By Joe R
Remember Prince, that guy in the missile-defense program who Elizabeth wrangled up while dressed like Morticia Benatar and the Blackhearts? He comes to Elizabeth with news that a highly-placed Air Force colonel is disillusioned and prepared to flip. Elizabeth and Philip are worried it's a trap, and they're more worried when Claudia tells them a meeting with the colonel has been set up. They try to work around Claudia, maybe even get her sent back to Moscow. Prince, meanwhile, threatens to gum up the works entirely by getting arrested by the local cops for not paying his child support, the louse.
Meantime, though, they need to find out if it's a trap, so Philip decides that Clark can get Martha to plant a bug in Special Agent John-Boy's office if he gives her the right incentive. That incentive being: he proposes marriage. A secret marriage she can't tell anybody about (okay, fine, her parents, but that's it). And so we get the absurd visual of Elizabeth and Claudia in dumpy dresses and big glasses, standing as family and witnesses while Philip pledges his life to Mrs. Clark Westerfeld. But hey, she does plant that bug.
Meantime, Heylia James gets an attack of religious-based conscience for planting the bug in the clock at the Secretary of Defense's house. She ends up confessing, to her employer and then to the FBI, who are now aware of the bug and can plant false information at will. Now, between Heylia and Agent Patterson, they have two accounts of a man-and-woman couple carrying out dastardly KGB deeds. The sketches don't look anything alike (so, I guess, fuck us for complaining about the insane disguises), but Stan uses his special powers of deduction and intuition to conclude that they ARE the same person (so I guess fuck them for thinking such insane disguises would help).
Finally, Arkady puts enough trust in Nina that he puts her on the Directorate S beat. Comes with a pin and an oath and everything! At the same time that the Motherland is putting such faith into her, it seems that she really very much suspects that Stan was the one who killed Vlad, his straight-faced denials to the contrary. So we get the shocker of a scene where Nina confesses to Arkady that she is the mole and throws herself at mercy of Moscow. That said, she does also admit that she and her FBI agent handler have become sexually involved. She asks if she could use that to perhaps redeem herself somehow. Nina! Making the big moves!