few dozen startlingly bright red hairs in it. To maintain order, Ressler had his hair mowed short every four weeks, and shaved his jaws every day.

His morning routine was strict, if not outrageous: he got up at six-fifteen, thought about Audrey, checked his second freezer, put on running clothes, drank a cup of coffee, went running for half an hour, returned home and had breakfast, shaved and brushed his teeth in the shower, donned his suit and went to the Post office. If he didn't have time for breakfast, he'd pick it up on his way to work; he took another road to the Post office every day and rolled a dice to select one of the eight different routes he'd mapped out after Berlin. Every route featured at least one bakery, and he sometimes cheated a little if he felt like a particular kind of sandwich only available at Elliot's Plaza or Claire's Bakery. The dice he used was a d8, an eight-sided dice, and he'd had it (and several other strangely-shaped dice) since he was twelve and had tried his hand at Roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons, Shadowrun and Cyberspace. It hadn't been a great success; somehow, he'd been entirely unable to see himself as a Paladin dwarf with a magical sword and his teenaged friends as grungy elves or natural born killers. But he still had the dice, and they now helped him run his routines.

It was therefore with a slight sense of misgivings that he read the ominously polite and prosy text message on his phone that appeared just as he arrived, pleasantly winded, back at his apartment at 7.00 sharp in the morning.

Good morning, Agent Ressler.

I may have need of you within the following three days. It concerns a short period of undercover infiltration. In preparation of this possible job, could you find it in you to not shave and not visit any hairdresser's? I promise you this state of unkemptness will not last if it turns out to be unnecessary. Meet me at 11 Neville rd. I have already notified Harold.

R.

"What now?" Ressler sighed. But he went through the rest of his morning routine and skipped shaving, which made him feel strangely unfinished and, indeed, a little unkempt. It wasn't very noticeable; his beard didn't grow that fast, but the rasp of stubble was annoying. He didn't think he'd ever faced his colleagues any way but clean-shaven—well, apart from Liz Keen, that was, whom he'd faced stark naked and with a hangover. To his chagrin, as he opened his car door, the monthly notification in his phone popped up to tell him that today he was due for another mowing session.

I'm obviously beginning to become too dependable in my actions, he thought. He wondered how Reddington found out about these kinds of things. Did he hire people to spy on Ressler as he'd done with Keen, or did he see it as a form of leisure, or practice, perhaps, following Ressler around himself and making neat little notes on the ways he spent his time? He couldn't imagine Reddington caring enough about him to waste his own valuable time, so the brutal truth was most likely that he'd been followed by a boy on a skateboard or a young mother with a pram. For at least a month, no, make that two, if he knew about the haircut.

Painful.

He took a detour to Neville Road, if only to give skateboard-boy or pram-lady a solid workout. The road itself was long and winding, featuring several enormous houses spread thin over properties so large they made him sigh with envy. Number eleven was near the end of the road, stand-alone, and clearly not Reddington's, if he had to believe the plaque on the door.

The older man answered the door himself; Dembe must be out liquidating people, or having the car washed, or some sort of business.

"Ah, Agent Ressler!" Reddington said, ushering him inside and smiling as if seeing him this early in the morning came as a pleasant surprise to him. "How good of you to come so quickly. Come in, don't mind the mess." There was no mess to speak of, apart from an empty bottle of wine on the hideously expensive-looking kitchen table, two glasses, one sporting lipstick, a fat manila envelope and an empty coffee cup. Reddington himself looked remarkably fresh-faced and immaculate in a crisp white dress shirt and dark blue pants. Not having people after him howling for his blood must agree with him. He offered Ressler coffee, but he declined.

"Let me see—ah, you didn't shave. Very good. Hmm." He appraised Ressler's hair. "Bit short, but it'll do. Tell me, how long does it take for you to grow a beard?"

"I have no clue," Ressler said. "But I can manage the Don Johnson-look in another two days or so." Reddington smirked. "Why this fascination with my facial growth?"

"I need you to be someone else for a while."

"Undercover job?"

"Yes. We'll have the official briefing with the others at the office, later." He picked up the envelope, opened it, shook out its contents and handed them to Ressler. In it was a thick stack of pictures and what looked like an extensive personal file. "This," he continued, as Ressler looked at the pictures one by one, "is Aaron Stone."

Ressler frowned. "The name seems familiar."

