Thank you for the overall positive feedback on the last chapter - I'm glad you like the idea of passing on some 'backstory'. For that I have a few tidbits worked into the narrative of the main story, but if there is some particular instance about their past you would like to know about and would like me to write a chapter on, please do not hesitate to furnish me with prompts!
Also, I want to give a shout-out to the people still taking the time to leave a review on "Now a' is done". I am wholeheartedly grateful and glad that you enjoy the prequel - and I hope you guys are still enjoying the sequel just as much and maybe even more.
Chap 9 Tickling the Bomb
"There is nothing we are particularly good at doing apart from interrogating and shooting people", Ziva hissed, violently throwing on a pair of jeans. They were standing in the bathroom, their exclusive and semi-intimate place for discussion and brainstorming in the morning. Tony was shaving, trying not to smile in fear of cutting himself.
"You're exaggerating", Tony countered calmly. "Between the interrogating and shooting there's the finding and catching."
"You…are not helping." He watched in the mirror as Ziva's eyes narrowed, turning in time to see her shake her head. "I hate those meetings. Why can you not go?"
Tony chuckled. "Because it's your turn", he stated, drying his face. "And because those meetings do something to your brain and I need all my marbles lined up right now."
"And I do not?", Ziva exclaimed, pushing him a little to the side for access to the mirror so as to apply her make-up.
"You're better at blocking them out."
"They like you better."
"Maybe that's because you threatened to shoot Betty Wilson last month?", Tony suggested, buttoning up his shirt with a meaningful grin.
Ziva whirled around, a look of determined righteousness in her eyes. "She was telling me…for the fifth time that children of parents with violent jobs are ten times more likely to turn to violent measures in later life... Five times, Tony."
Tony stepped up to her and put his hands on her upper arms, kissing her forehead. "And no one understands the shooting urge more than me, Sweet Cheeks, but you might wanna go for the charm offensive this time."
"How? I have nothing to offer", Ziva lamented, turning back around for the finishing touches on her face. For some reason she felt particularly self-conscious about the amount of make-up today.
Tony smiled softly, resting his chin on her shoulder and slinging his arms around her middle. "You offer more than any of the other moms. You're the whole mommy'n'gunny package."
"That is it exactly, Tony."
"Can't you, I don't know…like knit the costumes?"
She cocked her head to the side, her eyes narrowing. "I don't know. Can you?"
Tony smiled. "Cook. You're a great chef."
"I doubt they will need cooking at a school play." A sly smile had formed on Ziva's face.
"Then you'll manage the ticket sale. Don't worry, everything will be fine."
"I do not want Tali to-"
Tony broke her off with a kiss, smiling against her lips. "She won't care what you do. The only thing she cares about is that we're there to watch her perform and we will be. And the smile on our little girl's face will be worth not having to get rid of Betty Wilson's body."
Ziva sighed but nodded with a small smile. Tony grabbed his jacket and turned around, mumbling something about preparing breakfast. He was stopped in the door by Ziva sly remark, "No guarantees."
Tony nodded, a grin settling on his lips. "At least spare me some paperwork and take your non-issue backup."
That Friday was much different from their usual Fridays. Abby had insisted on Liora-duty, even though Fridays usually were McGee's mornings with his daughter before he handed her over to Cameron for the rest of the day until their - generally simultaneous - homecoming. McGee treasured that hour alone with his daughter, but he realized that Abby was experiencing a bout of more or less irrational clinginess right now. However, what with all the worrying scenarios playing in his head every unoccupied minute, he didn't feel like fighting Abby on wanting to spend more time with Liora. They had set up a meeting with whomever claimed to be Liora's biological father for the upcoming week - they would take it step by step.
