Disclaimer: no legal rights to NCIS, no money being made.
Beta: Mike91848. So all mistakes are mine.
Warning: Same as chapter one.
A/N: Any technical terms and technical information in this story, any technical babble and crazy weird solutions are all figments of my imagination and as far as I know, none of it is true.
CHAPTER 24
IN THE FELL CLUTCH OF CIRCUMSTANCE BEYOND MY CONTROL
Previously on NCIS
With no foreseeable solution to Ziva's mindset, Gibbs cut off that particular train of thought and turned to the subject he had called her out of DiNozzo's room for.
NCIS NCIS NCIS
Ziva started to turn away but Gibbs called her back.
"Just a moment, Ziva. Something else. When you were researching DiNozzo, Senior, your report indicated a lead that didn't pan out, an address in Boston?"
"Yes, Gibbs, as I reported, that address was an empty..."
He interrupted her while she was trying to explain, "Come to find out the numbers were right, just transposed. You were looking for the wrong address, Ziva. DiNozzo got it right but by that time, Senior was long gone when he got there."
He looked at her strangely, "We all can make mistakes, Ziva, but that was a rookie move, not worthy of you. That's why we check and double check or better yet, pass it on to another agent on the team if we're stuck." Gibbs furrowed brow indicated his confusion, it was almost as though...
She could almost read his mind. He was thinking that she had screwed up, maybe on purpose? She could not let him finish that thought. She dredged up a response that would surely placate him.
"Gibbs, what are you saying? That it is my fault that Tony is here beaten up so badly? No, that cannot be! Surely, that is not what you are thinking? If that is so, I will tender my resignation effective immediately because apparently I have not earned your trust." She started to reach for her gun, her badge only to be halted by Gibbs' hand placed not so gently on her arm.
Gibbs was taken aback by her obvious distress and he was angry. He wasn't adverse to setting a junior agent straight when they had shown ineptness or carelessness. If those mistakes got someone hurt, or worse, there would be no second chances, their butt would be on the street, his included, if the mistake was spiteful or deliberate.
But his pet peeve, when someone jumped ahead and put words in his mouth, that was a sure fire way to get slapped down, and that's where she had gone. To make matters worse, until she had chosen to defend herself against what she thought he was thinking, the thought never entered his mind that she was willingly holding back information. That seed was now planted firmly in his brain.
"Hold up, David. You remove that gun or badge you can be damn well assured you won't get them back! You want to go that route?" He challenged in her face.
Ziva's face blanched and she took one step back, something she would not have done for any other person, man or woman. As they stared each other down, she was the first to blink, her defiance hidden behind a mask of acquiescence.
"No, I do not, Gibbs." Ziva finally answered his question. "But I am crippled if...I am unable to do my job if I am not trusted."
"Trust is earned. And putting words in my mouth is a bad habit, Ziva."
"I realize that, Gibbs."
His steely eyes seemed to see right through her. "Trust can also be lost. If you have anything else to report, do it now!"
"I have nothing else to report, Gibbs." And she walked back into Tony's room.
NCIS NCIS NCIS
Tony was able to travel the next morning. The men who beat him up knew where to strike and how hard to punch so as not to break ribs or injure internal organs; professionals, who knew how to cause a world of pain. Tony accepted strong pain medication even though it invariably made him say things stupid or knocked him out just so he could fly back to DC.
McGee picked them up at the airport. He didn't say much even seemed a little aloof and his face turned an even pastier white than his complexion could really stand when he first saw the bruises on DiNozzo's face. Both Gibbs and Ziva knew what he was blaming himself for but no time to make comforting noises, Tim would just have to chalk it up as a learning experience and move on, but Gibbs would watch just to make sure that he was 'moving on'.
As it was, the object of Tim's guilt wasn't blaming anybody for anything being so conked out on drugs that a wheelchair seemed his best friend as he canted to the right and looked up to watch the airport spinning.
McGee drove to Tony's apartment and he and Gibbs helped him get undressed and into bed. Tony's torso showed discolored dark blue and black skin, and Tim idly remembered from his high school health course the technical term for what was happening: bruising, typically caused by a blow or impact rupturing underlying blood vessels eventually turning to a sickly yellow...
"McGee! Get a couple ice packs going if he's got any ice, otherwise go, do some shopping, plus get soup, rice, banana's, pudding, anything soft he can eat for a few days."
"Boss?" DiNozzo felt his shoes being removed.
"Still shouldn't talk, DiNozzo."
"Can take care of self, done...before..." Tony managed.
"Fine by me." Gibbs agreed, but continued to pull off one of his shoes.
"Relax, Tony, you could not pay us enough to babysit you." Ziva joked, coming out of the bathroom with two empty ice packs.
