'The Gold' Recap: Season 2 Episode 4

The Gold airs Sundays at 9:00 pm is available to stream on the PBS app and wttw.com. Recap the previous episode.
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The media is beginning to get wind that Boyce’s investigation into the stolen Brink’s-Mat gold is narrowing in on more suspects. Having seized half a million pounds when arresting Douglas and Scott Errico at Heathrow airport, Boyce makes the case to his superiors that it’s worth supporting the investigation – because a new law allows the police to keep any money related to drug trafficking when they seize it.

He then enlists the circling media for help. He needs concrete evidence that John is engaging in illegal activity in Tenerife so that he can get a warrant from Spain. A news organization wants to cover John, and so they team up with Boyce. The reporter Tina Keyes is called back from reporting on a freedom fighter who is also likely a drug trafficker in Burma and sent to Tenerife, where she asks John to launder 100 million pounds of heroin money from Burma. John is skeptical, but Tina leaves him with an offer to meet at the Ritz in London in two days. 

Fortunately for Boyce, John is under increasing pressure. His old associate Ken Noyes has arrived in Tenerife; Ken’s presence is a vague threat towards John, even if Ken doesn’t want anyone else to know that he’s there. He eventually tells John that he’s on the run, if not from what, and that he needs to go somewhere quiet – and enough money to stay there. Ken departs in a car driven by John’s intimidating new Russian bodyguard.

The Russians present their own threat to John. He doesn’t have enough money coming in through his front company – the timeshare business – to hide the amounts of money the Russians need laundered. Timeshare customers are beginning to ask for their money back.

John asks the Russians to take a break, but Ivan refuses. So John considers taking up Tina’s offer, which would include a 20 million pound fee for John. Enriqué, who is laundering the money for John, says such a sum would buy them only a few days of more money laundering before it was discovered; they would both have to leave the island afterwards. Enriqué asks for five million of it for his work. 

Further discussion is forestalled by the arrival of John’s Russian bodyguard.

Boyce’s team is also following Charlie Miller’s money. Douglas arrogantly refuses to talk after his arrest at the airport, but Tony and Nicki find information about Tortola in his office. Threatened with sharing a cell with the violent Scott if he doesn’t cooperate and eager to get back at Logan for stealing his girlfriend Sarah decades ago, Douglas agrees to wear a wire and visit Logan in Tortola. Tony, Nicki, and Lundy all accompany him, even though Lundy wants to keep tracking down Charlie.

Charlie is currently in an airport lounge in Arizona, waiting out a storm. He chats up an American hedge fund manager and ends up talking to her all night. As she leaves, he convinces her to let him invest in an opportunity she’s working on involving oil in Kansas. She gives him a business card and tells him to wire two million dollars within a few days; if he does, she’ll meet him in this same airport lounge.

Charlie sends the money. The woman never shows. The number she gave him is fake. The criminal has been conned.

Kadene has begun worrying that her fiancé Logan is a criminal and a con. He wants to get married right away – thus bringing him under Tortola’s non-extradition treaty for citizens – but she wants to know why she saw a drug trafficker wanted by the DEA – Scott – in his office. He admits that he occasionally gets mixed up with drug money while working with companies that are trying to avoid taxes by incorporating in Tortola – it can be difficult to tell the difference. But he cut Scott out of his business as soon as he learned of the drug connection, he claims. 

Kadene doesn’t quite believe him. Lunez, the DEA agent on the island, approaches Kadene outside the office to ask for help investigating drug trafficking on the island. Once in the office, Kadene asks her boss Lauretta, Tortola’s governor about Scott and Logan; Lauretta argues that she’s doing what needs to be done to improve her impoverished island. 

As Douglas prepares to visit Logan wearing a wire, Boyce is infuriated to learn that the police commissioner has admitted to the press that the Brink’s-Mat investigation has expanded to Tortola. Even though the story is buried deep in the newspaper, Sarah sees it and faxes a copy to Logan. 

The fax comes through as Douglas gets Logan to explain how he launders money, the machine’s noise obscuring Logan’s voice in the recording the police are making. Figuring Douglas is wearing a wire, Logan invites him to the pool at his house. Douglas takes off the wire to swim. 

Logan accuses Douglas of trying to entrap him, and yells at him for bringing him into dangerous business – he would have never touched money from the Brink’s-Mat robbery if he knew where it came from. 

Logan asks Kadene to flee Tortola with him, admitting that he has laundered lots of money and is in imminent danger of being arrested. He promises a new, honest life – somewhere else. While he digs up money he has hidden, Kadene calls Lunez. The agent and Boyce’s team are waiting for Logan as he attempts to flee. Kadene has chosen her home over her fiancé.

John also falls into a trap. He meets Tina at the Ritz. She’s with a Burmese man she presents as the drug trafficker who needs money laundered; she has gotten him a visa in exchange for his cooperation. Boyce just needs John to mention criminal activity in Tenerife so he can acquire warrants. 

John is suspicious – but desperate. He takes a break to do coke in the bathroom, then returns and raises his asking price in exchange for laundering the money. He assures Tina that he can do it; he’s already doing it for the Russians. 

Evidence acquired, the Burmese man drops his facade. John notices a camera hidden in a flower arrangement. He leaves in a daze. Boyce emerges to tell him he’ll see him soon.