Loose Ends: Chapter 11
"Oh, my God!" Abby Sciuto enthused for what had to be at least the fourth time. "I can't believe I get to do some real field work!"
"It is not exactly field work, Abby," Ziva countered from the next seat on the Metro. Ariadne had clearly outlined her plan for bringing in Colonel Ye; to Gibbs' obvious displeasure, it involved strategic placement of women who could be mistaken for her, at least from the back, a description which happened to include the black-haired forensic scientist. Their first stop, though, was to L'Enfant Plaza, to get both Abby and LT Geist clothing for the mission. Ziva was the only one already appropriately dressed.
"It's not lab work," Abby countered, "which just leaves field work. Am I going to be carrying a gun? Because I know how to fire a weapon. A lot of weapons, actually. I do so all the time in the lab."
"You're not going to need a weapon," Geist said, her first words since explaining her plan in the bullpen. "You're going to be outside the line of fire. Far outside of it."
"Okay," Abby said, relief obvious in her voice. "Not that I'm not willing to do more, but—"
"It's not your training," Geist replied as she stood to exit the Metro at their stop. She smiled thinly at the forensic scientist. "We understand that." Abby merely nodded in reply.
"You know, I've never been shopping at L'Enfant Plaza," Abby said thoughtfully as they walked the promenade, their unusual mixed appearance—a goth, a Navy lieutenant, a casually-dressed Israeli spy—not even getting a second glance from the busy DC crowd. "In fact, I don't think I've ever heard of anybody shopping at L'Enfant Plaza."
"That's because there's not much here," Geist said thoughtfully as she ducked into an off-label clothing store. She smiled thinly at the middle-aged saleslady as she began rifling through the racks. "Here. Try these on," she said, trusting a pair of jeans and thick dark sweater into Abby's arms.
"These?" she asked, making a face.
"I know," Geist replied. "But the point is to put you in something that a cryptographer might conceivably be seen in, in her off-hours. And warm enough for you stand outside in for as long as this takes."
While Abby was in the fitting room, Geist continued to search for clothes for herself, pulling shirts out and replacing them quickly. Ziva blinked as she realized the pattern of what the lieutenant was rejecting. "You are attempting to emphasize your pregnancy," she said. Geist paused for a minute to study her before returning to her shopping.
"That's right," she finally said. Ziva frowned.
"Will it make him less likely to kill you, if he knows that you are pregnant?"
"No," Ariadne replied, still not meeting the Mossad officer's gaze. "If anything, it'll probably piss him off more. At this point, he suspects that I was an American spy sent there to gather his secrets, but there are other possibilities."
"That you are a mercenary offered more money from someone else," Ziva filled in. Geist nodded.
"But if I show up visibly pregnant, it'll confirm that I was on a mission all along, that I had a committed relationship to return to." She smirked slightly at a memory. "We planted clues in my cover identity that I had a lesbian lover in Greece, to distract the Intelligence operatives trying to find holes."
"The more distracting information they have, the less likely they are to dig deeper." That was a lesson Ziva learned from her time as a control officer. When she was in the field, she never gave her cover identities a second thought, taking them for granted as another layer of security between her real life and her mission; once she became the one in charge of creating them, she realized just how vital every piece of information was.
"They fit." Abby's glum voice distracted them from their conversation as they turned toward the fitting rooms, where the pig-tailed goth was frowning at the mirror. "I feel like the cover of Boring Suburban America Weekly."
"I'll try not to take that personally," Geist said dryly as she traded places with Abby. She returned a few minutes later in pair of tight black stretch pants under a long-sleeved shirt-dress that was tight enough to make it obvious that she was pregnant without being trashy. Ziva frowned slightly; even in uniform, she couldn't figure out how she hadn't immediately noticed the bulge in the otherwise model-thin lieutenant's abdomen. If she had been staring, Geist seemed unperturbed by it. "Let's pay for these and continue shopping. We still need shoes and make-up." She pulled out a credit card to pay for her outfit and Abby's, signing the receipt without looking at the total.
Their next stop was a shoe store—cleverly called "Shooz"—where it was a pair of black fur-lined imitation Ugg boots for Abby and flexible, slip-on cycling-type shoes for Geist. The final stop was to a boutique-style cosmetics store, where the lieutenant put a small fortune of Japanese-made make-up onto that same credit card she had used previously.
Geist frowned as she studied her watch for a minute. "Ye was spotted on the Mall an hour ago," she said. "Realistically, we probably have another hour before he's going to move on. We could go back to the Navy Yard, or straight to the Mall."
