Aahana Swrup
Episode 5 of ‘Lioness’ season 3 delves deeper into the type of investigation the CIA Special Ops team was heading prior to the abduction of their leader. Thanks to the turncoat Russian spy/Ukrainian agent, Oleksandra Balakin, the Lionesses learn about the foreign powers’ sinister infiltration of the USA’s cultural and social infrastructure. As such, they use their enemies’ strategies and patterns to corner a few vital operatives. Once their mission succeeds and leads to the apprehension of multiple foreign agents and/or homegrown traitors, the next phase of their plan begins. This includes an intense string of interrogation, ruthless intimidation, and planning out what their next defensive steps should be. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The CIA’s Best-Laid Traps Catch a Few Useful Assets
Joe and her team simultaneously execute two operations to entrap suspected operatives with sympathies to the foreign cause. One requires Two Cups to pose as a defense contractor salesman and set up shop at a strip club known to be a hotspot for asset acquisition. On the other hand, Cruz and Josephina honeypot another individual, a high-ranking engineer, who has already been turned into an asset. Fortunately for them, everything plays out according to plan. Two Cups goes home with a sex worker, who secretly films them having intercourse to use as blackmail material.
However, by the time her handlers arrive on the scene the next morning, the CIA is waiting to storm the place and apprehend all parties. Alternatively, once Cruz and Josphina take their target, Cade, back to his hotel room, Joe and the others arrive for a confrontation. Once discovered, the engineer has no choice but to reveal the inner workings of his contact with his handler. This allows the team to set up an ambush attack plan. In the end, they walk away with the apprehension of the Handler, another software engineer named Rooster. With both the asset and the handler in holding, the team retains the possibility of gaining plenty of exploitable intelligence.
Joe Pitches Her Idea of Turning Foreign Spies Into Double Agents
Rooster and Cade’s interrogation unfolds differently from the process involving the Russian agents apprehended during Two Cups’ sting operation. Kyle helms that interrogation, employing the CIA’s existing extensive biometrics-supplied information on the apprehended individuals to gain an upper hand. Given the agents’ training, the agency knows that they wouldn’t be able to extract any immediate intel from them. As a result, these individuals are threatened with the promise of detention and torture at Guantanamo Bay. Afterward, an interdepartmental meeting is held with Secretary Mullins, wherein the head of the FBI expresses her displeasure with being consistently left out of the CIA’s operations.
Nonetheless, these complaints are hardly at the top of anyone’s priority list. The recent missions have uncovered the reality of foreign infiltration in the different sectors of the country, from education to politics. In fact, multiple senators, judges, and other high-profile individuals have been discovered to be influenced by these outside powers. However, a mass exposure of their treachery will only lead to public unrest as the population will lose trust in significant institutions. For the same reason, Joe comes up with an alternate and effective solution. She proposes that the authorities approach these individuals personally and offer them a choice between resignation and becoming double agents this time in the USA’s favor.
Joe Personally Oversees the Detention of Professor Ealy
Unlike the Russian operatives, Rooster and Cade are both US citizens, which charges them with treason to the state. Upon interrogation, Joe and her team learn that the handler had supplied the engineer with answers to imperative tests during his college days. This means that the latter’s career is more or less being controlled by these outside forces. With the reveal of this information, the CIA’s top priority becomes discovering the identity of the professor who had made this entire operation possible. Eventually, they received a name: Professor Ealy.
Ealy is a software engineer at a highly esteemed college who seems to hold communist sympathies. At the same time, he continues to benefit greatly from the frameworks of capitalism. This hypocritical divide between his alleged philosophy and his lifestyle becomes a cause of heightened disdain for Joe. For the same reason, she personally makes the trip to his lecture hall and detains him under the CIA’s custody. Fast forward a few months, and Joe currently finds herself a prisoner of Russian operatives. As she’s taken out of a jet and towards another, her demise promises to become more and more precarious.
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