Chapter Text
Barring mention of Bode Technology, Meir Dagan, Efraim Halevi, Adolf Eichmann, Ira Einhorn, Jonathan Pollard, the Siman-Tov Procedure, and the publicized criticism of the Mossad's expenditures by Israel's Office of the State Comptroller, all characters and incidents portrayed in this story are fictitious. Any further resemblance to real events and actual individuals, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Names, events, and opinions expressed are either property of Belisarius Productions and CBS-Paramount, or are products of the writer's imagination; neither are to be construed as real. The views and actions contained herein should not be interpreted as representative of the policies (official or otherwise), activities (official or otherwise), or personnel of any department or agency of any governmental body based in the US, Israel, or any other country.
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KIDON: Part One
Chapter One
Ziva needed to make her mark with this team, and she had to make that breakthrough soon, or it would be better to leave. If someone demanded complete honesty from her, she would say that she was tired of being grudgingly viewed as Kate's replacement. That was a personal comparison. She needed to be viewed as Ziva David, and not the person who would never be Caitlin 'Kate' Todd. She had to force the rest of the team to view her in a professional light, and to do so she would have to prove her worth in a way that went beyond what they expected.
They didn't expect enough. All they knew of her was attached to that word 'Mossad' and that didn't even begin to describe Ziva David.
Kidon. Bayonet. Someone with Box 850 (MI6) had once asked Ziva, Why 'bayonet' and not something else, like 'dagger'? The Mossad had its roots in Israel's military intelligence community, and old soldiers had been the first to be recruited by the Mossad, old soldiers who had often made use of bayonets instead of bullets from suppressed weapons to effect silent kills.
There is little or no defense against a surprise bayonet thrust out of the dead dark. Little or no defense against crack operatives with minutely detailed mission plans and the confidence of years of experience to back them.
Ziva was a kidon, a member of the Mossad's Anaf Metzada (Masada Branch) which, contrary to popular belief, does not singularly specialize in assassination and kidnapping. Ziva had been trained to kill in a variety of ways, but she'd also been trained in other skills. Many other skills. The members of Anaf Metzada tend to have a lot of free time on their hands. They are expected to use it well. Ziva had, pursuing anything that had seemed like a useful addition to her skill-set. All she'd had to do was suggest to her supervisor that she wanted to learn to do X, and he'd seen to it that she'd been included in a training program. She had to wonder how it would work here, had to wonder if she'd be allowed time off to acquire an addition to that long list. The word 'useful' repeated itself to her: if the skill would be of use to NCIS, she might be permitted that time off.
But her considerable skill-set, her general usefulness, and that word 'Mossad' all fell short of describing a woman who was nearly six-thousand miles from home, and just trying to make the best of it here.
What she wanted was an opportunity, just a small gap. She needed a case that was not what it seemed. Beyond that, she needed to remember the way things were done here. She couldn't go over the head of her immediate superior without that person feeling put out, left out, and out-of-sorts. Ziva called that childish, but she wasn't stupid and didn't dare express her opinion aloud. She also didn't bother to explain that the Israeli way of doing things had its roots not in arrogance, but in history.
In late September of 1973 a junior intelligence officer tried to warn the Israeli brass of a Suez Canal crossing by Egyptian armor divisions. Lt. Siman-Tov was ignored, to Israel's considerable cost during the Yom Kippur War. After the war, the Siman-Tov Procedure was adopted by Military Intelligence, and it is still employed throughout the Israeli intel community: anyone, no matter how low their rank, may take information or queries directly to the top, without consulting their immediate superior first.
Ziva knew the value of quick action, of listening to her gut and doing things in a way that saved time and produced results, but she'd gotten into Gibbs's bad books by going over his head to Director Shepard some weeks ago. No matter what, even if it hurt her budding career here, she wouldn't be doing that again.
And she had a while to wait for that gap. When it arrived, Ziva was the only one who saw the obvious.
There were two victims: Marine Corps Sgt. Steve Danner and his wife. At first, Gibbs had had his money on the sergeant and his wife amounting to collateral damage in what initially looked like a burglary-gone-wrong, but that idea was soon tossed out during a search of the Danners' modest hunting lodge, on the Virginia shore of the Delmarva Peninsula. They hadn't expected to find anything there.
"I have... many guns here," Ziva called from the basement.
"Well, yeah," Tony called down from the kitchen. "Danner was a pretty serious goose hunter."
"Did he hunt gooses with Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine guns?"
"It's geese," Tony muttered. "And y'know, you're right: an MP5 SMG is not the right kinda gun for geese."
They found a ten-unit crate of HK MP5s, and two ten-unit crates of MAC–10s. That discovery made the ATF hungry for the case, but Director Shepard was keeping them away for the meanwhile. Ziva was happy about that: if they weren't kept at a distance, the ATF would turn up a gunrunning ring that might just mask the trail of the Danners' killer.
Ziva was certain that the killer was affiliated with the gunrunning ring, but that these two killings were not related to that business, and her gut was telling her to focus more on the sergeant's wife than the rest of the team was. After all, the guns hadn't been touched. The guns were the equivalent of a smoke screen: the killer knew where they were, and he'd left them right where the cops would find them.
Today she'd tried for a second time to get Gibbs and the rest of the team to listen to her theory, but she'd been rather much ignored. Well, fine. She decided that it was time to go and talk to Dr. Mallard. That wasn't anything like going over Gibbs's head. It was more like shifting sideways. If Ducky agreed with Ziva, he'd have to consult with Gibbs, and Ziva had made up her mind to let Ducky do all the convincing on her behalf.
It was nearly eight p.m, but that didn't matter. Ducky worked late nearly every day, though that hadn't been the case for long.
"Ever since Mother came to live with me," he wryly told Ziva. "If I time it just right, she dozes off in front of the telly, and then when I get home I just help her to bed."
"Maybe she is lonely?" Ziva blurted.
"My dear," Ducky drawled. "My mother is a member of a bridge club, a knitting and crochet circle, two different church socials, and she plays lawn bowls, croquet, and—much to my chagrin—darts. If she's lonely then I'm a monkey's uncle."
"Oh. I see. Can we perhaps talk about Irina Nikoreva Danner?"
"I thought she looked Russian– Slavic bone structure," Ducky said. "But in my file her maiden name is listed as Schmidt..."
"Her marriage to Danner was the second one. She was married to Heinrich Gerhard Schmidt when she lived in Germany, and Schmidt is the name she gave to the INS when she immigrated to the States."
"Ahh... And what about Herr Schmidt?" Ducky asked.
"Deceased. Natural causes." Ziva handed over a copy of a rather brief autopsy report. "My German is passable. The medical examiner listed a fault, a congenital defect."
"Indeed he did– a Grade IV Herzgeräusch, a pretty serious heart murmur, or hole in the heart as it's more commonly known. Schmidt was lucky to live as long as sixty years. So let's say that his death is not something we need to worry about."
"For now," Ziva said, looking him in the eye.
"You've been burning extra oil on this one, hmm?" Ducky said with a small smile.
"My instincts tell me to... Before her neck was broken Irina was held in a forearm choke-hold, yes?"
"A shorter term is 'yoked'..."
The killer had put his arm around the victim's neck so that her throat was positioned in the crook of his elbow. A yoke is an extremely effective choke-hold. Simply by making a fist and pulling the forearm back, breathing is restricted because the larynx is depressed; blood flow to the brain is also restricted due to pressure on the carotids at either side of the neck. A properly applied yoke can result in loss of consciousness in about thirty seconds.
"He killed her husband with a gun," Ziva mused. "But then he put Irina in a choke-hold... Do you know if she actually lost consciousness?"
"There's very minor bruising as evidence of the yoke, but no petechial hemorrhaging associated with suffocation, and without the latter I would rule out a proper choke. No, she wasn't even briefly asphyxiated; she didn't lose consciousness."
"Doctor, put a hold like that on me, and then try to go from the choke-hold to the hand positions needed for a manual neck-break."
"All right..."
Ziva stood and Ducky stepped up behind her. They knew that the killer had not used leverage, that he hadn't shoved his victim's head over his forearm to break her neck. Instead, he'd gripped the top of her head in one hand, her chin in the other, and he'd snapped her neck by moving his hands rapidly in opposite directions: a torque break. Ducky had only seen two successful torque breaks in his entire career. In the movies, commando types and bad guys make it look easy, but it requires the assailant to be exceptionally strong, and the victim to be very slight of build. Irina had been only five feet tall.
"He could've released the yoke slowly and gotten a grip on her chin," Ducky suggested, and he did exactly that.
"I am the victim. I am scared. I will try to run," Ziva said.
It took very little effort to get away from Ducky, who frowned at Ziva when she turned around.
"Either he managed to choke her with very little pressure, or she fainted, or—"
"He knew her," Ziva said. "He might have been wearing a ski mask when he came into the kitchen and shot her husband. And the choke-hold was used to calm her down, to hold her still. He was talking quietly in her ear. He was telling her, reminding her that she knew him, reminding her—perhaps—that this was planned. Remind me, now: where was her body found?"
"In the bedroom. We found rifled drawers and closets left open—"
"But were there any of the typical signs of pursuit and struggle?"
"None. All of that was in the kitchen and living room."
"He killed Danner in the kitchen," Ziva said. "Irina ran away. But he caught her in the living room. And then?"
"The Turkish runner in the hallway..." Ducky got out the thick case file and removed an envelope of photographs. There were so many that he and Ziva spread them out on the floor. Eight shots of the hallway, and a long Turkish runner that was completely undisturbed. "It's a loose runner. It doesn't even have that non-slip rubber coating on the back."
"Correct. If either of them had run into that corridor, or if he had walked with her in the choke-hold, the carpet would have slipped and moved. It would have been messed up by their feet. You cannot walk properly when someone's arm is around your neck like that."
"She willingly led him to the bedroom," Ducky said.
"And when she was there..." Ziva picked up a photo showing that Irina's blouse was partially unbuttoned. "She began to undo those buttons."
"He walked up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders, as if caressing her... Yes. It would've been easy to then position his hands correctly."
"And... SNAP!" Ziva said, snapping her fingers for emphasis.
"Do you want to call Gibbs, or shall I?" Ducky asked.
"He does not want to listen to me," Ziva said, and both her tone and expression were unreadable.
Ducky decided not to comment and picked up the phone. He and Ziva were drinking Ceylon tea when Gibbs arrived. Ducky took it on himself to relate Ziva's theory, and what he was really doing amounted to rubbing Gibbs's nose in it, just a tad.
Gibbs never apologized for anything. Rule No. 6: Never apologize– it's a sign of weakness. All Ziva got for her troubles (and nine hours of unpaid overtime thus far) was a brief nod.
"What else did you dig up?" Gibbs asked.
"She was born Irina Nikoreva. Does the name Nikorev sound familiar to you?" Ziva asked.
"You have got to be kidding," Gibbs said, his shoulders slumping.
"What am I missing?" Ducky asked.
"The Nikorev family tried on a turf war with the Old Irish Trinity—Brannigan, O'Meath, and Connor families—here in D.C. about thirteen years back. The Nikorevs got their asses kicked. These days the Irish mob isn't what it used to be, so what gives, Ziva? You think the Nikorevs are trying to muscle in again?"
"Perhaps, but I have said already that these two murders have nothing to do with the guns. The ATF can worry about the guns, Gibbs. We only have to catch the person who killed Sergeant Danner and Irina, yes?"
"I'd prefer to keep things simple, yeah," Gibbs said. "So who are we looking at?"
"Someone in the Irish mob," Ziva said dryly.
Alone at home later, Ziva sat quietly with a beer, a personal reward for breaching that gap. But it was only the start. She opened a file and read through Kate Todd's career history again, for what seemed like the hundredth time. Ziva's half-brother Ari had killed Kate. The team thought that Gibbs had killed Ari in self-defense, but only Ziva, Gibbs, and Director Shepard knew the whole truth: Ziva had shot her brother. Not even Ducky was aware of Ari's relationship to Ziva.
It could fix things, if she told them the whole truth. It could fix things very quickly, but in the wrong way.
She wanted to earn her place on that team. Having it handed to her on a platter, with a garnishing of pity, would not suit Ziva at all.
~ ~ ~
Gibbs surprised Tony and McGee by giving Ziva the investigation lead. It was now up to her to prove her theory. Ziva didn't rush in. She got the team to look at the bosses and captains of several Irish mob families, and she made sure to remind the three men to completely ignore the Nikorev family, kept reminding them to ignore all those guns. She found that that was a tough job, mostly because the people that they were plugging for information, members of D.C. Metro's Vice and Organized Crime squads, were rather insistent that the guns had to be the primary motive.
In the end it took three days to decide that the person they most wanted to speak to was a captain in the Brannigan family. He was an odd mixture of brawn and brain, with a touch of peacekeeper added to make that mix even more strange. Most importantly, he was a man with a reputation for knowing everything that went on in his world. His only tattoo was the phrase Knowledge Is Power, in large Gothic lettering right across the span of his shoulders.
Ziva's accent sounded familiar to him, and he could see the Star of David pendant at her neck. He wanted to know for sure. There was one very easy way to get that information.
"Lebanese?" he asked.
"Israeli," Ziva growled.
Charley Brannigan tried his usual trick of folding his massive arms and bunching his fists. That caused various muscles to bulge. He relaxed his fists when he saw quite plainly that this slight dark-haired woman wasn't the least bit intimidated by him. He knew what that meant: she was quietly but completely confident in her ability to put a serious hurt on anyone who deserved it, including big Charley Brannigan.
"Pardon," he said, with a slight Irish lilt. "What can I help you with?"
"Irina Nikoreva Danner."
"I read in the papers that she'd been murdered."
"Do not play games with me," Ziva said quietly. "I know things about you. If I say them out loud, it will be reason enough for other people to want to arrest you. I think you know that I am serious, yes?"
Charley gulped and nodded, looking past Ziva at the two-way mirror behind her.
"Good," Ziva said briskly. "Irina Nikoreva. Who was her lover?"
"Tommy O'Meath."
"Thank you, Mister Brannigan. There is an officer outside who will walk you out."
"That's it?" Charley mumbled.
"You would like to talk about those other things I know?" Ziva asked lightly.
"Uhh... No. That'll be fine. A good day to ya, miss!"
In the observation room, behind the mirror, Gibbs's expression was unreadable. McGee, however, was wearing a grin.
"She's not that hot," Tony said. "Kate was—"
"Stow that," Gibbs said quietly. "Ziva isn't Kate, DiNozzo."
Gibbs walked out, leaving Tony to frown in confusion.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean? Of course she's not Kate. I know that."
"Do you?" McGee said. "Ziva's worked overtime on this case. Why?"
McGee didn't wait for an answer; he walked out. Tony looked into the empty interview room and remembered the funny faces Kate used to pull at him through the two-way glass. She had always known exactly where he was, even though she hadn't been able to see him. And then he remembered that rooftop, the horrible sound of the impact of the bullet, and Kate falling. Dead before she hit the gravel. Gone for good.
That wasn't Ziva's fault, and Ziva was not Kate, was not trying to be Kate. She also wasn't trying to take Kate's place. She was just doing her job.
Tony made his way to the squad area. Ziva was at her desk. Not Kate's desk; Ziva's desk.
"You did good in there," Tony said.
"Thanks," Ziva said, and got back to work.
~ ~ ~
Tommy O'Meath lived in a small house just outside of Crystal City, Virginia. Unsurprisingly, they found more guns in that house, and this time the ATF was allowed to crawl all over their case. One of the guns they found was one that O'Meath should've tossed. Ballistics tests proved that it was the .45 caliber pistol that had been used to kill Sgt. Danner.
Ziva knew better than to celebrate. Cracking one case was only the start, and cracking cases was not the name of this game. She just wanted to be seen as a part of the team, someone worth keeping, someone who pulled her own weight. She didn't want anything more than that.
At home, she made to open that file yet again, then picked it up and put it into her bag instead. She'd give it back to Gibbs tomorrow. The rest of the team might still need time to let the woman rest, but Ziva had made her peace with the ghost of Caitlin Todd.
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Chapter Two
There are three types of woman with the name Jennifer. The first type is only ever called Jennifer, and never Jenny or Jen. The second type is never called Jennifer, and is called either Jenny or Jen, but not both. The third type is called Jennifer, or Jenny, or Jen, and doesn't mind who uses whichever version of her name.
Director Jennifer Shepard had once been grateful for the fact that she was a Type Three Jennifer, because Jennifer is one of those names that tends to suffer reduction to a diminutive more often than many others, and sometimes absolute strangers are the culprits. However, she'd realized a few years ago that perhaps being a Type Three Jennifer wasn't such a good thing.
The name Jenny did not inspire respect. In professional circles, she'd found herself bridling at the tone some people used when they called her Jenny: familiar and patronizing. That just seemed to get worse after each and every promotion, as she came into contact with people who held very high positions in government and the military, and in the various intel communities. Most of them were men, of course.
By now it was too late to insist on Jen, or Jennifer for that matter. If she made a fuss, even a minor fuss, it was as good as letting several of those men know that they'd gotten to her. But she'd nearly let one of them have it today. He'd called her Jenny, had introduced her to several Washington high-ups as Jenny, without adding her last name or her title, and he'd gone so far as to address her as 'honey' when asking if she'd like some coffee.
"So I ordered new stationary, and I took the Jennifer right out. 'Director J. Shepard.' That's all it says. And I can't even insist on Jennifer or Jen at NCIS."
"But you're the director of that agency," her mother said. "Make it so, and all that."
"Mom, it isn't the Starship Enterprise." She switched the phone to her other ear and reached for the microwave door handle.
"I heard that ping, Jen. Don't tell me you're eating those awful TV dinners again."
"I didn't last night. Tonight I'm just too tired to cook."
"Fine. And for what it's worth, I'm sorry I named you Jennifer."
"Oh, Mom..." Jen muttered and rolled her eyes. Then, realizing she'd never asked before: "Why didn't you give me a second name?"
"Your father wanted that to be his grandmother's name: Eugenia."
"Urgh!"
"Exactly, so I said no to a second name."
"Thanks," Jen chortled.
After saying goodbye to her mom, Jen settled on a bench seat in her breakfast nook and ate the 'awful TV dinner.' It was something resembling lasagna and actually not that bad, or maybe she was just too tired to care. She hadn't brought home any paperwork tonight and she was intending to go to bed early. Jen needed the rest.
She'd snapped at Ziva today. What she'd said to Officer David was true enough, and it had been necessary to say it, but Jen should've said it while in a better mood. She'd have to remedy that, and she would, as soon as she found time to do so.
~ ~ ~
As he often did, Gibbs strolled into Jen's office and stood in front of her desk until she looked up from her paperwork.
"Jethro, when last I checked, you were supposed to be hunting a possible serial killer. Did he declare a vacation?"