"It was also the title of a kids' TV series," Reddington deadpanned, "2008, 2009, if I recall correctly." Ressler ignored him. He very much doubted the name sounded familiar because of a show he had never heard of. "But I can guarantee that no one will connect the two." Reddington continued. "This Aaron Stone is a renowned drug trafficker from Washington." He gestured at the pictures and Ressler flipped through them, determining that Stone was a tall, hard-faced, well-built Caucasian male with a short beard, messy reddish-blonde hair and a penchant for Ray-Ban sunglasses.

"And you want me to be him. Is he dead?" In other words, is this going to bite me on the ass mid-mission when the real thing shows up and proves me a fraud?

Reddington seemed to hear his unspoken thoughts and laughed, but it wasn't the chuckle he used when truly amused but the slightly too loud laugh that meant he was actually very serious. "Agent Ressler, Aaron Stone doesn't exist. I created him six years ago. And so yes, he's very much alive. Unfortunately, the man in the pictures, whose real name is Neil Mandellion, and who has been playing Aaron Stone whenever he needed to make a physical appearance, died in a car accident in Albany last Friday."

"Ah."

"Yes. Considering the fact that I needed him to meet his contact in two days, you can imagine I'm somewhat put out by his unexpected demise."

Ressler studied a close-up of Aaron Stone, or rather Neil Mandellion's face. It wasn't exactly like looking into a mirror, but they did answer to the same description, even up to the dimple in their chins.

"So I immediately thought of you," Reddington continued brightly. "You've got the right accent, the correct age, a similar build; big strapping lad, iron exterior, deep voice, all the works. Someone who never met Aaron Stone would believe you were him without a second thought."

"And why couldn't you tell me this at the Post office?" Ressler asked, smelling a rat.

"Because Aaron Stone is a sampler, and playing his part would mean you'd need to get up close and personal not only with Davey Boscoe, who is Stone's contact in Baltimore, but also with various substances Harold Cooper probably doesn't want his personnel exposed to."

Ressler snorted. "You want me to pretend I'm one of your drug dealer flunkies, and you expect this will not blow up in our faces?"

"I don't have anyone else." Ressler found that very hard to believe. "No one available at such short notice," Reddington amended, noticing his expression. "I know quite a lot of tall blondes, but none of them resemble Aaron as closely as you do. I can postpone the meeting with Boscoe for another day, maybe two—that is, you can, if you call him and take the job, but if Aaron doesn't show up in the next couple of days, the deal's off and I won't be able to catch the man behind all this."

"And who would that be?" Ressler asked. "Another one of your Blacklist entries?"

Reddington nodded. He walked to the cooking isle and placed what Ressler identified as a percolator on the gas stove. "There's no coffee like freshly-ground percolated coffee, Donald. Don't let anyone ever convince you otherwise. Nowadays, people simply don't take the time to enjoy making their favourite beverage. An Italian grandmother dies every time people spoon instant into their mugs."

Ressler patiently waited until he'd finished bemoaning the death of perfect coffee. By now he had learned not to push Reddington when he was having one of his seemingly random flights of fancy.

"The man behind all this?" he repeated, when the percolator was puttering. "Does he have a name?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't need Aaron Stone to find out," Reddington said. "All I know, all anyone knows, is his nickname, which is 'Blofeld'."

Blofeld. Wait…Ressler huffed. "Are you kidding me?"

Reddington smirked. "I see you know your James Bond."

"Does he have a white cat?"

"No, but he does seem to aspire world domination."

"And he is dangerous…why?"

"Because despite the nickname, Blofeld is a highly unsavoury character who has signed his name on far too many operations that have crossed mine."

"I thought you said drugs wasn't your cup of tea."

"It isn't. Hence my desire to sabotage this shipment, catch and unmask Blofeld and stop him for once and for all."

"And what kind of profit will 'Blofeld's' capture yield to you, huh? His hidden book with names and addresses? That will enable you to find out the passwords to some Pentagon file hidden away in an obscure databank somewhere? If it'll help you find Berlin, you know we'll do everything we can to help."

Red smiled, only the lower half of his canines showing. "Some people just need to be stopped because knowingly leaving them alive and free to prey on humanity is too much of a sin to live with. Trust me, you don't want this man to continue his business. I have sent proof to Harold—Aram's probably turned it into a lovely little PowerPoint by now. What I need to know, is whether you're in or not."

