FX’s secret agent thriller, The Veil, introduces viewers to Imogen Salter, or whatever her name is, played by the incredible Elisabeth Moss. As the title suggests, the series is full of deception and intrigue. I’ll be on hand for the ride, recapping all of the details to help viewers like you sort out the truth from the lies. We begin with the first episode, titled “The Camp,” in which Imogen meets her latest assignment, Adilah El Idrissi.
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Episode 1 – “The Camp” – Written by Steven Knight
A blonde woman named Portia (Elisabeth Moss) meets Tomas (Phillipp Christopher) in an airport lounge. “Let’s celebrate,” he says, holding up a glass of champagne to toast. “I doubt you’ll feel the same when Interpol arrives,” she counters. His smile fades as Portia reveals that she’s a secret agent. “Good luck,” she exits as Tomas is surrounded by officers. Walking out, she makes a call to her unseen boss to have her flight to Istanbul booked. “I would like my name to be Imogen,” she adds.
At a refugee camp on the border of Syria and Turkey, a food delivery truck gets stuck in the snow and is rushed by the refugees. Adilah El Idrissi (Yumna Marwan) climbs into the bed of the truck to pass out bags, trying to make sure they get to women with children first. But one of the women (Zeynep Köse) recognizes her. “ISIS,” she cries out. “She killed my husband and my daughter!” Men grab and attack Adilah, tossing her into the crowd. She is kicked and restrained as a robe is tied around her neck and draped over the canopy of the truck. It’s a public hanging until soldiers intervene, shooting the rope. They pick up Adilah and take her into custody.
Imogen Salter (Elisabeth Moss) arrives at the camp. Guy (Dan Wyllie) from the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) welcomes her. As they walk, Guy fills her in that most of the refugees are Syrian women, with most of their men killed by ISIS. Imogen comes up with an excuse to break away (yesterday was her birthday, and she needs to call her mom after she uses the toilet), but really, she wanders off in search of Adilah’s tent. It’s not hard to find, it’s the one with a military escort outside. Guy finds her, thinking she’s lost. Imogen pretends to know nothing, asking who is in there. He tells her it’s a French woman who has been accused of being part of ISIS named Adilah El Idrissi. Her fingerprints have already been sent to French and U.S. intelligence. Guy speculates that when the guard takes a break at night, someone will sneak in and slit Adilah’s throat. He mentions that he’s seen firsthand what ISIS is capable of, admitting that he’d do the job if given the chance. “I need to make that call,” Imogen says.
Imogen goes inside the shed and interrupts Philippe (Yoli Fuller), who is playing a video game. She asks him to take a walk to avoid embarrassment. She lights up a cigarette. He tells her she can’t smoke in there. “Yes, I really can,” she says. But the minute he closes the door, she puts it out in the ashtray.
In France, we see the receiving end of Imogen’s phone call, not to her mother, but to Malik Amar (Dali Benssalah) at the DGSE Headquarters in Paris. She tells him about the incident that occurred at the camp before she arrived. The fingerprints they received weren’t conclusive. “Try to get her to a decoy camp as quick as you can,” he instructs. “The Americans are circling, and we want to get to her first. No doubt you’ll get something out of her before that.” He asks her to be careful.
Adilah reads Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days inside her tent. She puts the book down, hides a cell phone in a plastic bag, and ties it with twine before hiding it. Voices outside alert her. Imogen talks to the guard, Daan (Aron Von Andrian), telling him that Guy sent her to assess Adilah’s condition. She approaches the tent door and speaks to its occupant in French, saying she works with the NGO and was sent to help. “Help me with what?” Adilah asks from inside, holding a pocket knife in defense. “With staying alive,” Imogen replies. Adilah unzips the door and backs up. Imogen zips it closed behind her. She sees Adilah’s knife and smiles, pulling out her own similar pocket knife. She then folds it up and puts it away, indicating that she’s safe. Adilah follows her lead.
Adilah asks Imogen why she would help her. She says it's a pledge the NGO has to protect people, like doctors. She then asks if Adilah needs a doctor. She shows her a wound on the right side of her abdomen, a knife wound from the fight that’s infected. She won’t accept antibiotics, fearing they will use poison. “They hate me,” Adilah tells Imogen. “Do you deserve to be hated?” she asks. Adilah doesn’t answer.
Sitting down, Imogen gets Adilah to share some of her life story. She learned English at school outside of Paris. She’s a fan of poetry and math. She quit school young when she was offered a modeling job in Paris, where she was quickly taken advantage of. Having been disowned by her family, she ended up working for some bad men. She’s a mother. Her daughter lives in Paris. “All I want is just to have a life with her,” she explains. Imogen disarms Adilah with a childhood anecdote about rescuing worms as evidence of her good nature and innate desire to help others. “A mother should never have to lose her child,” she tells Adilah. Her plan is to get antibiotics, and then relocate to a camp in Syria that will make it easier to repatriate back to France.
Guy has grown suspicious of Imogen. He called HQ and learned that they didn’t send anybody. He grows more concerned when Phiippe reveals that he didn’t listen to Imogen’s phone call and left her unsupervised in the shed.
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Refugee women storm into Adilah’s tent with knives. Imogen and Adilah both fight them off, a lantern tipping over and setting the tent on fire in the process. As they run into the camp, a mob is looking for them. One of the women has a gun, and Imogen shows her stealth, dodging a bullet and wrestling it free. She uses it to hold the refugees back, protecting Adilah.