"I've got an Israeli robot at a desk. I need my Mossad officer back," Gibbs said, and sat on the edge of her desk as if he owned it. "I dunno what it is with you two—"
"I've got no idea what you're talking about," Jen said, replacing her glasses. "Get off my desk and find me that alleged serial killer, or find me six separate murderers—" As Gibbs reached the office door, she said softly: "I'll talk to her later."
He paused there, with a hand on the frame, then closed the door and returned to the desk, but this time he stood next to it. She looked up, over the rims of her glasses, eventually taking them off again. They stared at each other for a while, and it was just like the old days, when she was a rookie and it seemed like he could never have been one of those, and yet she'd always met his eyes, even then. Gibbs had never been her hero.
Jen had learned to read him, all those years ago. She could practically read his mind right now. It went both ways. She'd never been able to lie to him, and she wasn't about to.
"My history with Officer David goes like this: just under four hours in Cairo, and only three hours in Riga. That's how much time we spent in the same room before she came here, and we were never alone in those hours. The rest is none of your business."
Gibbs nodded briskly, turned, and walked out.
That nod was all the apology that Jen was going to get. If she hadn't known Gibbs as well, she'd have been mad at him. As it was, she knew him well enough to know that he was a little hurt to come up rather bluntly with the fact that she didn't miss him.
~ ~ ~
It wasn't hero worship now. Ziva David was all grown up. The sad thing about that was that she'd been all grown up even at age twelve. While she'd joined the Mossad voluntarily at age eighteen, she had almost been bred for the Mossad, for the Aman (Israeli Military Intelligence), and even for Shin Bet—although, according to Ziva, anyone who wanted to join Israel's somewhat nefarious state security agency needed their head shrunk. Her first field assignment for the Mossad had come along only a few days after her twenty-first birthday, and she'd been ready for every bit of it except that first meeting with Jen Shepard.
It had taken Ziva a full hour to put a name to the spark that had caused her to want to stare at Jen: ambition. Jen wanted to occupy a position of power, and she was clearly willing to work her ass off to get it.
What did she want from life? Twenty-one-year-old Ziva hadn't been able to answer that question, and unanswered, it had burned. She'd have to wait another eight years to get even a clue.
~ ~ ~
"Ani mitzta'eret," Jen said quietly in unaccented Hebrew. I'm sorry.
Startled, Ziva jerked her head up and away from a pile of photos. Her face flushed. No-one got the drop on her, but Jen had.
"At mitzta'eret– lama?" she asked curtly. You're sorry– why?
"My tone, my attitude... but not for what I said." Jen nudged Ziva's backpack with the toe of a handmade ankle boot. Her mother came from very old money. "Let's go."
"But—" Ziva lifted a photo.
"Achshav, chaverah sheli," Jen said. Now, my friend. "Everyone else has gone home, and that photo stack will keep. If you carry on being an Israeli robot, as Gibbs calls you, I'm pretty sure you'll burn out, or maybe short-circuit."
"Like Tony's phone?" Ziva muttered, recalling a coffee spill.
"I think there'd be smoke involved, in your case. Maybe even some flames," Jen drawled.
Ziva followed Jen without further argument. They were silent in the elevator, and in Jen's car that silence thickened. It wasn't so much uncomfortable or awkward as it was full of things unsaid. Jen expected an argument in a little while, probably in her study, over Chinese food and wine. Ziva was expecting the argument and nothing else, and if she was honest, she was almost looking forward to that little set-to. It was about time.
But they were both hungry. They ate seated in red-brown leather chairs near a fire that Ziva had lit on the hearth. The only other light in the room came from the desk lamp.
Their second glasses of wine were poured after Jen had cleared away the empty cartons.
"Cigarettes in that box on the desk, if you're interested."
Jen sat back and sipped at the young California white. Her peripheral vision caught Ziva's rise from her chair, and she watched her open the carved wooden box to snag a smoke. Ziva carried both lighter and brass ashtray back with her.
"I don't smoke much anymore," Ziva said behind a veil of blue smoke, eyes narrowed against it.
"You used to smoke too much– you told me—"
"Dai," Ziva said. Enough. She wasn't interested in chit-chat. If it hadn't been for Ziva's excellent aim eight years ago, a suicide bomber would have killed them both. She had every right to speak plainly with Jen; it was unquestionably within her rights to set aside their professional relationship after hours. "Why are you not sorry for what you said two days ago?"
"Because it's true," Jen stated. And she repeated, but in a kinder tone, "I don't want you to be a part of NCIS if Gibbs and I are your chief reasons for being here. There's Tony, Abby, McGee, and Ducky as well, yes; you like them, but you wouldn't give up your job for any of them... You'd give it up if Gibbs suggested it. You'd walk away if I so much as hinted at it."
Ziva stared at the wine in her glass. Every word of that was true and she had no choice but to own that truth.
"So," Jen continued. "You must want the job, Ziva; not the company."
"I cannot like the company? I am not permitted to care?" Ziva snapped.
It would be hard not to care. Gibbs was alive only because Ziva had shot her brother. She and Gibbs shared a bond that was difficult to classify, but it was strong. Although he felt that he owed her, he knew that she didn't feel that he did, and that made for a complex relationship. And then there was Jen. They'd liked each other at first meeting, and not long after that Ziva had saved both their lives. They trusted each other without question. Some might have cited the incident with the suicide bomber as basis for that trust, but they knew better. Ziva had shot the bomber eight years ago, and she and Jen could count the number of hours they'd spent together in that time. They barely knew each other. Neither of them could explain their level of trust in each other, and they just did not question it. It was something like faith, and faith defies explanation.
"You must care," Jen said, shaking her head. "But you've got to learn to be there for the case first... It's not enough to excel at just about everything; not enough to be unbeatable; not enough to know the rules so well that you can push them to their limits. The aim is to be irreplaceable, and the only way you get to that place is by seeing the job as something that you can never, ever give up."
"But you will move up from your director's office some time," Ziva countered.
"If the right promotion is offered," Jen said, though for the life of her, she couldn't think what that rung on the ladder might be called. An office at the Pentagon was one possibility; a high-ranking position within the CIA was another. "I'll only move up then. And what would you think of the person taking my place?"
"They would have to work harder than you to be as good—Ahh. No. Your replacement might be very good, even better than you, maybe, but they would not be you."
"Right. And you'd make that comparison while thinking of my personal approach to the job."
Ziva looked a while into Jen's eyes, then turned her head to watch the flames lash dry logs. This was so different to her work with the Mossad, where it had been all about performance. She'd been able to advance there simply by doing. That had nothing to do with trying: it was all about having the skills and the knowledge and putting both to use. She could've stated flatly that she hated whichever assignment, even that she hated the job in general, and no-one would've taken note as long as she had produced the results desired by her superiors. If she said something like that now, here, it was likely that either Jen or Gibbs or both would send her back to Israel. More to the point, her teammates would probably distance themselves from her. Americans were strange: results were great, until people found out that one's heart wasn't really in it.
"I joined HaMossad before my father could suggest it. After that... I have never had a choice, you know?" Ziva said to the fire. "Choices are for people who do not understand duty. My work for HaMossad was and will be important; I will still do whatever they need me to do. But now I have a choice, another road to follow parallel to that first one, and my choice is this job. I want it."
"I know you do," Jen said. "So start believing that no matter what kind of personal... issues you have with anyone, your attitude to the job is all that matters. Do it well, do it with passion, do it like you own it, and your position is secure."
"Now I think I understand," Ziva said. "Personal clashes within the Mossad can get you transferred very quickly to another division, perhaps even kicked out altogether. Ignoring the suggestions of mentors, even ones that say 'Resign' can result in... trouble."
"Yes, I know. It's a strange organization. I often wonder how it's produced some of the very best operatives in the intel community."
"We get to kill people more often than other operatives do," Ziva deadpanned. "This is a very good incentive."
"How old is that joke?" Jen chortled.
"I first heard it—in Hebrew—when I was five or six. It is much older than that," Ziva said with a wry smile.
"Probably. I first heard it... I think I was still with Naval Intel."
"Matai?" At which time?
"When you were five or six," Jenny drawled.
"You have worked very hard to be where you are," Ziva said quietly, looking Jen in the eye.
"Really hard for what seems like too long, if I think about it too much. Sometimes... Sometimes I ask myself if it's worth it, but then I follow that question up with this one: why do I do this work? The answer to that is always the same; it never wavers. If I don't, who will? If I don't give it my absolute best, will someone else do that? I can't answer those questions. So I've put in twenty-six years so far. In three years time I'll be fifty. I'm a bit younger than most men who've gotten this job, but I've worked a damn sight harder."
"Yes, because you are a woman," Ziva said, looking at the fire again. "In Israel, in the military, police, and intelligence fields, the saying is, 'Make the grade; get the job.' Both genders are treated equally, but men still manage to 'make the grade' more often than women. I could have served in the army. I could have been a member of the Karakal Battalion, the co-ed combat battalion, but maybe I would still be a lieutenant when men my age have made captain... What I am saying is that the grade, for whatever, is something decided upon by men only, simply because more of them are in a position to make the rules. Until that changes, 'Make the grade; get the job' is just a... platitude. Right word?"
"Very much so, yes," Jen said. "But you hold a pretty high rank in the Mossad, don't you?"
"After nearly eleven years, eight of those in the field... I have enough commendations, yes. Right now, if I propose an investigation or operation, my proposal will be considered not by my section leader but by my division supervisor. I mean that I hold enough merit to skip several steps on the ladder... There are some who would like to see me follow my father, and they want that for the right reasons. He is a deputy director of HaMossad, but his daughter completely ignores that, and she always has. I have also worked very hard."
"And you're not about to kick back and relax," Jen stated.
"Sometimes I think that even if I wanted to, I could not," Ziva said grumpily. "Someone I know once said to me that he thinks I am genetically engineered to be addicted to work."
"Ouch," Jen chuckled. She glanced at the mantel clock and arched her brows. "Late. I'm kicking you out. Take my car and pick me up in the morning?"
"Tony and McGee are of the opinion that I cannot drive, you know."
"I remember how you drive," Jen said, unphased. "You managed a chase, at speed, in Cairo—of all places—and didn't get so much as a scratch on the car... You drove crazy on purpose, didn't you?"
"Bechayech!" Ziva said with a wicked smile. On your life! "I hate driving big trucks: you have to go so slow..."
"Just don't get a ticket tonight."
Jen walked Ziva to the door, and a little later she watched her two-door Mercedes glide down the street. She stood there a while, enjoying the chill night air, before going in. At her desk she sat down and sorted a thick sheaf of paperwork into smaller stacks.
"Do it with passion," she told herself wryly.
~ ~ ~
Gibbs didn't know what the hell Jen had told Ziva, and professionally speaking he didn't care. Professionally speaking, results were all that mattered. On a personal level, the Ziva he knew and admired (however grudgingly) was back, with something extra. He didn't quite know what to call it, but he liked it; he liked the difference it made to the way she did her job.
It took his team four weeks to get a name, another two weeks of surveillance to gather additional evidence, and a week's worth of waiting on red tape, but then they made an arrest. Arrests weren't always the grand prize, but this particular arrest had been made on solid evidence. They had their man and he was going down, no doubts. Celebrations were in order and an Irish pub seemed the best place for it.
They'd been there for an hour before Jen arrived.
"Sorry I'm late... Jamesons rocks, please," Jen said to the bartender. To the rest: "And I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Hudson somehow managed to kill himself."
Jen could only shrug at the stares she received.
"I'd better go and take a look at the body," Ducky muttered.
He left without further comment and no-one followed him. From smiles and laughter the rest of the team had been hammered down into scowls and anger.
"Cheat," Abby mumbled eventually. "Suicide is cheating justice."
"There's a good side," McGee said. "An innocent man wouldn't have killed himself."
"But what was he guilty of?" Ziva said. "If the murders stop, then people will say, 'He was that killer.' But calling him a killer and having a judge call him guilty are not the same."
"Yeah," Tony almost snarled. "Killing himself was payback– to us. A slap in the face."
"Well? What else can you expect from scumsacks?" Ziva said.
"Bags!"
"Scumbags!" Tony chortled.
"But scumsack sounds worse," Ziva said. "It sounds right for Hudson."
"Pretty much," Gibbs agreed. "And I've got a boat to build."
Abby hitched a ride with him. McGee and Tony decided to go shoot pool downtown. That left Jen to nurse her drink, and Ziva needed to order another.
"Club soda and lime," she told the bartender. To Jen: "A table?"
"Might as well."
They ended up discussing the case and the intricate interlace of evidence that had eventually brought Hudson into custody. Working a criminal case was not unlike building a jigsaw puzzle without a picture to work from. The straight-edged border and corner pieces were the crime or crimes, and one had to work from the outside in. A picture of the suspect eventually appeared, as one gradually linked one bit of evidence to another, and worked out a way to piece it all together. Sometimes, though, no matter how good the team, there just wasn't enough evidence, and the center of the puzzle remained blank.
"You're not going to like that," Jen told Ziva. "You're going to hate putting a case away unsolved. And that's my only doubt. We'll only know that you're really suited to this job if you can handle that. After all, you're a spy, not a cop."
"I could say the same of you," Ziva commented.
"You'd be wrong," Jen chuckled. "I'm definitely a cop. That's why I'm okay with riding a desk. Being the boss is being a cop, always. I look at evidence all day. Evidence of good work and bad work and mediocre work. I police the entire agency."
"Oh. Yes, I suppose... But do you miss fieldwork?"
"Sometimes," Jen said wryly. "Like when I walk into my office to find that both in-boxes are full and there's a pile of paper in the center of my desk, as well as email, and I'm told that there's a meeting in fifteen minutes. Then I miss fieldwork."
"I will keep to fieldwork, thank you," Ziva drawled.
"Wise... I shouldn't have driven here," Jen said after sipping the last of her third Irish whiskey. "Are you okay to drive, or should I call someone to collect my car?"
"I have had only club sodas."
"And I'm going to prevail on you to stick around for dinner, or I probably won't have anything until breakfast."
"I can cook," Ziva offered.
"We'll have to stop and get things for you to cook."
"If you were not the boss, I would tell you to look after yourself better."
"You just did," Jen said, amused.
Ziva decided to keep it simple. Just two stops provided the wherewithal for dinner, which was steak and a green salad. She rolled her eyes at Jen's mumbles regarding the steak and how good it was. No matter how tired she was, Ziva cooked for herself or thawed something from the freezer, either stew or soup. Then again, she didn't take home a briefcase full of paperwork. She took it on herself to clean up after dinner. In the study she found Jen at work already.
Ziva stepped behind the desk and looked over Jen's shoulder.
"Most of it is reading really carefully, before signing," Jen muttered. "And you aren't cleared to look at this, but I don't care."
"Lama lo?" Ziva asked. Why not?
"I trust you. I always have," Jen said. Then irritably: "Dammit. No-no-no. The way this sentence and these two paragraphs are worded makes it seem as if it's okay for other agencies to borrow my people, without clearing it with me first. So this entire document has to be struck and redrafted..."
"I overheard you complaining to Gibbs about this. Tony did, too, and his comments suggested that you were overreacting."
"I admit, it could seem that way to anyone who isn't up to speed on the details," Jen said. "Let me explain why this business pisses me off. It's not about me wanting complete control. I'm mad about it because I'm not the only one who can see the flaws in this new fangled smart-ass idea called consolidation, but I seem to be the only one actively speaking against it. It'll never work, for the simple reason that federal agencies involve specialization that's individual to each agency. You can't take ten FBI agents and just swap them with ten CIA officers."
"Yes, but mostly because a CIA officer cannot operate as a CIA officer within the borders of the USA."
"Huh. The smart-ass—he's NSA, home to more brainiacs than NASA—already thought of that particular briar patch. To get around it, he proposed secondment: the CIA officer would be seconded to the FBI, and therefore fully deputized, thereby making their status as a CIA officer null and void for the duration of the secondment."
"That would involve... a lot of paperwork," Ziva said, frowning.
"Oh, I know," Jen muttered, signing and initialing another document. "Suggestion, then approval, then the secondment rigmarole, then... Every time someone is seconded I'd say that at least six people would need to do two hours of desk work each, and just as much paper will have to be pushed to reverse the process. But never mind the paperwork. If the press ever gets wind of the fact that FBI Agent Jones is also CIA Officer Jones who—y'know—operates on a 'Warrant? What warrant?' strategy... Well, I don't want to think about that."
"Mmm," said Ziva, rather glad that she didn't have Jen's job.
She didn't feel like going home just yet. She selected something from a bookshelf and settled into her chair by the fire. Reading didn't hold her attention strongly enough, and Ziva dozed off to sleep. She woke later to find the book on the table next to her, the fire low, the lights out, and Jen gone. A light but warm blanket had been draped over her.
Ziva blinked. Book... Blanket... The book had been taken from her, maybe off her lap; the blanket had been spread and laid over her. She hadn't woken. She had, in fact, no recollection of falling asleep, but that was beside the point. When last she was home, her eight-year-old cousin hadn't been able to take two steps into her bedroom without Ziva waking. She'd been trained to respond to the slightest changes, even when asleep, and yet Jen hadn't woken her.
Ziva puzzled over this mystery while writing a note to say that she'd fetch Jen at seven a.m. She left the house quietly and drove off in the Mercedes.
In bed later, she lay awake for a long while but no matter which way she turned this little puzzle of not being woken by Jen, she couldn't figure it out.
__________
Chapter Three
After four months as Mossad Liaison Officer, Ziva had realized that being a part of the team involved more than working together. She'd taken note of the Monday morning conversations between Tony and McGee and Abby (those three in particular), and she'd noticed that sometimes Gibbs and Ducky had things to say on Mondays as well, about time spent with other team members over the weekend. Of course, those conversations only took place if the team hadn't worked right through the weekend. Sometimes they did, but if they didn't, such activities as going to a movie, lunch or dinner out, or a barbecue at a mutual friend's home, going to whichever sports game, or just kicking back with a beer and good conversation, were mentioned on Monday mornings.
Ziva didn't quite know how to approach anyone except Jen with an invitation to dinner or lunch or a movie. Americans are not Israelis. In Israel she could suggest a movie and pizza to a male colleague without that man thinking that perhaps she was asking him on a date. If she asked Tony—especially Tony—to dinner at her place, she'd receive a sharky grin before he said yes, and while she was aware that his schoolboy fantasies were something he kept well under control, those fantasies irritated her. She didn't want to put herself in a position where he would irk her to the point of snapping at him. After all, she was trying to make friends, not enemies.
So she started with Tim McGee, who seemed to put his ego on a shelf somewhere before he came to work, and instead of inviting him to her home, she took him to a mall, of all places. They returned to that mall two Saturdays in a row, and on the Monday mornings following, their conversations had sparked a fair bit of interest in Gibbs and Tony. Perfect. All Ziva had to do was wait. She didn't have to wait long.