Ressler nodded slowly. There was only one real problem with Reddington's plan. "You said Aaron Stone is a sampler. You do realise that I've never used drugs in my entire life? I mean, I've never even smoked pot. Or maybe once, I can't even remember. I don't smoke at all—don't they all smoke?"

"You'll be fine. I can educate you. And you don't actually need to use it, well, not much, anyway, not if it all goes well…"

"Because these kinds of schemes have always worked out so great in the past."

"Fatalism doesn't suit you, Donald."

"I'd like to think of it more as realism." He was silent for a while, the cogs in his head turning their slow but steady way. He wasn't thrilled with the whole plan, but more because undercover jobs pulled him out of his comfort zone. He was very good at processing data, following leads and being intimidating, but not so good at playing at being someone else. Especially when it was connected to cocaine. Then again, if he could really dive into it…It might work. He felt a little tingle of excitement. Unfortunately, Ressler's face was not made to convey excitement clearly, and Reddington needled, "Agent Ressler, I hate to say it, but we have no one else. I'm not going to let myself in with yet another FBI group; one gaggle of groupies is enough for me."

Ressler did not rise to either the 'gaggle' or the 'groupies'. "I'm just not very good at pretending."

"I know. Your acting capabilities are sorely lacking. However, with a good sniff of cocaine inside of you, you should perform admirably."

"I really don't think…" Ressler back-paddled, but Reddington interrupted him.

"You don't fail, do you, Donald? Isn't that what you said? You never fail anymore?"

"Shut up." He sat down at the kitchen table, Aaron Stone's file in front of him, considering. Reddington waited patiently and poured two cups of coffee. "Ok. First of all, what kind of illegal substances are we talking about?"

"Cocaine," Reddington said immediately. "And XTC. Meth, probably. Heroin. Perhaps some marihuana. But coke, XTC and meth are most likely."

"I'm not shooting up."

"You won't have to. They'll only expect you to test the coke and the ice. Maybe do some bonding over XTC. Most dealers don't actually do heroin."

Ressler snorted. Breaking news: FBI hotshot turns Meth head for dubious undercover job for world-renowned criminal. "I can't say I'm looking forward to doing meth. It causes nerve damage and long-lasting behavioural changes if the methamphetamine is contaminated with the reagents or solvents—what? I keep up to date with the stuff the kids are using out there."

Reddington pushed one of the coffee cups towards him. "Thankfully, Blofeld is famous for his clean crystals—and even more for his cocaine. You wouldn't need to use much, just test it."

Ressler sat for a couple of seconds, rubbing his knees. He absentmindedly took a sip of coffee. It was very good, much better than the local Star Bucks clone's. "I would have to test it. I have no clue what makes drugs good quality or bad. I'm not narco, and I never wanted to be. Sure, I know that if coke smells like washing power it's probably cut badly, and that methamphetamines can be snorted, smoked and shot—I passed all my narcotics tests, but that's about it."

"I have the fullest confidence in you," Reddington said calmly.

Of course he did.

"Fine. But I need to try it out, in a safe environment, before I snort down a handful of coke in front of a bunch of addicts and totally lose my…and mess up."

"Certainly," Reddington said immediately. "I'll provide you with some…try-out material, so you can practice."

He felt another flutter of excitement, the kind he'd also felt when he'd decided that he would either get answers or leave a suspect strangled to death in the interview room. But it wouldn't do to let Reddington know that he was beginning to look forward to his little mission.

"Will you also make sure Cooper won't take my tox screen next month? I'd hate to lose my job over testing positive on a wide variety of illegal substances."

"Your job will be safe, don't worry."

"What about dealer etiquette? If I go there and do a faithful impression of Jesse Pinkman, I doubt anyone's fooled."

"I'll educate you on that as well. Or Squeeze will. I'll introduce you to her. Meet me at eight, this evening."

"Where?"

"Here. I'll get you your safe environment, and everything else you'll need to become Aaron Stone."

"Tonight?"

"We only have a couple more days until Boscoe chooses their dealer in Baltimore, and gives him the date and place of the next shipment. We need to know when and where that's going to be, so yes, tonight." He drank his own coffee, smiling in bliss. "Get yourself familiar with Aaron Stone's life. Read his bio, it's very extensive and will give you all the information you need. Also check the memory stick in the envelop; you'll find it useful I'm sure."

