The Night Manager “Episode Four”

So, Jonathan Pine was once Thomas Quince, but is now Andrew Birch.  Roper trusts him enough to give this virtual stranger a fake company for some reason.

What reason could that be?

So, Roper outlines his basic scam.  It works like this:  he, Roper, goes to various investors.  He tells them about this up and coming company, Tradepass, selling farm equipment.  The investors pay Roper a large sum of money.  Roper then uses the money not for farm equipment, but to buy black market weapons from shifty Russians.  The investors never know this part, but make their money back while Roper fudges the books to give himself a much bigger profit.

Jonathan, as Birch, is simply the face of the fake company.

That job used to be Corky’s.  Corky’s not happy.  He’s the type to make passive-aggressive threats to Jonathan and to a lesser extent Jed while everyone is out at dinner at a nice restaurant, and just outright aggressive threats to everyone else.  Granted, Corky is absolutely right about all that, even the Jed stuff, since he apparently is the only one to see Jed sneak off to Jonathan’s place.  Since Corky is a gay alcoholic, most folks write it off as Corky is attracted to the new guy.

That Jed thing goes somewhere when Roper leaves her for a while with Jonathan, and they have a quickie in Jonathan’s hotel room.  Was that Hiddleston’s butt?  Ask Jenny.

Angela is having some success of her own.  The paperwork Jonathan sent her is first translated by Roper’s Spanish lawyer.  He disappears later.  At episode’s end, he’s dead.  Roper plays for keeps.

Angela’s boss is threatened while riding his bike to work by some white vans.  That just makes him mad enough to triple Angela’s budget and give her more people.  She shares some papers, which he later shares when another higher-up shows up looking to fire Angela.  That just tells the corrupt guys in MI6 that Angela is on to them, but one guy there already knew since she pushed him for more information.

Why does Angela care so much about Roper?  Because back in 2003, both of them witnessed a group of children killed by poison gas in Iraq.  For Angela, this was horrifying.  For Roper, it was a business opportunity as he saw a lot of money to be made in WMDs.

But the whole Jed/Jonathan thing is discovered by Angela’s people.  She wants to pull Jonathan out.  He says she’ll never learn all that he can since he’s already seen a weapons transaction, but there’s more going on he can discover yet.  She doesn’t care.  So…he tells Roper there are authority-types looking for them and they all bug off, leaving Angela to fume that Jonathan will ignore instructions for his own purposes.

So, what might those ultimate purposes be?