The Price of Honesty: Chapter 11
Special Agent Freiler didn't have much to add to the campfire, as old cases didn't tend to give the NCIS Bahrain—or any other overseas offices—any problems. Back in the States, criminals tended to go to prison or the brig, occasionally coming back for vengeance after their sentences were up. Overseas, they were shipped back home to be incarcerated, and then stayed in the continental United States after release. It would have to be an unusually motivated perp to make his way back to the Middle East in order to go after the investigator who put him behind bars in the first place, and unlike Gibbs, Burley didn't seem to piss criminals off enough to give them that much motivation.
After DiNozzo declared the campfire over, Gibbs sent Tomblin and Freiler back to their office to continue working on their open cases. McGee frowned at that, until Gibbs reminded him that they were there to work Burley's case, not to take over the function of the Bahrain field office. Although no one was saying it, everyone was sure that Tony would be given Burley's job soon, but until Director Vance actually gave the word, he was still Gibbs' senior field agent, and his job was still to do what Gibbs ordered. Kim Tomblin, as the senior ranking field agent assigned to the Bahrain, was the temporary Special Agent in Charge until something final was declared.
"McGee," Gibbs barked, making the junior agent look up quickly in alarm. "Need you to forward the evidence reports to Abby, and send Gracy an email reminding her to look into Stan's autopsy report."
"Uh, sure, Boss," McGee said tentatively. "But don't you want to be the one…" His voice trailed off at the look on Gibbs' face. "Or I can just do what you tell me to do," he said quickly.
"Good idea, Elf Lord," Gibbs replied dryly before making his way out of the conference room without any further explanations or instructions.
"Where is he—," McGee began to ask before DiNozzo cut him off.
"Intimidating someone down in the lab to ship the forensic evidence to Abby," the senior field agent replied, not looking up from the case report he was studying on the laptop, and silence again fell over the conference room.
"I am going to go upstairs to discuss the Yemen case with the Mossad team," Ziva said abruptly, rising from her chair.
"I'll go with you," Dunham said quickly, seeming relieved to have something to do that would get him out of that conference room. DiNozzo looked up, his eyes on Ziva before traveling over to Dunham and back again, which didn't escape the Mossad officer's notice, her eyes narrowing.
"I will try to remember to come back and let you know before I go to Yemen to investigate on-site," she snapped.
"That's not what I was going to say," Tony replied, his voice low and almost a little sad. "I was going to ask if you wanted me to call and let you know when we're ready for lunch."
Ziva blinked once before looking away, instantly feeling guilty about her outburst. She was already on-edge from Burley's murder and the possible connections to the terrorist camp she had been following peripherally for the last few months, and the last thing she had needed was a dose of Tony's irrational jealousy. Accustomed to assuming the worst out of people, that was immediately where her mind had gone. "Yes," she said simply. "Thank you."
He nodded once before turning back to the computer to resume his reading. He hadn't been expecting an apology—Ziva accepted them but gave them almost as rarely as Gibbs—and so wasn't surprised when he didn't get one. He couldn't blame her, either. They were all a little tense about working a murder they wished never happened in the first place, and he had a tendency to become an ass when he was tense. Especially when there was a guy involved who was giving Ziva attention, which wasn't exactly a rare occurrence.
Even with the side thoughts about Ziva's reactions, DiNozzo was pretty much done with Agent Amin's case files on the petty officer's kid, which didn't tell him anything new. It was just like Tomblin said; it was a pissed-off father, but there was no indication that he was about to become violent about it, and definitely not toward the supervisory field agent over the agent investigating his son's whereabouts. "This is a waste of time," he said with a shake of his head, closing the file on the computer.
"Hmm?" McGee asked from his position on the other side of the table, where he was copying the data from Burley's computer onto the laptop, or some such thing like that.
"These cases," DiNozzo said, making wide waving gestures at the laptop. "A petty officer who just wants to see his kid? A commander who doesn't seem to understand that no means no? A possible leak from Naval Intelligence that there are no leads on? The only active case that has any possibility of having anything to do with Burley's murder is the terrorist camp in Yemen, which our Israeli friends are taking care of for us. We need something more to work with."
"What're you thinking?" McGee asked with a frown. DiNozzo opened his mouth to respond, but didn't get the chance.
"If it wasn't professional, that leaves personal." Both agents turned to the door at the sound of their boss's voice. Gibbs gestured at the computer McGee was working on. "Anything personal on that?"
"Uh, not that I've found, Boss," McGee answered. "So far," he added quickly. "Everything I've seen saved on the hard drive is work-related—case files, reports, crime scene photos, agent evaluations, professional correspondence. He kept very good records of everything, organized by type and divided into sub-folders—case files by office that investigated them, evaluations by agent, et cetera." He looked up to see Gibbs giving him one of the 'get to the point, McGee' looks. "I haven't gone through his email or internet history yet, though."
"Keep looking," Gibbs ordered. "Look through the agents' files. Gonna want to talk to anyone with a poor evaluation." He turned away from McGee and looked pointedly at DiNozzo, who just shrugged.
"I've got nothing, Boss," he said. "This thing with the petty officer and his son is pretty cut-and-dried. I don't think we even need to talk to Agent Amin or Petty Officer DeTrolio." At the look on Gibbs' face, he quickly added, "Not that I'd leave any stone unturned, Boss."
"And Ziva?"
"Israeli meeting of the minds upstairs," DiNozzo said, pointing at the ceiling. "Dunham tagged along."
