Fic: A Goat for Azazel, (Tony, Ziva, Team), [7/15]
Title: A Goat for Azazel, chapter 7/15
Authors: Hagar and Sailor Sol
Category: gen
Rating: overall M for captivity elements and intense emotional content
Summary: Goes AU after Aliyah. When Tony disappears two days before the Saleem op is a go, the team scrambles to find him - and to understand what an associate of La Grenouille and Israeli domestic intelligence have to do with it.
Chapter Title: Tailspin
Chapter Rating: T for the intense end of canon-typical situations
Chapter Summary: The more the team learns, they more they worry.
AO3 | DW | LJ Below:
Tuesday, September 15
The stack of files on Cassie’s desk was getting precariously high as she reviewed her case notes for the third time in as many days. There just wasn’t much else to do while they waited on Tim’s search routines or her undercover contacts to turn something up. Making sure her notes were up-to-date and accurate was also good for retracting her mental steps, trying to find a new angle or something she’d missed before. She’d had no luck so far, though.
Eight days since Tony had gone missing, and they weren’t much closer to finding him then they had been when Cassie had arrived at DC on Thursday. The knowledge that Ziva was in fact Gisele, and the one who’d taken Tony, raised more questions than answers. The more they tried to figure out the truth behind Gisele, the longer the list of unanswered questions got.
The team was, predictably, falling apart. Oh, they were still a functioning unit from the outside, but Cassie had known those people long enough, in both good and bad times. Abby was crying almost constantly, now, alternating between silent moping and hysterics well outside of her usual scale; Tim had not been home in over a week, except perhaps to pick up clean clothes; Gibbs, for his part, was preternaturally calm by Gibbs-standards. Sure, he was terrorizing his team, his boss and pretty much anyone who wandered into his sight, but it wasn’t yet quite as bad as she remembered it from the time Tony had been dying of pneumonic plague. Cassie also had the sneaking suspicion that Gibbs took to avoiding Autopsy, for pretty much the same reason that the rest of them haunted it. Thank goodness for Ducky and his tea.
Dunski was the unknown factor. It wasn’t that she was hard to work with; she’d slid in unusually smoothly, considering how complicated this particular team could be. But there was something about her that bothered Cassie - something in the way she interacted that just felt off. The Israeli woman was calm and professional, had a keen eye for detail and has certainly made all of their lives slightly easier by taking up food and coffee duty. The gesture should have been caring, but there was nothing like it in Dunski’s manner. Cassie couldn’t be quite sure, though. The Israeli was as readable as a regular blank mask. She certainly did not seem nearly as upset as she should have been, if she was as close to Ziva as she claimed. Cassie didn’t like second-guessing the people she worked with, but with Dunski, it was difficult not to.
For example, she had to choose that exact moment to look up from her own notes, straight at Cassie, catching the agent in the act of openly staring at her. Her eyes caught Cassie’s for the fraction of a second, but she might as well have not noticed at all. She stood up in an appearance of total indifference, and said: “More coffee?”
“I’m good, thanks,” Cassie replied with a smile.
Dunski nodded and moved around her desk, but then paused as Gibbs’ phone rang.
“Yeah, Gibbs,” the man said, and that was all: a second later he put the phone down and pushed himself up, making for the elevator. “You coming?” he tossed angrily over his shoulder. Cassie wasn’t sure where they were going, but she was smart enough to follow without question. Dunski did the same.
Once in the elevator, Gibbs punched the button for Abby’s lab’s level. Cassie’s pulse picked up: that phone call had to be either Tim or Abby, telling Gibbs that they had something.
Finally, they had something.
Whatever it was, though, it wasn’t good news. Abby didn’t turn around from her computer, and Tim looked like someone had died.
“What’ve you got?” Gibbs demanded.
“Well...” Tim began. He sounded about as lost as he looked.
“Today, McGee.”
Standing behind Gibbs’ back, Cassie allowed herself to cringe.
Tim’s expression flickered, and then he said, in a monotone, “We’ve been trying to track weapons that Gisele could potentially be offering to sell. Specifically, we searched for exotic, easy to conceal items. These criteria mean primarily biochemical weapons.” Tim paused, but continued before Gibbs could snap at him again. “Research facilities dealing with overt military research are tightly regulated and secure. There have been no security incidents at any of these facilities in the past three months. However...” Tim swallowed, and did not continue.
“It’s the plague, Gibbs.” That was Abby, still facing her computer. Abby’s voice was lifeless - no: it went beyond that, deep into hopelessness. Abby should never sound like that, Cassie thought. That, more than anything, convinced her that she’d just truly heard those words uttered.