On the other side of the bullpen Tony had traded early mornings with Ziva so that she could attend the PTA-meeting at Tali's preschool. He knew just how much she hated those and if their bathroom-banter had been any indication, that was still a well-established fact. Much had changed about the Ziva he had met a few feet from where he was standing right now over fifteen years ago. Somalia had played a prime part in most of that change, but her affiliation with all of NCIS, their romance and more than anything their children had contributed their transforming share. What hadn't changed was the rift between who Ziva was in the course of her job and who she was outside of it. She had learned to deal with all kinds of people through her work as an NCIS Agent, but she still had a particularly hard time relating to and fitting in with the PTA-crowd. As far as Tony saw it, what with it being about their kids, Ziva was simply too emotionally invested to treat those people with the same sense of analytical detachedness she would one of their cases and the people involved in it. Ziva had a background so far removed from most of the parents in Tali's and David's schools it was particularly hard for her to identify with or to fathom their outlook on life, their kids and everything around that. But that's what Tony admired about her, how much she still tried to adapt - and how strangely impossible it was for her to shake her innermost self no matter what.
A small smile dashed across Tony's face at the thought of his certified ninja in a lopsided hand-to-hand with Betty Wilson. The smile quickly vanished when McGee turned up by his side, scoffing at the sight in front of them. They were looking at the big plasma in the middle of the bullpen, surveying the live feed of Interrogation Room II and their current and very much human Matryoshka doll. They could hardly believe their eyes. Ian Johnston was lying on top of the table on his back, his hands neatly folded atop his body and his face smiling broadly and contently. He looked, to engage a cliché, completely at peace.
"We bumped into each other on my way up from the lab this morning", McGee remarked, not taking his eyes off the screen. "He was coming out of the shower rooms, humming. He even greeted me like he'd never even tried to bite my head off."
For a moment Tony was silent, watching the rhythmical heaving of Johnson's torso. Then, suddenly, he cried out, "Can we please go back to the sex talk on Monday morning and someone tie me down and gag me before I can answer the phone?"
McGee turned to look at him with an apparent scowl. "You realize there's an irritating pun in there, right?"
"I hate this guy", Tony continued and pointed at the screen, not paying attention to McGee's irritation. "He's like PMS'ing up and down the emotional barometer. First he's denying he said anything at all, then he's pissed as hell we locked him up even though he'd sure be better off locked up in a padded round tower. Then…he's negotiating terms with Ziva only a few seconds before breaking down in tears. And now he's totally okay with the world like he's on meth or something. I mean-" Tony suddenly broke off when he saw the dawn of realization on McGee's face. "What?"
"I can't believe I didn't see it sooner."
"See what, McCryptic?"
"It, I mean him", McGee struggled, pointing towards the screen. "Johnston. It's obvious."
Tony turned back to look at the man onscreen, screwing his forehead up in a scowl. "I'm having a blonde day here. Just spit it out already!"
"Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance", McGee summarized Tony's earlier account. "The Kübler-Ross model."
"You lost me."
McGee huffed and sprinted over to his computer. He knocked a few letters into his keyboard and turned the screen around for Tony to see. It was a webpage with information on something titled the 'Kübler-Ross model'.
"The Five Stages of Grief, Tony", McGee explained, a note of glee ringing through. "Johnston isn't making any sense because it's not what he's telling us that's important. It's how he does it."
"So, you mean he's been enacting this model?", Tony countered, not entirely convinced.
"That's the information he was talking about."
"A model for the process of coping?"
McGee nodded. "For people with terminal illnesses."
Tony's eyes widened. "He's dying", he conceded. "He is the case."
Tony entered Interrogation II with Ziva by his side. While she took a stand by the mirror, her eyes trained skeptically on Ian Johnston's peaceful features, Tony sat down in the chair across from him. Unblinking, he declared, "You're the case. Somebody killed you."
"And there I was hoping for the Shakespearean dying scene", Johnston mock-sighed, his eyes rolling up to meet Ziva's.
Suddenly, Tony smashed his palms onto the table top, audibly yanking Johnston back into an upright position, his blue eyes immediately settling on the agent in front of him. "We played along for the longest time", Tony growled. "You had your fun. Now tell us what you know."
"Actually…", Johnston started. "I don't know much."
"We will be the judge of that", Ziva cut in.
