The Blacklist Season 7: Red's Art Dealing Scheme Goes Wrong In This Sneak Peek

The Blacklist Season 7 premieres on March 20 from its long hiatus with one of its occasional distantly-inspired-by-real-headlines episodes. The eleventh episode of the season "Victoria Fenberg" finds Red Reddington (James Spader) embroiled in a complex art forgery scheme involving a family that vaguely resembles the Sacklers, the controversial opioid-pushing pharmaceutical magnates who fund many arts and cultural institutions. In this exclusive clip, Red gets into some trouble while doing the black market art dealing that gets him caught up in this whole mess.

In the clip, Red is in Ukraine to retrieve one piece of a nesting casket (think of a Russian nesting doll, but way more valuable) to take to a meet-up where a buyer is going to give the owners of each of the six pieces a huge windfall. While there, the guy Red hired to guard his treasure vault betrays him. So now Red is in a compromised position, with separatists who are very mad at him for selling weapons to the Russians on their way.

"Victoria Fenberg" puts the Katarina Rostova plot on the backburner for a bit, but more will be revealed about Liz Keen's (Megan Boone) team-up with her super-spy mother (Laila Robins) to uncover Reddington's true agenda as the season progresses.

"We have some incredibly surprising and startling and decisive things that happen between now and the end of the season that will really kick it into next year, of which I can speak of none of it to you," James Spader tease-promised TV Guide.

The Blacklist returns Friday, March 20 at 8/7c on NBC.