With that said, though, Tim seemed able to continue the narrative. “Lowell Pharmaceuticals did not survive Hanna Lowell by much. Their former research staff is now employed by a dozen different players in the pharma market. Some of them continued with their former projects, some didn’t. For those projects that were discontinued, tracking down their old stocks was...” Tim’s hand gripped the edge of the bench as he visibly struggled to steady himself. “Most were properly destroyed,” he continued, voice softer and more strained, “as they should be. But the plague vaccine project was only shelved, not totally discontinued. And somehow the rights for the project ended up with one company, and Dr. Pandy at another, and - and the company that has the stocks had a security glitch just last week. Their internal report didn’t find anything missing, but - but the spores were lyophilized. It’s just white powder in a test tube, Boss. And they didn’t go tube by tube.”
Cassie held her breath, waiting for Gibbs’ reaction. When it came, she didn’t think any of them had been expecting it, even though perhaps they should have. He turned around so fast and so sharply that she only barely managed to get out of his way in time to not get her toes trodden on. He stomped out just as fast, affording her only a glimpse of his expression, set in cold fury. A second later they could all hear the heavy fire door of the stairwell slamming with a loud metallic bang as Gibbs did not bother waiting for the elevator. Tim and Abby did not even twitch at the sound.
Cassie swallowed, trying to force herself out of the shock. The gesture felt useless; it was difficult not to feel useless, herself, to not give in to the cold terror of the thought that they were facing the plague once again.
And once again, Tony’s life was in the balance.
The words on the computer screen in front of Tim blurred for the fifth time in half an hour, and finally he pushed away from his desk, standing and stretching. He was sick of sitting there doing nothing, while Tony was out there somewhere, and Ziva...
“This is getting us nowhere,” he snapped. Cassie looked up from her own computer screen. She looked about as exhausted as Tim felt.
Dunski looked up, too. “No new ideas,” she said. “I don’t think she could’ve pulled off this heist on her own, but until the CIA returns your Director’s calls or Mossad mine...” She shrugged and let the sentence trail off.
“This is the best lead we’ve got right now,” Cassie said, but she pushed back from her desk as she said it. Tim felt the urge to hit something, but he’d never much been one for physical violence as a means of releasing frustration.
“We could be looking into known bioweapons traders,” Dunski said. “A genetically engineered plague strain, that’s rather specialized. Whoever has access to that, they’re going to be on at least one database.”
The frustration finally boiled over. “Ziva would have known,” he said. He had been trying not to think about this all day, trying not to think about blue lights and Tony leaning over his trash can to dump a bottle of water over his head or Gibbs standing up on his desk to declare the emergency. “She should have known better, damn it!”
“I know, Tim,” Cassie said softly, coming across the bullpen to sit on the corner of Tony’s desk. Dunski got up and came around, too, forming a loose triangle with the two of them. Her arms were crossed on her chest and her gaze particularly intent.
“You have previous experience with this strain?” she asked.
He saw Cassie look at him expectantly. He had to swallow twice before he could get the words to come out. “Five years ago, Tony...” He had to swallow again. “The owner of Lowell Pharmaceuticals sent a letter to NCIS laced with Y. pestis. Tony became infected.”
“Five years ago,” Dunski repeated. Her voice lost its usual detachment. “That’s when Ziva was first assigned here.”
“About a month before Ziva arrived,” Tim clarified. “But she knew.”
“So she had to have known, when she took up this op. She knew what this would mean to you.”
“Ziva can be a bitch, but this is low, even for her,” Tim said. “Tony’s not afraid of much, and she knew that.”
Dunski shook her head. “No,” she said sharply, flatly. “Involving him could not have possibly been part of the operational plan. Something went wrong.”
“Maybe she didn’t mean to get him involved, but she knew what impact this would have on him,” Cassie said.
“I don’t think any of you were supposed to be aware of this at all. That would be better protocol. If not for the Roberts murder - and that doesn’t seem to be part of whatever plan is unfolding here.”
“Then why this? Why the plague?” Tim demanded.
“I can think of two alternatives,” Dunski said, quietly. She uncrossed her arms. “One is that this strain was already on the market, and she might have been particularly interested in taking it off. The other would be that this is simply what she was familiar with, and thus she incorporated it into the plan.” Her mouth stretched into a sad half-smile. “Ziva is not always good with other people’s feelings.”
Cassie made a soft snorting noise. Tim shot her a dark look before sitting down in his seat again. “We have work to do,” he snapped.
Dunski’s smile turned sardonic. “No, really.”