His curiosity got the best of him. Tony had gotten McGee to spill the beans about what seemed like a lot of fun. The very next day, Tony had persuaded Ziva to take him to a mall in Baltimore on the following Sunday. The name of the game was passive pursuit. It's an urban surveillance technique that is best learned by picking a random stranger in a preferably crowded mall and following them closely, but in a way that evades detection. Tony soon learned that this wasn't as easy as it sounded.
"Young man, are you following me?" an old lady demanded.
"Uhh, me? No, ma'am," Tony said, managing to affect the manner of an offended puppy.
"Oh. I'm sorry. It's just that this is the third time I've seen you in the last half-hour..."
Some distance away, Ziva had her phone jammed against her ear to disguise the fact that she was laughing at Tony. He glared at her and strolled in her direction. He might have had a good laugh when her phone actually rang and she yanked it away from her ear before answering it, but then she was looking at him in a certain way. He was expecting it and sure enough, his phone began to vibrate.
"DiNozzo," he said into the phone.
"We've got three bodies and they're still warm," McGee said. "Gibbs and I are already here with the truck and all the gear. You're with Ziva, right?"
"Yeah. In Baltimore, dammit."
"We're in Sykesville– not far away... Boss just told me he gave Ziva the address."
They'd been on the road (grille lights flashing) for about six minutes when Ziva got another call, this time from Jen. Ziva put her on speaker while she gave Tony a new set of directions. He sped up the nearest exit and cars made way for them on an overpass and all the way back onto the highway. Tony flipped a switch that added a siren to the grille lights. Vehicles ahead pulled into the middle and far right lanes. Ziva turned off the speaker and pressed the phone to one ear; she stopped the other ear with a fingertip.
"S'licha?" she said to Jen. Excuse me?
"Be careful," Jen repeated loudly.
"We will be careful, yes."
Ziva hung up just as Tony took another exit, but this time he took a right and headed into Baltimore's western suburbs. He cut the siren and got Ziva to watch their progress on the dash-mounted GPS unit. He didn't want to take the chance of getting lost. However, it soon became apparent that if he followed any of the three Baltimore PD cruisers that had sped by their car, he couldn't get lost.
"What are you packing?" Tony asked.
"My SIG."
"All I've got is a little eight-round three-eighty backup. Dunno if this car's been Gibbs-rigged."
"Why were you driving this car anyway?"
"My Mustang is in the shop for her twice-yearly tune-up and service, so I just signed this tank out... I guess this is it. Grab a vest out the trunk and go flash your badge. I'll see if there's anything under the backseat."
Ziva ended up getting help with her body armor straps from a Baltimore PD officer who walked while he talked and adjusted those straps.
Gibbs and McGee would've had only two bodies to deal with if victim number three hadn't attempted to play hero. He'd tried to apprehend the man who had shot and killed a Navy lieutenant and her boyfriend, and he'd gotten himself killed in the process. The killer had then fled in victim number three's car. An eyewitness to the third shooting had gotten the plate number, and the car with those plates was parked half on the sidewalk and half in someone's yard. The man they were after was holed up in the house of one Heidi Bennett.
The officer introduced Ziva to his lieutenant.
"And Miz Bennett's in there, too," Lt. Parker said, gesturing toward the house. "SWAT's on the way."
"SWAT? You do not storm a house where someone is being held hostage," Ziva stated. "And this is my operation, Lieutenant."
"Ma'am, this is my turf," Parker protested.
"There you'd be all-out wrong," Tony said with a charming smile. "That man in there shot a Navy lieutenant in cold blood. That's our man, which makes any bit of this entire country our turf."
"That doesn't sound right to me. Jurisdiction is juris—"
"Enough," Ziva hissed, taking a step towards Parker. He tried backing up but found a squad car in his way. Ziva poked the Kevlar over his chest for emphasis as she said, "If you get in my way, I will have your badge."
"She will," Tony said, nodding.
"Okay, okay!" Parker squawked. "Whadya need?"
"Only cooperation."
"All right," Parker mumbled, looking surprised.
Ziva took a look at what Tony had found under the backseat of their car: a chopped-down M16 assault rifle. She curled her lip in disgust. After all, she came from the land that had invented the Tavor TAR-21 bullpup assault rifle, and the Galil assault rifle. In Ziva's experience, the M16 and all its variations fell far short of the marks set by the Galil and the TAR-21. Tony gave an apologetic shrug and asked her what she wanted to do about the guy in Heidi Bennett's house.
"Lieutenant Parker, I need you and your people to make a lot of noise, please. Can you get helicopters here? Even press helicopters. I want them to fly around. Make a noise."
"Uhh... Sure. What are you two gonna do?"
"I dunno yet," Tony threw over his shoulder while following Ziva.
They left Parker to talk into a radio, and they took the scenic route to the back of Bennett's small house. This involved dashing through several back yards. They had to make a detour when they climbed a fence and found that a large mongrel dog was watching them intently. The yard backing the one clearly owned by the big dog, was presided over only by a somewhat rotund ginger cat. They managed to sneak right past an old timer sleeping in a deckchair on his back porch, oblivious to the racket being made by two helicopters circling above, and after that they had just one more board fence to climb. Crouched over, they cautiously approached the house.
"Are you sure this is the right yard?" Tony whispered.
"This is the only light blue house on this street," Ziva whispered.
"Good point. It's the only powder blue house I've seen in years," Tony drawled. Then: "Ah-ha. No drapes."
He pointed to the window in question and Ziva snuck up to it on all fours. She knelt up slowly and peeked over the sill. A woman, bound and gagged, was sitting at the kitchen table. Ziva straightened a little more and mouthed, Where is he? The woman jerked her head towards the front of the house. Ziva nodded and ducked down again to report to Tony.
"Poor lady's gotta be scared out of her skin."
"That one? Huh! She is not scared. She is very angry," Ziva whispered. She crawled slowly to the back door and tried the handle. The door opened slightly. "It is not locked."
"I grab her, and you get him?"
"No. We get her out, then we both go and get him."
"Okay. Back me up, then," Tony said.
Tony slung his M16, settling it against his back. He and Ziva got to their feet quietly and nodded to each other before pushing the door open. Ziva went in ahead, crossing the kitchen to stand behind the woman at the table, and facing the entrance to the dining room. Tony helped her up and walked her quickly but quietly to the back door. Ziva followed, walking backwards. Tony held a finger to his lips before removing the gag.
"You gotta stay out here, ma'am," he whispered. "Duck down there, tight against that wall, and stay right there, okay?"
"You get that asshole. Did you see what he did to my roses out front?"
"He killed three people, too," Ziva hissed. "Down next to the wall, and do not move, please."
"Fine. Just get the sonuvabitch," she said, sitting down against the wall.
Back in the kitchen, Tony and Ziva took turns backing each other and crossing to cover. In the dining room they did the same. The house was old and all of the rooms were separated from each other by a door. The man they were after wasn't in the living room. That left the first floor. Ziva took the first flight of stairs and dropped to a knee on the landing. Tony came up after her and also took a knee. It made sense for Ziva to take the flights first because she was lighter and made less noise. At the head of the stairs she was grateful to find a wall and a window at her back; the first door was four feet from that, giving her adequate cover. Tony came up slowly and stopped just below the top of the stairs.
They could hear someone moving, and other sounds: drawers being opened and closed. He was rifling the house looking for things to steal.
Tony got down onto his belly and leopard-crawled into the hall. He stayed flat, with the M16 trained on the door at the end of the hall. He took a breath and nodded: he was ready. Ziva clucked her tongue in answer.
"Federal agents!" Tony yelled. "Get out here with your hands—"
"Screw you!"
He stormed into the doorway, a large-caliber revolver in-hand. Tony aimed for a knee; Ziva aimed for a shoulder. Two shots sounded almost as one, and a third boomed and mixed with a howl of agony as the big man ahead of them crumpled to the floor. His shot had blasted a fist-sized hole in the plaster ceiling. Ziva darted forward, keeping to the left side of the hall, out of Tony's line of fire. The man had dropped his gun and was clutching at his leg with the hand that still worked. Ziva's shot had possibly hit his brachial complex, a bundle of nerves that controls all movements of the arm. That arm was limp, almost lifeless. Ziva kicked the big revolver back towards Tony.
"I got shot by a girl?" their wounded collar whined.
"No. You were shot by a Mossad officer. Now shut up."
~ ~ ~
Their passive pursuit game at the mall had been terminated by work, but that turned into a benefit. At least, Ziva thought so. She was able to nonchalantly suggest dinner and a pool game at a bar'n'grill, as something like a just reward for their efforts that afternoon. Tony had accepted the invitation much as he would have if Ziva had been Gibbs or McGee. That was what she'd wanted. Tony had, for the moment, forgotten about those schoolboy fantasies of his. Ziva was just a colleague inviting him to go dutch on ribs and beer.
And after that it was easy. Ducky was next on her list– they attended an opera; then Gibbs– just a beer and conversation about the boat in his basement; McGee next– Ziva invited him to a coffee shop-come-bookstore where they discussed favorite authors; and Abby was lucky enough to get an invitation to dinner at Chez Ziva, dinner courtesy of Ziva's excellent efforts in the kitchen. Abby boasted and gloated a little, because Ziva had told her straight that she had no intention of inviting any of her male colleagues to her apartment just yet. Abby didn't pass on that particular bit of info. She agreed with Ziva: she needed to earn more respect from those men first.
"I agree with that, too," Jen said. "At the moment they're still caught up in the 'Wow, Mossad!' novelty... thing. To be honest, I think that even Gibbs is expecting you to tell him, any day, that you've been recalled to Israel."
"He does not know that I am contracted to NCIS for one year?" Ziva asked.
"He knows, but: 'Wow, Mossad!'"
"Hmph. Even the Mossad must play by the rules... Sometimes."
Jen snorted a laugh at Ziva's oh-so-innocent expression. Ziva spent more time after hours with Jen than she did with any of her other colleagues. They had dinner together twice or three times a week, usually on weeknights when Jen knew that without company she'd be bad to herself and go to bed with no more than a glass of wine or two in her stomach. She could always go to a restaurant but that wasn't the same, especially when she was too tired to pay proper attention to the menu. If Ziva dropped round for dinner, Jen found energy enough to cook, or to help Ziva cook. They mostly talked about work, sometimes very seriously, and while some might have said that that would've tired Jen further, she found herself to be invigorated by the conversation.
Talking to someone who understood, someone with similar experiences, seemed to be what they both needed. Some might have called Jen a mentor to Ziva, but Jen would have argued that point. Ziva was making her own way through life and her career, and she had no ambition towards the sort of high-ranking position owned by Jen.
Still, they were two women in a man's world; two women who were equal to any man in that world, but they had to constantly prove it. That was a hard road, one potholed and rutted and obstructed in ways that never seemed to affect their male colleagues, and those men had to be forced to respect women like Jen and Ziva. Getting too friendly with any of those men was not a good idea.
__________
Chapter Four
Ziva was coming to like Jen's Mercedes an awful lot. Or maybe she just liked the federal sticker in the windshield, one that enabled her to park that car anywhere without concern that it might be towed or clamped. Washington's parking issues—namely, the seemingly complete lack of legal parking spaces—were cause for constant grumbles from many people, including Ziva. Her Mini Cooper had been towed once and its wheels had been clamped three times in the five months that she'd owned it.
This morning she deliberately parked Jen's car right below a sign that said, 'No Parking.' Ziva smirked when an early bird traffic cop increased his speed from stroll to march, ticket book at the ready... only to end up blinking at the sticker in the windshield.
"Good morning," Ziva said cheerfully.
The cop thumbed the brim of his cap and grouchily continued his foot patrol, leaving Ziva to stifle a wicked chortle or three. She crossed the street to a deli and bakery where she greeted the owner in Hebrew, and carried a conversation with himself and his wife while she collected this and that for brunch. This was her second stop. The first had provided several items that were definitely not kosher.
Back in the car, on the way to Jen's home in Glen Echo, Ziva ended up puzzling over the events of last night. It had happened again. Ziva had dropped round to discuss an aspect of the team's current case, and after a beer (possibly with the help of that beer) she had fallen asleep in her favorite chair in Jen's study. She'd woken to find herself covered with a blanket, and the mantel clock had showed the time: around four a.m.
As a point of comparison, she considered the fact that she'd recently dozed off in her own apartment while Abby was visiting. Abby had told her that what followed was rather scary: her slightest shift on the couch had resulted in Ziva waking and reaching for the gun on the end table beside her chair.
Jen didn't inspire that reaction. Twice now she'd been able to approach Ziva while she slept. On the first occasion she'd taken a book off Ziva's lap before laying a blanket over her. The second occasion had involved only the blanket. The overall point being that Jen hadn't woken Ziva, that Ziva's training hadn't kicked in when Jen had gotten up from her desk.
She'd been trained to sleep lightly, to be aware of her surroundings even while she slept. Almost anyone can learn the skill. It involves the simple practice of taking note of where things and people and even pets are, just before going to sleep. Those few moments of mental focus are all that is required to turn everything in the room into a sort of alarm clock. If something is moved, a closed door is opened, someone already present moves, or if someone who isn't supposed to be there enters the room, the 'alarm clock' kicks in. After enough practice, this technique remains active. It can't be switched off.
The fact that Ziva had dozed off without actively focusing on her surroundings, should not have affected that 'alarm clock.' She should have woken in the moment that Jen had left her desk.
But what confused Ziva most was that while this small mystery of the failed 'alarm clock' gave her pause for thought, she wasn't in the least worried about it. Another aspect of her training insisted that she should be worried about it.
Even the ones you respect; even the ones you least suspect: expect even them to cause you harm.
That was the golden rule, one that applied to every intelligence operative in every corner of the international intelligence community.
It seemed that for Ziva Jen was an exception to the golden rule. As yet she really didn't know how to feel about that.
"Boker tov!" Ziva called. Good morning! She returned the hidden key to its spot before closing Jen's front door. "Did you have breakfast?"
"No. I'm still in bed," Jen's voice floated faintly down the stairs.
"I have things for... umm... Brunch?"
"Oh, good..."
"You are older than me. You are the one who should be acting like a mother," Ziva hollered, while making her way to the kitchen.
Ziva heard footfalls on the stairs, and Jen arrived in the kitchen with bed-head and wearing a dark silk robe.
"Good morning. If I acted like a mother, you'd probably kill me."
"Ulai..." Ziva said, teasing. Perhaps. After a short pause she said, "I am still trying to work this out: you did not wake me last night. And that was not the first time."
"As I did the first time, I expected you to wake up at any moment, and you didn't." Jen took the apple Ziva offered and bit into it. Eventually she said, "Maybe this is the same."
"This?" Ziva gestured generally at the kitchen and Jen's robe.
"Yes. Unusual."
"But... comfortable," Ziva noted, unpacking definitely-not-kosher bacon from a paper bag. "And trust is a funny thing, and dangerous, also. I trust you, and Gibbs. Everyone else? No, I do not trust them like that, not even Abby."
"Trust is a big risk, yes," Jen agreed.
They prepped and cooked brunch together, seemingly as if they'd done so for years. Understanding. Trust. Both were at work, and in ways that didn't beg questions. They ate almost in silence. Comfortable. Both were very keen on the saying, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' There was nothing to fix, but there were things to discuss, if only to gain an equal grip on their situation.
"Situation?" Jen chuckled. "I think that 'relationship' is a better word."
"Be'seder," Ziva said. All right. She handed over a dish for Jen to dry and put away. "Relationship. Ours. What is it?"
"Beyond work... friendship, I think. It's possible to have two separate relationships with the same person."
"Gibbs?"
"That's ancient history, but... yes. It's a good example. Unfortunately, it's also an example that he sort of hinted at more than six months ago. He assumed that you and I... Egypt. Latvia."
"I would never have lost focus like that," Ziva stated.
"I know. It's what makes you better than me, better even than Gibbs. Stronger than either of us were back then."
"But not stronger than you are now," Ziva said, rinsing the sink with the water that was draining away.
"No. More like an equal," Jen said. "That's why this is okay. Why we can trust each other and talk like this and have a relationship other than the one at work. No matter what you know about me, personally, I can trust you not to let that affect your performance on-the-job."
"Yes," Ziva said simply. But she added: "This is simple. What is complicated is how other people will see it."
"True, first among those being Jethro."
"Does Gibbs think that you sleep with everyone?" Ziva muttered, annoyed.
"I'm sure he doesn't. He just compared things and came up with an incorrect assumption. I told him the truth, and he knows it, but I also said that the rest is none of his business. This, now, is 'the rest,' but he's probably being a man and thinking that 'the rest' relates to the assignments you and I worked together. Focusing on the fact that you and I have history."
"A work history, yes. I know what Tony thinks because it is often written on his face... Men. I have spent most of my life surrounded by men and I still do not understand how they think."
Jen nodded in agreement and clinked her coffee mug against Ziva's.
__________
Chapter Five
Someone had been executed. Zip ties had been used to bind his hands behind his back. He'd been blindfolded. He'd been taken to a small patch of lawn adjoining a basketball court not far from Johns Hopkins University Hospital. He'd been forced to kneel, and someone had shot him in the back of the head.
No-one had seen the actual shooting. A lot of people had heard the shot; 911 operators had taken sixteen separate calls reporting that gunshot.
At the scene, Ziva didn't say very much. She took photographs; she made notes. If someone asked her a question, she answered briefly, almost curtly. Ensign Davis had been shot before daybreak. The team managed to return to NCIS HQ before lunch.
During her break Ziva took a walk through the Washington Navy Yard, her intention being to clear her head and focus.
She wasn't a robot. She got nervous and scared, could be hurt emotionally and physically, and was generally human, in most respects, though there were those who'd seen her remain cool and collected in exceptionally trying circumstances, and they might've argued about 'generally human.' Ziva found it easier to focus when it was that or die. What she had always found tough was dealing with events that developed slowly. It wasn't that she lacked patience. She was a good chess player, one who could map her opponent's possible moves and plan her own moves to counteract them. That ability didn't do her any good when the chess board was reality, when she could see how things might pan out and she was almost powerless to combat those possible events.
Eric Davis had been executed. Ziva was an assassin. She was that among many other things but today, and probably until they closed this case, the 'many other things' would be pushed into the background by her teammates. She'd have an easier time of things with Gibbs. He'd been a Marine Scout Sniper, and he'd also practiced his craft outside of wartime. The Mossad had done their homework on him. Gibbs had been kept very busy by Naval Intelligence, before he signed on with NCIS. Tony and McGee had no idea, and Ziva wasn't about to say a word to them about it.
She leaned against a tree and gave a blank stare to the chocolate-brown water of the Potomac River. Focus, she told herself.
The manner in which Davis had been killed closely mirrored an assassination in Ziva's career. She hadn't pulled the trigger, but she'd been there. The man had been a bomb-maker, rather a prolific one at that, and when the Mossad had been informed that he'd relocated from Syria to the West Bank, that had been enough to say that his next targets were Israelis. They'd thought he was responsible for building the bombs used in two bus bombings, but they hadn't been sure, and besides, until he'd moved into that apartment in Jenin, they hadn't known where to find him. They didn't get him soon enough. On the morning before his capture, another bus bomb had killed two people, one of them a Palestinian woman and the other a Greek tourist. Twenty-one people had been injured, twelve of them seriously. More than half of the injured were Palestinians. No-one in the West Bank mourned the violent end of one Nadim Kaled. Ironically, his first name meant 'friend.'