Johnston nodded slowly. He bent down and took off his left shoe, a brown leather boot, while Tony and Ziva were left to stare at him in bewilderment. He turned the shoe around and started fumbling with its heel until he suddenly produced a miniscule computer chip, which he offered to Tony. Tony eyed the diminutive piece of highly condensed data suspiciously. "Shouldn't our ever so sensitive scanners have picked up on that little gadget of yours when you entered the building?", he inquired.
Johnston smiled slyly. "I helped design and program those scanners. You think I don't know how to cheat 'em?"
Tony nodded slowly and retrieved a small evidence bag from inside his jacket pocket (an old habit). Johnston let the chip drop into the bag and watched, an indiscernible expression on his face, as Tony sealed it. "What's on it?"
"Actually, I don't really know. After a while I was just saving data without the time to review it, but I'm sure your Agent McGee will know what to do", Johnston stated, putting his shoe back on.
"Give us an idea, will you?"
"I think it was December last year or January. I picked up on some unusual chatter on one of our more recent channels."
"Channels?"
Johnston smiled benevolently. "If you're a bad, bad guy and you wanna do bad, bad things you're just as dependent on good networking as everyone else. You need arms, you look for the right arms dealer. You need someone dealt with, you look for the right hitman...or hitwoman." He vaguely winked at Ziva. "If you need to go somewhere below the radar, you set up means for transportation. Wrong-doing is a global market, Agent DiNozzo. Channels is what we call whichever system of communicating those demand-and-supply-chains they choose. The more channels we disclose without the bad guys knowing about it, the better for us good guys."
"You're cast as the good guy then?"
"Never once recast."
"So..?"
"So, I was monitoring a channel we had just disclosed through an international consortium." Johnston's eyes quickly darted towards Ziva again. "And there I picked up on a guy named Arik setting up illegal access to the U.S. for himself and a bunch of others. I tracked them for some time, before they backtracked me-"
"They made you? I thought you guys can't be traced."
Johnston huffed in a mixture of amusement and a soft sigh. "In truth, everything can be traced somehow. But as a government official I'm protected by the fact that I am, essentially, the government doing its job", he elucidated calmly. "The government is bound to a certain degree of...lawful operation, though. So, for singular purposes…I was known to do a little…freelancing."
Tony's and Ziva's eyebrows rose almost simultaneously. "You worked on it outside the grid", Tony clarified.
Johnston nodded. "I guess, I got a little too eager, didn't cover all of my bases."
"And now you're…dying?", Tony asked evenly.
"Diagnosed last February", Johnston answered just as evenly. "No one could tell me what exactly was doing this to me, but it's like this: No organ in my body is working the way it should be working any more. I'm on pain meds to make it easier, but…at one point my heart will just give out and that's that."
"What about your family?", Ziva cut in, a softer ring to her voice.
"I never married, never spawned. Only child. My parents are long dead. I left everything to an uncle in Iowa, talked to him too…a few weeks ago. Everything's settled."
"And you think you were poisoned?"
"No, Agent David", Johnston declared with a small smile, "I know I was poisoned."
"How?"
"They told me."
"How?"
Johnston sighed. "One fine day I come home and find a postcard on my doorstep with some scavenger bird or meerkat on it, I can't really remember. It was saying, in really neat handwriting by the way, something to the effect of 'Keep your mouth shut or you'll die'. Naturally, I didn't stop, though. Then I started feeling a little queasy, but I brushed it aside as good old psychosomatics. When I started throwing up blood, though, I finally went to see my doctor and well… The rest is history, as they say."
"That's when you decided to come here?"
"Well, first I got my afterlife in order, then I came here", Johnston corrected. "But yeah, I figured I was dying anyway, so I could at least find someone who would kill those bastards for me. I'm Navy, you're Navy cops. Came naturally, I guess."
"Why didn't you just tell us? Why go for the dramatics?", Tony growled, leaning back in his chair.
"I'm a dying man, man. Let me have a little fun before I kick the bucket."