Jethro was sawing, and he’d been at it a while. Ducky knew that before he pulled open the door leading down to the basement: the smell of sawdust was quite evident. He coughed a little as he stepped downstairs.
“Really, Jethro,” he called out. “You have got to install better ventilation in this place if you’re going to release all these particulates.” Or you’ll give yourself emphysema, he nearly added, but thought better of it.
Jethro’s shoulders were tense, too tense. Ducky could only imagine the burning contractions he had to have worked his back into, sawing back and forth like that. He didn’t look up at Ducky as he said, “If I wanted better ventilation, I’d open a window, Duck,” but Ducky hadn’t expected him to. Jethro was prone to doing that. He did, however, put the saw down and walk over to the workbench, where he unceremoniously dumped a dozen nails out of a jar and refilled it with bourbon.
Ducky joined him without saying a word or, indeed, without finding himself a seat. He remained standing, as Jethro was.
“You got something for me?” On another day, Jethro’s voice would have been harsher, demanding. On another day, he’d be glaring at Ducky and not staring through a wall. Ducky’s heart constricted in sympathy.
“I wish I knew, Jethro,” he said heavily. “This infernal affair seems to only become more convoluted the more we try to untangle it.”
“Damn it, Duck.” The anger was nearly smothered by the exhaustion. Jethro’s gaze dropped to the workbench. “What the hell is going through her head?”
The question could have been rhetorical, but Ducky knew better than that and so did Jethro. Ducky sighed. “Ziva considered Tony responsible for Rivkin’s death. More than that: she considered him guilty of it. We knew that, and when you returned from Israel, four months ago, you voiced some concerns at her father’s motivation in this.” Ducky paused, trying to find just the right way to phrase the next point. There was none. “You remember Ziva’s early interrogations.”
Gibbs downed the two fingers of bourbon.
“She had been trained for efficacy, indeed, for callousness. She would have been trained to sharpen anger and grief into blades, to channel them into vengeance. And she had lost too much, at too young an age.” Ducky’s words bled dry. Profiling was rooted in empathy, but that didn’t make Ziva’s motives just, only understandable.
“Yeah, I know.”
“It may not be much of a comfort, Jethro, but I do believe that she is acting out of pain, not hatred.”
Finally, Jethro looked up at Ducky, and there was something harsher than tiredness in his eyes as he snapped: “She made the choice to stay.”
“She confessed a difficult truth,” Ducky corrected, gently, “and you both made the only choice you could, given the circumstances.”
“This needs to end, and sooner rather than later.”
“You may want to lean on Officer Dunski,” he said, trying to not let the way he felt about the woman color his words; at least, not too much.
“You sound like you really hit it off with her,” Jethro replied, sarcasm lacing his words.
It was easier to form the words in his mind than to speak them out loud. Thinking of what he saw in the woman forced him to remember the previous - and mercifully, only - time he’d known someone like her. Eventually, though, he managed. “I met someone with eyes like that, before.” He could feel the pain of the memory in his suddenly-tense shoulders, in the jerk of his arm, in how his gaze was suddenly on the floor rather than on his friend. He hoped that Jethro would perceive it and interpret it correctly, saving Ducky from having to expand.
There was a slight, barely perceptible pause, and then Jethro said, in a tone of voice that Ducky appreciated even if he hoped to never be its subject again: “Ah, hell, Duck.”
Ducky made himself look at Jethro in time to see the man upend another jar and pour two fingers of bourbon into it before offering it to Ducky.
Ducky closed his fingers around the jar wordlessly.
“This’ll be over soon, one way or another.”
Ducky sighed again. “Yes,” he said, “that’s what worries me.”
Wednesday, September 16
The line of sight from the elevator door of the MCRT floor was not one of Yael’s favorite things. DiNozzo’s unmanned desk came into view first, and then McGee’s; she could see the twin paper cups that meant he was having coffee with his sugar, but nothing to suggest actual food. She noted the silence from Yates’ desk at about the same time: the woman wasn’t in just yet. Gibbs was at his desk, though judging by his posture, muscle tone and the way his head snapped towards her, he would not be staying there long.
Took him long enough. She’d expected the confrontation the afternoon of the day before. She sipped on her coffee as she walked to her desk. It was still too hot, but it would be too cold by the next chance she’d get.
“Morning,” she said as she passed McGee’s desk.
“Morning,” he replied absentmindedly, attention locked on his work.
“Anything new?” she asked as she dumped her bag at her desk, ignoring Gibbs’ attempt to bore holes into her back with his eyes.
“Nothing,” he said.
She pushed the computer mouse as she sat down, still working on that coffee.