His name aside, she remembered that bitter cold night as if it was yesterday, though she hadn't thought of it much in years. The scene of Davis's execution had brought the memories back. Kaled had fallen exactly as Davis had, onto his right side. Ziva's partner had used a .25 caliber pistol, a smaller caliber than the .380 used to kill Davis, and the smaller round had resulted in less damage, less blood. Or perhaps the dark had hidden it... No. The air had been clear. There was snow on the Golan. After the cordite had drifted away, Ziva had barely been able to smell the blood.
She frowned and remembered the large pool of blood below Davis's head. Other things jumped out from memory. The zip ties had been too tight: his hands had been red and swollen. That was important. Restraints that are too tight indicate haste, and a lack of experience in applying restraints. The blindfold had been a wide strip of cloth that had been folded twice, and it had been tied with a square knot. Strip blindfolds are only seen in the movies, and if ever they are used by people who know what they're doing, it's for short periods of time. A hood works without slipping. That strip blindfold would have slipped up, slipped down, come right off, if Davis had worn it for only half an hour.
The large caliber pistol; the zip ties pulled too tight; the strip blindfold. Ziva jogged all the way back to the Headquarters building.
"They are not professionals," she told Gibbs. "I say 'they' because I am certain that more than one person was involved. If you are going to shoot someone and you take them to a deserted area, then you can do it alone. But if you must get away before you are seen, you need help. And whoever killed Eric Davis did it in a rush. They did not plan it properly."
Gibbs looked Ziva in the eye for a long while. He admired her then, and not a little bit grudgingly. It took courage to admit to the kind of knowledge that would definitely remind McGee and Tony of the fact that she was no stranger to killing. More to the point, she was no stranger to executions. Gibbs would never ask, but he had to wonder how many times Ziva had ended a life in a quiet place. She was too smart to pull a trigger or use a knife in public.
There was more to that than smarts. Gibbs wasn't present to hear about it.
~ ~ ~
"Killing him in a public space," Ziva said to Jen. "This is what worries me. It is a statement. Possibly a message to people who live and work in the area."
"So maybe these guys think that those people might know who they are," Jen said.
"That could be a... delusion of grandeur. This is not the work of terrorists, but very often terrorists have this idea that everyone knows who they are, that everyone fears them."
"All psychopaths have big egos," Jen muttered.
It wasn't often that they spoke about cases while at work. More often Ziva would drop by Jen's place after work and they'd talk, but Gibbs had had to fly out to San Diego for a function, and Jen was the one supervising his team until his return. Jen sat on the edge of Ziva's desk and flipped through the stack of photos Ziva had taken from a drawer. McGee joined them and tapped a fingertip on one photograph showing the crime scene in relation to the street.
"That's a bookstore that Davis spent a lot of time in during college," McGee said. "The owner lives above the store. He was one of two people to provisionally ID the victim."
"And the other person?" Jen asked.
"Someone who works in a twenty-four-hour diner further up the street," Ziva said. "You can see the crime scene from that diner. You can also see it from the apartment Davis lived in while he attended college."
"So whoever killed him knew him quite well..." Jen said. "It's definitely a statement, killing him in that neighborhood. A mob job, maybe."
"But if my theory is correct, that the killers are amateurs?" Ziva said.
"Not the mob," Jen agreed. "So where does that leave us?"
"The usual. We must find out why someone would want to kill him," Ziva said with a shrug. "I think they had what they feel is a very good reason. But to kill him in public, even though it was still dark... There are families who live on that street. Children. To kill someone where just anyone can see is... I want to say 'unethical,' but the kind of ethics I am talking about belong to very few people."
"People with training, yes," Jen said. She stood as Tony strolled over. "Did Gibbs issue any last minute orders before you dropped him off at the airport?"
"He got a call on the way there," Tony said. "Davis's parents. Ensign Davis had a storage unit. They haven't taken a look at what's in it, so we're gonna go check it out."
"I'll get the van," McGee said.
"And," Tony said, giving McGee's shoulder a nudge. "We have orders to work late and try to get this case closed quickly. He got more than one call on the way to the airport. Some reporter got Gibbs's cell number."
"I hope he didn't toss his whole phone in the trash, like last time," McGee drawled.
"He did?" Jen chuckled.
"From about fifteen feet away," Tony said. "Perfect overhand lob into an empty metal trashcan."
"Pieces'n'parts," McGee said with a wry grin. "Abby picked out the SIM card and told him that that was all he should've gotten rid of."
"And he asked why no-one had told him that before?" Jen asked, amused.
"You could've been a fly on the wall," Tony drawled.
In the storage unit, hidden behind some furniture, they found a box of newspaper clippings and several notebooks filled with Davis's small, neat handwriting. He'd been investigating a murder that had been committed nearly ten years ago. The notebooks were evidence and couldn't be removed from the Headquarters building. The team couldn't take them home. As per Gibbs's orders, his team wouldn't be clocking out at five p.m.
Working late nearly always put Tony in a rotten mood, more so when working late caused him to have to cancel a date. Gibbs's absence this evening only served to darken his mood further.
"Not fair," Tony grumbled.
"You sound like a ten-year-old," McGee said tetchily, and took his dinner from a microwave in the break room. "I'm gonna eat at my desk. There are worse things than working late, y'know."
"Correct. It is raining. We could be stuck at a crime scene," Ziva drawled.
"I don't think we need the workaholic's opinion here," Tony interrupted. "Some people have a life."
McGee paused in the doorway, thinking to offer Ziva some backup, but she gave him a look that said, Go.
"After I have been here less than six months what, exactly, do you know about my life?" Ziva asked Tony.
"Besides being a workaholic, I know that you have a weird take on ethics. I didn't have chance earlier, so I'll ask now. I heard you and Jenny Shepard talking this afternoon. Where do you, in particular, get off saying that public executions are unethical?"
"Excepting urban combat situations, I have not once killed someone in a place where it would be indiscriminately witnessed," Ziva said plainly. "It is unethical to present an execution as some sort of public display, which is the way things are done in Saudi Arabia. Have you ever attended such an execution, Tony?"
"No," Tony muttered, pushing away his plate. He'd suddenly lost his appetite.
"I have. If ever you attend one, I think you will be shocked to find small children riding their father's shoulders, so that they can see over the heads of taller people. A child who witnesses such an event is not likely to ever place as high a value on life as one who has never seen someone's head being chopped off. That is what I mean by 'unethical.' Clearer now?"
"You're not serious about kids—"
"Yes, but I am. No-one is barred from witnessing beheadings, hangings, and crucifixions in Deirah Square in Riyadh. They call it Chop-chop Square. Tourists are not common in Saudi Arabia, but if you are in Riyadh on a Friday, after noon prayers, you might find yourself pushed into the front row for the best view, as befits a guest."
"Okay. You win the public executions debate," Tony said. "But I think I had a right to call you on it. You're an assassin. You get orders, and off you go and kill people. You execute them."
"You say that as if you really believe that it means as little to me as signing my name to something," Ziva said quietly. She'd been expecting and preparing for something like this, but it still hurt.
"I never said that. But you seem to be okay with—"
"It is never 'okay,'" Ziva hissed. "Killing is always wrong and I never, ever want to do it."
"But you do it anyway," Tony countered. "You have a choice."
"Choice?" Ziva said and laughed without humor. "Tony, people like me enable you to keep your conscience nice and clean. Your hands, too– we are the ones who do the dirty work. Killing is always wrong, but sometimes it is necessary. People like you can speak of choices, because there are people like me."
McGee hadn't gone far. Something had told him to hang around. He snuck away to his desk now, rather than storm into the break room and ask Tony if he liked hurting people. McGee had plenty of trouble with the concepts of assassination and sanctioned executions. However, he had no trouble at all accepting the fact that Ziva was a good person. Monsters are heartless, and people who kill because they see nothing wrong with that, are monsters. He barely knew her, but it was pretty damn plain that Ziva was not one of those people. Tony had no business hurting her just because he wanted to win the overall argument.
When Tony eventually returned to his desk, McGee had no pity for the 'I'm such an idiot' look on his face.
"That was a low blow. Proud of yourself?"
"No," Tony admitted.
He'd apologized to Ziva. McGee hadn't heard that, but in his place Tony might have said that an apology was a good grace offered too late. He certainly felt that way.
"Stop beating yourself up," Ziva said later, when they were on their way home. "Yours was a valid question. The phrasing could have been more conversational and less... accusing, but it was a valid question."
"You don't deserve that," McGee said to Tony. And to Ziva, "Y'know, if you keep letting people get away with stuff like that, they'll keep right on kicking you. See you guys tomorrow."
Ziva and Tony stared after McGee, and eventually offered each other somewhat shocked expressions.
"I think he's right," Tony said quietly. "One, I don't deserve to be so easily forgiven. Two... Well, Gibbs smacks heads for a reason."
"So you are saying that if I give you a bloody nose it will make you feel better?" Ziva said, her tone unreadable.
"Something like—"
Ziva socked Tony in the gut instead. He gasped, clutching his middle, and dropped to a knee.
"There," Ziva said. "Now I have acted as a man would. We are... all square, yes?"
"Except for my bruised ego," Tony wheezed.
"Grow up," Ziva muttered and snatched up her backpack. "When next I accept an apology from you, remember that I am not a man."
"You wanna tell McGee about that deal?" Tony said, wincing as he got up.
"I will. Goodnight."
"See ya," Tony said.
He sat in the nearest chair and watched Ziva enter the elevator. He weakly returned the little wave she gave him before the doors closed. It was true, what the science guys said, about objects with small surface areas gaining better penetration: that little fist seemed to have reached his spine. Tony was rather glad that Ziva had caused his appetite to vanish earlier. With a full stomach the punch would have felt ten times worse. He might actually have thrown up.
"Pissing off the Mossad officer is a really, really bad idea..." Tony told himself.
~ ~ ~
Jen wasn't surprised to find Ziva on her doorstep at a little before ten p.m. Since they'd landed the Davis case, Jen had noticed Ziva frowning more often.
"Tough one for you," Jen said, somewhat unnecessarily, but the statement would open the ball. She closed her front door on the wind and rain outside. "You look like a half-drowned rat."
"Rav todot!" Ziva said and laughed. Thanks a lot! "I should have told the cab driver to come right up the driveway... And yes, this case is... tough."
"We'll hang that windcheater on the back porch to drip-dry... Hot chocolate?" Jen suggested, leading the way to the kitchen.
"Im brandi?" Ziva asked hopefully. With brandy?
"Now you're talking..." Jen said with a grin.
Ziva got angry about things and tended then to do something about it, or if she couldn't do anything, she expressed her anger verbally. But she wasn't one to complain very often, and especially not about things that couldn't be changed. She also didn't like to complain about how others felt regarding some aspects of her work for the Mossad.
"But I think that what you told Tony is true," Jen said. "I've learned the hard way not to point fingers, not to call myself better than those people who do the dirty work. In more organized—organized, not 'civilized.' In more organized nations, those who make the calls for termination are backed by the best possible intelligence resources. Sometimes the call is wrong, but that is rare because if there's any doubt, termination orders are not issued. I've been meaning to ask, and it pertains to this discussion: who took out Hiram Katz here in the States?"
"Asinu et zeh," Ziva said quietly. We did that.
"I thought so, and you know, if ever you need to make someone understand, use that example," Jen said flatly. "I bet that you could give other, similar examples. How many times have you personally ended the life of an Israeli citizen or someone Jewish?"
"Twice."
"Right," Jen said, gentling her tone. "Which is evidence to the fact that very often the dirty work amounts to absolute necessity. I agree with you that killing is always wrong, but sometimes it's also the right thing to do... May I ask why Katz was terminated?"
"He was going to bomb two mosques. The CIA did not call our evidence enough, but they left the door open. You are familiar with that term?"
"They wouldn't stop the Mossad from doing what they felt was necessary," Jen said, nodding. "Was further evidence found to back the decision?"
"He was an amateur," Ziva said irritably. "Notes. Maps. All the ingredients for the bombs were in his basement. We found out about his plan because he told his rabbi, and his rabbi sent us word. Some of my colleagues had help when they cleaned up all of that mess. The CIA were very helpful, suddenly. And really, the evidence was better than just good. But it was easier to let us do the dirty work."
"They would've set Homeland Security on Katz if you'd refused."
"They knew that we would not have refused, because it would have looked bad for Israel if Homeland Security had waited until the first bombing, which is what they usually do. That agency does more harm than good," Ziva said angrily. "And the CIA is very good at putting people in tight places, to get what they want. But I cannot complain: they learned that from us."
"It pays to learn from the best," Jen said, teasing to lighten the mood.
"There is no such thing as 'the world's best intelligence agency,' unless there is a very secret one that I have not heard about," Ziva said with a wry smile. "Most of the world knows that the CIA exists. Many people know about the Mossad. No matter how good a job either agency does, neither can be called 'the best' because their cover is blown in a very big way."
"True," Jen chuckled. "But if you had to rank them?"
"I would be biased, of course. You rank them."
"I have already. As I said, it pays to learn from the best," Jen said. "Americans refuse to see the obvious, that bigger is not better. The Mossad employs a tenth the number of people employed by the CIA. The Mossad's screw-ups are documented, and you can count them on the fingers of two hands. The CIA goes to great lengths to keep its screw-ups under wraps, because that list is very long. The bigger the agency, the more likely it is that its people will screw up."
"Nachon," Ziva agreed. Correct. After a short pause, she looked at her watch and said, "I should go."
"If you must, but I have two guestrooms."
"Thanks, but I did not go to the climbing gym tonight, so I will go early tomorrow."
"Sucker for punishment," Jen drawled.
"Lif'amim," Ziva chuckled. Sometimes. She thought for a moment before saying, "You are a good friend, Jen. Thank you."
"Can't say that I did much," Jen said.
"You... get it. That is 'much,' according to me."
"Goes both ways," Jen said, and reached for the phone to call a cab.
~ ~ ~
Davis had put his notebooks away because his amateur investigation into the murder of one of his old high school teachers had led him to a literal dead end: his chief suspect had been killed in a car accident. However, reading through all the notebooks turned up something that Davis had initially missed. The team suspected that he was killed because something had happened to cause him to remember a detail that an experienced investigator would have chased down immediately.
"Follow the money– everyone knows to do that," Jen said. "Kids who watch TV know you should follow the money. Why didn't Davis?"
"Because he rightfully thought that the cops had already done that," McGee said. "Reporters speculated that Sam Halpern was killed because of a gambling debt. Statements made to the press by Baltimore PD indicated that that original supposition was incorrect. They'd found that Halpern had always paid his debts—"
"Or so they said," Tony said.
"We have a dirty cop," Ziva said and handed Jen a notelet with a name on it. "All yours, Director."
"Back at you: rav todot!" Jen sarced. Thanks a lot! "I'll call the Baltimore DA. You're all sure about this, right?"
"He's one of the officers who reported to the scene of Davis's murder," Tony said. He'd stopped using the word 'execution.' "Talk about balls. I bet he shot Davis while wearing his uniform. That means that his beat partner is probably his conspirator."
"Give me a motive," Jen said.
"Guess who got hooked into big stakes poker games during his investigation of Halpern's murder?"
"Davis," McGee said. "And he ran up quite a tab with a loan shark called Virgil Epps, who is Officer Ronny Anderson's cousin by marriage."
"Davis stumbled on that, too," Tony said.
"It is in his notes," Ziva said. "We checked it out."
"Twice," Tony said. "We think Davis finally picked up on what he'd missed: follow the money."
"So maybe he attempted to clear his debts with Epps by trying to blackmail Anderson," Ziva said. "That is a strong possibility. There is the motive."
"When it comes to the reputations of fellow law enforcement officers, I'm not a cowboy, people," Jen said, gesturing with the piece of paper. "Before I call the DA and give him this name, you need to mount a little surveillance operation. Let's get something that's more than circumstantial, please."
"But there's only three of us," Tony pointed out. "We need a fourth if we're gonna run a stakeout op."
"I'm game," Jen said. "Tim, we'll take the second shift. I'll supply the coffee."
"Okay," McGee mumbled. Jen gave him a smirk and walked away. McGee's shoulders slumped, and he muttered: "Stuck in a car for four hours with my boss. Great."
"She does not bite," Ziva drawled and rolled her eyes. "Tomorrow you will probably make us jealous with reports of Colombian coffee. That is all she drinks at home."
"Can't you brew us some good coffee?" Tony asked hopefully.
"Ma ani, ez? What am I, the goat? Do you not know how to operate a drip machine?" Ziva said and stalked away.
"Remember," McGee deadpanned. "The Director doesn't bite, but Ziva does."
"The Israeli Rottweiler..." Tony grumbled.
Ziva hadn't been joking about the coffee. It was so good that McGee ignored the cream and sugar Jen had brought along for him, and he took it like she did: straight up black. However, after three nights of four-hour watches that produced nothing, Jen's coffee ceased to impress McGee. Stakeouts, according to McGee, were as bad as watching paint dry, in the dark, no less. He ended up in a car with Jen yet again on the fourth night, but this time they took the first shift. Gibbs was back and would be taking the second shift with Ziva. Tony had been lucky enough to draw a short straw which had given him a night off.
"Gotta say, I'm surprised Gibbs didn't politely tell you to hand back his case, ma'am," McGee said.
"Huh," Jen snorted. She tossed something in McGee's lap. "What's that?"
McGee knew what the object was by feel, but he'd never gotten a look at Jen's badge before. He held it up to the light from a street lamp some distance from the car. When his eyes had adjusted he noticed that all the raised detail on the polished brass badge was silver-plated, and where it said AGENT on his badge, and SPECIAL AGENT on other badges, Jen's read DIR. J. SHEPARD. Agency directors were the only people who ever got to keep their duty badges. If they resigned or retired, handing over their badges was a symbolic gesture. The badges were one-of-a-kind items and were returned to their owners.
"So Gibbs occasionally remembers what it says here," McGee said, handing the badge back.
"And when he doesn't," Jen drawled. "I remind him of what it says. He prefers not to be reminded, so it generally works out well... Umm, Tim? Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"
"I think that's Ziva," McGee murmured, leaning forward to get a better look through the windshield. "What the hell is she doing?"
"Well, she made sure we saw her," Jen said, unable to keep a grin from her face or her voice.
"She's probably gonna break the law, and you're happy about that?" McGee squawked. And tacked on: "Ma'am."
"How many nights do you want to sit here?" Jen demanded.
"Umm..." McGee scowled at the spot where he'd last seen Ziva. She'd vanished in two seconds flat. "Okay. Point taken. Whadya think she's gonna do?"
