Loose Ends: Chapter 10
A heavy silence had fallen over the bullpen after that last phone call, broken only by the rapid clicking of the keys under Geist's fingers and the distant ringing of telephones on the other end of the squad room. Everyone had their own things that they were working on, and nobody seemed interested in talking to anybody else while they did those things, and the minutes stretched on until they felt like hours.
Ziva was in the midst of sifting through Interpol files sent to her by one of her contacts while shooting subtle glances at the other occupant of the MCRT bullpen. Gibbs had disappeared shortly after barking his orders for everybody to get back to work, probably to go down to Autopsy to check in with Ducky and Jimmy Palmer to see if they found anything that would help with 2ndLt Andrea Dailey's murder. Abby had likewise returned to her downstairs domain, under orders from Gibbs to go through records from Immigration over the last few days to see if they could find any evidence of Colonel Ye entering the country. She had protested about the fragmentation of the data—there were multiple points of entry into the country, each of which had its own records—but like always when someone tried arguing with Gibbs, her words fell on deaf ears, leaving her muttering something about pointless busy-work as she trudged to the back elevator. She had no idea what Tony was doing, as he had already submitted the BOLO with the pictures of the man they knew as Colonel Ye, along with the instructions to other LEOs not to approach under any circumstance. He was now staring intently at his computer screen with a completely unreadable expression on his face. McGee was also at a computer—in this case, Gibbs', with the boss's approval—his fingers moving almost as quickly as Geist's. The NSA agent had given him instructions on something to check, using computer terms that Ziva couldn't begin to understand even if she wanted to.
She glanced up at Tony again to see him now looking at her. She narrowed her eyes slightly at the expression on his face, trying to figure out what exactly it was supposed to mean. It was almost like he was trying to figure out the next course of action, but she didn't know why he was wondering that; after all, LT Geist had made it very clear who was in charge of the investigation, and for once, it wasn't Gibbs and the rest of the team.
"Agent DiNozzo," Geist said from her position at McGee's computer, her eyes still fixed forward at the monitor, but a slight smile on her face. She said those two words with a heavy Italian accent, almost emulating the 'DiNotso' that Fornell always said. "Parli Italiano?"
He blinked at the sudden Italian phrase, an expression of confusion briefly crossing his face. "Si, un poco," he finally replied. "But I'm fluent in Spanish."
Geist smirked slightly, but the expression didn't quite meet her eyes. Ziva caught her glancing toward the elevator with an almost worried expression before returning her attention to the computer screen. "Spanish and Italian are very similar," she finally said. "Just change some 'a' sounds for 'o' sounds and you're practically fluent in both."
He frowned, trying to figure out why that was relevant. He eventually decided it was best to just ask. "Why do you want to know?"
Geist shrugged her right shoulder. "Apenas curioso," she replied in Spanish. Her eyes darted to the elevators again before falling on Ziva. Her lips twitched into a smile and her green eyes took on a decidedly mischievous glint before she casually said something in German. Ziva looked a bit surprised, then slightly embarrassed, before she responded to that in Russian. The back-and-forth continued, the language changing with each sentence that the two women exchanged, and all Tony could do was turn his head between them, trying to identify the languages as they were spoken: German, Russian, Greek, French, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese. He felt like he got lost in a foreign film festival and couldn't make out the subtitles.
"I do not know Chinese," Ziva responded in English, sounding almost apologetic. Geist grinned at that and chuckled.
"That's okay," she said. "What I said was that I don't speak Hebrew." Ziva smiled slightly at that, and Geist's eyes again lifted from the computer monitor to the elevator. She frowned but didn't say anything about what she was waiting for. "Agent McGee," she said, her gaze moving to the special agent currently sitting at Gibbs' computer. "I have three more aliases for you to put into that search database."
"Sure," McGee replied, his hands poised over the keyboard, ready to type.
"Li Qiao, Jonathan Fai, and—Jeremy." She stopped abruptly, rising and heading for the elevator without another word. DiNozzo and Ziva watched with interest as she walked quickly toward the man who stepped out, her attention seemingly focused on him and him alone.
"Jeremy?" McGee echoed, his attention still focused on the computer screen. "Jeremy who?"
"I think Geist, Probie," DiNozzo observed, still watching the lieutenant. The man who stepped out of the elevator, another Navy lieutenant with his black uniform jacket over his khaki uniform, was tall—probably a couple of inches taller than Tony—and lean, but without the gangliness that someone like Jimmy Palmer had. His dark hair was buzzed short; his almond-shaped dark eyes, speaking of some sort of Asian ancestry, were locked on the figure of the woman approaching him. Ariadne walked up to him confidently before taking his face between her hands and kissing him without hesitation. He appeared surprised by the move initially, but then moved his free right hand to Geist's hip, his left still holding back the black shoulder bag that hung there. "At least, if it's not, she has some explaining to do to her husband." He got up to watch the encounter from in front of Ziva's desk, resting his hands on its surface as he leaned closer to get a better look. None of the three NCIS agents bothered to hide the fact that they were watching the two lieutenants.
"You are just wondering if that means she is open to other relationships, Tony," Ziva mocked lightly in regards to his last comment.
"No way," he answered automatically. "Women with children… That's a complication I don't need."
"No children yet, Tony," McGee pointed out. The senior field agent made a face.
"Once they start acting as incubators, it's all over," he declared. Ziva rolled her eyes and returned her attention to the two lieutenants by the elevator.
And then without any warning, Geist pulled away from the man who was probably her husband. "Du Idiot!" she scolded angrily as she smacked him in the chest. DiNozzo leaned back involuntarily at her tone.
"Whoa," he murmured. "Someone's angry." He leaned forward again to get a better view of the interaction by the elevator. He frowned as he realized that LT Geist was scolding her husband—after they separated, the nametag declaring the new visitor to be 'GEIST' became visible—in German, and he was responding in the same. "Do you know what they're saying?" he asked Ziva in a low tone.
"Tony," she said incredulously. "It is a private conversation. I can not believe that you want to eavesdrop on them."
"Now, that I find hard to believe," he said thoughtfully. She frowned. "That you can't believe it," he clarified. "Don't you know me at all?" She gave him a dark look, but turned back to the Geists, appearing to listen.
"She asked what took him so long to arrive," Ziva finally translated. "He replied that he had to get another surgeon to take over for him, and then change out of his scrubs, take the Metro back to their home, change into uniform, and drive to the Navy Yard." She frowned slightly. "At least, that is what I think he said. He said quite a lot quickly and his dialect—"
"I think that's pretty much the gist of it," he interrupted, gesturing for her to continue.
"She replied that when getting a—a call? Maybe a page?—from his wife telling him to report to NCIS, that he should drop everything and go immediately, even if that means he must go in bloody scrubs. She then said that she should have sent for a car to pick him up, so he would not have had the option of wasting time."
Dr. Geist opened his mouth to reply to that, but before he could say anything, his pager went off. He gave his wife an apologetic expression as he pulled out his cell phone. "This is Dr. Geist. I was paged," he said into the phone when the call connected. He listened for a few minutes before saying, "Okay. I want you to tell him that he's a nurse, and until he gets an MD, that he's not a real doctor and isn't allowed to make decisions on patient care. His job is to do what the doctors order, which means he needs to give the guy the liter bolus of normal saline, and if he doesn't do that, I'll put him on report."
"Whoa," Tony muttered. "This guy's an ass." Ziva shot him a glare, and apparently his voice carried more than he realized, because Ariadne shot him an amused look before turning back to her husband.
"Agent DiNozzo just called you an ass," she reported. He shrugged as he replaced the phone on his belt.
"I'm a surgeon," he replied. "It's my job." He smirked slightly and bent down to kiss his wife lightly. "Sorry I worried you. Next time I'm called urgently to NCIS, I'll leave the OR immediately and let my patient die on the table as I make my way here post haste."
She rolled her eyes at his sarcasm. "It's a good thing you're good looking," she scoffed as she turned to return to McGee's desk. "It means I don't need to convince anyone I married you because you're a kind, caring, decent human being."
"That kid is going to think its parent hate each other," he pointed out as he followed her across the bullpen.
"It's also going to think we hate it, because we still refer to it as 'it'."
"Only for another," he glanced at his watch, "twenty hours or so. Then hopefully we'll have a real pronoun to go with."
"True." Standing by McGee's chair, she turned and studied her husband for a minute, and Ziva blinked at the expression on the NSA agent's face; it was very similar to a look she had seen on Tony's face when she had caught him looking at her. It was like Geist thought she could see what her husband was thinking if she just looked hard enough, like if she tried hard enough, she would know everything about him. Suddenly acutely aware of just how close her partner was to her, Ziva knew that she should step back, look away, and get back to her work, but found she couldn't.
Her eyes were still locked on the Geists as she watched Ariadne reach to the back of Jeremy's neck and tug at the chain of his dogtags from under his shirt. She continued pulling at it until the tags were visible before unclasping the smaller of the two loops. She pulled something off the chain and palmed it, then resecured the loop. There was an amused look on Jeremy's face as he held out his left hand without his wife saying anything, and Ziva blinked in surprise as she realized that Ariadne was slipping his wedding band onto his finger.
And as abruptly as the moment had started, it was over, and with the blink of an eye, Ariadne was back to business. "You probably have half a dozen AHLTA notes to finish, don't you?" she asked her husband. He grimaced.
"Probably closer to a dozen," he admitted. She rolled her eyes as she indicated for him to follow her to the rarely-used desk on the other side of the partition.
"Just let me get AHLTA on this computer, then you'll have something to do while we work on catching the bad guy."
"Sounds like the usual pattern," he said with an exaggerated sigh. "Have the doctor do doctor-work and hope he doesn't pay too close attention to the spies doing their thing using highly-questionable means."
She smiled thinly. "It's not like that at all, Jer," she protested lightly. She glanced up from the computer, her eyes meeting Ziva's briefly. "There are only two spies here. The rest are NCIS special agents."
"I stand corrected," he replied dryly. He made a face as he tugged at the collar of his uniform. "Did this uniform always itch so much?" he complained. Ariadne glanced up.
"You're the one who decided to go home and put it on," she reminded him before returning her attention to hacking into the DoD's electronic medical record system to download the program into the computer. Jeremy made a face in her direction as he began to pace around, obviously bored.
He stopped immediately in front of the screen and froze at the image displayed there. "Du meine Güte," he murmured. Ariande's head shot up at the comment. "This lieutenant looks just like—"
"Nichole," the female LT Geist finished softly. "I know." Her husband appeared to think about that for a moment.
"Someone's after you and your loved ones," he finally stated, his voice flat. The two continued to stare at each other, a determined look on her face and an unreadable one on his. Still standing close to her, Ziva could hear DiNozzo's sharp intake of breath, his head moving as he looked from one LT Geist to the next.
"And we know where he is." Everyone turned to see Gibbs stride toward them, a cup of coffee in hand. "Got a hit on the BOLO. Metro PD's keeping an eye on him in the National Mall."
"Let's go," DiNozzo said, heading toward his desk to grab his gear.
"No," Ariadne interrupted. With one last unreadable glance at her husband, her eyes went to Gibbs. "If you don't mind, Agent Gibbs, I have a better idea."