Thorns Wear Roses
2
There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
The hidden vest beeps.
Detonates. Fizzles. Dies. The only thing that does.
The woman breathes like a sprinter while standing still, perfecting the surprised shock that mirrors the strangers gathering nearby. She looks to her partner. Knows what comes next. They have maintained distance from the fray, they and the ducks serving as fearful onlookers. A pair of fowl have fluttered deeper into the cold water, one more tilting a green head toward the man being hauled away.
Her partner's hand fuses to her elbow, stilling whatever instinct to rush the scene he must fear she has. Agent David will not remind him that the strategic nemesis of impulse has his own name stitched to its label. But Agent DiNozzo's jaw is tight, eyes owing the bright rim of menace to the yawning light.
"Don't break cover," their leader huffs into their ear pieces. "We've got this."
"Roger that."
The pair watch openly, as the innocently curious will, while the small man is folded into the backseat of a black Escalade. Close enough to note that his capture produces neither syllable nor sound from the bomb-frustrated man. The manila envelope so recently in the man's hand, nine-by-twelve and sealed, wrinkles under the force of Tony's fingers. There's something solid weighing down one corner.
"Tony," comes the warning and the order to move. One word, enough to bring events into submission.
And one word of acceptance is all the tall man will throw into a resurgent wind, in a whisper heavy with all that could have gone wrong. But there is a job. And that has been the point to this street theater.
"Our new employer was not there," Ziva surmises in the quiet warmth of a nondescript car. "Was not watching."
This is not an unknown. Yet silence is a jar that opens its lid for filling. Three red lights, two greens and one yellow and then he speaks;
"Didn't need to watch. One thing to kill the messenger. Another to have the messenger kill himself."
The question, who was the man willing to die for, does not require voicing. But at the next stop sign, the first of a series stabbing the dry ground of an unnamed borough, DiNozzo asks. Her breath will mist over a tiny section of window glass when she exhumes old beliefs.
"Perhaps not who but what. Many offer their lives less to a figure than an ideal."
"For holy war, they usually spit out rhetoric all the way to jail," Tony muses. "Fear? That's usually when action suffices."
"Did he not have the most," her hand takes up an uncertain orbit, "blank face?"
"Needed some sun. And a better bomb designer."
The envelope rests on Ziva's thighs as the car stalks the midday light. The disappointed courier will be deposited in interrogation. Forensics on the items once in his possession will have to wait. A sheet of paper, torn from a yellow legal pad, contains an address and a name written in the sort of penmanship that makes engineers sob. Precise, measured letters. Crisp. Perfect. Both are run through the system. Neither connects to elements known or crimes past.
The paper's companion, a burn phone, is a veteran of multiple tours. Handled roughly and dropped often. There is dirt under the keypad and a crack across the screen. Ziva had considered snapping on latex gloves but her partner's raised eyebrow spoke to the fruitlessness. From the driver's seat, DiNozzo detects the scratches where steel wool has been applied. Repeatedly. The grime of misuse is all that holds the device together.
It doesn't ring. But it will.
The courier offers no figure. No ideal.
On the long rim of an interrogation table, speech is withheld. As though weighing out the government's threats against a greater dark. One will question, another will demand, yet more will research independent of uncooperative sources. In a day that sees the sun resistant to rousing and now disinterested in sleep, two will pound on pavements, doors and pulses while another two drive endlessly west.
The nameless messenger lasts the day.
The courier is a pale, fair man on whom the standard orange gear sags loosely. What he does not voice is paced in a diagonal path across a sparse cell. Every footfall tells of failure. The guards tire of watching the video screen of this pattern, northeast corner to southwest corner and back again.
Walls make cells. But necessities make an end.
A methodically torn strip of bedding is the escape of one who prefers a messier death by explosion. A louder statement, the only one he'd expected to give. There will be stars in the sky that he will never see. Whether they twinkle in spite of him or to mourn will earn no contemplation. The small man would need a heartbeat to manage that.
On a closed channel comes the report of dangling feet.
The uneven paint on the compact sedan catches the streetlights. Darkness dotted with neon will not improve the looks. While its fading interior refuses to accommodate the driver's cramping legs, miles are quickly added to the odometer. The sun has gone back to bed in this direction and they give chase.
The digitalized chirping tone of a prepaid phone erupts halfway to midnight.