"What I'd do. Plant tracking devices on the cars in Anderson's garage."
"Oh. That'll be helpf—What am I saying? Breaking and entering: great!"
"Oh, calm down," Jen said gleefully. "She will most certainly enter, but she won't break a thing."
McGee gave up and laughed. What else was he supposed to do? These two maverick females were going to adjust the rulebooks to suit themselves, and he'd just have to hope that they didn't get him into hot water.
Some distance away, Ziva crouched in deep shadow and worked with picks to disengage an automatic spring lock. It was the kind attached to a remote- or switch-operated system that opened the garage's tilt-up door. Being a spring type meant that she'd have to turn and hold the tumbler unit while she opened the door a little way. Only a little way, because Ziva knew by now that some part of this door hit a light switch as it opened. When she got the door open just far enough for her to be able wriggle under it, she picked up a fourteen-inch-long piece of five-inch diameter PVC pipe that she'd removed from her bag earlier. She double-checked that the pipe was properly seated before resting the bottom edge of the garage door on it. She gave the door a test shove before reaching for her bag and taking a VFS (Video Fiberscope) from it.
The hand-held camera unit was already attached via cable to a small monitor. Manipulating a joystick on the camera unit resulted in its flexible 'nose' pointing in whichever direction Ziva made it go. Night vision photography revealed every detail, including the thin green 'strings' of two infrared lasers crossing just inside the double-wide garage door; the lowest was at least three feet off the ground. Ziva put the VFS away and slid her bag under the door, into the gap between the two vehicles. She wriggled in after it.
She would have liked to go the whole hog, and wire the garage for sound and pictures, but the team needed a warrant for that. Technically, a GPS tracking unit cannot directly incriminate a suspect under surveillance. Ziva suspected that someone would object to the use of GPS trackers soon, but they'd probably find themselves arguing the difference between passive surveillance and lawful interception: a wiretap more often than not requires a warrant and is an example of lawful interception. Stakeouts are an example of passive surveillance: just watching someone usually does not require a warrant. GPS trackers only observe. They do not record conversations. They also don't take photographs, but it's perfectly legal for officers and agents to take photographs and video footage of suspects under surveillance. Basically, Ziva was really glad that she wasn't a lawyer.
She attached the tracker units to the undercarriages of the two vehicles and silently got the hell out of Dodge.
Time for a little fun. Instead of heading back to the street corner where a cab had dropped her off, Ziva snuck down the street towards Jen and McGee's position. There were streetlights here, but there were also large trees and many were in need of pruning. They cast very handy pools of deep shadow, and Ziva made her way right past her colleagues' vehicle unseen. She dodged in behind it and then crept up to Jen's window, which was rolled down.
"Bed'yuk k'mo Riga," Ziva whispered through the window. Just like Riga.
"Aval tzarachti ba'Riga," Jen whispered back. But I screamed in Riga.
"Wha—Holy shit!" McGee squawked.
"Not quite my sentiments this time," Jen drawled and shot Ziva a glare. "Get in the car, brat."
Ziva chortled, highly amused, and did as she'd been told.
"You said 'this time.' There was another time?" McGee asked, trying to get his heart to quit hammering.
"Yes. She pulled exactly the same stunt when we were on an op in Latvia. I was actually thinking about it, hence no shriek from me this time. So, Super Spy? What do we do now?"
"We go home," Ziva said. "Gibbs thinks we will only catch Anderson meeting with his loan shark cousin at the weekend."
~ ~ ~
"Why'd he take his wife's car to work?" Gibbs mused, looking at a wide screen monitor. He pointed to the small pulsing blip that marked Anderson's wife's Toyota Prius, which GPS placed at a Baltimore PD precinct. He pointed to another blip that marked Anderson's Ford F150. "That's Arundel Mills Mall. She's gone shopping in his truck, and he's driving her Prius."
"A good ol' boy like Anderson is gonna be verbally mauled about driving that 'sissy' car," Tony said.
"That's what I'm thinking," Gibbs said. "You and Ziva get out there."
Staking out a car parked in a police precinct lot, in broad daylight, is a lot more difficult than watching a house or vehicle after dark. The GPS tracker on the Prius suddenly became worth its weight in gold. More than a block away from the precinct, Ziva and Tony found a parking spot, and 'watching' the car simply involved keeping an eye on a laptop monitor.
Still, it wasn't exciting. Ziva set the tracker monitoring system to ping at them if the Prius budged from its parking spot, and she read a novel while Tony played Tetris. He eventually put the game away, put his seat back, and closed his eyes for a nap. To Tony it seemed like only seconds had passed before the laptop issued a loud ping. He sat bolt upright and adjusted his seat back.
"Time?" he asked, starting the car.
"Just after three p.m. You were asleep for almost two hours," Ziva said. "He is heading west."
"Right."
When following a car by sight, that car naturally has to be kept in sight to avoid arriving at an intersection and heading off in the wrong direction. The tracker unit enabled Tony and Ziva to keep their distance, and they decided to remain out of Anderson's rear view mirrors.
They ended up crossing the state line into Virginia. Anderson stopped at a restaurant in Arlington and then drove on, but not much further. He stopped again in Crystal City.
"It is a Toyota dealership. I doubt that he drove that car all the way here for a service. Maybe he is selling or trading in the Prius?" Ziva said to Tony, and she was already dialing Gibbs's number. "But the DMV says that that car is less than a year old..."
"Hinky. Why get rid of it?" Tony muttered. He parked their car opposite the dealership and watched Anderson talking to a salesman, who gestured at the latest model Prius on display. "Oh yeah. Tell Gibbs he's trading it in for a new one."
Ziva did so and put Gibbs on speaker.
"As soon as Anderson has left," Gibbs said. "You two go inform the dealer that a search warrant is on its way. And keep that guy away from a phone. I'll bring Abby to that dealership."
A little over an hour later, the salesman and his manager were surprised to find badges flashed at them, but they were cooperative. Tony explained that it wasn't likely that the car would be damaged in any way, and the two men relaxed completely.
"Gotta say, it's odd," the manager said. "Coming here? We're a pretty small dealership. He got that Prius from the biggest Toyota dealership in Maryland, one that regularly offers good deals to its customers. We can't match that."
"Yeah, he's covering something up," Tony said.
"Rather, he tried to cover it up," Ziva said.
"Hey, you better collect our handy little friend," Tony noted.
"Oh, yes. Excuse me."
Ziva fetched a screwdriver from the trunk of their car. Levering off the industrial plastic box attached to the Prius' undercarriage took only seconds. She dusted herself off and ignored the funny looks from the manager and salesman. A command typed into the laptop turned the GPS tracker off.
Gibbs, McGee, and Abby eventually arrived, and the Prius was given a thorough going-over. First, all visible fibers, hairs, and loose objects were collected. Vacuuming happened next. A Luma Light was used to look for stains and 'bleach-out' areas, but none were found.
"I'm not gonna print this car," Abby told Gibbs.
"Yeah, I don't see the point either," he agreed. "The victim had his hands bound behind his back– couldn't deliberately touch anything without attracting attention to himself."
"The kind of attention that would probably have earned him a beating," Ziva said. "And even if he did try to touch the door handle, for example, Anderson and his accomplice would have made sure to wipe it down."
"That's what I was thinking," Abby said. "So we're done here."
"All yours," Gibbs told the manager. "And sir, the guy who traded this car in probably killed someone. Telling him about his old car being processed by us is a bad idea."
"Telling anyone about it won't help us sell that car," the manager said with a shrug. "We're on the same page here."
~ ~ ~
Three hairs found in the Prius were microscopically similar to Davis's. DNA results echoed what the microscopy had revealed: Davis had been in the back of the Prius. Instead of collaring Anderson right away, the team decided to get his partner Michael Lehman in for questioning. They wanted Anderson, but there was a chance that if they interrogated him first, he'd say that his partner was the one who pulled the trigger.
Given that Baltimore is an hour's drive from D.C., Jen requested the use of the facilities at an FBI field office. The Baltimore SAC (Special Agent in Charge) offered to get Lehman to 'drop by' while Gibbs and Ziva were on the road. When Gibbs walked into an interview room and stated that he was an NCIS agent, Lehman stared at the table for a moment, then made a run for the door. Said door opened inwards, and the half-second it took to yank it open was all Gibbs needed to take Lehman down in a tackle.
Having seen what was about to happen, Ziva had bolted from the observation room, and she arrived next door in time to see Gibbs take an elbow to the side of the head. Stunned, he lost his grip on Lehman's other wrist. Lehman gave him a shove and got up, only to face Ziva.
He swung a punch at her. She caught his wrist in both hands, took a step towards him, and turned, throwing him over her hip. She didn't let go of his wrist. She held him in a pronated wristlock, and a little twist caused him to gasp and cry out.
"Maybe I should just break your elbow," Ziva said, nudging said body part with her knee. Lehman yelled cusses, tears streaming down his face. "Now that we understand each other... I am going to release you, and Special Agent Gibbs is going to handcuff you. If you resist again, I will just shoot you. Okay?"
Lehman nodded. Gibbs said not a word while cuffing him.
"I want a lawyer," Lehman said when the cuffs were on.
Gibbs smacked him upside the head and shoved him into a chair.
"I want the gun Ronny Anderson used to kill Ensign Davis," Gibbs muttered. "Fair trade. Tell me where that gun is, and you get a lawyer."
"If I give you the gun, Ronny's lawyer can say that I killed Davis. I didn't. Ronny shot him. I helped Ronny to collect and tie up Davis. I drove his wife's Prius, but I did not shoot Davis. I didn't even get out of the car."
"Why did you help Anderson?" Ziva asked.
"Cos he breaks kneecaps when people don't pay what they owe his cousin. I needed some dough to fix my bike, and I coulda paid it back in the first month, but I helped out with my sister's medical bills. She got in a car wreck. So there I am, telling Virgil I need a couple months more, and Ronny says that I'm good for it. Then he tells me that I'm gonna help him with this thing, and if I don't... You ever seen what a crowbar can do to someone's knee?"
"Okay," Gibbs said. "I buy it. You were scared. You went along and just drove the car. Gimme something that'll help you out in court, then tell me where the gun is."
"Umm... The blindfold. Ronny's wife does a lot of sewing, and Ronny brought the blindfold. Maybe he cut it from some of his wife's fabric?"
"If we find only a scrap of the same fabric, that is enough," Ziva said.
"Gun," Gibbs demanded of Lehman.
"It's under Ronny's dad's new patio. He got me to help him pave it."
"Call Jenny and tell her we need warrants fast," Gibbs said to Ziva.
Less than a half-hour later Gibbs received the arrest warrant for Anderson. He was told by a judge's clerk that the search-and-seizure warrants for Anderson's home and his parents' home had already been delivered to NCIS HQ. Tony and McGee were waiting to hear that Anderson had been arrested before acting on the other warrants.
"We're gonna do this the hard way, cos I don't trust the so-called easy way," Gibbs told Ziva. "We tell anyone at that precinct that we want Anderson, and someone will tip him off. Who's he crewing with today, Lehman?"
"Some wet-eared rookie. I want payback. I'll help you find that patrol car."
"You always trust a guy who offers to help you catch the bastard who got him in trouble," Gibbs told Ziva, and handed his phone to Lehman. "Get him to go someplace quiet. I want him there in an hour."
The quiet place wasn't entirely quiet. It was a small parking lot near a boardwalk that led to several fishing spots. Still, Gibbs considered the occasional pedestrian acceptable traffic. He and Ziva sat in their car and waited patiently. Gibbs had driven Lehman's old Bronco here. They both liked the fact that its windows were tinted: there was no-one in that truck, and Anderson wouldn't be able to see that.
"If he shoots at us..." Gibbs said to Ziva.
"I have yet to hesitate in such a situation," she replied calmly. "I will shoot back."
"Hmph. I hope for his sake he doesn't shoot at us, then."
"Yes," Ziva said simply.
"You can be so damn calm it's scary, y'know that?" Gibbs muttered.
Ziva hunched a shoulder and said nothing in response. At times like this she fell into a rhythm that had been determined by her training, and honed by eight, nearly nine years of experience. When Mossad investigations revealed that it would be impossible to capture or take down a target through a stealth operation, firepower was employed. That usually involved sending Mossad officers along with either the elite civilian SWAT and counterterrorism unit YAMAM (Yechida Merkazit Meyuchedet—Special Central Unit), or an elite sayeret (commando) unit of the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces). Ziva had forgotten how many times she'd been shot at. She'd fired a total of a hundred-and-ninety-six rounds in close-quarter combat situations, most of them from automatic weapons, and she remembered as much only because others kept meticulous records of such things. More than twenty of those rounds had found their mark. If Anderson drew his service pistol on them today, she hoped that his name would be added to the tally of wounded, and not to the count of those attackers dead by her hand. So far that count sat at five.
"I must ask something. What is the American opinion regarding someone who dies later of wounds sustained in a gunfire exchange with a law enforcement officer?" Ziva said. "Is the officer considered responsible?"
"Only if it's a dirty shoot," Gibbs said. "If he shouldn't have shot the guy, that's a dirty shoot, in real simple terms. If it's a clean shoot—officer had no choice, then if the guy dies later in hospital, no, that officer is not technically responsible. What's the Israeli take on it?"
"It varies, both ways, yes and no. I personally do not know how to feel about it. Everyone I have ever shot at in a firefight was also shooting at me and the people with me. In the moment, and for some time afterwards, I am very certain that it is not my problem. After a while, though..."
"Far as I'm concerned," Gibbs muttered. "If some bastard draws down on me and I shoot back and he only dies later, I don't feel bad. Generally, if someone dies on the spot where I shot 'em, that's cos I shot to kill. But at times like that, it's shoot-to-kill or end up dead myself."
"Same," Ziva said. And then added: "Sort of. I mean, I still shot at him. Them. Four of them. Maybe I should add their names to the list of people who died because I aimed to kill..."
"Y'know what I think?" Gibbs asked. Ziva said nothing in response, so he just said, "The bad guys don't worry about shit like that, which means you're one of the good guys. I'd try not to worry about it too much."
"I am Jewish. I will probably worry about shit-like-that until I die."
"I thought the Jewish guilt thing was a myth," Gibbs said.
"The Jewish guilt thing, yes. The Jewish worry thing? No, it is not a myth," Ziva drawled.
Gibbs chortled, but his amusement was short-lived. He elbowed Ziva's arm and nodded to his side mirror. No words now. None were necessary. Both of them unlatched their doors, but held them closed as a Baltimore PD cruiser rolled by to a parking spot five spaces distant from the Bronco. A tall officer got out of the cruiser.
Gibbs hit the grille lights and siren just as Ziva bailed out of her door. She rolled and came up on a knee as Anderson spun around. The lights and siren were to let his rookie partner know that this was a legitimate grab, that he wasn't required to backup Anderson.
Ziva's pistol was steady, her eyes hard but calm. Anderson knew that look. He slowly raised both hands. But then he was flipping off his cap– a diversion, one that didn't work. As his gun cleared the holster, Ziva fired. At the distance of only twenty feet, it was an easy shot. She hadn't broken Lehman's elbow, but Anderson's she completely wrecked. He clutched at his ruined arm and didn't even think about the service pistol lying near his feet.
"Nice shooting," Gibbs said, sounding relaxed, but he wasn't. Not nearly.
It was hard to forget that rooftop; impossible to forget Kate's blank, slack expression as she fell dead. Gibbs's worst fear involved losing another member of his team. He should have gotten Kate and Tony off of that rooftop. Or he should have at least told them to keep low. A sniper on the loose, and there they were, all three just standing in the open. It was hard to let that go, to forgive himself for that mistake.
"You ever made a mistake that got someone killed?" he asked Ziva on their way back to D.C.
"Yes. I should have shot Ari sooner," Ziva said quietly.
"You didn't have enough evidence," Gibbs pointed out.
"Sometimes one must rely on instinct, and forget about the law. If I had done that, Kate would still be alive."
"I'd give... I'd give a lot for her to still be alive," Gibbs said. "But y'know that she was a stickler for the rules? She wouldn't have been happy if you'd killed him without enough evidence."
"And I would never have forgiven myself," Ziva said and sighed quietly. "I still have not forgiven myself, but I will one day. I know this, simply because he would have killed you if I had not killed him. Some might think that that alone should make it easy to forgive myself—"
"Yeah, right," Gibbs muttered. "Those people have never aimed a gun at someone in earnest."
"What I resent most is that he made it personal for me, for the first time ever," Ziva said, anger leaking out and tinging her voice slightly. "He caused me to question my professionalism in such matters."
"I take it you fixed that," Gibbs drawled. "Nothing unprofessional about your actions today."
Ziva laughed briefly and shrugged, and she didn't bother to tell Gibbs that the calmest moments of her life were those where Death lurked in wait. In those moments she could only do her best, and if that wasn't good enough, there was nothing she could do about it. That was surprisingly easy to accept.
~ ~ ~
"Feeling better?" Jen asked and handed over a beer. Ziva had just arrived on this fine Sunday afternoon, and she'd brought along a stuffed chicken that was currently roasting in the oven. "About the Davis case, and the baggage attached."
"Somewhat," Ziva said, moving her legs out of the way so that Jen could sit on the porch swing beside her. Once Jen had settled Ziva promptly parked her legs over her lap. "'Comfort' is my middle name."
"Like me you don't have a middle name... Talk to me?" Jen invited.
"In some ways the air is clear, you know?" Ziva said.
"Well, I know that you were annoyed by your father blithely telling Gibbs that he didn't know what use we'd have for an assassin. I didn't expect Gibbs to repeat that to Tony and McGee—"
"He did not. One of my former colleagues told Tony. He works here at the Israeli embassy now."
"Still? Maybe you should fix that."
"He is also a former lover, so how will that look?" Ziva grumbled.
"Oh. Ouch," Jen said and snorted a laugh. "Sorry."
"You are not at all sorry, but watch out, or I will make funny remarks about you and Gibbs."
"Touché," Jen said and straightened her face, with effort. "So you say the air is clear. Or just clearer? Gibbs is the only one who has any real clue what it's like to agree with the reasons for it, and carry out a termination order. I've killed two people in close-combat situations. I was once in a situation where I was supposed to terminate someone, and I couldn't do it in cold blood. Just wasn't in me to do it."
"I hope you have never called yourself weak for that," Ziva said.
"I did for years, and then I let it go," Jen said, looking out at the river beyond the varnished picket fence marking the bottom boundary of her yard. "I realized that comparing myself to people who are not me is pretty stupid. In situations like that, you are utterly alone. The event itself and your reactions combine to form a singularity, never to be repeated."
"Yes, and that is also because your mark is an individual," Ziva said. "Even if you do everything the same way for three marks in a row, each of them is someone else, and that alone makes each occasion very different. What is that saying about a river?"
"You can't step in the same river twice. That one?"
"Yes. It is different 'water' every time... So the air is... clearer now between Tony and McGee and me. Like you say, maybe it will only be completely clear between me and Gibbs. Also between me and you, because you are never afraid to ask even very difficult questions."