Ressler picked up one of the pictures and held it up. "He has a sleeve."

"Yes. Several other tattoos as well, in fact. That reminds me to call Cindy. She can work miracles with henna-based semi-permanent inks."

"Great," said Ressler. He checked, but to his immense relief Stone didn't seem to have any piercings or other things that were hard or impossible to fake. He flipped ad random through the many pages of the file, reading little bits and pieces of it while Reddington finished his coffee. "Wait a minute. It says here that Aaron Stone rides a Harley."

"Yes. Will that be a problem?"

Ressler grinned. 2007 DYNA FXDSE CVO DYNAGLIDE SE. Screaming Eagle cylinder block (1800 CC). Sweet. "I don't think so."

About an hour later, Reddington explained everything again to the team, a little more detailed in some parts while glossing over some other. Cooper was apprehensive, but Reddington made a great case for the need of Blofeld's removal by listing an impressive and somewhat frightening number of deaths directly traceable to operations led by Number 13.

"And what's in it for you?" Cooper asked, because he was no idiot either.

Red smiled winningly. "Satisfaction that the weaker people in these surroundings will have to work just a little bit harder to get their fix, and perhaps have time to wean off of it. And revenge for being thwarted just a couple of times too many."

"I thought the Blacklist wasn't about revenge, it being so short-lived," Ressler said. He was a bit worried by how easily Reddington had glossed over the part of Aaron Stone being a sampler as well as a dealer, and how plausible he'd still made Ressler's role without it. He felt weirdly nervous about taking drugs, especially meth. The Ressler household had discouraged any substances but alcohol (that is, his mother would have loved to discourage alcohol as well, but then she'd have had to divorce her husband), and apart from a couple of drags from a joint, he found he'd never needed anything but booze to relax when going out. He guessed he'd always simply been too chicken to risk a bad trip—a feeling not all his colleagues had shared. Friends at the DEA were always easy access points to all sorts of drugs, and he knew for certain that Sam from his old Reddington hunting taskforce had liberated several grams of cocaine from the vault of his local office for personal and recreational use. Hell, he understood, and it wasn't as if he blamed or judged them. It was just not something he'd ever considered doing himself.

Yet at the same time, there was that thrill of risk, a bit like hitting 120 mph on a country road and knowing that crashing, while unlikely, was definitely an option. I've never driven a Dynaglide, just that old Softail…

He jerked to attention when Reddington started to outline the plan. It was deceptively easy; most of the groundwork, i.e. establishing Aaron Stone as a trustworthy contact, had already been done. All Ressler needed to do now was introduce himself, make friends with David 'Davey' Boscoe, convince him Stone would make a good distributor who didn't cut when told not to, stood up to the right people and bowed down to the right people, and so find out when the shipment would arrive. That, Reddington stressed, was the main goal of the operation. Finding out Blofeld's real identity was part of the operation, but not obligatory, as Reddington was convinced that the shipment itself would hold valuable clues on where to look for the man.

"Won't they smell you're FBI a mile away?" Keen asked some time later, leaning against the door jamb and watching him from the door opening. "Or will you start cutting yourself again to prove them you're reliable?"

"I'll change to Axe Supermeth," Ressler replied absentmindedly. Despite himself, he was impressed with the completeness of Aaron Stone's character. Relatively normal childhood, girlfriends, rivals, parents remaining (an ailing father, whom he had not abandoned even as a drug trafficker, and who still regularly called him—making him a perfect head-of-mission line), contacts in several cities. Parts of the bio were written by Reddington, other entries were obviously made by Mandellion, fleshing out his character as he played it. Even more useful was a memory stick with several hours worth of movies and sound fragments of Aaron Stone talking, walking, sitting; listening, rapt, attentive, bored, angry, every mood conceivable.

Keen spoke to him again, but he ignored her, and after a while she went away, leaving him to his homework.

There was a lot of it, but once Ressler's interest in something was piqued, he could absorb information very quickly. That was the way he worked best, and it had been something he hadn't been able to do for quite some time. Reddington, his great obsession, was off-limits, perhaps forever, but this here, becoming someone else, was right in front of him and posed a challenge that was…well, challenging at last. He sat with his eyes glued to the screen of his computer, headphones on, and watched 'Aaron Stone' being interviewed by a dark-skinned lady. It was clear that the woman knew him as Mandellion, but after a few laughs, they both fell into character. The man's shift from himself into Stone was interesting. All he changed was his stance and his tone—voice a bit lower, speech just a hint slower with a hint of a drawl, head tilted to the right when asking questions, a curve of amusement to the mouth whenever he was listening, as if everything was below him. It was fascinating, really. He wondered if he could do the same thing. Somehow, he thought that he could.