"I'll get the ice!" McGee dumped Tony's other shoe on the floor and brushed past Ziva as he made for the bedroom door. They heard the outer door close as Tim rushed to escape into the hallway. He skipped the elevator and pounded down the stairs escaping the claustrophobic confines of Tony's tiny apartment and the people in it.
Ziva looked after him thoughtfully, frowning. She felt the awkward silence mostly from Gibbs and the puzzled stare from Tony and felt it was her duty to fill in the blanks.
"Tim's good nature is in need of a Pepsi talk to bolster his confidence as he feels that it is his fault, Tony, that you have been so egregiously injured.
"Pepsi? Tim needs a...cola?"
"No, you do not understand! He blames himself for your injuries."
"Not his fault...father is scum."
"That is true, Tony, but if Tim had not..."
Gibbs terminated the conversation abruptly by turning out the light and saying for the third time, "No talking, get some rest, DiNozzo." He beckoned to Ziva to leave the room with him and closed the door.
Ziva felt the silence still awkward to her and uneasy as she came out of Tony's bedroom and was confronted by Gibbs who hadn't moved far from the door. He was displeased with her for some reason. Not that she could tell by his expression, inscrutable as always, but after studying him for so long, his expressions these days weren't always as insurmountable to decipher and undoubtedly what she had started to say back there had annoyed him.
"Wait until Tim gets back, Ziva, then take the car and head back to the yard. Fornell should be contacting us about any DNA matches his lab might have found. He'll probably call me but if he calls the office get that information to me immediately."
Gibbs instructions were given in cold clipped terms with no room for negotiation even though she tried anyway to let her wants be known as she gathered her coat and scarf.
"Protection detail, Gibbs? What time shall I come back to relieve you?"
"Don't come back, at least not tonight, McGee and I will handle it."
Gibbs went to the kitchen to prepare a pot of coffee while Ziva boldly looked around the apartment as they waited for McGee to return. They finally heard Tim fumbling at the lock trying to get in. Ever vigilant, Gibbs looked through the peephole first, then opened the door to let Tim, who was carrying several grocery bags, into the apartment. Gibbs looked out into the hallway, up and down, then stepped back into the room but left the door opened, expectedly.
Ziva took the hint. Only Tony needed a sledgehammer wallop to the back of his head to know when he wasn't wanted. And, it wasn't the first time she had been excluded from the 'all little boys club'. Her father had been a master at the game of separate and divide but she could play the game, too.
"Very well, then, I shall say goodnight. If there is anything Tony might need, please call me, Gibbs." She adjusted the scarf loosely around her neck and to the sound of McGee's, "goodnight, Ziva," she proudly left the premises. She heard no parting words from Gibbs.
McGee started putting the groceries away. He also felt the quiet too uncomfortable and tried to start a conversation. "Gibbs...I realize..."
The liaison officer had stirred the pot putting Gibbs in a much maligned position he never went to voluntarily, verbal communication. "Before you say anything, McGee, think about this. I don't know what I would have done in the circumstances you found yourself in. What you did..." Gibbs paused, gathering his thoughts. "What you did wasn't out of malice. I know for a fact that you took Tony's warning seriously by staying late and cleaning up the files even after you transferred the money. I don't think Tony blames you, he said himself, his father was scum. Try and put this behind you, Tim, and move on."
"Could you just put it behind you, just move on, Gibbs?" Tim gaped at him and out of his disbelief had spoken boldly.
And stumped Gibbs for a moment, how to answer? "Maybe not put it behind me, Tim, not right away." Gibbs thought of the years that had passed since his family's death, the memory still as fresh as the day it happened. But Tony wasn't dead.
"But move on then if you can't put it behind you, keep working," he finally conceded. "We need to get these guys, put them behind bars where they belong, or better yet, dead for what they did to those boys and girls. Don't be crippled by your guilt, McGee, it serves no purpose. Can you do that?"
As a pep talk, it wasn't half bad coming from a mute like Gibbs and Tim knew what he was saying; quit wallowing in self-recrimination and self-pity. But, easier said than done, after all, Gibbs wasn't the one beaten and hurting because of his carelessness.
Still, he'd try to follow Gibbs' council and put into practice his grandmother Penny's advice, one step at a time because he needed to help put these guys where they belonged. He'd start by being grateful Tony didn't seem to blame him for what happened. And, as important, he would continue to tune out the negativity, as Abby would say, that he always now associated with Ziva David.
"I can do that, Gibbs."
NCIS NCIS NCIS
The next day while Tim and Dorneget were on guard duty at Tony's apartment a private messenger knocked on the door. "Package for Anthony DiNozzo." He said through the door.
"Who's it from?" Tim said looking through the peephole.
