Chapter Four

Tony heard the bottle green front door of Ziva's apartment slam close. He opened his eyes and found himself lying on Ziva's rather small red couch, completely alone in her apartment. He squinted at the green block numbers on Ziva's oven's clock; he was lying on his partner's couch, completely alone in her apartment at 0512, he thought. He sat up and looked around at the dark apartment, and he found remnants of their movie night scattered around the lounge. He forced himself to get up; he stretched whilst uttering curse words about the uncomfortableness of Ziva's couch. He felt the cold wooden floorboards beneath his feet, and then his phone rang. His ringtone, which was the Magnum theme tune, broke the silence of Ziva's apartment. He picked up the phone, not bothering to check the caller ID.

"Zi," he said before he heard the very recognizable heavy breathing and sipping of coffee of his boss Gibbs, a functioning mute. "Zi Boss!" he cried in a fake accent, trying to dig himself out of the hole he had found himself in.

"Case, Norfolk Harbor. Bring coffee." Gibbs barked, relaying orders that would usually take two minutes in less than thirty seconds. Tony was about to answer with a yes Boss when he heard his boss hang up. DiNozzo hung up as well.

He found his car keys in his pocket, and his discarded jacket. He was about to leave when his stomach let out a loud rumble. He looked up at Ziva's kitchen shelves and after a brief scan, found nothing with enough sugar to be a DiNozzo breakfast. He locked up Ziva's apartment to the best of his ability. He walked out of the apartment building and realized he had left his car at the Navy yard the day before when Ziva had agreed to a movie night; she had told him that they would take her car to save money, because fuel was so expensive in the current economic climate. He walked up the busy street Ziva lived on, to the bar where the taxis were waiting for an intoxicated passenger to crawl into one, and want to take the scenic route home. He knocked on the window of the one furthest away from the bar; a grey haired cabbie woke up. The cabbie saw DiNozzo, and unlocked the car. DiNozzo hopped in.

"It's your lucky day," he said as he told the driver where he needed to go and that they had to stop for coffee.

XXX

Gibbs walked onto the boat with a disposable coffee cup in his hand, his third coffee in the hour he been called by dispatch. He pressed the green call button on his cell phone and for the second time in that hour he heard the generic voicemail of his Israeli-American probationary agent.

This is Ziva David, I cannot take your call right now, please leave your name, number, and a message, and I will get back to you.

He was about to press the green call button for the third time when Ducky came aboard the boat with Palmer in tow. The two men were having a disagreement about directions; a common disagreement for the pair of them, as Palmer, it seemed, had never learnt to read a map.

"Sorry Jethro," Ducky said as he saw his friend standing above the body, "Mr Palmer is an even worse navigator this early in the morning." Gibbs smirked.

"Did ya see Ziver on your way in?" Gibbs asked as Ducky knelt beside the body. Ducky looked up at his friend.

"No," he said, "Should I have seen her?" Ducky let a concerned look cross his aging features; Ziva was a reliable agent and never one to be late.

Ducky could count with one of his hands the number of times she had been late in the five years he had known her. The first had been when she was still new to DC and had accidentally taken the wrong bus. The second had been when she had managed to end up framed by the Iranian intelligence community, leading to her being on the run from NCIS, Mossad, and her father. The third time had been not long after she returned from Somalia; she had had a doctor's appointment that had lasted longer than she expected.

"She's breaking rule three Duck," Gibbs said.

Ducky racked his mind for rule three, as despite being Gibbs's friend for a good many years, he still did not know all the rules by number. Never be unreachable echoed in Ducky's head. Ziva being unreachable happened even less than her being late.

"I am sure Ziva will be fine," Ducky said quietly to himself, which was much more of a prayer than a suggestion. "She will probably turn up in a minute with another traffic ticket." He said in a much louder voice, remembering many instances where Ziva had turned up to work, on time but in a foul mood because she had been pulled over by a Metro traffic cop. "After all, Ziva's driving can seem a little erratic especially to Metro PD's traffic officers."

Gibbs offered a grunt in response and walked off towards McGee; he tried calling Ziva again but again got her voicemail. This is Ziva played before Gibbs hung up.

"That's an understatement," Palmer said, continuing the conversation about Ziva's erratic driving once Gibbs had gone, as despite working with Gibbs for over six years, the medical examiner's assistant still felt uncomfortable talking around the stoic functional mute that was Gibbs. "She once picked me and Tony up; the cops were doing a drunk driving bust, and they were convinced she was drunk just by how she drove alone."

Ducky listened to the younger man, a tad surprised that Jimmy and DiNozzo were spending so much time together. Then he remembered the summer Gibbs was away, when Jimmy had proved to be a great sounding board for Tony, just as Ducky was to Gibbs. The elder man had often pictured Jimmy and Tony continuing the tradition of the great friendship between the Chief Medical Examiner and Major Case Response Team leader.

"Mr Palmer," Ducky said as he looked at the body. "Does this body look moved to you?"

Jimmy looked at the body; he was not a hundred per cent sure the body had been moved, but nonetheless he agreed with the elder man. Ducky was a wise man and usually right about those sort of things.