“Dunski, my office. Now,” Gibbs barked, standing up from his desk.
That was more petty than expected. She adjusted her assessment of him accordingly as she got up, left the coffee on the desk and fell in step with him, walking towards the elevator.
Gibbs punched viciously at what appeared to be a random floor number before the elevator doors closed on them, and then hit the emergency stop switch as soon as the elevator started moving.
She placed herself with her back to the elevator’s rear wall, near the opposite corner from where Gibbs was standing, still by the control panel. He’d have room enough to maneuver from her front and left. By the time he turned around from the control panel, she’d already relaxed into posture: feet at shoulder-width, knees straight but unlocked, gaze focused straight ahead. She’d left her arms to the side of her body rather than clasp them behind her back, but it should still provide Gibbs with the sense of control he needed for this conversation to truly remain under control.
He crossed half the elevator in two strides, cutting the distance between them but not trying to crowd her or get in her face just yet. His shoulders were pitched high, weight balanced on the balls of his feet. The visible signs of anger made it above his neckline, too. Display, or too agitated to care? His established pattern of behavior made it impossible to tell just yet.
“You want to tell me what the hell is going on, Dunski?” he demanded, voice rising a little above what was acceptable for polite conversation.
“Nothing new that I’m aware of.”
“I didn’t ask for what was new.” There was more than the hint of a snarl in that last word.
He was going full-helm with the back-to-square-one tactic, then. Well. Making sure to stick to Ziva’s speech patterns, she replied: “I know nothing that you do not.” She paused for a split-second, and amended: “Nothing case-relevant, that is.”
“Bullshit,” he snapped. “You’re David’s handler.”
And that was why she was careful to not be lulled into complacency by his choice of tactics. The choice of pronouns was interesting, though. No surprise, no added tension in his jaw or around his eyes: the sentiment appeared to be genuine.
“A Shin-Beit officer, handling a Mossad operative?” She injected some incredulity into her voice for that, and then switched to a faint hint of distaste. “If that makes sense to you then you are significantly smarter than I am.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences.”
There was nothing helpful to reply to that, so she didn’t.
He took another step towards her, bringing him close enough to be threatening by virtue of that alone, even if the possibility of violence wasn’t written in each and every single line of his body. “You just happened to stumble into the other end of her assignment? That seem like a coincidence to you, Dunski?”
“It’s a small country. And a smaller intelligence community.”
“You walked into this office last week knowing damn well what Ziva’s involvement was in this mess. And you certainly weren’t flying in from Israel that morning.”
He was back to the first name, with Ziva. That was good; the instability wasn’t. “I never said I did.”
At this short a distance, and with his reflexes, she had no time at all to see it coming before his right fist hit the elevator wall just by her ear and stayed there as Gibbs all but trapped her between his body and the corner, looming in her face and from the side quite as if he was a gunnery sergeant again, and she an errant Marine. She wondered if he recognized the choreography; she wondered if he consciously noticed that she hadn’t flinched, and that her gaze stayed locked on.
“Cut the crap, Dunski. We both know what you are.”
“I am not her handler,” was the expected answer, which she fired off even as she analyzed his voice. It wasn’t wrong, quite, but it suggested that he meant something different. “If you want to hit me, Gibbs, go ahead.” The words were Ziva’s, but the tone of voice was hers, tiredness topped with derision and challenge. “I am not going anywhere.”
“You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
His voice dropped in volume, became softer, poison-like. Ah. So that’s what he was getting at. She let her next exhale carry that slight tremor, let the slight increase in tension settle into her posture. She kept her voice stable, for the time being, as she said: “I have no idea what you mean.”
“I know what my government calls people like you; what does yours?”
“The term was collections officer, last I checked.”
“Collecting what?”
“It’s the same job as your case officers.”
“My government doesn’t train people into torturers from the cradle.”
Someone must have informed him of her family; she filed it off for later. That was a minor point, though. She didn’t have to reach at all for the indignant fury as she turned her head to meet his gaze squarely. “I have never,” she spat, “caused more harm to a living thing than was absolutely necessary, and I have certainly never caused harm for its own sake.”
"And you consider any harm that comes to Agent DiNozzo to be necessary?"
“I already told you,” she replied quietly, “that in my opinion there was no operational justification for his kidnapping.”
And finally, the rest of what he had to be feeling seemed to catch up with his anger. She could hear it in the rhythm of his breath, see it in the tension of his forehead and around his eyes. “You had damn well better be telling the truth, because if you’re not?” He leaned in as much as he still could, bringing their faces disturbingly close. “Any harm he comes to, I will hold you responsible for. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she replied. Much like their exchange the day she walked into MCRT, this was a promise. “I do.”
