Chapter Four
The Sword Shall Pierce Your Heart Also
It was nearly two hours later, two frustrating hours with nothing more to do and nowhere to go before the agents could interview Marine Corporal Harold Campbell in the Recovery Room following his operation. The treatment to repair the damage from the bullet that had gone through his leg had not been critical, so he was awake and alert when the agents saw him - but he had even fewer details about what had happened to him than Lieutenant Carpenter, Doctor Hampton and Nurse Tremont had provided.
While Gibbs and DiNozzo interviewed Campbell, David and Palmer obtained his medical information to share with the Corps and document the shooting for further action. McGee had already used his PDA as a computer link with NCIS' records to look into Campbell's history in the vanishingly small chance that he, rather than Paul Kensington, had been the shooter's intended target.
Campbell had served two tours in Afghanistan and is on a two week Leave visiting his parents and girlfriend prior to assignment in Kuwait.
That deployment will be delayed for several weeks.
"Wanna know the real irony?" Campbell had asked Gibbs at the close of the interview. "Three guys from my Unit were injured, one got shipped back with no left hand but I never got more than a couple of bruised ribs over there. Looks like my luck ran out."
"No, Corporal, Paul Kensington's did."
xxx
When the agents return to Headquarters Gibbs leads the way, as always, from the elevator, but when the doors close again he's unsurprised to find his team is one short. He glances back, not needing Tony's report that, when the man had let Ziva and Michelle precede him off the car, McGee hadn't exited.
"Okay," is all Gibbs has to say, knowing the new husband's destination. He can't fault him. He'll fault him later.
It's eight minutes to noon, and as they cross Operations to the bullpen two things are glaringly obvious. The tension that suffuses the building is smothering; the men they pass are grim and angry, the women show these feelings far more intensely. The second thing of note is that, throughout the Operations Division the latter agents are making their collective way to the stairs leading to the upper balcony.
Special Agent Susan Hollander waves to the arriving team as she passes, a 'come on' gesture. "You're just in time," she says, addressing Ziva and Michelle, "the Director's called a noon meeting in MTAC."
Tony, halfway through the entrance to the bullpen, diverts and takes a step out toward the stairs.
"Women only," Hollander snaps, but when Gibbs' turns a hard glare upon her she realizes that, in her stress, she's drastically violated protocol. L. Jethro Gibbs may head a Major Case Response Team and work the field by his own choice but he is the Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge, second in rank only to the Director and is not someone whose team a Document Examiner snaps at. "Excuse me, sir, I'm sorry, but something serious has happened. If you don't know about it yet, it's not my place to tell but the Director wants to see all female Agents–"
"Go," he tells Ziva and Michelle. To DiNozzo, when they're gone, he has a different order, one he knows is more suited to McGee's skills but he'll direct him later. For now, DiNozzo can start to "Take the Internet apart."
xx
McGee, on the fourth floor, stands before a door only distinguishable from its fellows by a discrete, new shingle on the wall beside it. The new two line white on brown plate, installed sometime during their sojourn in the Emerald Isle, reads 'S. McGee' and 'Chaplain'.
Tim raps four times on the door, a moment later three, then two. By the time he knocks the final time the door is already pulling away from his hand and the light in the hall seems to him to flash far more brightly as his lovely wife smiles at him.
She reaches up, her arms about his neck as she pulls him into a kiss. It's quite a few seconds before she draws back, clearly not wanting to. "Hoigh, a stór," she greets him delightedly, "I was wondering when you'd come."
She can, Tim thinks, make 'hi, my darling' sound so romantic, and though he's learned almost enough for a short conversation, she'll use their native tongue only for the special. She's been teaching him for those times when they may have private conversations in public. There's nothing of the broad double-entendre in her tone that she'd hit him with if they were alone; for she can't see up or down the hallway and she has an image and reputation to maintain, even though she can now receive him in this room without reservation. The brightness in her smile and in her emerald eyes make clear how well she'd like to receive him.
"Coming to take me to lunch?" she asks, happy anticipation alight in her eyes.
"Are you okay?"