Tony was momentarily thrown by the wording. He faintly remembered the ominous bucket-list he once started assembling during a particulary trying case - one of those mortality-in-your-face cases back in 2011. He remembered getting to No. 9 before Ziva had caught him. He remembered her giving him that look of dire understanding and while he had concentrated on her, she had, with the flick of a finger, simply deleted the list. He remembered her touching the side of his face and telling him that he'd better focus on making the moments he had count than counting down moments he hadn't yet had.
Ziva recognized the split-blank expression on Tony's face. She substituted quickly, "And why did you not report to your superiors about it?"
"So they could do what exactly?", Johnston challenged with raised eyebrows. "Send the memo through the ranks until, with a little bit of luck, it would reach someone who would actually give a crap and have enough power to do something about it?"
"That's kind of the protocol way to do it", Tony argued.
"Right. I'd be fertilizer by then", Johnston deadpanned. "This way I didn't only get the memo across, I also got to wave my pompoms and do a little yuppie dance routine to really get it to sink in."
"You're nuts."
"With chocolate icing."
Tony and Ziva couldn't keep the edges of their mouths from drifting upwards a little bit. "Weren't you worried they'd realize what you're doing and speed up the process a little?"
"I guess they thought an IT geek wouldn't have the guts to do what I did. And other than that: Did you ever see me actually leave this building? I'm safer here than anywhere else."
"This is not Fort Knox", Ziva reasoned, her reference earning her a slight smile from Tony.
"Yeah, but I'm guessing what they're really after is more important than plugging every leak."
"And what's that?"
"That's for you to find out. I only got you going. I'm actually a little sorry I will be too dead to see them dying." He cocked his head to the side a little, a thin smile settling on his face.
Ziva and Tony remained silent.
"Wanna know what's the ultimate kicker here?", Johnston asked, the smile persisting. "That I'll be basically poisoning my own body from the inside out because I was poisoned from the outside in. Funny, isn't it?"
"Obliquely…", Ziva said.
Tony, entering the lab alongside Ziva, called out, "Give it to me, my tech-match."
McGee immediately looked up from his typing. "Johnston's story checked out. He recently updated his will and took a trip to Iowa three weeks ago: plane ticket, rental, comp time. I also tracked down his presumed uncle, but he's more like a longtime family friend than blood-related, an old school friend of his father's. When I called him, he confirmed that Johnston had visited and told him about the will… Just that he thought the government was sending Johnston abroad on a highly classified mission." McGee ended his rapport with a soft scowl.
"For claiming to be the good guy, he sure has a troubled relationship with the truth, doesn't he?", Tony quipped.
"That's not the real trouble, Tony", Abby cut in, pointing towards the myriad of screens, figures and symbols filling up all of her computers. "Johnston must've followed that Arik guy's movements for months. There's like two terabyte of information on the microchip Johnston gave you."
"A lot of it is taken up by the encryptions he integrated, though."
"Meaning it will take some time to get to the information to begin with?", Ziva inquired.
McGee shook his head. "It's pretty heavy stuff, but Johnston gave us the basic lock codes, so we should be fine."
"So, what kinda intel are we talking about anyway?", Tony asked, rounding the table and peeking through the gap between the computers from the other side.
"IP-tracking serials, GPS data, a bunch of files", McGee answered, looking between Ziva and Tony. "The moment Johnston got a fix on Arik, he infested his computer with a kind of tracking virus through his IP number. As long as that connection held, Johnston could easily and automatically extract information from Arik's computer. He also monitored communication directly via Arik's provider, so it didn't matter if Arik logged onto a different computer."
"To maintain that connection and at the same time keep your cover, your own data packages need to oscillate between parameters, though." Abby instantly took notice of Tony's and Ziva's eyebrows rising almost simultaneously and put on a knowing smile. "The data you're automatically sending to the computer you're connected with mustn't be re-traceable. That's what jumping around on servers is for…more or less."
"And that's also what Johnston got careless with", McGee substituted.
"That is why Arik found him."
"Arik and friends, actually", Abby corrected, furrowing her brows.
"At the beginning Johnston took the time to review the data he was gathering and packed it into a separate file we're almost done downloading", McGee explained.