Authors: Hagar and Sailor Sol
Category: gen
Rating: overall M for captivity elements and intense emotional content
Summary: Goes AU after Aliyah. When Tony disappears two days before the Saleem op is a go, the team scrambles to find him - and to understand what an associate of La Grenouille and Israeli domestic intelligence have to do with it.
Chapter Title: Tailspin
Chapter Rating: T for the intense end of canon-typical situations
Chapter Summary: The more the team learns, they more they worry.
AO3 | DW | LJ Below:
Tuesday, September 15
The stack of files on Cassie’s desk was getting precariously high as she reviewed her case notes for the third time in as many days. There just wasn’t much else to do while they waited on Tim’s search routines or her undercover contacts to turn something up. Making sure her notes were up-to-date and accurate was also good for retracting her mental steps, trying to find a new angle or something she’d missed before. She’d had no luck so far, though.
Eight days since Tony had gone missing, and they weren’t much closer to finding him then they had been when Cassie had arrived at DC on Thursday. The knowledge that Ziva was in fact Gisele, and the one who’d taken Tony, raised more questions than answers. The more they tried to figure out the truth behind Gisele, the longer the list of unanswered questions got.
The team was, predictably, falling apart. Oh, they were still a functioning unit from the outside, but Cassie had known those people long enough, in both good and bad times. Abby was crying almost constantly, now, alternating between silent moping and hysterics well outside of her usual scale; Tim had not been home in over a week, except perhaps to pick up clean clothes; Gibbs, for his part, was preternaturally calm by Gibbs-standards. Sure, he was terrorizing his team, his boss and pretty much anyone who wandered into his sight, but it wasn’t yet quite as bad as she remembered it from the time Tony had been dying of pneumonic plague. Cassie also had the sneaking suspicion that Gibbs took to avoiding Autopsy, for pretty much the same reason that the rest of them haunted it. Thank goodness for Ducky and his tea.
Dunski was the unknown factor. It wasn’t that she was hard to work with; she’d slid in unusually smoothly, considering how complicated this particular team could be. But there was something about her that bothered Cassie - something in the way she interacted that just felt off. The Israeli woman was calm and professional, had a keen eye for detail and has certainly made all of their lives slightly easier by taking up food and coffee duty. The gesture should have been caring, but there was nothing like it in Dunski’s manner. Cassie couldn’t be quite sure, though. The Israeli was as readable as a regular blank mask. She certainly did not seem nearly as upset as she should have been, if she was as close to Ziva as she claimed. Cassie didn’t like second-guessing the people she worked with, but with Dunski, it was difficult not to.
For example, she had to choose that exact moment to look up from her own notes, straight at Cassie, catching the agent in the act of openly staring at her. Her eyes caught Cassie’s for the fraction of a second, but she might as well have not noticed at all. She stood up in an appearance of total indifference, and said: “More coffee?”
“I’m good, thanks,” Cassie replied with a smile.
Dunski nodded and moved around her desk, but then paused as Gibbs’ phone rang.
“Yeah, Gibbs,” the man said, and that was all: a second later he put the phone down and pushed himself up, making for the elevator. “You coming?” he tossed angrily over his shoulder. Cassie wasn’t sure where they were going, but she was smart enough to follow without question. Dunski did the same.
Once in the elevator, Gibbs punched the button for Abby’s lab’s level. Cassie’s pulse picked up: that phone call had to be either Tim or Abby, telling Gibbs that they had something.
Finally, they had something.
Whatever it was, though, it wasn’t good news. Abby didn’t turn around from her computer, and Tim looked like someone had died.
“What’ve you got?” Gibbs demanded.
“Well...” Tim began. He sounded about as lost as he looked.
“Today, McGee.”
Standing behind Gibbs’ back, Cassie allowed herself to cringe.
Tim’s expression flickered, and then he said, in a monotone, “We’ve been trying to track weapons that Gisele could potentially be offering to sell. Specifically, we searched for exotic, easy to conceal items. These criteria mean primarily biochemical weapons.” Tim paused, but continued before Gibbs could snap at him again. “Research facilities dealing with overt military research are tightly regulated and secure. There have been no security incidents at any of these facilities in the past three months. However...” Tim swallowed, and did not continue.
“It’s the plague, Gibbs.” That was Abby, still facing her computer. Abby’s voice was lifeless - no: it went beyond that, deep into hopelessness. Abby should never sound like that, Cassie thought. That, more than anything, convinced her that she’d just truly heard those words uttered.
