He ran. The girl in the sports car had recognised him, as she called out his name he panicked. They would find him, she had found him, she knew him, she would tell them where he was… He was not safe on the streets.
He still could not believe his luck in his escape.
He had no idea of time. He knew he knelt for hours on the concrete, the pain in his shoulders constant as his bound wrists were forced up behind him. Eventually someone had come and they had dragged him to his feet. He was held by two people, he could tell that, dragged between them. His numbed legs stumbling, almost unable to support his weight.
The heavy cloth was still over his head.
He was dumped in a chair, the tie around his wrists was cut, and he whimpered as his sore arms dropped to his sides. His wrists were roughly grabbed and bound together, in front this time. A bright light was switched on, and it penetrated the thick cloth. He squinted as the hood was yanked off. The sudden blast of light acutely painful. He turned his head away and squeezed his eyes closed.
A needle pricked his arm.
"Your name is Dr Ari Haswari." The voice surprised him. "You work for Mossad." The sheer ordinariness of the voice confused him, he could not comprehend the strange things that the voice was saying to him.
A hand tilted his head back, blearily he tried to focus on the face, but his vision was blurring and none of it made any sense. "He's not convinced. We need to convince him."
He tried to take in what was being said, why they kept calling him Ari, he was nearly certain that was wrong, but he couldn't work out why. He was being carried… and laid down on a hard flat surface. His bound wrists yanked up above his head, and fastened to something, his legs tied down. The cloth laid over his face.
The water came, cascading over his head, it was everywhere, the cloth clinging to his face, he thrashed and struggled, and suddenly another strap pinned his wrists brutally hard down to the plank he was lying on. He could barely squirm, but still he fought the suffocating cloth and the cascading water.
He was drowning and he thrashed in panic. He did not want to die. The water continued to pour over him and he began to beg. Incoherent phrases wrenched from the depths of his terror.
Eventually, they stopped.
He lay there, soaked and shivering with fear and cold. "Dr Ari Haswari… that is your name." He tried to nod. "You don't look convinced. I think you need some more convincing."
More pain. Endless pain.
Through the beatings and the half-drownings, and the needle pricks in his arms; the calm voice telling him that he was Dr Ari Haswari, of Mossad, and that he had a job to do.
Anything… he would agree to anything, just so that the pain would stop.
Then, that morning, the cuff on his left wrist was loose. It was going to hurt to pull his hand out, but what was more pain amongst so much. He yanked his wrist and hand through the steel band, the bracelet leaving a long bloodied scrape on his wrist and thumb.
It was all a jumble, how he found the sweats, and a white tee shirt, much washed and too big, but it would have to do. A pair of worn trainers, almost as though they had been put there for him to find. He moved more cautiously then, something did not feel right. But his need for freedom, for the pain to stop, was too strong to be denied.
He moved cautiously at first. Dodging in and out of doorways, concerned with putting distance between himself and his captors. He hunched over a little, pulling the hood of his jacket up. But the heat was too much and he pushed it down again. Too hot and such concealment would be too memorable. Why he thought this, and how he could have known such a thing a mystery.
He was too tired to think.
He reached the crossing and stepped out, scarcely aware that the crossing was in his favour…
His name…? He couldn't remember, he just remembered 'Ari' being associated with his pain. His tee shirt was sticking to him, and he knew that it wasn't the sweat that was causing it. He still bled from the last beating. They were everywhere, all around him, and with the last of his strength he fled. Before he could be recaptured.
"Describe him." Horatio Caine leaned forward a little, offering a reassuring smile to the young woman in the seat opposite him.
Ziva's answering smile held a lot of pain, and he wondered about that as she began to describe the man she had seen. As she talked, he drew a picture in his mind, and his mind grew still. Frozen in time.
Another place, Speedle dying on the marble floor of the jewellers. The German who fronted the operation. He turned, then he remembered free on licence and recently gone missing. There was a live warrant out.
A mix of emotions as Horatio uttered the name who he would always associate with Speed's death. "Rudy Koehler."
Ziva stared at him curiously as he leaned over and typed something in to the computer.
A picture came up on screen. Then all she could do was stare. Koehler could have been Ari's twin.