"We should go back to NCIS and coordinate with the rest of the team," Ziva replied. Geist's eyebrows rose slightly at something she heard in the tone, but nodded her agreement.
"Let's go," she said.
---
While the women were out shopping, Gibbs, DiNozzo, and McGee continued to coordinate with the necessary authorities and departments to bring this 'Colonel Ye' down. Dr. Jeremy Geist hung back from the NCIS agents, listening with a frown on his face. He considered himself a pretty smart person—not everyone could go on to become a surgeon, after all—but to him, the whole plan seemed far too simplistic to ever work. Gibbs and DiNozzo would be providing a perimeter while McGee ran surveillance from the truck. Abby Sciuto and Ziva David would be positioned close enough to Ye that the Chinese man would be momentarily distracted by trying to determine which tall raven-haired woman was Ariadne Geist, and his wife—his pregnant wife—would be wearing a wire when she approached Ye and 'talked'.
There had been a glint in Ariadne's green eyes as she explained her plan, something hard that he didn't recognize at all. He knew what she had done at the beginning of her career, in the years between graduation from the Naval Academy and when their paths crossed again—espionage, subterfuge, state-sponsored assassinations that "didn't happen"—but he had never before seen that person. The Ariadne he knew ran more than four miles every morning, was most comfortable in jeans and a tee-shirt, spent most of her time in front of a computer screen, liked to try new restaurants, could cook like a pro, and teased her husband by speaking languages he didn't understand at every opportunity she got. He didn't know the woman who could fit in anywhere, fired a weapon as accurately with her left hand as with her right, or knew how to kill someone and leave no evidence that she was there—or that the bastard was murdered in the first place.
She had told him once that that woman died after getting shot on a mission. He believed her, until she left abruptly for the 'deployment' that started this whole mess that brought them both to NCIS.
"Dr. Geist." He blinked at the intrusion of Special Agent Gibbs' voice into his thoughts. "You'll stay here."
"No," he said bluntly, shaking his head to add emphasis. "I'm going." Gibbs frowned.
"No place for surgeons."
"I've been listening to this plan of yours, and if anything goes wrong, there will be a place for a surgeon. No, Agent Gibbs, I'm going." The NCIS agent still looked unconvinced, so he pressed on. "I've qualified as an expert on both the pistol and the rifle, and Ariadne makes me go to the range at least once every other week to keep it up. And I won't get in the way." Gibbs looked ready to refuse again, prompting him to add, his voice low and intense: "That's my wife and kid out there." The two locked eyes in a silent staring match.
"You'll stay in the van with McGee and the translator," Gibbs finally declared. "You leave that van, I'll shoot you myself."
"Deal."
"Bad news, Boss." Everyone in the bullpen turned to face Agent McGee, again seated at his own desk, hanging up his phone. "We don't have any Chinese translators available."
"CIA?"
McGee shook his head. "Both the CIA and NSA said they can lend us someone tomorrow."
"We don't have until tomorrow, McGee!"
"I, uh, told them that, Boss. They said there's nothing they can do."
"Tomas," Dr. Geist said abruptly. The other men turned to look at him. "Lance Corporal Tomas Jin, Ariadne's younger brother. The only problem is, he's not exactly a translator."
"Armed Forces School of Music." Gibbs said flatly. "Don't need a bugle player."
"Piano, actually," Dr. Geist corrected. "He also speaks Chinese fluently. Same dialect as Ariadne. Obviously."
"Don't have any other options," Gibbs said after a moment. "Get him here."
"On it, Boss," DiNozzo replied quickly, reaching for his phone. He was still talking to someone at Little Creek about getting a chopper to get Tomas from base to the Navy Yard when the elevator doors slid open, revealing the three women. Jeremy found himself smiling at how unlike Ariadne her clothes were. DiNozzo smirked when Abby's outfit registered.
"Don't start," the forensic scientist said warningly. He just grinned.
"Jer," Ariadne said quietly, handing him a shopping bag. He glanced inside, confused. "My uniform and shoes." She tilted her head up to kiss him lightly. "I'm going to need those tomorrow." He saw the look on her face and nodded slightly, recognizing the words for what they were, a request to trust her on this mission. "Okay," she said, now addressing the other women. "Hair and make-up."
DiNozzo smirked as he hung up the phone. "And then after that, a pillow fight. This is just like a slumber party," he said with obvious glee. Ziva rolled her eyes.
"Yes, Agent DiNozzo," Ariadne said dryly. "Covert missions are often exactly like slumber parties. If your slumber parties involve guns, wires, and international terrorists."