Just as Red prepared to leave the Post office, Cooper put a hand on his arm.

"A word with you, Reddington. If you please."

It was difficult to tell with the man's ruined voice, but Red thought the 'if you please' sounded more like 'and right now', but he said, "Certainly," and followed Harold up to his little cubicle at the top of the stairs. The blinds were down already, which made him wonder what dear old Harold was up to when he was alone in here. Nothing interesting, most likely. Work. But it amused him to picture a stack of Playboys in the bottom drawer of Cooper's desk. "What can I do for you?"

Cooper sat down behind his desk and gestured for Reddington to do the same. Red smiled and kept standing, noting and ignoring the twitch of annoyance on the other man's face.

"I need to know what you're up to."

Red raised an eyebrow. "I just gave a briefing of 45 minutes. If you…"

"Cut the crap. I have neither the time nor the energy to play your games." It was odd how a close brush with death seemed to erase some men's basic sense of manners, Red reflected mournfully. "I don't need to remind you that, although the position of this task force is a little more secure after arresting Nigel Pederson last month and finding those two girls still alive, we're still dangerously close to being shut down. Your immunity is always at risk. So tell me why we're really getting involved to bring this Blofeld," his nose wrinkled in distaste, "to justice."

"It is ingenious, isn't it," Red marvelled, "that name. Come up with a nickname so cliché that no one wants to pronounce it for fear of embarrassing themselves, and you're got the perfect cover."

"A bit too perfect," Cooper reflected. "We haven't been able to find as much as a hint of him anywhere."

"Well, that's why you've got me, isn't it? If you could have found him by yourself, he wouldn't be on my list. I bumped him up, too, can you believe it? He used to be at fifteen and now he's at thirteen—he passed Alyosha Yaroslavovich, and let me tell you, Alyosha has been at thirteen for a very long time."

"Reddington."

Red sighed. "The reason why I need to bring Blofeld in is because I don't know what he's up to. Now, there are a great many people whose plans and whereabouts are unknown to me, but they won't cost me any sleep. Not knowing what tricks Blofeld has up his sleeve, that troubles my sleep." He returned Cooper's somewhat worried look with a reassuring one of his own. "It's not like Berlin. I know about Blofeld and his business. I know I've never crossed him personally. But he's been silent for too long, and trust me, that does not bode well."

"Do you think he might be working with Berlin?"

"I honestly have no idea, Harold. That's why I need Ressler to lure him out, or at least deliver us the next…shipment."

Cooper, already on the next topic, didn't notice his slight hesitation. "Why Ressler?"

"As I already told Agent Ressler himself, I don't have anyone else with the same qualities available at such short notice. Do you doubt his capabilities?"

"I don't doubt his capacity as an FBI agent. I'm less convinced it's a good idea to send him out there and subtly worm his way into the Baltimore underground."

"Because of his lack of experience in undercover operations? I agree that subtlety is not Agent Ressler's forte, but we don't need subtle; we need someone who is perfectionist or dogged enough to quickly and successfully adopt a completely different character, smart enough to think on his feet, and trained to say the right things to make the right people trust him." He laughed. "You can say a lot about Agent Ressler, but he is very dedicated to whatever it is he is trying to pursue, as I know from personal experience."

Cooper pursed his lips, unwilling to discuss his own agents with an individual like Reddington, and Red was curiously satisfied when he spoke up after all. "The last time he went on a mission with you he almost got killed."

"Harold, we've all almost been killed, the past few months, including you and myself. And you make it sound as if I personally send your agents out on missions, while you are their boss, not me. Besides, I doubt he remembers; it's more than half a year ago." He twirled his hat in his hands. "No. You're not afraid he'll be injured, it's something else. Perhaps you'd care to tell me?" He raised his hands when Cooper scowled at him. "I can't help you nor Ressler if you won't tell me what's the problem, Harold." As far as he could tell, Harold was the only one who saw a problem. Ressler had acted normally. He wondered if that meant the problem was more or less serious.

"Let's just say that some people are…not entirely happy with the way Agent Ressler is behaving ever since you turned yourself in."