Her smile almost falters in her surprise. His tone is so grim, so tense, so... "Of course I'm okay. Why wouldn't I be?"
"Well..."
"Tar isteach," she invites with an anticipatory grin so at odds with what's happening. It's like she knows something he doesn't rather than the other way about. But she couldn't be this happy, this care free, if she knew what's happening.
He enters, uncertain how to say it. "It's just tha–" The first thing that hits him is the floral scent, then his eyes bulge, his mouth falls open and for several seconds he can't force anything out. Ultimately, the best he can force in an astounded breath is "Good … Lord..."
"I'm letting it stay today, only so I can tell Abby I didn't take it all down right away." She closes the door behind him. "But I'm coming back in the morning and boxing everything."
x
Abby Sciuto, in her enthusiasm, had turned his desk downstairs into a veritable Mardi Gras float of ribbons, banners, streamers, bunting, balloons, tinsel and signs until Gibbs had called a halt to the madness on the third day of their two week absence. He hadn't had time this morning to do more than clear himself a workspace on that desk.
Undeterred by Gibbs' command Abby, with what the McGees don't know yet was Michelle Palmer's increasingly reluctant help, had turned her enthusiastic imagination loose on this enclosed room with gusto and glee.
When the couple had left for Ireland the room had contained only one long brown leather couch at the right wall, a desk and executive chair facing the far wall, upon which was mounted a single distinctive crucifix brought over the day after the wedding from her bedroom in the Rectory and installed over the desk, a clock/radio, a computer and a trio of filing cabinets standing at the left wall. Siobhan believes in sending the message to her visitors that there is nothing to distract her from them.
The room now has the same density of decoration as his desk downstairs but with over twenty times the volume. To that stunning total had been added streamers hung with silver and gold tassels that crisscross the ceiling and hung with multihued tassels while layers of inverted arches circle the walls before them. Posters vie with wedding and reception pictures for space on the walls and a tremendous 'Congratulations' banner dominates the far wall above the desk, while ribbons and rosettes and stars and hearts and artistic flowers and bunting and streamers turn the room into a staggering kaleidoscope of color. Blinking Christmas lights frame every wall and the filing cabinets like a madwoman's re-envisioning of the set of 'Tron', but Tim sees that the colored flashers that line the desk's top, front and legs have been unplugged. When Tim looks back over his shoulder, the inner side of the door is elaborately gift wrapped in silver foil with wide gold ribbons that join into a tremendous rosette.
As the coup de grâce of this mad excursion into the land of the demented decorator, Abby has filled the room with enough flowers of every conceivable - and a few inconceivable - hues to outfit a medium-sized forest, stunning in their collective scent.
Siobhan doesn't know that Gibbs had given Abby one instruction: 'At least leave her enough room to open the door'. Gibbs doesn't know - yet - how near a thing it had been.
The room is longer than it is wide and the effect is that of walking into a kaleidoscope.
x
It takes Tim several moments to rip his eyes from the maelstrom of color to his wife, who tells him "I used to think Abby had an encyclopedic mind. Now I'm wondering where else in the encyclopedia I'll find her."
"She means well." 'Sometimes a bit too well?' he wonders. 'And did she clean out Bill Rolonio's Florist Shop?'
"Oh, I know she does. She just ..." Siobhan looks over the stationary parade again, "scares me a little sometimes."
He smiles, well acquainted with the feeling. "Abby is as close to love personified as anyone I've ever met – except you," he catches himself quickly and surveys the room again. "Enthusiasm, ditto."
But then he remembers the importance of his visit and the world dims for him again. "Shav, no one called you?"
She shrugs, explaining "No. I'm sorry but when I got in there were seventeen messages – most people didn't call because they knew I was away," she points to her still-blinking answering machine half-buried under the decorations; she doesn't use NCIS voice mail due to the private nature of her work. "Before we left I recorded a new message letting people know I was out until today and why. Everyone here already knew, but the only messages that did get recorded were from people in Norfolk, Little Creek and so forth. I turned off the phone's ringer to give me a chance to catch up but I've been working my way through the calls one at a time, calling people back and–"
"So no one's seen, well, obviously no one's seen you." He can tell that by her good mood. "You've been up here all this time–"
"Timmy," she cuts him off as he had her, apprehension lighting her eyes, "you're starting to scare me. What's happened?"