"You always have the option of refusing to answer," Jen pointed out.
"I know, and I know as well that if ever I do not answer, you will be okay with that."
"Respect is actually a very simple thing," Jen said.
"Yeah. Be nice and respectful and get me another beer, please," Ziva said with a grin.
"Brat," Jen said and laughed.
__________
Chapter Six
Months passed and only Ducky was made indirectly aware that Ziva and Jen had something else going on besides a professional relationship. He was told about it, in a roundabout way. He and Ziva were visiting a museum together on a Sunday. She'd left her backpack and phone with him while she went to a restroom, and on her return he was talking on her phone. The caller had been Jen. The message: could Ziva bring over a bottle of wine later, preferably Chianti. Ducky had relayed that message without a hitch. Thinking about it, Ducky found that it made sense. Jen and Ziva were sore thumbs at NCIS, one the very first female director and the other an Israeli spy. Both were highly thought of, but in a distinctly grudging manner. It just made sense that they'd seek each other's company outside of work.
Ducky might one day be a very close friend, but he and Ziva were content to let that relationship build as it would. They believed in quality time, though their definition of quality time didn't include a lot of conversation. Museums, the symphony, the theater, the ballet, and simple Sunday afternoon walks taken arm-in-arm, usually after a good lunch, were what they liked best. The comments they made on this and that taught each about the other. He was something like an uncle, and she was something like a niece.
Ziva was building a friendship with Abby, too, but it wasn't close. They were just too different. Still, their differences didn't stop them from spending a fair amount of time together. Abby had cajoled Ziva into joining her bowling group, just once, and 'just once' had turned into a regular habit, a pun giggled about often because the rest of the group were all nuns. As yet Ziva hadn't gotten pally with any of them, but that wasn't surprising. At all.
Stalking unsuspecting mall patrons aside, Tony was a buddy, and McGee was one as well, but in a quieter way: she'd go see old movies with Tony and talk about books with McGee. On the whole the guys enjoyed her company and she enjoyed theirs. If Ziva wanted to go somewhere and didn't want any unwarranted attention from other men, she simply said as much and either Tony or McGee willingly tagged along.
If ever Ziva saw Gibbs after hours, it was at a bar'n'grill or else in his basement, and she couldn't help but feel honored to be allowed to work with sandpaper on the hull or some other bit of his latest boat. Still, there was something like a thin wall or a heavy curtain between herself and Gibbs. She knew a lot about him, but that had all been learned secondhand. Gibbs was a listener, not a talker, and he just did not talk about his late first wife and the daughter who never got to grow up.
All in all, over the period of nearly twelve months Ziva had worked quite hard on friendships with her colleagues. At least, it seemed like hard work when compared to the little effort required where Jen was concerned.
They rarely ordered in or got take-out. They cooked, more often together than separately. Both were tired tonight, though. It had been a long week and a hard one for the reason that everyone had had to put in overtime while helping three federal prosecutors to prepare evidence for trial.
And for once Ziva hadn't minded being desk-strapped. She'd just gotten over a nasty bout of flu, and though the calendar said that it was spring, it seemed that winter was trying to make a comeback. The Capital had been assaulted by strong, chill winds that had blown heavy cloud cover in from the west. Weather channels were forecasting heavy rain, with a strong possibility of sleet. The wet stuff hadn't materialized yet, but the elm outside Ziva's apartment was currently engaged in something like a samba with the wind.
"I hope that tree does not break," Ziva said, nodding towards a window.
"Yes, considering most of its friends said farewell to this world due to Dutch elm disease," Jen noted. "Amazing, how just a few won't get it... You mentioned just now that friendships with the rest of the team sometimes seem like work. Does the effort go both ways?"
"I think so. McGee really tries– I can tell by his questions. With the others... Even Gibbs is careful with his questions. That is where it might seem like work for them."
"Right. So you've got a long way to go before you have this kind of friendship with any of them."
"But I do not want this kind of thing with the others," Ziva said.
"Any reason why?"
"I would want it to be the same. That would require me to spend as much time with someone else as I do with you. I do not have much free time. Zeh ma she'yesh." Ziva said. This is what there is. She snagged something delectable off of Jen's plate and gave it an approving nod a little later. "When we order from that place again, I will have that dish."
"Really good," Jen mumbled around a mouthful. Ziva pinched another morsel. "Hey, eat your own food!"
"I am, with yours as a side dish," Ziva giggled.
"Brat..."
Ziva smirked around a mouthful, eyes twinkling. She'd thought about taking a few extra days and going home to see her father, but not much cogitation on that idea had helped her to decide otherwise.
Eli David wasn't too happy with Ziva's position as liaison officer at NCIS, and what he sometimes failed to recognize was the fact that she wasn't simply on loan to the agency. He'd had to be reminded twice that as Liaison Officer, hers was a contractual obligation, that she was relied upon, and that the Mossad would need an exceptionally good reason to 'borrow' her back.
As the Mossad's deputy director, Eli had enough power to yank her back to Israel on a whim, but he couldn't do that without making certain people angry, certain people who were more powerful than him, first among those being the Mossad's Director-General. Another was the Israeli ambassador to the US, someone who had a direct line to Israel's Prime Minister. There was a list of people who felt that Ziva was in a position that was already valuable, and would only become more valuable, on several fronts, as time passed. She hadn't been afraid to drop that list of names. She'd told her father that the deal was very simple: if the Director-General agreed that the reason was good enough, there would be no question of a temporary return to Israel to effect whatever task may be asked of her.
The last of those two conversations had happened more than six months ago. Eli had reluctantly agreed to the deal.
Since then Ziva had renewed her contract without speaking to her father. She'd contacted her division supervisor instead, and of course he'd agreed to sign this and that as soon as a courier arrived. Every phone call to her father, and her last visit home, had involved arguments related to that contract renewal.
NCIS had become the lever that had lifted Eli's thumb off of Ziva, and she fully intended to raise that thumb further, to make it so that her father had a limited professional say in her life.
"And personally?" Jen asked.
"Unlike you and I, my father and I have just one kind of relationship. If I remove his authority in a professional way he will see that as me... distancing myself from him in every way. This will not be a bad thing. I stand a better chance of eventually building a family-type relationship with him if he feels that he has no say in my life. Of course, if ever he is appointed as Director-General, then things change. As DG he would almost own me, professionally, so I must make myself very useful to people here, and useful also to HaMossad. As you know, I am working on that."
"Yes, and I think you're doing a damn good job," Jen said. "I told him as much when last he called me. He seemed honestly impressed."
"And that is exactly what I want," Ziva said. "If I can become the 'valuable asset' cliché, then even if and when he is DG he will want me to stay here. Then it will be up to someone else within HaMossad to convince him that I must be 'borrowed' for something... Overall, this is complicated. We can talk about something else, yes?"
"Of course," Jen said.
Ziva's apartment; Ziva's music. Rami Kleinstein was singing 'Od Lo Tamu.' Jen knew a little about the tune.
"It's a love song to Israel, isn't it?" Jen asked.
"Pretty much," Ziva. "But not a very accurate one, unless it is part hymn to God. The title comes from the first line of the chorus: Od lo tamu kol pla'ayich. 'Your wonders have not yet ceased.' I would only say that about Israel when—by some miracle—we manage to bring about a lasting peace in the Middle East—"
"Israel can't do that alone," Jen stated.
"No, we cannot. And so the song is not very accurate, but it is beautiful."
"Yes," Jen agreed, thinking that it might be one of those tunes that would return to her via memory over the next few days, as had several other Hebrew ballads heard in this apartment. "What's that other one... Shlomo Artzi sings it. Hi lo yoda'at something-something."
"Hi Lo Yoda'at Ma Over Alai. 'She does not know what's going on with me.' I will put that on just now," Ziva chuckled. "And what is this 'something-something'? Your Hebrew used to be fluent."
"No practice, which is nuts, because I could practice with you," Jen drawled.
"Practice clearing the table while I go find your song."
Ziva ended up playing translator while they cleaned up in the kitchen. Except for her excellent command of Hebrew cusses, Jen's Hebrew was very formal. While many of the words in various songs sounded familiar to her, Jen knew that 'song Hebrew,' as Ziva termed it, was generally idiomatic and nothing like the stiff, formal way in which she spoke the language. Having Ziva translate the next three songs helped Jen to make sense of what she was hearing.
"If I translate this one line-by-line, maybe I will set fire to something," Ziva said regarding the next song.
Jen frowned in concentration while listening to Shalom Chanoch sing "Le'at-le'at," – "Little by Little":
...You draw closer to me, little by little.
Between whisper and glance, little by little.
You reveal who I am, little by little.
You reveal to me who you are, little by little.
Surprising how your body is so familiar,
And how the soul reaches the flesh.
A touch like this just can't be described,
And I never knew before...
You draw closer to me, little by little.
You melt between my fingers, little by little.
Breaking waves reach the shore, little by little.
In an endless movement, little by little...
...and she understood enough of that, and other lines, too, about dancing and the gradual removal of clothing. She glanced Ziva's way to see her smirking. Jen's cheeks pinked slightly.
"You see?" Ziva teased. After lighting a rare cigarette, she said, "When this song first came out I was nineteen and we could only hear it on Galgalatz, the Army station. One other contemporary station, Reshet Gimmel, would only play it after eight at night. When last I heard this song in Israel, it was played as a 'classic' on Reshet Gimmel, in the middle of the day. Times change... kind of. In Israel no-one dances to this song unless they are a couple."
"I'm not surprised," Jen said and cleared her throat.
"I knew guys who used it as a kind of pick-up tactic. They would ask tourist or kibbutz volunteer girls to dance, and translate it right next to their ears. They would either get told to piss off or they would get laid, nothing in between."
"Sounds like something Tony would try," Jen drawled.
"I think he would prefer to use lines from movies, and he probably has. The weird part– maybe it has worked a few times."
"The women were weird, then. Or at any rate, they were nothing like me."
"Or me," Ziva said and chuckled wryly. And then she yawned and cussed in Arabic. "No work tomorrow, but because I will wake at five anyway—and not get back to sleep—my little body clock is telling me to go to bed. Are you staying? This couch can fold out. Abby reports that it is comfortable."
Jen thought about the effort of going downstairs and waiting for a taxi, and compared it to the effort of staying right where she was. Staying put won by ten lengths.
But then the couch wouldn't fold out.
"It's this... thing here. Maybe I did not fold it properly when I put everything away last time. See? It is bent... Ben zonah..."
"Whores have sons that are hinges?" Jen chortled.
"Hmph! Yeah, no-one ever has to practice swearing in another language: you remember them all just fine, huh?"
"Perfectly. I hope that can be fixed."
"It can. I just need the right tools, but I do not feel like going to borrow them from the super right now. Am I calling you a cab or are you sharing my bed?"
"I'm staying because I am not putting those shoes back on," Jen stated.
"Why wear heels if they hurt you so much?"
"That's all you can wear with a pencil skirt."
"I suppose combat boots would not look good," Ziva conceded.
"No, but I wish they did. And then there's Abby, who pairs a pencil skirt with bright red knee-length Doc Martens and manages to pull it off."
"That skirt was leather, and she can wear whatever she wants because she is Abby."
Abby Sciuto probably could have worn an empty horse feed sack and flip-flops and the result would've been, 'That suits you!' from just about anyone. Abby could make any outfit work for her just by wanting to wear it, or so it seemed.
Little organizing was required. Jen borrowed a sleep shirt and used the bathroom first. Ziva ducked in there next, and by the time she emerged, Jen was asleep. Her Glock was laid on the bedside table. Ziva liked her gun closer and stuck the SIG Sauer P226 .357 Elite Dark under her pillow, which meant that it required an anti-lint cleaning every morning, but she felt it was worth it.
She yawned and crawled into bed, turning out the lamp even before she pulled the covers over herself. She hadn't felt this tired in a long while, and sleep stole her away quickly.
Five a.m, on the dot. Ziva woke, scowling in the dark, and gradually became aware of an arm and a leg draped across her body, a head nestled into the hollow of her shoulder. Ziva smiled sleepily and rested her cheek against the top of Jen's head. It wouldn't hurt to have a lie-in instead of heading out there, in the cold dark, to go for a run. The wind hadn't let up; she could hear it, and maybe some rain, too. No need to go out there. And in any case, moving might wake Jen. Ziva really didn't want to do that. She let her body relax again, and when next she woke light was edging around the sides of the drapes, and she'd woken because Jen had chuckled.
"Maybe I should've warned you."
"About this?" Ziva said and rubbed Jen's back.
"Mmm. You don't mind," Jen stated.
"Nachon," Ziva said, yawning. Correct. "Especially because you helped to convince me to stay in bed, and I got extra sleep instead of going jogging."
"Ten points for me, then," Jen said with a smirk. "You realize I could stay here all day."
"The last time I stayed in bed all day I was sick."
"Flu that turned into 'bronchitis-bordering-on-pneumonia,' Ducky told me. And typical you," Jen chortled. "You get sick and go see a medical examiner instead of a regular doctor... Was that when Abby stayed here?"
"She insisted on staying the night for nearly a week," Ziva drawled, but there was a hint of fondness in her tone. "I was fed lots of chicken soup. But when she had the flu all I was allowed to do was deliver some meals. I got the impression that she was dating someone and maybe he was staying the night."
"Why didn't we hear about him?"
"Lo yoda'at," Ziva said. Don't know. "But the simplest reason might have been that he was just a... fling? Right word?"
"Yes."
"Another subject– something I forgot to ask you last night: have I been granted clearance to enter MTAC?"
"No," Jen said and winced. She'd been dreading this. Access to NCIS's Multiple Threat Alert Center required personnel to have a minimum Level One (Confidential) security clearance. Although Jen had personally requested Ziva's clearance from the Department of Defense, that request had been denied. "And you know why."
"I am not Jonathan Pollard," Ziva muttered.
"No. Worse. You're a real-deal Mossad officer," Jen said. "Look at it like this: there's something like MTAC at Glilot, isn't there?"
"Yes, on a smaller scale."
"Would I be allowed to walk in there?"
"No," Ziva said and huffed.
"Right. Why?"
"Because NCIS is part law enforcement agency, part intelligence and counterintelligence agency," Ziva muttered. Time to accept this and move on. There was no sense in arguing about or even feeling put out by the conditions governing a very old two-way street. "Spies do not invite other spies into their professional living rooms."
"You said it... Ziva, if it's any consolation, I feel insulted on your behalf."
"Thank you. Gibbs said something similar, but it is not your fault, or his... Is this a dimple or a, umm, dent?" Ziva said, her fingertips exploring an odd little hollow through the fabric over Jen's left shoulder blade.
"Scar. Seven-point-six-five millimeter round, and luckily it was almost spent or I would've been dead. As it was it broke my shoulder blade, and then, for some reason unknown to every expert I saw, the bone healed fine but the flesh part of the wound went bad. I didn't respond to the usual kind of antibiotic regimen. The docs had to concoct a combination of regular antibiotics and less common ones. When it healed it left that dent behind."
"The joys of being shot..." Ziva muttered. "I caught some buckshot once. Most of the load missed me, but I got six pieces of it. Not fun."
"Not at all."
"And when you got shot, why were you not wearing body armor?"
"Undercover on a get-close-to-him job," Jen drawled. "That bullet was meant for my subject."
"Getting in the bullet's way blew your cover?" Ziva asked.
"No. The idiot who wanted him dead hired another idiot who tried a hit from range—maybe 60 yards—with a suppressed CZ-50 pocket pistol. He missed, of course."
"CZ?" Ziva squawked in disgust. "Blegh!"
"Their nine millies are okay. But the seven-point-six-five? Slide jam city..."
"Hmph. If it is not a SIG, it is no good."
"Glock is—"
"Combat Tupperware," Ziva insisted. "I do not trust guns that are, by cubed area, more than sixty percent plastic."
Jen giggled and her amusement had mostly to do with the entire conversation: most people would never have matched the picture of two girls in one bed to a knowledgeable conversation about guns. This was why she believed that law enforcement officers, federal agents, and military personnel ought to date in their own circle. People outside of that circle just didn't get it, and in the gap where common ground should have been, tension built. But having any type of personal relationship within that circle was not without its tensions. If the two people concerned had a professional relationship, an additional personal relationship of whatever kind was generally frowned upon, if not forbidden in Regulations.
"The rules say I shouldn't be here," Jen said eventually, and then explained how her train of thought had led to that statement.
"Ahh," Ziva said. She thought for a moment before saying, "Someone with the ATF once said to me that overall professional performance counts ninety percent in every disciplinary hearing about behavior off-the-clock."
"That's true," Jen said. She levered herself onto an elbow and propped her chin on the heel of her hand. "But in that case you want several years of professional performance in your back pocket. You've been with NCIS for a little less than a year. So I'm asking, Ziva: just how comfortable do you want this relationship to get?"
"It gets more comfortable than this?" Ziva chuckled.
"It can," Jen said quietly.
"Yeah..." Ziva thought carefully for a moment before saying, "I am not willing to give up this friendship. I am willing to defend it, if it comes to that. The job is very important to me, yes, but I still get asked if I would like jobs with other agencies, as an analyst or translator, or both. There is also, right now, an opening with the FBI: Mossad liaison officer. It is not a desk job. I cannot tell you more, but my duties would be much the same as at NCIS."
"Counterterrorism Division?" Jen guessed.
Ziva nodded and remained zip-lipped afterward. Jen chewed at the side of her lower lip, mulling it over. At last she shook her head.
"No-one on the team would rat us out. They haven't yet, and I'm pretty sure they all know that you and I have become close."
"They are not saying anything. Maybe that is because they all like us?"
"More to it than that, my friend: we're not making their lives difficult. Also, they trust us to be professional when it counts... Dumb regulations. For God's sake– we're just friends; we shouldn't have had to talk about this."
"Do not care about it," Ziva said quietly, rubbing Jen's back.
Jen smiled at the phrase. That was Ziva in Very Relaxed mode: she was thinking in Hebrew and translating to English. If she'd been thinking in English she would have used the word 'worry' instead of 'care,' a common Israeli word-choice error. Jen lay down again, replacing her thigh over Ziva's hips and hugging her middle.
"Damn straight. I won't care about it at all."
__________
Chapter Seven
She hadn't seen Jen in more than two weeks. She had a lot of questions to answer, first among them:
"You called Gibbs? Why not me?"
"If you had helped me in any way, your whole twenty-seven-year career would be like dust right now."
Jen opened her mouth to argue and then closed it. There was no arguing with that point.
Ziva had been wanted by the FBI in connection with a bomb blast that killed two FBI agents. She'd been tailing someone, who turned out to be someone she knew, but he was no longer a Mossad officer. Now working for a clandestine branch of the Idarat al-Amn al-Amm, Syrian GSD (General Security Directorate), he'd planted the bomb and Ziva had unwittingly allowed him to escape. Her car was left parked at the scene of the explosion, and that's how the FBI had connected her to the crime.
