02 – New Girl on the Team

Tony found Ducky in the main hall and hurried him back to the lab, where Abby and McGee were already waiting. Everyone was basically talking to themselves, making assumptions on who the Newbie would be and no one was paying attention to Gibbs when he entered the room. He was not alone.

"Attention everyone" he called, and all of a sudden there was silence in the room. With just the faint sound of the computer cooling system, Gibbs was looking at his team. "May I introduce you to our new colleague, Special Agent …" the door opened and a tall woman entered "… Kathrin Westmann."

Immediately the silence was gone. Everyone was yelling questions. Except Tony, he grew pale and felt like someone had given him a punch in his stomach. Luckily, nobody was paying any attention to him, as they were all storming towards Gibbs and Kathy, eager to learn what was going on.

"If you shut up and listen we might be able to get through with this like civilized people and can begin to get some work done today" Gibbs finally shouted unnerved and slowly the yelling turned into murmur and then into silence.

"As I just learned from our director, Kathy had applied for a job at NCIS already before she had met Petty Officer Williams. When the director learned that we would bring her in for interrogation he thought that this would be a good test for her story. They thought that her camouflage would not be save if we could crack it – and when we were not able to do so, they considered her NCIS material and immediately transferred her to our team. As you are well aware we had the only open position." His voice cracked and he was looking at the floor, trying to get it together again. "Special Agent Westmann, why don't you bring your new team up to speed about who you really are."

Kathy looked at the five people now standing in front of her. Gibbs and Ducky in the back of the room, arms crossed in front of their chests, Abby sitting on the desk next to the computer, swinging her legs, looking at her with eyes wide open and her eyebrows curiously raised. They had not met before, but Kathy instantly liked Abby. McGee was standing next to her, looking interested but not as amazed as Abby. Tony was still standing in front of the DNA-Sequencer, not able to move just one inch ever since Kathy had entered the room.

His thoughts were going crazy and he wouldn't have been able to say his name if someone had asked him in this moment.

"I apologize for everything. It was not my intention to mislead you about my identity. But I had orders from the White House to act exactly as I did and as I was just recently granted American citizenship I found it wise not to tamper with my guidelines. The truth is that I worked for several secret service organisations all over Europe before I came to the United States. I have gone through trainings similar to the ones that your Navy Seals undergo, I have degrees in computer science, medicine, forensics, engineering and weapons technology. My last assignments were all in Anti-Terrorist missions and my bosses found it best to transfer me to the US so that my skills can be brought to a more efficient use. I heard that you just lost a colleague in a terrorist attack and I am well aware of the fact that it is not easy to work with someone new after such a short span of time. I do not intend to take Kate's place, but I do intend to do a perfect job and I hope that you will give me the support that you are famous for," she said, with a glance to Gibbs. Abby was smiling, she got the hidden joke in Kathy's statement.

Gibbs was still angry, in part at the director, for playing games with him, in part with Kathy, for not being honest. Deep inside he knew that it was not her fault and that she had just followed her orders, but he was still mad.

So was Tony. He was still standing at the exact same place where he had been when Kathy had walked in. He was completely confused by his feelings. Knowing that she had worked on so many top secret and highly dangerous assignments over in Europe made him feel small. Plus, he was feeling things that he had never felt before. He was not sure if it was just a crush or love – but he definitely knew that despite all those feelings he did not trust her. There was something about her that he didn't like and he had the gut feeling that she was still hiding something from them. And it did not feel like it was a good thing. When he was finally able to move towards Kathy to welcome her to the team he made the decision not to get to close to her and not let her lull him in with her charms (she WAS charming and beautiful, this he couldn't deny). He would stay watchful and if she indeed was on to something he would find out and stop her from doing it if it meant any danger for the team or anyone else.

"You really didn't make our research skills look to good to our dear director", he said, while shaking her hand.

"Don't take this the wrong way", Kathy answered, "but first of all, the best double-identity experts all over Europe have been covering my actions and second, working undercover in Europe automatically means to lead two lives. Even my closest friends have no idea who I really am. So you really didn't have a chance of finding anything suspicious on me."