"Whatever could you be implying?" Red asked innocently.

"We know he came to you after Audrey Bidwell was killed," Cooper stated. "And that you provided him with the information that led to an unwarranted attack on an illegal hospital, the death of Robert Jonica and the disappearance of Mako Tanida." Red permitted himself a tiny smile. Would he still have that box? "When I was injured, he used excessive force to extract information from a suspect and ignored any commands to report in and stand down," Cooper continued, frowning, "Combined with an inordinate number of headshots when non-lethal force would have sufficed…Like your King-maker. There was an inquiry, and I can tell you that it was touch and go or he'd not have been here anymore."

"You're saying Ressler's off the rails?" Now that was an interesting development, and not one Red had foreseen—or even detected himself. Ressler seemed his usual, boring, straight self to him.

"No. Not yet, in any case. But I don't like exposing him to…" He gestured. "Not when his psych report is so influential in the rest of his career."

Reddington considered. "Are you afraid he'll go rogue?"

"He doesn't have any reason to do so. But with every new incident, his reactions become more extreme. You might want to think about that when you send him out there. Do you really want a man like Ressler become someone else and then infiltrate a gang of drug dealers led by, as you say yourself, one of the few people who keep you from sleeping soundly?"

"That may not be an ideal option, no," Red murmured, not showing how pleased he was with this information. He'd been somewhat anxious that Ressler would balk at some of the tasks, as of yet unspecified, required of him; this suggested he wouldn't. And if this all did go to hell, and Ressler was thrown out of the FBI…well, Red would have use for him. "It's nice to see you care so much about your personnel."

Cooper scowled. "Of course I care about my agents. They're good men and women, and I've already lost too many."

"But, unfortunately," Red sighed, "we have no one else."

So engrossed was Ressler in his new material that he almost missed his appointment at 11 Neville road. He arrived a few minutes past eight still chewing the last bites of a sandwich grabbed hastily on the way. Somehow, he thought snorting coke would be a bad idea on an empty stomach. Because it's such a great idea otherwise.

Just before he could ring the bell, Reddington opened the door—again—and let him in with the most amicable smile. Red himself was dressed for the theatre: a tailor-made suit, tie, white scarf even, shiny shoes.

"Going out?" Ressler asked with a hint of suspicion. It wasn't really Reddington's style, but he wasn't convinced the other man wouldn't set him up if he had decided that Ressler would be of more use in prison than in the Post Office.

"Yes. I thought you'd probably feel more relaxed if I wasn't there to watch your every high-as-a-kite move." True, Ressler supposed. He was still apprehensive.

Red laughed. "Oh come on, Donald, would I do anything as stupid as call the police and complain about addicts in my kitchen? What would that gain me, apart from an annoying investigation of my current habitat, which isn't mine, as you undoubtedly fathomed?" He patted Ressler's shoulder. "Trust me, this is purely for your own peace of mind. Unless, of course, you'd rather have me stay? I can cancel my engagement for this evening. I'd hate to leave the lady hanging and miss a reputedly stellar performance of La Traviata, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make if you insist."

Ressler sighed inwardly. No, he definitely didn't want Reddington in the same room when he tested out the various substances. But he trusted the other man as far as he could throw him, and who knew what he was up to? Red grinned, sensing his inner turmoil, then took pity on him.

"Relax. You're safe here. Let me introduce you to Squeeze and Cindy. Cindy will be doing your tattoos. I thought it would be a good idea to combine that and the drug test-outs; it will save time and they know one another already. Oh, I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention my name. It would mean nothing to them, and might endanger them." He opened the door, led Ressler past the kitchen and into the outrageously sprawling living room, where two women got up from a cream white leather couch.

"This is Squeeze." Dry, firm handshake, a beautiful, hard face with a scar over one eyebrow, small of stature but somehow large of presence, sallow skin, grey teeth when she spoke. As Reddington introduced him as Aaron, she looked him in the eyes for three seconds, a very straight, measuring glance, before her eyes started roving the room again.

"And this is Cindy." Ressler noticed that while Cindy's shoulder got a friendly brush of the hand, Reddington made sure not to touch Squeeze. Cindy was large, blonde and pretty, and sported a variety of tattoos on her arms. A thorny rose in bloom climbed its way up her neck. Her gaze was guileless, open, and her smile very white.

