At the Soviet Embassy in Washington, a conversation is being had about how quickly to bug Defense Secretary Weinberger's house. The more cautious of the two men, Vasili, is looking at surveillance photos of the clock and also the Weinbergers' maid (Tonye Patano, a.k.a. Heylia James from Weeds!), while the other guy, more of a hardliner, is saying that with British Prime Minister Thatcher and her Defense Minister coming to town this week, they need to get ears on the scheduled meeting between Weinberger and Defense Minister Nott. The only people who can get an operation up that quickly are Directorate S (and you'll recall Philip anticipated the mission could take nine months). Vasili is incredulous, especially considering just last week they lost a Directorate S officer (R.I.P. Cuteski). But Hardliner is insistent upon Directorate S participation (oh for Pete's sake, just call K Directorate and Anna Espinoza and get this shit taken care of in an hour). Vasili says he's going over Hardliner's head, to General Zhukov, but Hardliner says that Zhukov doesn't have the power he once did. Ah, this must be what Zhukov was talking about last week, about how everybody in the KGB has gone psycho-crazy. Sounds fun.

Later, Philip and Elizabeth are at work, looking at the printout of their coded orders. Guess nobody thought it would be interesting to see how they actually get their orders. Anyway, Philip thinks the three-day timeframe is fucking stupid, but Elizabeth says they're orders, and you know orders are the only thing Elizabeth loves more than following orders is not getting too attached to her kids. She's all, "But General Zhukov said things would be getting harder!" and he gets all Kevin Walker-condescending, like, "Are you being serious? Do you hear yourself? Because you sound like a fucking moron."

Next thing we know, Elizabeth is sitting in the courtyard of a local college, dressed up like a woman looking for a job as a nanny. Not a sexy nanny, either, but a real one. Her dumb wig du jour us made even dumber by the fact that it's the same color as her real hair, so she could have just styled it differently. She spots a student across the way and begins to stride in his direction. She's carrying an umbrella, and when she hits a button, the thing sprouts a needle at the end. She pretends to fall and ends up subtly sticking that needle into the ankle of the student she's stalking. Phase One (of whatever dumbshit plan this is): complete.