Guy meets with Imogen in a shed. “You’re a liar,” he accuses her. “You found a way to be a little less lonely here, haven’t you,” she responds, having seen Guy leave a tent with one of the refugee women, who looked disheveled. She speculates he’s had many. Payment for her silence is the ability to leave with Adilah and enough fuel to make it to Turkey.
Sandrina (Joana Ribeiro) from UNICRI gives Imogen a case of antibiotic vials and instructions to administer them. “You’re not taking a guard with you?” she asks as Adilah and Imogen get in the SUV to leave the camp. As they begin the drive, Imogen’s phone rings. She glances at the number and ignores the call.
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In the DGSE Surveillance Room, Malik looks at a map showing Imogen’s location. He holds a file labeled “Le Djinn de Raqqa.” He then goes past several layers of clearance to meet with Magritte Levasseur (Thibault de Montalembert). Magritte tells Malik that Adilah is believed to be Sabane Al-Qubaisi, a senior ISIS commander who was positively identified by six witnesses. Malik tells Magritte that Sabane’s nickname is “The Genie of Raqqa” because of her ability to disappear. Magritte says Adilah El Idrissi is not a name on their list. Magritte has been informed that the CIA is on their way to the camp to do a sweep and that agent Max Peterson is on his way to Paris. “The most American American America has ever produced,” he describes Peterson. “This is still a French-led operation,” Malik insists. “Even though the director forced us to ask MI6 for help?” Magritte asks. Malik says it’s just because Imogen is the best in the world. Magritte accuses him of having bias. Malik is assigned to pick Peterson up at the airport and is given a top-secret file about a planned attack on an unknown Western target within the next ten days. “If the woman in the car is a genie or a devil, Imogen will find out,” Malik concludes.
Throughout the drive, Imogen learns that Adilah’s father was a teacher and her grandfather, an Algerian Revolution hero, used to read her Shakespeare, which started her love of poetry. Adilah has a photo of her daughter. “How could a mother leave her child behind?” Imogen asks. The question upsets Adilah. “I just couldn’t bring her with me,” she responds. Later, Adilah reveals that she was trained to fight and kill in Raqqa. She had to use her skills once to set a group of abused captive women free. She was with a traveling party of women who had put heads on spikes when she ended up in the camp. That's where she was recognized for being part of that group, which wasn’t true. “I’ve never killed anyone.” She says the fighters know she released those women, and she will be identified and killed if Imogen takes her to Edip Köyü.
Malik picks up Max Peterson (Josh Charles) at the airport, who has Imogen’s location on his cellphone. He’s aware that Malik and Imogen have been having a sexual relationship. Malik is angry, not only that he hacked DGSE but that he’s looking at it on a cellphone in public. Malik gets Max’s phone from him, and they begin to fight over it. “Is there a problem, gentlemen?” a member of the French Border Police (Christophe Clairé) asks. They stop their fight and show their credentials, cleared to leave. Max says the U.S. is taking over this investigation. “You will do nothing to interfere with or endanger the French authorized handler who is currently active in the field,” Malik warns. Max holds his phone up again, showing the blue dot of Imogen’s location. “Tell your girlfriend in the blue light to expect a series of real-time escalations.”
Adilah asks Imogen about her own history, starting with her family. “They’re dead,” she says. Her mom died during childbirth, and her father when she was 16. Asking where Imogen learned how to fight, she says she was attacked when she was younger. Adilah asks Imogen about her life. “I’m afraid it will undo me,” she responds. We see a few images from her head, though. A sexy red dress hanging up on a dresser. Being intimate with an older man with a beard. “I lost something, a long time ago,” she adds. Images of hands at a piano. “I’ve been trying to figure out why I lost it.” A hand touches a child over the heart. We see Imogen in the red dress and a leather jacket, walking down a trail lined with baby’s-breath and trees.
“Explain to me why the beautiful daughter of intellectuals and communists would take a flight and cross borders and walk up mountains to join that ugly, brutal circus,” Imogen asks as they arrive at a fork in the road between Istanbul and Edip Köyü. Adilah says she doesn’t know why she did it. “I would like to live long enough to find out why.,” she adds. Imogen considers this for a moment. “Okay, here goes.” They turn right towards Istanbul.
At the DGSE, Malik sits at a boardroom table and opens his laptop. Signing in, he gets on a video call with Imogen at a rest stop. “Do you think she’s the woman we’re looking for?” he asks. “I think she was, but I don’t know if she still is,” Imogen responds. Imogen tells her Adilah is smart, and she doesn’t want interference. “You’re no longer following the directive, Imogen. Please, not again,” Malik warns. “Please don’t speak to the real me, it is extremely unhelpful.” She hangs up on him just as he was about to tell her something else.
Imogen watches Adillah get in the car. “For such that we are made of, such we be,” Imogen says, quoting Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. She gets in the car. “Adilah, my friend, you should know that I have absolutely zero idea what comes next.” They drive off into the night.
“Silly girl, begin,” says Michael Althorp (James Purefoy), the bearded lover from Imogen’s memory. She is thinking about him as they drive. And another flash to Imogen in that red dress and leather jacket running down the grassy path.
This was a double-episode premiere, so you can continue your journey right now with our recap of Episode 2, “Crossing the Bridge.”
Songs Featured in this Episode: