Wanting for Independence: Chapter 10
A/N: I know, I know, you want me to write faster. I want me to write faster, too. But unfortunately, I do have a full-time (and fairly demanding) job and am actively working on two different stories. If you need a Sashile fix, check out my stories Falling on Unyielding Ground and Hitting Hard over on Fictionpress. They're both very long and should keep you occupied :) In the meantime, feedback about this story (or any others) is always welcome.
It wasn't long after they found out that she was pregnant that Ziva David started doing something very uncharacteristic: bringing her husband lunch. The first time it happened, Tony DiNozzo assumed it was just a one-time random act of kindness. And then he got lunch again the next day. And the next day. At the end of the week, he began to get suspicious. After two weeks, he was tempted to call Mossad and ask if they were planning on transferring her to another station. Now, months later, he just went with it and enjoyed the free food. He wondered if this was Ziva's way of nesting; if the 'nursery' was any indication, it might be the only version of nesting that was going to happen. At this point, the room that would soon have an infant was a couple of boxes of unassembled furniture and some presents from the baby shower Bryn Freiler threw for her a few weeks before.
Remembering Tomblin's comment at that morning about babies making their own schedules, he wondered if maybe he should get around to putting together some furniture. At least a crib.
Aside from the growling of his stomach, he always knew when it was time for lunch when he began to hear footsteps down the staircase behind the wall, footsteps that had been growing increasingly uneven and hesistant over the last several months.
Today, though, the familiar footsteps of his pregnant wife were accompanied by the rushed and intentionally heavy steps that could only belong to someone as obnoxious as David Cohen. "Ziva, you've lost weight," he joked as he opened the door to admit Cohen into the office.
"Very funny," Ziva said sarcastically from behind her operative. "If you do not behave, I will be eating your lunch."
"I'll be good," he promised. "Conference room?"
"We brought enough food for an entire campfire, although I forgot the s'mores," Ziva offered. DiNozzo's eyebrows went up, then narrowed suspiciously. While Ziva had made a habit of having lunch with him, it was rare that anybody else would be invited. To have almost everyone from both teams would be unprecendented.
"You guys found something," he finally said.
"What's that about somebody finding something?" They all turned to the front door of the office, where NCIS Special Agent Gabi Stone was just entering. "I can use some good news. The Horn of Africa analysts are, well, pretty dull, and the sooner I get to stop hanging out with them, the happier I am."
"We're going to discuss it over lunch," DiNozzo said. "Ziva claims she brought enough for everybody, but I've seen Cohen eat. Did you guys bring Dardik?" He looked behind his wife for any sign of the quiet analyst, but it was all clear.
"He said that he is in the middle of something," Ziva explained.
"I do not even think he realizes that we left, with how engrossed he was in the computer," Cohen finished. He shrugged. "More food for me."
"I don't need anything," Special Agent Todd Freiler piped up. "Bryn packed my lunch."
"Seriously?" Gabi asked with a frown. "And that's not enough to make you eat something else?" Bryn Freiler's lack of cooking or baking abilities were a joke throughout the building. Freiler nodded in acquiescence and put his lunch back in the fridge before following them to the conference room next door.
They distributed the food before getting down to business. "Ziva said that you said that your murdered analyst was looking through email," Cohen began.
"Wait, what?" Gabi asked, thoroughly confused. "One of our analysts was murdered? Who? Which division? When? Why am I the only one who doesn't know what's going on?"
"You were already in the Somalia meeting when Freiler came in," DiNozzo explained. "It's not one of our analysts, but one of the junior AFRICOM analysts at Headquarters was murdered in DC Saturday night. There's not much going on in the ways of forensics, so McGee called Tomblin—"
"Cunningham," Gabi interrupted. "Although why I should bother to remember her married name when she can't do the same for me is beyond me."
"She knows that you go by Stone, she just likes to annoy you," DiNozzo reminded her. "McGee called Special Agent Kim Cunningham to ask if she knew anything about African terrorists in DC, she said she didn't but told him that she'd call me, and I told her about our conversation about Al-Shabaab on Sunday."
"What conversation about Al-Shabaab?" Freiler asked.
"You see, this is why you need to be present on Sundays," Cohen said to the NCIS junior agent. "Al-Shabaab has been making more anti-American statements than usual. Since your agency's analyst was studying signal traffic that originated from email at her workstation the day before she died, Ziva asked Dardik to look into similar signals." He took a large bite of his food.
"And?" Gabi prompted.
Cohen chewed thoughtfully, making his case officer roll her eyes. DiNozzo caught her eye and grinned, which prompted another eye roll. Between the men she dealt with at work and the one she dealt with at home, she was constantly surrounded by men who were very good at being childish.
The Mossad operative finally swallowed his food. "We have not found anything that would explain what your analyst was looking for on your National Mall," he said. Now it was DiNozzo's turn to roll his eyes, this time at the dramatics Cohen was so fond of. Not that he minded the food, but if his normal lunch with his wife was interrupted just so Cohen could be dramatic about nothing, he was going to get annoyed.
"That's it?" he asked.
"No," Cohen said calmly. "It is what Dardik found incidently that is interesting. I do not know what it has to do with anything, but he found a few emails that reference a man referred to as 'the engineer'. I do not know if this means that Al-Shabaab has an engineer on retainer or if it is some nickname, but I believe he is either American or has access to American documents."
"Based on what?" DiNozzo asked, sitting up straighter.
"Based on intelligence that I cannot tell you about," Cohen said promptly.
"This means that Dardik did not tell him," Ziva explained.
"Wait," Gabi interjected. "'The engineer'? Are you sure that was what they said?"
"I know how to read Arabic," Cohen reminded her.
"What was the actual word?" He repeated it for the group, making Gabi's eyes widen in excitement.
"That came up in the Somalia meeting!" she exclaimed. "But I didn't think it had anything to do with the States. It was the same context as some chemicals, so the assumption was that they were talking about a chemical engineer."
"Any specific chemicals?" Freiler asked.
"I thought you would ask, so I made sure I wrote it down," Gabi replied as she pulled out a piece of paper decorated with Arabic writing. "Let's see… 'The engineer has a location. We must secure'… I'm not sure on this, because all of my chemistry classes were in French or English," she added warningly. "But if I had to sound it out, ethylene—that's something, right?—and mono…chlorine? Chloride. Sulfur monochloride. Or sulfur dichloride. Does that make sense?"
"Yeah," Freiler replied. "Unfortunately. Depending on the method of synthesis, either sulfur monochloride or sulfur dichloride can be combined with ethylene to synthesize sulfur mustard. Mustard gas."