Gibbs had been her first choice of contact for the simple reason that he'd withdrawn from NCIS, following a near-death experience.
"He could not get into trouble," Ziva told Jen.
"Abby could have, and you called Abby to get his number. I have that number, too," Jen stated.
"And you would have given me his number, and then? You are not being rational. Listen to me, Jenny. Ani makira otach," Ziva said. I know you. "I have spent more than a year getting to know you..."
Ziva laid it all out. She knew that Jen would have done her best to keep any general NCIS involvement quiet, but eventually someone—Tony, Ducky, McGee, Abby—would have said something about Jen being personally involved. The rest of the team had made sure to do only what could not be called obstruction. Anything Jen might have come up with would have involved running interference. She would have deliberately obstructed the FBI's investigation.
"That is what you were trained to do," Ziva said quietly. After a pause, she added: "I wanted to call you. Even if I had called just to tell you I was okay... I know you."
Jen didn't respond. She couldn't argue because Ziva was right. As it was, it had been a tough job to sit back and simply allow the FBI to run rough-shod over her top team. She was proud of them for doing what they had, which boiled down to aiding and abetting a suspect in a federal investigation. Aiding and abetting is a crime of principle that doesn't rely on the suspect in question being proved guilty. Even though Ziva had been proven innocent, her teammates could still face that charge, could still be tried, could still go to jail for upwards of ten years. And here Jen sat pretty, with not a mark, not a dust mote against her name. It just didn't seem right.
"Hey..." Ziva whispered. She stepped in front of Jen and rubbed her upper arm. "You are hurting now, not angry. I can see. Why?"
"I've just realized that ambition makes for a lonely road to travel. Top of the pile, I'm not really a part of anything that goes on below me, am I?"
"You do a good job," Ziva stated. "When we are stuck, when a case is going nowhere, you suggest that we try stuff, and it works. And you are invited to drinks after we close a case. You think that is because of... obligation? No. When you were stuck in that meeting the last time, we were all disappointed... And okay, so that is maybe because we like you better when you are buying the drinks, but—"
"Hah!" Jen squawked. "The truth at last!"
"Clown," Ziva accused, smiling. "But seriously, it would not be the same without you... And can I get a hug now, please?"
Jen didn't even pause to nod. She slipped her arms around Ziva's neck, stepping closer when a pair of arms tightened around her torso. Jen would never have expected the quiet sniffle followed by a sob, and her mind immediately told her, That's not fair. True, it wasn't fair to think of Ziva as someone completely tough, someone beyond emotion. Jen found herself to be whispering nothings, soothing without trying to get Ziva to stop crying.
"If the FBI had ignored the evidence," Ziva said later. "I would not have stayed here. I would have tried to say goodbye to you, but I might have failed. It was... very hard to know that I had so few choices; that I might have had to run without seeing you again."
"I would've found you, after the dust had settled," Jen said firmly. "But given the rabidness of Homeland Security, that settling period might've been years."
"Yeah," Ziva agreed and sipped at her beer. After a pause she said, "Strange. I was detained at the Israeli embassy for a while, as you know. HaMossad have pictures of Tony arriving at and leaving my apartment once every week, since Gibbs left. There are no pictures of me being visited by Abby or Ducky or McGee, and no pictures of you visiting; no pictures of me visiting any of them, or you. They asked me outright, am I sleeping with Tony."
"I think your father has something to do with that," Jen drawled. Then, looking Ziva in the eye: "Are you?"
"No," Ziva said, relaxed, and with a cheeky smile: "You are the only colleague I sleep with."
"And if you stay tonight, it won't be in a guestroom," Jen stated.
"If? Huh. I am staying," Ziva said and covered a yawn with her hand. "I am so tired I could sleep for two days straight, I am sure."
"Sorry. Work tomorrow."
"I know, I know," Ziva drawled. Seriously: "Before I forget... I think that Gibbs will be back soon."
"That's my hunch as well. Back in two months, at the most," Jen said. "He left for the wrong reasons, and he knows it: written all over his face."
"Yeah..." Ziva shrugged, deciding to leave the subject alone. She got up from her chair. "See you later."
"Yes."
All defenses down, Ziva didn't hide a slight limp when she left the study. She had stitches at her hairline and one eye was going black from the fight with Syrian GSD agent Faatin Amal that morning. That limp was probably due to sorely punished abdominal muscles, maybe even a bruised kidney, Jen guessed. And she thought to herself, Such is the life of an intelligence operative.
Someone somewhere was probably gunning for Jennifer Shepard right now. On every mission and assignment, every covert operation, intelligence operatives made enemies of the variety that tended to hold a grudge for a very long time. Jen had a list, and any of the people on it might choose to make a concerted effort to end her life, on any day of the next week. She guessed that Ziva's list might be a fair bit longer than her own, with as many as four new names added to it just today, Amal's first among them. The Syrian woman would soon find herself on a plane, bound for Gitmo.
When Jen eventually crawled into bed, Ziva stirred, then started fully awake, her hand reaching under the pillow at once.
"Just me," Jen whispered.
Ziva relaxed and blew up at her hairline, heart hammering. It would be like this for days: adrenalin pumping for the slightest reason. And Jen knew all about that, so Ziva didn't bother with an apology. She had something else to say.
"I missed you."
"I missed you, too, but from this range I can safely say that it's impossible to miss each other," Jen teased gently.
Ziva snorted a laugh and hugged Jen's shoulders tightly, but that grip gradually relaxed as sleep claimed her again. Jen listened to a heartbeat that slowed to a steady, even thump: calming, reassuring– the complete opposite of the experience of the last two weeks.
Over the last four or five days, Jen had tried to tell herself that it might be a good idea to put a little distance between herself and Ziva, but that idea seemed less-than-good right now. It seemed stupid, in fact. Despite a continuously high level of worry during these two weeks, Jen had performed at her professional best, as had Ziva, despite her very difficult circumstances. That trend would simply continue.
There was no sense at all in 'fixing' what wasn't broken.
__________
Chapter Eight
"Whadya mean, gone?" Gibbs snapped.
"Hasn't been at work for three days, Boss," Tony muttered.
"Umm, maybe someone should go calm Ziva down," McGee said and swallowed nervously. "She said something about wanting to kick Judge Liebewitz in the, uhh, crotch."
"I bet she said 'balls,'" Gibbs growled. "And she'll have to stand in line. We lost Meller cos Liebewitz pulled some pure-law bullshit about unlawful surveillance, due to so-called goddamn circumstantial evidence... I can't believe this. By now he could be anywhere..."
"What's going on?" Jen asked from the walkway above the squad area.
"Lewis Meller is not at home, not at work. No-one's seen him in three days," Tony said.
"Jesus Christ..." Jen muttered, hands white-knuckling the railing.
"I want Liebewitz's ass in a sling," Gibbs said angrily, his face very red. "I want him off that fucking bench he's so goddamn proud of!"
"I doubt he'll lose his bench, but I also doubt that Liebewitz will enjoy explaining himself to the SECNAV," Jen said and headed into her office.
McGee fetched Gibbs a cup of water from the cooler and handed it to him hesitantly.
"Thanks," Gibbs said and downed the cupful. "Goddammit. We've got four dead female sailors. Four in less than two months..."
"And Meller killed who-knows-how-many civilian women before he started focusing on women in uniform," McGee said, slumping his chair.
"I'm gonna go tell Abby to call her pals at the Bode labs," Tony said. "Maybe she can get them to put a rush on those samples."
Saliva that didn't belong to the four Navy victims had been found on their skin. Two cold cases, civilian women, had peaked Ducky's interest, because they'd been killed in the same area and their bodies had been posed in the same subtle way seen with the four Navy victims. Saliva samples had also been collected from the civilian victims. Given that the samples were somewhat degraded, they'd been submitted for mitochondrial DNA testing. Ducky hadn't even bothered to request the Y-STR DNA analysis that's standard when a suspect is male.
"Abby can try, but mito sequencing takes longer than the regular testing. Can't rush it," Gibbs said and got up. "Tony, meet us at Seamus Green's. McGee, go tell Jen we're calling it a day. And give Ziva a call, tell her where we'll be."
"Sure, Boss."
Perhaps drinking wasn't the best idea, but as it turned out, the beer helped. Jen had come along to the pub and so had her briefcase, source of a legal pad and pen. McGee took notes while the four of them brainstormed the only avenue left to them: Find Meller.
Three days ago Judge Liebewitz had issued an immediate cease-and-desist order against all surveillance on Meller, and since then he'd had three days in which to go wherever he wanted to. No-one had been watching airports or border crossings. It was likely that Meller had a fake passport, and that ruled out a standard search of passport control and airline databases for his name and a flight number. They'd check anyway, but they hoped that something in Meller's apartment might give away his destination. They had every right to press for a search-and-seizure warrant now. Meller had not been seen or heard from since the judge had told NCIS to back off. Cops don't believe in coincidences. Most judges tend not to believe in them either.
"The SECNAV definitely does not believe in coincidences," Jen said. "And neither does the TJAG. If necessary they'll both appear in person and demand that warrant."
"Didn't you and Wiccomb used to date?" Gibbs asked, referring to The Judge Advocate General of the Navy, or TJAG. "No, wait– you were engaged to him."
"Really?" Tony gawped. "He's a genius but he's about the most boring person on the planet!"
"Focus, people," Jen drawled, hoping that her face wasn't as red as it felt.
"Right," McGee said, hiding his amusement with a gulp of beer. "Okay. We get the warrant. And we're looking for what– anything relating to travel, vacations—"
"Photo albums," Gibbs said. "My guess is the asshole left in a real big hurry. Unless he took pictures of his vics, albums would not have been high on his ditch list. He's gotta run, and all he's thinking about is getting rid of whatever obvious grounds for an international manhunt. We gotta get in his head in those moments."
"So we don't even dream about finding evidence linking Meller to our four victims," Tony said.
"But if he didn't take his toothbrush, hairbrush, didn't do his laundry, we'll get his DNA," McGee pointed out.
"I want his mother's DNA," Jen muttered. "But we need evidence that's a lot more solid than what we've got before we can press a judge to compel a sample from Missus Meller."
"Yeah. No way will she give up her darling son," Tony said, his tone disgusted. "She's the kinda woman who'll insist that he's innocent even if he confess—Whoa! Ziva, what the hell did you do?"
Ziva used her free hand to wave Tony off. Her other hand was busy pinching the bridge of her nose. There was blood down the front of her Goldman's Gym T-Shirt, and a very unladylike bit of cotton wool was wadded into one nostril. Her lower lip was split and puffy. It had to hurt, but she was grinning anyway. She parked on a bench seat next to Jen, and thanked a waitress for the beer she'd ordered on the way to the booth.
"We're dying here, hello?" Tony said. "What happened?"
"Savlanut!" Ziva muttered and took a healthy swig of beer.
"Huh?" said the three men.
"Patience," Jen translated, but she didn't feel very much like being patient. "Ziva..."
"Okay already," Ziva grumbled. She took a smaller sip of beer and said, "Liebewitz was at Goldman's Gym. He is there every Wednesday evening. I let him throw the first punch, and then I threw all the rest."
"In the boxing ring or the no-rules cage?" Gibbs asked eagerly.
"The cage. My knee had your name on it, Gibbs."
"Atta girl," Gibbs said and grinned like a pirate.
"This can't come back at us, can it?" McGee mumbled.
"He went willingly into the cage," Ziva said. "He did not have to accept my challenge."
"I bet old man Goldman tried to tell him not to," Tony chortled. "How'd it go? Something like, 'You meshugineh nebbish! She'll kill you! And a judge dies in my gym– what then?'"
"He said 'mangle,' not 'kill,'" Ziva giggled. "You speak Yiddish?"
"He speaks Goldman," Gibbs chortled.
"Sounded just like him, too," McGee said, grinning. "'Meshugineh' is crazy. What's 'nebbish'?"
"A pitiful, weedy sort of person– in this case, very apt," Jen drawled. To Ziva: "How're your hands, Slugger?"
"Four-ounce gloves do not protect anything," Ziva said and flexed hands that were swollen and bruising over the knuckles. "I taped-up properly, too, but—"
"You'll mend," Jen interrupted. "Now. Give it up. Blow-by-blow."
"Never mind that," Tony said. "Just tell us how bad he looks."
"Broken nose, mashed ear, sore ribs, and very sore beitzim."
"Eggs?" Jen mumbled a translation.
"Not from-the-chicken kind of eggs!" Ziva said and cracked up laughing with the guys.
"Oh, God..." Jen groaned, hiding her red face behind her hand. "I'll never live this one down."
"Aww, ani adayin ohevet otach," Ziva chuckled. I still love you.
"I might believe that tomorrow," Jen drawled, but she was smiling.
~ ~ ~
Bang-bang...ba-bang-bang-BANG...
Ziva woke from a dream that had suddenly involved multiple mortar shells exploding all around her.
BANG-BANG!
"Not mortar fire..." she muttered, turning on a lamp and getting out of bed.
BANG-BANG-BANG—!
"Regah!" Ziva yelled. Wait!
She snatched her gun from under the pillow, and muttered cusses in several languages all the way to the door. Ziva gave a bleary eye to the peephole and, with fresh mutters, got on with disengaging several bolts and locks.
"Jen, ma koreh achshav?" What's happening now?
"Ha'kol dafuk, that's what's happening," Jenny snapped.
"Everything is fucked up—what is this 'everything'?"
Jen opened her mouth to explain and then cracked a wry grin instead.
"I just have to say that when you think in Hebrew and translate directly, it's really cute."
"Zeh? Ani lo omeret klum. Ma ha'sha'a?" This? I'll say nothing. What's the hour?
"Erm..." Jen squinted at her watch. "No glasses... Uhh, shtaiyim ve'sh'va-esreh dakot." Two and seventeen minutes.
"Shtaiyim ve'sh'va-es—B'boker? Holechet le'cheder, bevahkasha– yallah!" —In the morning? Go to the [bed]room, please– let's go!
Jen snorted a laugh and kicked off her shoes. She picked them up and carried them to the bedroom, where still-sleepy Ziva first noticed that she was wearing an evening dress.
"You have a bad effect on me. I sleep through many bangs at the door.... I did not notice that dress, the shoes... Ugh. Jen, what is going on, what is fucked up?"
"Zipper, please?"
Ziva rolled her eyes and lowered Jen's long zipper. Next, she opened a drawer and liberated a sleep shirt that she dropped on the foot of the bed. She herself got into bed and again encouraged Jen to relate the details of what was fucked up.
When criminals cross international borders that nasty word extradition comes into play. It doesn't come into question if Mr. Murder Suspect isn't smart and flees to a country that supports the same attitude towards murder suspects. However, it is an issue when Mr. Suspect looks at a map and picks a country specifically because it doesn't support extradition, and it also doesn't believe that suspect Over There makes him a suspect Here, too. Countries with that attitude are quite numerous.
"Meller is in France. Tzadakti?" Jen said. Am I right?
"Yes, you are right," Ziva groaned. "Ha'kol dafuk."
"That sonuvabitch is free as a bird," Jen said from the bathroom while removing her makeup. "The SECNAV got word on his location while we were at that stupid cocktail party– great excuse to leave early, we both agreed... Interpol found him, but their hands are tied, because they have to maintain their neutrality. The SECNAV told them not to make trouble for themselves, or us, by trying to convince the French to arrest Meller. We'll have to think of something else... God, but it's sickening to see that bastard sitting at a café with a newspaper. We have photos."
"You want me to fix this?" Ziva said.
"Why don't I like the sound of that?" Jen asked, leaning in the bathroom doorway.
"We have good evidence to say that he killed four women, yes?"
"Yes. I just wish we knew who he was killing before he started targeting summer whites," Jen said, referring to the US Navy summer shore uniform.
"And Ducky is certain that the first Navy victim was not Meller's first ever victim. We found nothing in Meller's apartment to indicate that he has ever been there before, but I think that this is not the first time he has visited France."
"You mean—"
"Correct," Ziva said, with a small, dangerous smile.
~ ~ ~
"I can't believe I got this assignment..." McGee mumbled, staring at the Eiffel Tower on a bright fall day.
"This is not a vacation," Ziva stated. "There is the man we want to see. Stay close to me and do not open your mouth unless I say so."
"Okay."
The spare man with wispy grey hair was fully aware that he was being followed. Ziva and McGee kept to a certain distance behind him. It wasn't a short walk. They ended up in the Latin Quarter, on a narrow stair that led up to the third floor of an old apartment building. The door Ziva knocked at looked no different to three others. It was opened just a crack, and then all the way.
McGee followed Ziva inside and his eyebrows shot up when he found that the interior of the apartment seriously belied the exterior. Modern furnishings, and none of them modest. A very large desk supported four flat screen monitors, and a taller-than-usual tower chassis that probably housed a server instead of a simple computer. A high-end laptop sat on the desk's return.
"Shalom, Moshe," Ziva said, only when the door was closed.
"Shalom-shalom. We'll speak English. Who's this?"
Ziva introduced McGee to Moshe Aretz, who happened to be the Mossad Mefakach or Supervising Officer for all of France. McGee immediately switched 'Moshe' to 'Sir,' and Moshe left that alone. He'd learned many years ago that Americans are hung up on ranks and titles. Israelis are exactly the opposite. Moshe got right into the business at hand.
For the last week Lewis Meller had been tracked from the moment he left his apartment and all through each day, until he got home. Even then, there had been someone on stakeout, watching to see if he left in the middle of the night. The Mossad is an intelligence agency, not a law enforcement agency, but Ziva's interests were the Mossad's, too, and more importantly, it didn't hurt to build better relations between the Mossad and NCIS.
"It's also good for my people to get practice in tracking and general surveillance," Moshe said.
"I get to do that in shopping malls," McGee said and elbowed Ziva.
"Good practice is good practice. Is he any good?" Moshe asked Ziva.
"Getting better all the time," she said. "Were my suspicions correct?"
"Oh yes. Meller knows this city as well as someone born here. It won't be hard to find what you need, but we will need to be very clever to get it. You speak French, Tim?"
"Fluently, sir," McGee said, nodding.
"Good. You know his M.O. That's all we need to know, but first we have to hack into the French national crime database."
"I've done that before," McGee said simply, without a hint of a boast.
"Moshe, eifo ekdachim?" Ziva called from another room.
"I'll be back. She wants to know where the guns are," Moshe told McGee.
"She's real cranky without one," McGee drawled.
"I heard that!"
~ ~ ~
McGee had expected to get to work right away, but Moshe had other ideas that involved Ziva and McGee unpacking and relaxing. Ziva had the apartment's guestroom to herself. McGee was sharing Moshe's room; his bed for the duration was an air mattress on the floor, which reminded McGee of school and college sleepovers at friends' homes. The similarity, and indeed those memories, took flight out the nearest window when he walked into the dining room and found Ziva wiping excess oil from pieces and parts of a twin to her SIG back in the States.