Both women had a suitcase with them. After Reddington had bid them good evening and told them to take good care of Aaron, which made Ressler scowl, Cindy giggle and Squeeze regard Ressler with a hooded expression he didn't much care about, they both opened their suitcases like salesmen at the marketplace.

Cindy's was black and sported a drawing of a panther and a dragon fighting in a storm of rose petals, and held about fifteen jac bottles, a similar number of henna cones, pencils, markers, stencils and an assortment of oils and other things.

Squeeze's was plain brown leather, and held about fifteen small bags and plastic cylinders filled with pills and powders. Ressler couldn't help smirking.

"I wouldn't know where to start," he said.

Cindy turned to Squeeze, "Have you got something that'll make him sit really still?"

Squeeze shot the both of them a sharp smile. "Not really. Most of it will make you…active. But go ahead, your stuff will need time to set, right? I can show him some things, first, before we get to the actual sampling." She regarded him with cool eyes while Cindy told him to take off his shirt, no, the one beneath as well, silly, how can I paint on your back while you're wearing clothes?

Well, Ressler thought wryly, this proves to become interesting, with these two lovely ladies and their products and me half naked not five minutes after getting to know them.

Cindy had taken a couple of A4 photographs out of her case—Aaron Stone's sleeve, front and back views, Ressler noticed. Another picture was of some Chinese or Japanese symbol that Aaron had tattooed on one of his kidneys. Ressler wished he knew what it said, hopefully not 'kidney'—he really had to look that up in case someone asked. Cindy was rummaging in her papers when she asked, "Now, do you know, by any chance, whether you're allergic to PPD?"

"What's PPD?"

"It's a synthetic dye, I always forget what it stands for…"

"p-Phenylenediamine," Squeeze said, sounding bored.

"Yeah, right, p-Phenylendiada…whatever. It makes henna dye, which I'm going to be using on you, stand out longer and look darker. I can get it pretty dark with some extra inks, dark enough for this tattoo, but it'll last longer and look more crisp. But it can cause a pretty severe reaction if you're allergic, so…"

"I'm not really familiar with henna tattoos," Ressler said dryly. "What happens when I'm allergic?"

"It might give you short-term hives. Or cancer. Or it might cause scarring…I'll just leave it out, ok, and use some extra ink and glue. Ah, here they are, I was afraid I'd forgot them." She pulled out several stencils with the tattoo line art on it and began coating his upper arm with water. Taking special care to place the pattern on correctly, she then applied the stencils to his arm. "Don't mind me," she said, waving her hands. "I'll just do my thing here and tell you when I need you to sit still." She fished an iPod out of her pocket, put on in-ear headphones and began to sort her supplies.

"Good," Squeeze immediately took over, ignoring the other girl so pointedly it was as if she'd gone up in smoke. "I understand you're completely inexperienced when it comes to hard drugs."

Something in Ressler wanted to protest, but the fact was that he was, at least to exposure to it.

"I can tell you how it's made and what it does to you, but…yeah."

Again the knife-like smile. "Time to change that, then. You'll like it, I can promise you. I only hope you're strong enough not to like it too much. Meth's a harsh mistress, very clingy, and very hard to abandon once you've started dating her. It'd be a shame if that pretty mouth of yours became a wreck of ruin."

Ressler's eyebrows crawled up of their own accord. Pretty mouth? Really? "Personal experience?" he asked, and she smiled, showing her grey teeth.

"Can't you tell?"

"You don't look like…"

"I'm not. Not anymore. Hatman got me out, pulled me away from the needle and put me on top of the plunger. Still sour about the teeth, though." She unclipped a small plastic bag from the inside of her suitcase. "We're going to start with coke."

"We?" Hatman?

"Yes. I'm taking you through it step by step." The grin again, there and gone so fast it was nothing more than a flash. "Don't worry, we're not taking much. Just a little. And I'm going to show you how you take it, and what slang is hot at the moment." She put the sealed bag on the table and took out a regular brick of coke. "Just a question. This is not cocaine, by the way. It's flour, and you can tell by its dull colour. Coke is a salt, so it forms tiny crystals—sorry, I can see you know all that. Say, someone gives this to you and tells you to take a sample. How do you do that?"

She gave Ressler the package. It was well-wrapped in cellophane and tape. "Cut it open."

"Where? And how?"

"Here." He indicated the centre of the broad side of the brick. "Just a small slit."