"And in the messages we've seen thus far, Arik is definitely referring to himself as 'we' and 'us'."
Tony nodded. "Any chance at finding out who that Arik guy is-"
"If that is his real name", Ziva put in.
A soft smile formed on Abby's face. She tilted her head to the side, holding up her hands for emphasis. "If there's any indication to him on there-"
"We will", McGee concluded knowingly.
Later that afternoon Tali plopped down on the small, milky brown wooden bench across from the big shelving unit, which was taking up most of the wall of the corridor outside her classroom, and which was made up of diversely colored cubicles. One of them, a yellow cubicle, was tagged 'Tali' with a brightly yellow, five-pointed star next to the neat calligraphy. Ziva quickly pocketed her car keys, retrieved Tali's shoes from that cubicle and crouched down in front of her daughter.
From the moment on Ziva had routinely inquired about her day the little girl had been happily chatting away about its details and more or less profound events. "And you know what Judy said?", she posed eventually, her breath almost catching in her throat at the last syllable.
Ziva looked up from tying Tali's right shoe to find the little girl's appalled expression - an expression so heartfelt, it made it hard not to smile. "What did she say?", Ziva asked with exaggerated intrigue lacing her voice.
"She say that boats get made only on water but that's no true", Tali recounted, scrunching her forehead up in a deep scowl. "My Uncle Gibbs makes all of his boats in his house, right?"
"Yes, that he does." Ziva smiled up at her, starting to tie the second shoe.
"So, I tell her and that Deed and me help him make his boats lotsa times and one boat had my name on it", Tali declared.
"And what did Judy say to that?", Ziva asked. She got up and lifted Tali off the bench, getting her coat from her cubicle and holding it out for the little girl to slip into.
"She- She said that- that house-boats can't swim right, but then I say- I said that's no true again, 'cause my Uncle Gibbs and my Uncle Ducky are takin' a swim with his boat 'bout now." Tali put extra emphasis on the last word, thoroughly out of breath at the end of the sentence.
Ziva kneeled down in front of her daughter so as to zip up her coat. She quickly looked up at her, curious. "Did Judy believe you then?"
Tali shook her head degradedly. "Nope. She said I make it all up, but- but it's all true, right mommy?"
"Yes, tateleh, absolutely true."
In fact, Gibbs and Ducky had sailed Gibbs' most recent woodwork-endeavor up the East Coast, from where on Ducky had left for a longer trip to his native Scotland, visiting a myriad of old friends and far-removed relatives. He had planned on it being a two-month trip, but by now three months had passed since their departure and he was still writing postcards and e-mails detailing his past and outlining his future travel plans. They currently had a $100 pool running on how long his trip would ultimately last. Gibbs, on the other hand, they were pretty clueless about. As far as they knew he was still on his boat somewhere, he never really specified the where. He made his obligatory call every two weeks, mostly to Abby, and she would routinely trace his call back to some godforsaken place somewhere between the U.S. and Canada. The kids were receiving their share of postcards, though, of that he had made a strangely sweet habit.
"Can I take the picture of me and Uncle Gibbs and my boat to school 'morrow, mommy?", Tali suggested, her eyes brightening with the quintessential idea to prove herself in front of her friend.
Ziva chuckled at the utter determination written on her daughter's face. "Yes, you may."
"Ziva?", a familiar, somewhat shrill voice jerked mother and daughter from their line of conversation and caused Ziva, still kneeling before Tali, to whirl around.
"Betty", Ziva returned vaguely, putting on a smile and getting up to shake the other woman's hand.
Ziva had been acutely aware of the risk of getting mom-cornered, but Tony had still been up in MTAC with Director Vance, briefing him on the turn of events in the Johnston case - or rather, on it having finally turned into a substantial case for that matter. So, she had left to pick up Tali and Tony would then pick up David from soccer practice in an hour.
"Hey there, little Tali", the woman named Betty called out sweetly. Tali merely waved her hand, a quiet 'Hi' slipping from her lips as she leaned against Ziva's leg.