McGee came over and gave a short laugh. "Well, I feel a little relieved hearing this," he said. "I always considered myself as a real expert in online research. But when you say there was nothing to find I may be able to get over my failure a little faster."

"May YOU be able to get over it or may GIBBS be able to get over it?" Abby asked, the smile on her face reaching from one ear to the other.

Gibbs interrupted the gathering quite harsh. "Back to your desks everyone. It's a working day, now that we are a full team again the director and the NAVY won't wait to assign us to a new case. And as far as I remember I am still missing some reports on our last case. And by some I mean ALL reports. Special Agent Westmann will use any time she gets on her hands to catch up on all past assignments that show any connection to terrorism. Are we clear about this? Good, get to work!"

So everything was back to normal. Abby started packing all evidence from Williams' apartment into a big box, Ducky disappeared into the elevator, McGee, Kathy and Tony followed Gibbs back to the office. When they got to their desks, Gibbs had already gone to get coffee. McGee and Tony were looking at Kathy with an awkward look on their faces. She had to take Kate's desk, of course, and it freaked them out to see her sit there. She put her backpack down, opened it and took out a tumbler while taking a seat and booting the computer.

McGee strolled off to his desk and Tony pretended to type his report on the closed case while in fact he was watching Kathy. She had opened the tumbler and taken a sip of its content. The delicious smell of strong coffee suddenly filled the air. Tony took a closer look at the tumbler while Kathy was taking another sip. Hard to believe that a top-notch undercover agent had a coffee-tumbler with an obviously self-made motive: it had painted cows in all colours all over it. Tony couldn't help a smile.

"What is it?" Kathy asked.

"Oh, I was just admiring your tumbler. Very stylish and sophisticated." Tony replied.

"Well, I happen to love coffee and cows and sometimes I want to be creative – what's wrong with that? It's not like I'm wearing a shirt with cows on it."

"I didn't make fun of you, Kathy, I really like the mug, I just don't know what Gibbs will think about it." Tony said.

"What will Gibbs think about what?" came the question behind Tony.

He turned, only to find Gibbs had already passed his desk and returned to his own one. Just as he wanted to sit down a wave of Kathy's coffe-scent got to him. He sniffed to find out where it came from, followed the trail and was then standing in front of Kathy.

She hadn't paid any attention to his returning as she was busy setting up her programs on the computer. The administrator had cleared Kate's PC and put up an all-new workstation for Kathy, with lots more power, three screens, several high-speed DSL-lines and lots of extra hardware, just that he had no idea how to link everything, so she got started right away as it was quite some work to get all the components up and running.

"Ah-hem", Gibbs gave a strange sound. She lifted her had and gave him a questioning look.

"What you got in that tumbler?" he asked her.

"Well, that is coffee, what else do you think it could be according to the smell?" Kathy asked, a sceptical look on her face.

"This is coffee alright, but it is not any coffee, I can smell that, I KNOW coffee", Gibbs said. "Where did you get it? There's just a few places in the whole country where you can get this kind of coffee and they don't put it into the customers' own mugs."

"Well, I brought this coffee from my apartment. I KNOW coffee, too, and I brought my Swiss coffee machine from Germany. The coffee beans are imported from Italy. I never drink anything else." Kathy replied.

Tony was amazed. Someone able to teach Gibbs about coffee and, even more surprising, loving the same coffee was almost more than anyone knowing Gibbs could have ever imagined. If Kathy hadn't pissed him off so much on their very first contact Tony would have sworn her answer could have triggered an immediate marriage-proposal by Gibbs. Tony smiled at this thought. Gibbs was very special about his coffee and never ever had anyone understand this – not even speaking about liking the same strong essence in their cups.

Now he was smiling at Kathy, his head slightly tilt, watching her take another sip out of the cow-tumbler.

"You have a good taste", he said to her.

Tony grinned. It was official. They had a new girl on the team.