"I think he was tired of the death glares Tony was shooting him across the table," McGee said with a smirk, dropping it when DiNozzo turned the death glare in his direction. He was pretty sure that if he had been within reach, he would have gotten a swift smack to the back of his head for that one.
And he flinched when it came. "What was that for, Boss?" he asked Gibbs incredulously, and then blinked at the angry expression on the supervisory special agent's face. A few seconds too late, he remembered that they were in Bahrain investigating the murder of a man who had worked with everyone on the team—well, except for him—and that their usual joking and irreverent attitudes probably weren't going to cut it this time.
"You'd both be a lot more productive if you spent half as much time investigating as you do making fun of each other," Gibbs said, sounding more annoyed than angry as he rose from his chair and again headed for the door. "Be nice if you get something done while you're here."
Well, that time he sounded angry.
Neither man spoke to the other after Gibbs left the conference room, again for places unknown. Feeling more afraid of Gibbs than he had since he really was a probie, McGee stepped up his already quick search through Burley's computer, thinking, as he did the first time he turned it on, how amazing it was that somebody who was so organized on his computer was such a slob on his desk.
Just as Gibbs ordered, he took a look through the agent evaluation forms. Despite having been trained by Gibbs and having had worked under him for five years, Burley apparently had a much different philosophy to the evaluations than his former supervisory agent. Not only did they appear to have been done before the deadlines, but it looked like he actually spent some time thinking about what he was going to write, and when he gave someone a poor evaluation, he explained his reasonings in the 'comments' section.
With evaluations of each of his agents every six months in more than two and a half years, there were quite a few to go through, but McGee made his way quickly through the file, not bothering to give any one evaluation more than a cursory glance, sending each evaluation that was mediocre or less to the printer to allow him—and probably Gibbs—to review in more detail. When he came across Kim Tomblin's evaluations, though, his curiosity got the better of him. Not surprisingly, she got high marks in every category, with comments about her knowledge of the Middle East, her potential as a field agent, and how easy she was to work with. Of course, after having worked with her for the better part of three months, he knew those things already.
He skimmed through the other folder names, but nothing jumped out to him as being unusual; figuring that they were probably related to cases that Burley had worked, and remembering Tony's frustrations about this not seeming work related, he made a mental note to go through them later, and continued his search for anything that might have been related to the late agent's personal life.
After McGee's time in the sub-basement with the Cyber Crimes unit, he knew exactly how to get into a person's NCIS email account, and less than a minute had passed before he was looking at Stan Burley's in-box. Like the rest of his computer, everything was organized neatly into folders. There wasn't much of any importance in the new messages—mostly the standard NCIS mass emails reminding them of training schedules or the timelines for supervisors to finish their evaluation—and after excluding anything there as being case-breaking, McGee moved onto the folders of saved emails.
Burley had separate folders for each of the two agents he shared an office with, as well as additional folders for each of the subordinate field offices and divisions that reported to him. McGee's eyebrows rose when he realized that there was a folder labeled 'MCRT', which had a separate sub-folder labeled 'David'. Glancing up quickly to confirm that Tony was still focusing on the case folders and not on him, he clicked on it, feeling strangely guilty as he did so. It wasn't that he was expecting to find anything, well, personal, but—
"You're looking guilty, McSnoops-A-Lot." He blinked in surprise as his head shot up, wondering if always knowing what was going on around him was another sign that Tony was ready to be given his own team. "Whatcha doin'?"
"Uh, reading Burley's email," he replied, trying to keep his voice from giving anything away, but he could tell by the narrowing of the other man's eyes that he was far from successful.
"Must be some fascinating reading," DiNozzo said in reply, now giving McGee his full attention as he leaned back in his chair, threading his fingers together behind his head. "I can use some entertainment. Why don't you read it out loud?" His words, despite the forced levity, had a trace of something dark and angry that McGee couldn't miss if he tried.
"Tony…" he began, his voice trailing off with a sigh. "Forget it."
"No, tell me, McGoo," DiNozzo insisted, that caustic edge to his words now out in the open for anyone to hear. "Why don't you go ahead and tell me how difficult and immature I'm being and how I'm distracting you from getting your work done by asking all sorts of questions? Better yet, why don't you—"
"I was going to ask if you got any sleep last night," McGee interrupted, and DiNozzo blinked at the probie's ability to read him so well. They really had all been working together too long; it was amazing they even had to use words to communicate. He'd have to ask the resident science fiction expert at some point if it was possible to grow a telepathic connection without knowing it.
"Oh," he said instead. He righted himself in the chair, returning his attention to the case file, but could tell by the lack of clicking from McGee's keyboard that he was still being watched. "I liked you better before you grew a backbone." McGee smirked slightly at the words. "Get back to your email reading, Probie."
"Burley has a folder of emails from Ziva," McGee said matter-of-factly. DiNozzo's eyes narrowed slightly as he looked up at the younger agent.
"I doubt you have the clearance to be reading the contents of that folder," he finally said, his voice calm and even as he went back to his own work.
"I have the same clearance as you!"
"And I doubt I have the clearance to be reading those emails, either." Truthfully, he knew that if Ziva and Burley were communicating any sort of sensitive information, they wouldn't be using the unsecured NCIS email servers, but he also knew that nothing they had been emailing about had anything to do with Burley's murder. If it had, Ziva would have said something about it already.
"Aren't you curious—"
"No," DiNozzo interrupted. He looked up to see McGee giving him a look of disbelief, and just shrugged. "I trust her," he said simply. "And you should, too. Find somewhere else to sniff around, McSnoopy. Ziva doesn't have anything to do with this."