Ziva put an arm around her daughter. For some reason Betty Wilson always made Tali feel uncomfortable and she didn't know why. She did, however, know that her daughter's apprehension was yet another reason not to like that woman. Call it self-fulfilling instinct.
"I heard you're catering at the play. I didn't know you cook." Betty turned her attention back to Ziva, smiling away the blatant disbelief in her voice.
"It is more of a hobby", Ziva answered, trying to keep her answers short, to-the-point and respectfully calm.
"Really? That's so great. I wish I could say the same, you know?", Betty said. "I mean, I love to cook, obviously. But it's hard to make it your hobby if you do it day in, day out. Can't turn into much of a hobby if you have to cook for your family every day, you know. But you don't do that anyway, right?"
Ziva held onto the terse smile on her face. "No, not every day. Tony and I… We take it in turns."
"Wouldn't we all love to have a Tony?" Betty's laugh sounded especially hollow to Ziva's ears. "So, I'll get the list to you as soon as possible."
Ziva's eyes finally narrowed. "What list?"
"The diet list, of course", Betty exclaimed matter-of-factly. "For years I've been assembling all allergies, intolerances and quirks of the kids and their parents. It's turned out to be so helpful."
"All…of them?"
"Yeah, I know. And it was as tough a piece of work as it sounds. But I know that some parents can't spare the time to engage more in their kids' schooling, you know. So, some of us try to...pick up the slack with a little extra", Betty elucidated, blinking. "It will give you an idea of the…you know, range you got to consider."
"The range…" Ziva cocked her head to the side, her eyebrows deeply tugged over her eyes.
"I know you're a busy woman, right?" Betty smiled, her eyes briefly rolling upwards. "So, it's really more for time management."
"Of course…", Ziva nodded. "Thank you."
"Oh, don't mention it. We gotta stick together, right? Us moms."
Ziva's eyes swiftly dropped to catch Tali's. The five-year-old was looking up at her, rolling her eyes. She didn't quite understand the content plus subtext of what the woman was saying, but for one thing she caught on to her odd sound of voice, and for another the little girl could tell from the sound of her mother's voice and from the look in her mother's eyes that she didn't like that woman. And as a matter of fact, that was enough for Tali not to like her either.
"And…dads", Ziva added, unable to edge out all of the sardonic ring to her voice.
Betty smiled, her mouth gaping for a moment. "So, Tali's gonna be the star, isn't she?"
"Yes, we are very proud", Ziva answered, instinctively starting to caress Tali's arm. "Tony and she have already started practicing her lines."
"Have they? How sweet", Betty remarked, her eyes jumping between Ziva and the five-year-old's wary expression. "I'm really glad you can make time to help her out a bit. Crime never sleeps, does it?" A sly chuckle escaped Betty's lips.
Ziva's mouth opened in a silent laugh, inwardly heaving a deep breath. "Not as long as people find reasons to commit them."
"I'm sure-"
"Oh, look at the time", Ziva cut in, purposefully eyeing the watch on her wrist. "We have to pick up David from soccer practice."
"Right, I wouldn't wanna hold you any longer."
"No, certainly not", Ziva stated, gently nudging Tali to abandon her leg.
"Was good talking to you, though. We hardly ever get the chance to, you're such a rare treat around here", Betty punctuated her words with soft laughter.
Ziva chuckled slightly. "Yes, really a crime…" She took Tali's hand, shouldered the little girl's backpack and turned to leave.
"See you around."
Ziva nodded with a concise smile, quickening her steps almost unnoticeably until they had closed the front gate between themselves and Betty Wilson. Ziva heaved a sigh, softly shaking her head to get rid of any thoughts pertaining to violent irritation.
"Mommy?" Tali's words eventually yanked her out of her thoughts.
They stopped in front of Ziva's car and she looked down at the five-year-old, slipping on a wholehearted smile. "Yes, tateleh?"
"No liking people is okay. Uncle Gibbs says so too", the little girl declared sincerely, nodding.
Ziva chuckled, opening the door to the back seat for her astute daughter to climb in.
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