"Not a vacation," he reminded himself aloud.
"Right," Ziva agreed while rapidly reassembling the pistol.
"You don't have a permit to carry that thing." McGee took a seat at the table. "What if you get caught?"
"Hah!" said Moshe, from the kitchen.
"Umm, what's that supposed to mean?" McGee mumbled.
"The only time I will have a problem is if I am forced to use this gun," Ziva said, lightly smacking a full clip home. "And even then, the trouble will not be much. Think."
"Uhh... Okay. Forced to use it: you catch Meller about to kill some poor woman?"
"Correct, and when the French police arrive, I produce proof that I am working with NCIS, proof also that Meller is considered extremely dangerous, and there is more evidence: he tried to kill that poor woman. I will get a... scolding, and the gun will be confiscated, of course. I might also face something like a polite deportation to the States. No more than that."
"The deportation bit might make it hard for you to get back into France, if you need to," McGee pointed out.
"Who says that I will return through an airport, through a border crossing, or a sea port? I have been inserted into this country twice via parachute, and once I fast-roped from a helicopter onto the roof of the Israeli embassy here in Paris, all sans passport."
"I am never gonna get used to you, am I?" McGee mumbled.
"Probably not," Ziva said with smirk.
McGee rolled his eyes, and when Ziva lightly punched his shoulder he clowned intense pain, playing the geeky nerd, something he often did when they spent time together after hours. She could be a lot of fun, but McGee could never forget that there was a side to her that was extremely disciplined, yet dangerous and feral; a part of her that had yielded to training and discipline without being completely tamed. He knew it was there, but he hadn't ever met it before, not properly, and if he was honest with himself, he didn't want to meet that side of Ziva. He could respect it, and respect her just fine without ever becoming acquainted with it. However, if ever he did come face-to-face with Ziva the Assassin, McGee hoped that that meeting wouldn't change his opinion of her.
He'd known her just sixteen months, and just sixteen months ago he would never have said of any trained, sanctioned assassin, 'He or she is a good person.' Ziva was all that: a very good person. Just by knowing her, McGee had been forced to reexamine his opinion of assassins, and she'd done so without his feeling a need to reexamine his opinion of assassination. It is never 'okay', she had once told Tony. McGee remembered wanting to kick Tony that evening almost a year ago, but he'd known, after one glance at Tony's 'I'm such an idiot' expression, that Ziva had done all the metaphorical kicking necessary. McGee still thought that assassination was a very bad thing, but he reckoned that if someone like Ziva sometimes effected what amounted to a death warrant, perhaps some of those warrants were a necessary evil.
Later, when Ziva had gone out to meet with another Mossad officer, McGee asked Moshe if he'd ever worked with her before.
"Several times. She is very good, so good that it's best that we let her go, let her do what she wants to do," Moshe said.
"I don't understand, sir," McGee said, frowning.
"You can be very good at something even if you aren't properly suited to it, and if, one day, you find that you don't really like what you're doing, you will hate it immediately. That is Ziva. So, like I told her father once, we let her go, and that way, whenever we really need her, she will want to help us."
"But if you only ever recall her for wet-work—"
"Uhh! No-no, you mistake me. Not just wet-work. She is a lot more than only an assassin. She is a kidon, yes, but being a kidon does not restrict her activities to assassination. Her training was and is limited only to her abilities, and those are many."
"That much you don't have to tell me, sir," McGee drawled.
"Right," Moshe chuckled. "But you know her only in the field of law enforcement. I've known her, on and off, since she was a girl. I watched her become one of the best communications and signals interception, and counterintelligence people I have ever met. She's a spy's spy, someone who can insert herself into someone else's operation as a mole, and they will never, ever know. Ordinarily, we worry about people who are that good, that smart. It pays to watch them closely... The person who was responsible for most of her training, in the intelligence field, was that good. We didn't watch him closely enough. It was Ziva who saw what was right under our noses: he was a double agent, working for both the Mossad and the Iranian secret police. Only Ziva was good enough to get close to him. So either we sent her to kill him, or we tried to do that by using a bomb, or by sending fifteen or twenty spec ops soldiers. But he had trained her. They had a relationship of trust. We gave her the choice. She chose to take care of it herself."
"Jesus..." McGee murmured. "I can't... Can't imagine having to do something like that."
"Ziva is a master when it comes to separating her personal feelings from her professional feelings. She wouldn't have done it if she had felt personally betrayed by him. She had nothing against him, personally. Professionally? The man was a traitor of the highest order. His death was necessary to the interests of national safety. Imprisoning him was not an option: Iranian extremists consider an imprisoned 'hero' a martyr, and as you are probably aware, a dead martyr is dangerous enough. A living one?"
"Yeah," McGee muttered. "Like sleeping with a live rattlesnake in the bed."
"A good comparison. So she went to visit him, and she killed him. I can almost guarantee you that he didn't know it was coming, and that he didn't feel a thing. She set fire to his house, too, and the body was too badly burned... That was the only time that she didn't have orders specific to method. Ziva has never said how she did it. No-one, not even her father, has dared to ask."
"Huh, yeah," McGee said with a sneer. "Something else I can't imagine: 'Oh, Ziva? How did you kill that guy who taught you just about everything you know?' Sorry for the sarcasm, sir, but—"
"No, don't be sorry. You care about her. This is only good," Moshe said, smiling.
"She's a good person," McGee said with conviction.
"Yes, she is," Moshe said, and changed the subject.
~ ~ ~
They couldn't risk detection and that ruled out running a standard search within the database. McGee and Moshe decided to write a program that would fool the database into thinking that their search and one run by someone with authorized access, were one and the same. This would serve two purposes, the first being that they would get the information they wanted, and secondly, the person who asked for something else might just look at his or her whacky search results and decide to go and talk to the brass about several cases that seemed to be linked. Of course, when NCIS suddenly presented the French Police Nationale with French evidence against Meller, any French law enforcement officer might suspect that said evidence and those whacky search results were linked, but proving it would be next to impossible.
"That's why we need a few days to write this program," McGee told Ziva. "When it's finished doing what it needs to do, it's also got to... It'll sort of eat itself, erase itself."
"Ein baiya—no problem. Better you take more time than less. The SECNAV told me to my face that we can stay here six months if we have to."
"Won't be that long," McGee said with quiet confidence.
"Okay, but you and Moshe take your time with that program. I am going out to join Oren."
Sometime later, Meller had no idea that two Mossad officers were a silent, and for now passive menace only yards away from him. Oren and Ziva regularly ducked into public restrooms where they made adjustments to their appearances: swapped a T-shirt for one of a different color, donned hats and/or wigs. Oren was a master at applying fake bits of facial hair to himself. Ziva wrinkled her nose at bushy sideburns and equally furry eyebrows; Oren, who hardly ever said a word, merely grinned. They sometimes looked like typical tourists; at others they looked like French natives.
Meller never looked like a tourist, and he never acted like one. As Moshe had said, Meller was very familiar with Paris. In some ways Ziva was glad of that. She wasn't ever bored. Meller tended to like the city's very famous cafés, but often he led Ziva and whichever partner to interesting places, like small galleries and museums not often visited by even the most intrepid of tourists. If Meller wasn't casually strolling from one interesting urban point to the next, he was driving a rental car to vineyards and craft centers.
"That's behavior we didn't see here," Ducky said via video call.
"Correct, but I think that is because it would have given too much away," Ziva said.
"Too many people knew him here," Abby agreed. "There's a serial killer artistically displaying his vics, and who suspects the very un-arty electrician?"
"Right," Gibbs said. "But we called cos we've got good news. Abby?"
"All hail the mighty Bode Technology labs: mito is ba-ack..." Abby sang.
"You have matches?" Ziva asked, hoping like hell.
"Seriously?" McGee said, scrambling away from Moshe's desk. "Umm, hi, folks."
"Hiya!" Abby said. "Yep, we got three mitochondrial matches, and y'know how rare that is."
"We've got the sonuvabitch," Gibbs said. "As long as you two and the nice Mossad people in France can convince the French police to dig up a sample for testing."
"We're working on it," McGee said.
~ ~ ~
After three days in Paris, McGee still hadn't adjusted properly to the time difference. Going to bed at midnight in France felt like he was taking an afternoon nap back in the States, and going to bed at midnight and waking up at four-thirty a.m seemed also to be Ziva's habit. He found her in the kitchen. A Bluetooth earpiece was helping her to hold a conversation with someone in Hebrew, while her hands were busy fixing French toast. She waved him to a seat at the small kitchen table, where he sleepily thought that she might be talking to one of the Mossad people on stakeout across the street from Meller's apartment building.
But then she switched to English:
"McGee is awake, too... McGee, Jen says 'Hello.'"
"Oh... Hiya, Director," he mumbled. Then he whispered: "Her Hebrew is that good?"
Ziva nodded, gifted him with a plate of way-too-early breakfast, and continued the conversation in Hebrew. McGee blinked and pressed a button on his watch to show the time in D.C.: nearly midnight. He grunted and shrugged, reaching for utensils and condiments. He had to get up to fetch the ketchup from the fridge, but Ziva read his mind, grabbed the bottle, and handed it over. He slowly shook his head.
"Women... It's too early for multitasking!"
"Yes, he did say that... Very cute, I agree," Ziva said, grinning at McGee.
"Whatever. I'm just gonna..." He took a mouthful of toast and his grumbles vanished. "Mmm! Ziva, I think I love you..."
"Thanks! And Jen says that you have to share... Oh! And now I am in trouble with the Boss..."
"Serves you right!" McGee said, laughing at Ziva's unrepentant grin.
The conversation switched back to Hebrew while Ziva continued to cook her breakfast. Eventually she turned off the gas and put her slices of egg-dipped toast on a plate.
"Yes, yes. Now go to sleep. Yallah-bye," Ziva said as she took a seat. She placed the earpiece on the table.
"Umm... Did you really just order the Director to go to sleep?" McGee chortled.
"Sometimes she forgets the time," Ziva said seriously, while spreading a thin layer of ketchup on her toast. "She takes paperwork home and works... She looks at the clock and it is three in the morning. I know her."
"Yeah, I can tell," McGee said. "And something tells me that if I was Tony, you'd have told her goodbye as soon as I walked in here."
"Yes," Ziva said simply.
McGee didn't bother to ask why. He knew. Tony would pry. McGee had only one question:
"So you two speak Hebrew all the time?"
"No," Ziva said, amused. "Jen is meeting with the Israeli ambassador tomorrow."
"So she was brushing up on her Hebrew. Guess I woulda taken that kinda practice, too... Was she stationed in Israel at some point?"
"Ninety-one through Ninety-three."
"When I was still in junior high..." McGee mumbled.
"If you work as hard as she has, for twenty-seven years, I think you will be a good director of NCIS, or another agency. Would you like that?"
"Nope. I'd prefer to head a criminology department, or something like that. How about you?"
"When I am too old for fieldwork, I will consult. I am not interested in a job that ties me to a desk."
"Huh. Yeah, I can't see you as a desk jockey," McGee said. "But your dad's a deputy director of—"
"He is the Director-General of HaMossad. He is now called haMemuneh, or just Memuneh. It means 'chosen one' or 'leader'... The Prime Minister appointed him to that position last month."
"Wow. Okay. He, uhh, doesn't want you to follow him into that position?"
"He wants that, very much. Others want that, too. But I do not," Ziva said, looking McGee in the eye.
"Good luck to your dad and the other folks," McGee chortled.
"You know me better than all of them."
McGee's amusement disappeared fast and he concentrated on his food, rather than say that he was sorry. He had a good relationship with his parents. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to have a father like Ziva's, someone who had it in mind to convince his daughter to fulfill his own dreams; someone who didn't know his daughter as well as her colleagues did.
And it all clicked into place then: no wonder at all to McGee that Ziva and the Director were friends. He guessed that Jen Shepard had the kind of courage that seemed to elude him, the sort of gumption needed to say things like, 'If you need to talk...' and 'I'm sorry your father is being a bastard about your career.' He wanted to say those things but a small part of him was scared of upsetting her, and another little bit was quite terrified of seeing Ziva cry. That wasn't very fair, when he knew that if ever he needed to talk, and if ever he ended up emotional during that discussion, she'd be there for him.
"Girls seem to grow up so much faster than boys..." McGee thought aloud.
"Why did you say that?" Ziva asked, interested.
"Because... Umm..." McGee grabbed hold of some courage and blurted: "I'd like to be the kind of friend you can talk to, but I dunno if I'm really prepared for that."
"I am not looking at a little boy. A man is speaking to me. A good man," Ziva said quietly. "Remember that."
"Thanks. I will," McGee mumbled, and it seemed to him as if he'd made a leap of ten years in just a few minutes. He felt older, suddenly, but he wasn't stupid enough to suggest that Ziva open up to him. Instead he said honestly, "If the Director isn't available one day, and you need to talk, I hope I'll be prepared then."
"So you are going to learn Hebrew?" Ziva teased, deliberately lightening the mood.
"Gimme five years, okay?" McGee said and laughed.
~ ~ ~
The program was ready. Moshe gave McGee the honor of launching it. He needed just eighteen keystrokes to do so, and then he laced his fingers behind his head. They wouldn't have long to wait, given that their lurking lay-in-wait program would latch onto the first search request made by anyone with access, throughout France. McGee shut his eyes and concentrated on the music playing softly in the background: Elgar's Chanson de Matin.
"Mirror," Moshe announced.
McGee smiled, but didn't open his eyes. He had a feeling that it would take some time for every resulting case match to display on one of Moshe's monitors. And he was right.
There was a lot of dross, of course. Their search parameters caused the database to spit up many cases that had to be excluded: only one similarity was not enough. However, there was also no shortage of cases where five and six similarities were reported. Meller was a smart killer who attached just a few personal signatures to each kill, and threw in a lot of random pointers. Those were meant to throw investigators for a loop, and very often they did. Abby's mitochondrial DNA results were all that had linked two separate US cases to one of the dead Navy women. Regular, more obvious evidence hadn't been able to link those cases, because Meller's personal signatures had been lost among the random artifacts of violence that he'd deliberately attached to all of his victims.
"This one looks like a rage kill," McGee told Moshe, referring to a picture on his laptop. "But you see how she's lying? That's a pose, a really sly arrangement of limbs."
Meller's main signature was a subtly posed victim, and so far they had six French cases that had 'MELLER' stamped all over them. What they needed now was to see if any of those cases were mirrored on the Interpol database.
"What if there is nothing there?" Ziva asked McGee.
"Then we might be here for six months, or until your Mossad people catch Meller stalking his next victim. Ducky says that Meller will be feeling that urge to kill again. We just dunno when he'll act on it."
"But I'm sure that at least one of these cases has been entered into the Interpol database," Moshe said, and gestured to a passport photo on a monitor. "This woman here. This one is Meller's mistake."
"I agree," Ziva said. "She was Swedish, not French... So we find her on the Interpol database, we give this evidence to the French authorities—"
"And we're the experts," McGee said. "We get Ducky out here as a super duper expert, to back us up, and we coach the French cops on what to look for. They'll end up finding these other five cases."
"Even if they find just one more, they will arrest Meller," Moshe said. "The French are still sour about that Ira Einhorn mess, and now they won't extradite, won't even look at someone who is here but wanted in another country—particularly the US, unless that person harms a French citizen. Then it is a different story. They will arrest Meller with pleasure... And it doesn't matter who holds the keys, it doesn't matter which country has this monster: he must be locked up."
"He will be," McGee said coldly.
~ ~ ~
The French police might have been snootier if there'd been a political fuss made over Meller's presence in France, but that hadn't happened. Secretary of the Navy Ben Holder was a seriously smart man in general, but in particular, during his Navy JAG career, he had once been on the losing end of an extradition wrangle with France. As such, and with the help of one Ziva David, the Mossad, and Interpol, he'd rewritten the rulebook slightly: walk intelligently and carry big sticks. Holder also knew how the French liked things done, and he hadn't hesitated to sign the necessary documentation that had parked Ducky on a plane.
Ducky's near-endless list of credentials impressed the French no end, but in Ziva's opinion, it was Ducky's charm that was of more assistance.
"I take it, monsieur, that you will be making an arrest soon?" Ducky said charmingly to the Paris Chief of Police.
"Quite soon. As soon as we know where he is."
"Moment, si'l vous plaît," Ziva said politely. One moment, please. She made a phone call, and after a few moments: "Café de la Paix, monsieur."
"Merci," the Chief said, and reached for a phone.
Only ten minutes later, Ziva's phone rang. Ducky cast his eyes in her direction and was soon rewarded with a slow, satisfied smile: Meller was being handcuffed.
"Monsieur," Ducky said and stood, his hand offered to the Chief. "I am authorized by the United States Secretary of the Navy, to offer you his most sincere thanks. Of course, whatever evidence we have against Meller will be made available to you and your staff."
"You are most welcome," the Chief said, shaking Ducky's hand. "Convey my warmest regards to the Honorable Secretary Holder."
Ziva did her best not to roll her eyes. She would be very glad to get back to a place where doing a good job was a whole lot more important than owning a charming disposition.
~ ~ ~
When Ziva, McGee, and Ducky returned, Jen treated the entire team to dinner at The Old Ebbitt Grill. She would've taken them somewhere fancier, but Gibbs was a member of that team and Gibbs hated fancy restaurants even more than he hated computers.
During dinner one of the toasts raised was to the Mossad, and Ziva chimed in heartily. Another toast was raised to Ziva herself, and she tried unsuccessfully to mask her acute discomfort by insisting that McGee had done most of the work in France. Gibbs quickly altered the toast to include McGee; Ducky did his part by changing the subject altogether; Tony jumped on that wagon, with Abby and McGee's help. At the head of the table, Jen sipped at a cosmo to hide her smile. It was good to see evidence of the fact that she wasn't the only one who was trying to get to know Ziva better. It was about time, actually.
"Zeh lo chashuv," Ziva said later, in Jen's car. This doesn't matter.
"Of course it matters," Jen insisted. "They care: that matters."
"Yes, and I am grateful, but the time it has taken—more than a year—does not matter. You care more, and you cared sooner, but only because we have spent a lot of time together. I have already said to you that I do not have much time to give anyone else."
"Sometimes I don't know if that's a good thing."
"Lama?" Ziva asked. Why?
"I just wish the others knew you like I do."
"Ahh... But I do not think that I would like that," Ziva said. "If they were all women... Then yes, maybe. Many men lose their professional respect for women when they know those women very well. You know this."
"Unfortunately, yes," Jen muttered.
"And I must still work to make them respect me, because Tony and McGee and even Gibbs might prefer to see me only as a friend at work... where I am not your friend, am I?"
"No," Jen said and chuckled. "You and I manage our dual relationships very well. Okay. I concede the point."
"Bed'yuk. Ani tamid tzodeket," Ziva said with a grin. Exactly. I'm always right.
"You're full of crap, is what you are," Jen chortled.
__________