With that said, though, Tim seemed able to continue the narrative. “Lowell Pharmaceuticals did not survive Hanna Lowell by much. Their former research staff is now employed by a dozen different players in the pharma market. Some of them continued with their former projects, some didn’t. For those projects that were discontinued, tracking down their old stocks was...” Tim’s hand gripped the edge of the bench as he visibly struggled to steady himself. “Most were properly destroyed,” he continued, voice softer and more strained, “as they should be. But the plague vaccine project was only shelved, not totally discontinued. And somehow the rights for the project ended up with one company, and Dr. Pandy at another, and - and the company that has the stocks had a security glitch just last week. Their internal report didn’t find anything missing, but - but the spores were lyophilized. It’s just white powder in a test tube, Boss. And they didn’t go tube by tube.”
Cassie held her breath, waiting for Gibbs’ reaction. When it came, she didn’t think any of them had been expecting it, even though perhaps they should have. He turned around so fast and so sharply that she only barely managed to get out of his way in time to not get her toes trodden on. He stomped out just as fast, affording her only a glimpse of his expression, set in cold fury. A second later they could all hear the heavy fire door of the stairwell slamming with a loud metallic bang as Gibbs did not bother waiting for the elevator. Tim and Abby did not even twitch at the sound.
Cassie swallowed, trying to force herself out of the shock. The gesture felt useless; it was difficult not to feel useless, herself, to not give in to the cold terror of the thought that they were facing the plague once again.
And once again, Tony’s life was in the balance.
The words on the computer screen in front of Tim blurred for the fifth time in half an hour, and finally he pushed away from his desk, standing and stretching. He was sick of sitting there doing nothing, while Tony was out there somewhere, and Ziva...
“This is getting us nowhere,” he snapped. Cassie looked up from her own computer screen. She looked about as exhausted as Tim felt.
Dunski looked up, too. “No new ideas,” she said. “I don’t think she could’ve pulled off this heist on her own, but until the CIA returns your Director’s calls or Mossad mine...” She shrugged and let the sentence trail off.
“This is the best lead we’ve got right now,” Cassie said, but she pushed back from her desk as she said it. Tim felt the urge to hit something, but he’d never much been one for physical violence as a means of releasing frustration.
“We could be looking into known bioweapons traders,” Dunski said. “A genetically engineered plague strain, that’s rather specialized. Whoever has access to that, they’re going to be on at least one database.”
The frustration finally boiled over. “Ziva would have known,” he said. He had been trying not to think about this all day, trying not to think about blue lights and Tony leaning over his trash can to dump a bottle of water over his head or Gibbs standing up on his desk to declare the emergency. “She should have known better, damn it!”
“I know, Tim,” Cassie said softly, coming across the bullpen to sit on the corner of Tony’s desk. Dunski got up and came around, too, forming a loose triangle with the two of them. Her arms were crossed on her chest and her gaze particularly intent.
“You have previous experience with this strain?” she asked.
He saw Cassie look at him expectantly. He had to swallow twice before he could get the words to come out. “Five years ago, Tony...” He had to swallow again. “The owner of Lowell Pharmaceuticals sent a letter to NCIS laced with Y. pestis. Tony became infected.”
“Five years ago,” Dunski repeated. Her voice lost its usual detachment. “That’s when Ziva was first assigned here.”
“About a month before Ziva arrived,” Tim clarified. “But she knew.”
“So she had to have known, when she took up this op. She knew what this would mean to you.”
“Ziva can be a bitch, but this is low, even for her,” Tim said. “Tony’s not afraid of much, and she knew that.”
Dunski shook her head. “No,” she said sharply, flatly. “Involving him could not have possibly been part of the operational plan. Something went wrong.”
“Maybe she didn’t mean to get him involved, but she knew what impact this would have on him,” Cassie said.
“I don’t think any of you were supposed to be aware of this at all. That would be better protocol. If not for the Roberts murder - and that doesn’t seem to be part of whatever plan is unfolding here.”
“Then why this? Why the plague?” Tim demanded.
“I can think of two alternatives,” Dunski said, quietly. She uncrossed her arms. “One is that this strain was already on the market, and she might have been particularly interested in taking it off. The other would be that this is simply what she was familiar with, and thus she incorporated it into the plan.” Her mouth stretched into a sad half-smile. “Ziva is not always good with other people’s feelings.”
Cassie made a soft snorting noise. Tim shot her a dark look before sitting down in his seat again. “We have work to do,” he snapped.
Dunski’s smile turned sardonic. “No, really.”
Jethro was sawing, and he’d been at it a while. Ducky knew that before he pulled open the door leading down to the basement: the smell of sawdust was quite evident. He coughed a little as he stepped downstairs.
