Ducky carefully maneuvered his right arm into the sleeve of the thermal knit top and pulled it the rest of the way over his head.
He'd forgone his usual pajama jacket – and most other items of clothing that had buttons on them, for that matter – until his hand was completely healed.
If his hand completely healed, he thought with a mild feeling of dread.
Behind him, on the wardrobe, hung the dark charcoal gray pinstripe suit he'd selected for the next day. Below it sat his black oxfords, freshly polished.
Outside the hotel room window, he could see the lights of the city twinkling in the misty early April night.
The city known as Den Haag, The Hague.
Where Ducky was to testify as a witness in a tribunal against one Marcin Jerek, alias "Mr. Pain."
"You're not going, Duck!" Gibbs had yelled when Ducky came into the NCIS bullpen, the official letter from the International Criminal Court in his hand.
Oh, they'd argued long and hard about that.
In the end, Gibbs had relented. But he'd insisted that Ziva go with Ducky to keep an eye on him.
Ziva was in the room next door, sawing logs rather energetically from the sounds of things – and of course if you mentioned it to her you'd get a broken jaw, if you were lucky.
Ducky envied her. Ever since that day in the Embassy of Afghanistan - since the stabbing, for that matter - he'd dreaded closing his eyes at night. That was when it all came back.
The crying and moans in the medical tent. The screams that he always seemed to hear coming from a certain room in the camp – a room that he later learned was known as Mr. Pain's "special room."
Javid clutching Ducky's hand as the morphine took effect.
Ducky climbed into bed and tried to distract himself with a book he'd brought along. But in the end he set the book on the night table, turned off the lamp and lay back on the pillows.
The voices started, right on cue.
"How many did you save, Dr. Mallard, and how many did you take?"
"Bringer of death…"
"This tribunal now calls Dr. Donald P. Mallard, formerly of the United Kingdom's Royal Army Medical Corps..."
"Javid wasn't your victim…he was your weapon!"
"I used a boy…to break a man."
"Bringer of death…"
He was walking down a long, dimly lit corridor with a cement floor, each of his footsteps echoing off the walls.
The air had a musty, mildewed sort of smell to it. And beneath it, Ducky could detect other smells, like sweat, and a familiar metallic odor he'd come to know very well: blood.
Fear. Agony.
Death.
He looked down at himself. He was wearing his usual shirt, slacks, suit jacket and bowtie.
His outfit suddenly transformed into his olive-drab RAMC fatigues, doctor's white coat and boots, and a set of dog tags clinked against his chest as he walked.
His right hand was still in its bandages, though.
He came to a battered wooden door that swung open as he approached.
"Enter," a voice inside said.
He did, and he found himself in a room, cement-floored and dimly lit just like the hallway. It was the "special room;" he recognized it from the CIA filmstrip.
It was devoid of furniture save for one splintery wooden table and two chairs in the very middle of the room. A naked light bulb hung overhead, illuminating the table and chairs in a spotlight.
Jerek sat in one of the chairs, watching Ducky as he stood in the doorway. He looked as he did that day in the embassy, a withered, bearded old man whose wounded eye had healed to a grotesque scar.
"Come closer, Dr. Mallard, don't be shy."
Ducky slowly walked further into the room. As he did, he was aware of a flickering noise.
In the shadows, he could see Trent Kort fiddling with the controls of an old handheld film camera set on top of a stack of crates.
Trent looked up from the camera and gave Ducky a look of thinly-disguised disdain before starting the camera and disappearing.
Ducky came to stand behind the unoccupied chair. He and Jerek just stared at each other for a long moment.
"Sit."
He didn't want to. But Ducky pulled the chair out from the table – wincing at the shrieking noise the chair legs made against the floor – and sat down.
Jerek tapped his fingers together. "You left in the middle of our last game, as I recall," he said mildly. "A pity – you were a formidable opponent. And that move you had me trapped in…you recall, of course?"
Ducky swallowed. "The knight-bishop fork. Two more moves and there would have been a checkmate."
"So there would have been. But which one of us, young Ducky, which one?"
"Why did you bring me here?" Ducky demanded.
Jerek gave an impassive wave of his hand. "What else? For a game of chess."
A chess set instantly appeared in the middle of the table. It was a handsome set indeed, with richly carved pieces and a board with intricate inlays, all made from highly polished wood. The white pieces were on Jerek's side of the board, and the black ones were on Ducky's.
Ducky picked up one of the knights – the horse's head seemed to be glaring at him with its flared nostrils and wild eyes. He set it down and picked up one of the bishops. "You know, the bishop was added to the game when chess was introduced in Europe, but in ancient India and Persia, that piece was the elephant."
And right as he said so, the chess piece in his fingers suddenly changed into an elephant. A battered plush one with button eyes.
Ducky gasped.
It belonged to Marjan, the little girl he'd been treating for pneumonia only a few weeks before everything that happened with Javid.
One night, he'd found the elephant lying on the ground next to Marjan's bed in the medical tent, and he'd tucked it back under her arm without waking her.
The elephant in his hand changed back into a bishop, and Ducky quickly put it back on the board.
"Yes…" Jerek said quietly. "It is amazing how a simple chess set can stand for so many things. Memories…intrigues…a struggle for power." He sat up straight. "And now, Ducky, we play."