She grinned. "Your dealer ain't going to be pleased with you, brother. What's he going to do with that leaking package? He doesn't want to leave a trail like a modern Hansel and Gretel. No, what you do is this: you find a piece of tape that's loose, like here, pull it back an inch, make your cut beneath it, take your sample and hand it back so he can seal it back off with the spare bit of tape. Don't do it yourself, you're too busy snorting. What do you use to get a sample?"

"My key. Or I could rub some of it into my gums, but that's more to identify it, I guess."

She nodded, satisfied. "Just the tip of it. You can also use your knife, but be careful not to nick yourself; you'll look like a complete idiot. Better to shake a bit onto your hand and snort it from you thumb. Sometimes, they have a line laid out for you. If so, let them provide the straw, you can't be expected to have one in your pocket all the time. And if I were you, I wouldn't be snorting monster lines, not even if they offer. Right, let me see you take it."

"One moment, hon," Cindy said, as Ressler picked up the small bag, "Just gonna take my stencil off of you…ah, that looks perfect! Give me a sign when you're done, ok, so I can start on your arm."

This is so surreal, Ressler thought with a shake of his head. He opened the bag, dipped the point of the key to his front door inside and sniffed. The flash he'd been expecting didn't happen; all he noticed was that his nose and palate grew numb.

Squeeze nodded at him–you've done well, my padawan—used a cut straw to fish out a bit of coke and snorted it with well-practiced ease. Ressler made a mental note of the little movement she made with her head. "Ok," she said, "Lean back, let Cindy get started on your tattoo. It'll start working in a couple of minutes. How long's it last?"

"'Bout half an hour."

"Yup. Now, you're probably going to want to move, but we're not going to, because we're going to do speed, too, and you'll definitely want to go running when we're doing that."

"I'm good."

"Good." She paused as Cindy, singing, 'Oho here she comes, watch out boy, she'll chew you up!" under her breath began to trace the lines on his arm with one of her little bottles, grinned and said, "Relax! You're tight as a bowstring and you're not even tight yet. Here, have some water. Ok, now for some non-TV slang, what to say, and what not to say."

She gave him a list of synonyms for cocaine, most of which he was familiar with, and told him which ones were in use at the moment. Then she explained how coke deals usually went down, and what he could expect to be expected to snort down, swallow or smoke either to establish quality or to seal the deal.

"I don't smoke."

"For real? God, but you're innocent."

Ressler barked a laugh. "Not really."

"Untainted, then. No dope, no smokes—you do drink, don't you, or…?"

"Yes."

"Thank goodness; at least I'm not your sole source of bodily corruption. But be careful when you're using and drinking at the same time, which you'll probably end up doing, because that always happens. With coke it's not so bad, because the effects are over really quickly, but when you're using meth, it'll take a lot longer, up to eight hours. You won't feel the alcohol, but you'll be drunk all the same, and the blackouts are nasty."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"I doubt it, but consider yourself warned anyway."

"How do you know all these things? Do you deal yourself, or…"

Her face hardened. "Don't ask. I don't want to know who you are, and I don't want to tell you who I am."

Ressler raised his hands, palm out, making Cindy cry out and snatch his arm back. "Sorry, I don't mean to pry. I'm just…I mean, you're this tiny woman and you sound like the…" He bit down on his tongue before he finished: jaded narco guy who tutored this course I did on narcotics at the FBI.

But Squeeze had relaxed already and showed her flashy little smile again. "It's ok. I understand why you'd be curious. I must confess I'm a bit curious about you too. You're not like the guys Hatman usually pushes my way."

"Hatman?" Ressler couldn't help asking.

"Honey, if you tense your arm like that, I can't paint the inside of your elbow," Cindy complained. He relaxed his arm. The tip of her bottle tickled. "Thanks."

Squeeze shrugged. "I don't know his name. He usually wears a hat, don't he? So I call him Hatman, and he seems to like it. How are you feeling?"

"Good." Better than good, in fact. He was alert and very much awake, as if he could talk and rehearse all night and then start reading up on Aaron Stone again first thing in the morning.

"Thought so. Let's go through some scenarios, shall we? And then we'll take a break and have a beer, and then I'm introducing you to meth." She grinned. Widely. "You'll love that. we just have to make sure Cindy'll be finished with your sleeve by then, because I doubt you'll be able to sit still for very long."