“Really, Jethro,” he called out. “You have got to install better ventilation in this place if you’re going to release all these particulates.” Or you’ll give yourself emphysema, he nearly added, but thought better of it.
Jethro’s shoulders were tense, too tense. Ducky could only imagine the burning contractions he had to have worked his back into, sawing back and forth like that. He didn’t look up at Ducky as he said, “If I wanted better ventilation, I’d open a window, Duck,” but Ducky hadn’t expected him to. Jethro was prone to doing that. He did, however, put the saw down and walk over to the workbench, where he unceremoniously dumped a dozen nails out of a jar and refilled it with bourbon.
Ducky joined him without saying a word or, indeed, without finding himself a seat. He remained standing, as Jethro was.
“You got something for me?” On another day, Jethro’s voice would have been harsher, demanding. On another day, he’d be glaring at Ducky and not staring through a wall. Ducky’s heart constricted in sympathy.
“I wish I knew, Jethro,” he said heavily. “This infernal affair seems to only become more convoluted the more we try to untangle it.”
“Damn it, Duck.” The anger was nearly smothered by the exhaustion. Jethro’s gaze dropped to the workbench. “What the hell is going through her head?”
The question could have been rhetorical, but Ducky knew better than that and so did Jethro. Ducky sighed. “Ziva considered Tony responsible for Rivkin’s death. More than that: she considered him guilty of it. We knew that, and when you returned from Israel, four months ago, you voiced some concerns at her father’s motivation in this.” Ducky paused, trying to find just the right way to phrase the next point. There was none. “You remember Ziva’s early interrogations.”
Gibbs downed the two fingers of bourbon.
“She had been trained for efficacy, indeed, for callousness. She would have been trained to sharpen anger and grief into blades, to channel them into vengeance. And she had lost too much, at too young an age.” Ducky’s words bled dry. Profiling was rooted in empathy, but that didn’t make Ziva’s motives just, only understandable.
“Yeah, I know.”
“It may not be much of a comfort, Jethro, but I do believe that she is acting out of pain, not hatred.”
Finally, Jethro looked up at Ducky, and there was something harsher than tiredness in his eyes as he snapped: “She made the choice to stay.”
“She confessed a difficult truth,” Ducky corrected, gently, “and you both made the only choice you could, given the circumstances.”
“This needs to end, and sooner rather than later.”
“You may want to lean on Officer Dunski,” he said, trying to not let the way he felt about the woman color his words; at least, not too much.
“You sound like you really hit it off with her,” Jethro replied, sarcasm lacing his words.
It was easier to form the words in his mind than to speak them out loud. Thinking of what he saw in the woman forced him to remember the previous - and mercifully, only - time he’d known someone like her. Eventually, though, he managed. “I met someone with eyes like that, before.” He could feel the pain of the memory in his suddenly-tense shoulders, in the jerk of his arm, in how his gaze was suddenly on the floor rather than on his friend. He hoped that Jethro would perceive it and interpret it correctly, saving Ducky from having to expand.
There was a slight, barely perceptible pause, and then Jethro said, in a tone of voice that Ducky appreciated even if he hoped to never be its subject again: “Ah, hell, Duck.”
Ducky made himself look at Jethro in time to see the man upend another jar and pour two fingers of bourbon into it before offering it to Ducky.
Ducky closed his fingers around the jar wordlessly.
“This’ll be over soon, one way or another.”
Ducky sighed again. “Yes,” he said, “that’s what worries me.”
Wednesday, September 16
The line of sight from the elevator door of the MCRT floor was not one of Yael’s favorite things. DiNozzo’s unmanned desk came into view first, and then McGee’s; she could see the twin paper cups that meant he was having coffee with his sugar, but nothing to suggest actual food. She noted the silence from Yates’ desk at about the same time: the woman wasn’t in just yet. Gibbs was at his desk, though judging by his posture, muscle tone and the way his head snapped towards her, he would not be staying there long.
Took him long enough. She’d expected the confrontation the afternoon of the day before. She sipped on her coffee as she walked to her desk. It was still too hot, but it would be too cold by the next chance she’d get.
“Morning,” she said as she passed McGee’s desk.
“Morning,” he replied absentmindedly, attention locked on his work.
“Anything new?” she asked as she dumped her bag at her desk, ignoring Gibbs’ attempt to bore holes into her back with his eyes.
“Nothing,” he said.
She pushed the computer mouse as she sat down, still working on that coffee.
“Dunski, my office. Now,” Gibbs barked, standing up from his desk.