"Yes," he replied. "Did the killer do it?" Palmer offered as a suggestion, "Or perhaps Metro PD, when they were trying to ID him."

Ducky looked at the body, and he did not see the rushed turnover of a body to identify it; he saw a loving movement, perhaps a desperate attempt to save him. He took the liver temperature of the body

"TOD," Gibbs shouted from the inside of the boat; Ducky looked at his friend.

"About three hours ago," Ducky shouted back. It was 0630 now; the admiral had died at approximately 0330.

McGee held up the driver's license and typed the admirals' name into his iPhone.

"Leo Black, 63 years old; he was about to retire next week just before his 64th birthday. He's married to a May Black who lives in Chesapeake Bay," McGee read on his iPhone.

Gibbs nodded. "Photograph the scene and when DiNozzo finally turns up he'll bag and tag." Gibbs said, as he walked back towards Ducky.

McGee looked around the cabin of the boat; he found things he would not expect to find on a boat belonging to a sixty-four-year-old man. He found Olay moisturizer, the same type of moisturizer his own mother used despite McGee's father's constant compliments about his wife of forty years' goddess-like beauty. Other female effects also appeared in the cabin, including underwear and make-up. He eventually found a black leather brand imitation handbag stowed away in a cupboard under the window.

McGee tipped it out onto the floor, determined to find out the identity of the potential witness. More make-up fell out onto the floor, along with money in a foreign currency McGee did not recognize. A postcard from a country somewhere in Europe was tucked into a book not written in English.

A passport fell into his hand. It was black, and had golden Hebrew writing on it. McGee knew was Hebrew writing due to working with Ziva for so many years. He looked at the Israeli passport; he knew Black's wife had been an American as he had been so it was not hers. McGee opened the passport. The photo was of a woman in her late forties or early fifties, with deep brown eyes and brown hair; she was smartly dressed. Ziva had once told him that you had to be smartly dressed for an Israeli passport photo, unlike America where you could get away with a pair of jeans and an old t-shirt. As McGee thought of his Israeli-American friend, he noticed the similarities between Ziva and the woman in front of him; they had similar features and a similar build.

Thankfully, the Israeli passport had Latinized Hebrew next to the Hebrew alphabet. Even though McGee only understood two words in Hebrew, those being 'Shalom' and 'todah', he managed to read the name Rivka Yaakov in his head. He had no idea how to pronounce it. He pulled up his federal agent search engine on his iPhone. His eyes popped as he read whom Ms Yaakov's former husband was – none other than Ziva's father Eli David. He looked at the dates of the marriage; she was Ziva's mother too. He had to find Gibbs.

XXX

DiNozzo sat in the back of the yellow taxi-cab, with the tray of Styrofoam coffee cups on his lap. He watched the meter go up and up; he sighed. The driver Rupert kept stifling yawns. They reached the harbour. A strange look came over the taxi driver's middle-aged face.

"What's wrong?" DiNozzo asked. The driver looked at the yellow crime scene tape and the people walking around. He knew all the commotion had not been there when he had picked up that woman almost three hours ago. He rather evilly wondered if the woman had killed whoever was dead on the boat.

"Déjà vu," the driver uttered quietly, "I was here a few hours ago. I picked up some woman; she was upset about something, but I never thought much about it."

Tony processed the man's sentence. The driver had seen the potential killer; that was almost too good to be true. Gibbs's rule echoed in his head. No such things as coincidences. DiNozzo knew the taxi driver needed to speak to Gibbs.

"You need to come with me." Tony said, "You need to speak to my boss."

"I'm keeping the meter on," the driver said.

DiNozzo let out a sigh as the number on the meter got higher and higher; looked like he was not going to eat three meals a day for a while. The meter continued to run.

Gibbs stood on the deck and sipped his coffee. He saw DiNozzo and McGee rushing towards him. McGee had a little black book in his hand, and trailing behind DiNozzo was a man about Gibbs's age.

"Boss," both men called at exactly the same time.

"Black had a woman with him," McGee said just before DiNozzo opened his mouth to speak again; he walked towards his boss with the black passport.

"And," Gibbs said as he took the coffee from DiNozzo's coffee tray. He took the passport from McGee.

"Our cabbie picked her up," DiNozzo said. Gibbs showed the passport to the cabbie.

"That's her," the cabbie said.

"Her name is Rivka Yaakov; she's an Israeli citizen, and her last name used to be David," McGee said.

"Which David?" Tony said. McGee looked at DiNozzo confused. DiNozzo was referring to the three David brothers; Abner, Eliahu and Uriel. Abner had died in the 1967 war and Uriel had died when Ziva was a teenager. Eli was the only still living brother of the three David brothers.

"She's Eli David's ex-wife and Ziva's mom," McGee said. He watched a surprised look cross both DiNozzo's and Gibbs's faces.

"Where did you take her?" Gibbs asked. The cabbie focused on the picture.

"The Israeli embassy," he said. "Some guy was outside it, and he paid the fare."

The three NCIS agents looked at each other, all thinking the same thing. Oh, crap.

A/N: I probably should have warned all of you I'm not very good at the whole casefic thing.

A massive thank you to my beta Anoymous033, for her big red pen.