"Well, I - that is - it's really–"
Her sudden grip on his arm is like a vice. "Who died?"
"No one."
Relief very briefly washes through her. Death is the only problem that can't be solved, but what's distressing the man who'd driven into work with her, filled with joyous anticipation, just this morning? "Timmy, tell me."
"You'd better sit down."
Her initial reaction is to say she doesn't want to sit down, but if it'll get the answer out faster she pulls him to the couch and down beside her.
x
"Ever hear of faking?" he asks. Her expression tells him how mystifying this explanation is. "Photo manipulation, putting someone's head onto someone else's body."
"You mean like those websites do to actresses?" She's seen enough of that disgusting practice, knows there has to be a million such perversions out there. "Why?"
"Someone … someone did that. They took face shots of …." He stops. All morning they've dealt with it and it still doesn't seem real. "Someone took pictures of our female Agents and put them onto … well, you get the idea."
"I'm beginning to…." What had she ignored, what appeals for aid had she missed in so complacently silencing her phone except for her own outgoing calls so she could 'catch up', mostly with Agents in the field, saving the Headquarters calls that would go to the machine unheard for last? "What happened? And to who? Tell me everything."
It takes him a few seconds before he can say "Someone got hold of facial photos; we're not sure from where, of a lot of our female agents, grafted them onto nude bodies and posted them all over the web."
"Oh, Lord." What must her friends be dealing with? What kind of…? "Whose?" He's silent for a moment, for too long. She knows that stop. He doesn't want to say it. "Whose?"
"Everyone's." She feels cold rush through her. "We're not sure where they came from, Tony thinks someone hacked into HR files, or maybe Pass and ID records, but it looks like it's everyone's."
x
The cold centers into a hand that grips her heart. No. This can't … he doesn't mean…. "Everyone's?" He nods. She doesn't want him to nod, nor to see that look in his eyes. The frigid hand clutches her heart tighter, cold blood shoots through her. "But I–"
"Everyone's."
That ice fist crushes her heart. She can barely breathe, her chest heaving with the effort to drag in air. "Ohhh – oh my God." She blesses herself, her hand shaking. "Oh my God, you're saying…?"
"Yes."
x
She stares into his eyes – 'please be joking' – but there's no joke – he'd never joke about something like this. That icy hand rips her heart. She sees deeper sympathy behind barely contained outrage and has to get up, has to get off this couch, can't face him. She stands, back to him, trembling. She can't turn and he doesn't try to follow.
"What did they…?" She can't say it. If she says it it'll be real and this can't be real. Their honeymoon just ended. They've been back for hours - they haven't even unpacked. This can't be happening.
No.
No. She was tired, she came in and the overwhelming reception every time they met friends along the way … and these flowers, they made her fall asleep making callbacks. She's asleep at her desk, overcome by pollen poisoning, floral overload, something; kaleidoscopic vertigo. They'll find her slumped over the desk this evening and
"I am so sorry, honey."
She turns around, looks down into his sad face. "Please tell me you're making this up." Even as she says it, she knows it's impossible. Timmy would never–
"I can't."
She goes to her chair, sits down, turns away from him to the desk, to the wall. All the insanity that's come into her life since NCIS first touched it, was she an idiot to think getting married would change anything?
But then her gaze falls on, or is pulled to, the crucifix before her. Jesus' hands aren't nailed to this wood. His arms reach out to her. Reach out.
Reach out.
She stands quickly. "I have to get out there. They need me."
"Shav, you need–"
"No!" She pulls it back, ropes it down; remembers to whom she's speaking. "I have to go out there where I'm needed. This isn't about me, this is about my duty." She turns to him and realizes she's shaking. "A chuisle, later I'll need you to hold me while I scream and cry, but this isn't the time."
She crosses the room into his embrace, tries to hide how much she wants to lose herself in it, to bathe in its security.
She doesn't want him to let her go, so she's the one who has to push away.