That was more petty than expected. She adjusted her assessment of him accordingly as she got up, left the coffee on the desk and fell in step with him, walking towards the elevator.
Gibbs punched viciously at what appeared to be a random floor number before the elevator doors closed on them, and then hit the emergency stop switch as soon as the elevator started moving.
She placed herself with her back to the elevator’s rear wall, near the opposite corner from where Gibbs was standing, still by the control panel. He’d have room enough to maneuver from her front and left. By the time he turned around from the control panel, she’d already relaxed into posture: feet at shoulder-width, knees straight but unlocked, gaze focused straight ahead. She’d left her arms to the side of her body rather than clasp them behind her back, but it should still provide Gibbs with the sense of control he needed for this conversation to truly remain under control.
He crossed half the elevator in two strides, cutting the distance between them but not trying to crowd her or get in her face just yet. His shoulders were pitched high, weight balanced on the balls of his feet. The visible signs of anger made it above his neckline, too. Display, or too agitated to care? His established pattern of behavior made it impossible to tell just yet.
“You want to tell me what the hell is going on, Dunski?” he demanded, voice rising a little above what was acceptable for polite conversation.
“Nothing new that I’m aware of.”
“I didn’t ask for what was new.” There was more than the hint of a snarl in that last word.
He was going full-helm with the back-to-square-one tactic, then. Well. Making sure to stick to Ziva’s speech patterns, she replied: “I know nothing that you do not.” She paused for a split-second, and amended: “Nothing case-relevant, that is.”
“Bullshit,” he snapped. “You’re David’s handler.”
And that was why she was careful to not be lulled into complacency by his choice of tactics. The choice of pronouns was interesting, though. No surprise, no added tension in his jaw or around his eyes: the sentiment appeared to be genuine.
“A Shin-Beit officer, handling a Mossad operative?” She injected some incredulity into her voice for that, and then switched to a faint hint of distaste. “If that makes sense to you then you are significantly smarter than I am.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences.”
There was nothing helpful to reply to that, so she didn’t.
He took another step towards her, bringing him close enough to be threatening by virtue of that alone, even if the possibility of violence wasn’t written in each and every single line of his body. “You just happened to stumble into the other end of her assignment? That seem like a coincidence to you, Dunski?”
“It’s a small country. And a smaller intelligence community.”
“You walked into this office last week knowing damn well what Ziva’s involvement was in this mess. And you certainly weren’t flying in from Israel that morning.”
He was back to the first name, with Ziva. That was good; the instability wasn’t. “I never said I did.”
At this short a distance, and with his reflexes, she had no time at all to see it coming before his right fist hit the elevator wall just by her ear and stayed there as Gibbs all but trapped her between his body and the corner, looming in her face and from the side quite as if he was a gunnery sergeant again, and she an errant Marine. She wondered if he recognized the choreography; she wondered if he consciously noticed that she hadn’t flinched, and that her gaze stayed locked on.
“Cut the crap, Dunski. We both know what you are.”
“I am not her handler,” was the expected answer, which she fired off even as she analyzed his voice. It wasn’t wrong, quite, but it suggested that he meant something different. “If you want to hit me, Gibbs, go ahead.” The words were Ziva’s, but the tone of voice was hers, tiredness topped with derision and challenge. “I am not going anywhere.”
“You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
His voice dropped in volume, became softer, poison-like. Ah. So that’s what he was getting at. She let her next exhale carry that slight tremor, let the slight increase in tension settle into her posture. She kept her voice stable, for the time being, as she said: “I have no idea what you mean.”
“I know what my government calls people like you; what does yours?”
“The term was collections officer, last I checked.”
“Collecting what?”
“It’s the same job as your case officers.”
“My government doesn’t train people into torturers from the cradle.”
Someone must have informed him of her family; she filed it off for later. That was a minor point, though. She didn’t have to reach at all for the indignant fury as she turned her head to meet his gaze squarely. “I have never,” she spat, “caused more harm to a living thing than was absolutely necessary, and I have certainly never caused harm for its own sake.”
"And you consider any harm that comes to Agent DiNozzo to be necessary?"
“I already told you,” she replied quietly, “that in my opinion there was no operational justification for his kidnapping.”
And finally, the rest of what he had to be feeling seemed to catch up with his anger. She could hear it in the rhythm of his breath, see it in the tension of his forehead and around his eyes. “You had damn well better be telling the truth, because if you’re not?” He leaned in as much as he still could, bringing their faces disturbingly close. “Any harm he comes to, I will hold you responsible for. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she replied. Much like their exchange the day she walked into MCRT, this was a promise. “I do.”