"Don't know, man, I'm just the delivery guy. Jettison Delivery Service, we deliver any..."
"Put it on the floor and get out of here!" Tim said urgently and watched as the man's eyes bugged out and he dropped the package, turned and scurried away. Tim motioned to Ned. "Call Gibbs, I'm calling the bomb squad!"
"What's going on?" Came a tired sounding, pained voice as Tony limped from the bathroom.
"Package delivered from unknown sender. Could be a bomb." Said Dorneget excitedly.
Tony lumbered to the sofa and sat down gingerly accompanied by a long hiss of pain. That didn't make sense. Why send a bomb to kill him if they expected to get their money back. What was up with these criminals, brain damage?
"McGee, I don't think it's a bomb, doesn't make sense..."
"None of this makes sense, Tony, but I'm not taking any chances."
"Okay, McGuardian, but I'm going back to bed." And it was just as much a production for Tony to get up from the sofa as it had been to sit down, with much moaning and grunting.
Two hours later the bomb squad had come and gone. Gibbs and Fornell had come and stayed. The wrapped package contained a throwaway cell phone enclosed in plastic and dusted for prints, predictably, none were found.
Tony was questioned...again...about his attackers threats of exposing something they knew about him, something he had done? "You said in your handwritten notes that they said they 'wanted their money or they would expose you, they knew your secret'. What secret, Tony?"
Tony raised an arm with a grunt to run his hand through his hair in annoyed frustration. "I don't know! I'm telling you, again, and the answer will be the same every time you ask, I honestly don't know what they're talking about, Fornell. They know my secret? What? That I have a loser father, hell, that's no secret!"
Gibbs tended to believe DiNozzo didn't know and so did Fornell for that matter after interrogating him about it for most of the morning. If this mess was all Senior's doing then he would certainly have known some of Tony's secrets and from what they had garnered about Senior, they wouldn't put it past him to throw his son to the wolves.
But whatever these people thought they knew about Tony, they felt it was enough for him to cough up a fortune they insisted belonged to them, and that DiNozzo would just turn it over to them to keep them quiet about his secret. Who were they dealing with here, the Senator alone and his ill-gotten gains, the reject of a father trying to steal money that wasn't his, or some person or persons unknown as yet? All they could do was twiddle their thumbs and wait for the phone to ring.
The next day, the phone did ring and the only words spoken by a mechanical sounding voice were a list of numbers, and the message, "FBI, NCIS! This message is for you. We tried getting our money back through Tony DiNozzo but we realize that the matter is now out of his hands. So, here is your only warning. We know where your daughter Emily goes to school, Fornell. C4 would level the building. Transfer the money into the account numbers you were given or a different school will be targeted every day." The voice ended with, "You have until tomorrow noon."
Tony's face grew pale under the bruises but Fornell's face reddened as though hot steam had flitted too close.
"Son of a...!" Fornell cursed, shocked, then he started to move. Gibbs hurried to intercept him as the FBI agent barreled toward the front door.
"Fornell, wait, it's Saturday, no one's at the school today, calm down!"
"Calm down, calm down?!" Fornell all but shouted. He shrugged out of Gibbs' hold who immediately let him go. "They just threatened my kid!" The other agents in the room watched as Fornell took a step one way then the other, then reached for his phone.
"What are ya going to do, Fornell?" Gibbs stood nearby in case Fornell went off half-cocked again.
"I'm calling my daughter, then I'm getting in touch with my boss." Fornell said shortly and walked away to make his call.
"My God, blow up a school!" Dorneget sounded more in wonder than appropriately horrified. Gibbs glare, directed fiercely his way, suitably chastised the excited man into silence.
"Gibbs, this is crazy. Blow up a school? If this is my father's doing, I'll kill him myself, there won't be a need for a trial. But this, this isn't his style. He's a 'get what he can' kind of guy then takeoff for the hills, preferably Beverly Hills where he lives it up 'til his money's gone or whoever he conned the money out of. Then he'll take off to scheme and wheedle his next patsy. He doesn't stick around for confrontations."
"If this is your father's doing, DiNozzo, you'll have help hiding the body," Gibbs promised, then turned as McGee hurried over to him from the other room where he had been working with FBI specialists trying to trace the call. "Anything, McGee?"
"The call was untraceable, but..." and Tim watched Gibbs' eyes start to wander impatiently even before he tried to explain. "...but, you don't want to hear about that. They can't trace the call but they can trace where it is not coming from."
Gibbs huffed impatiently. McGee didn't know how much simpler he could make it for Gibbs to get it. As it was, Tim was already under a lot of strain, which led to babbling incoherently and that's all he needed, frayed under fire, would look good on his resume.
"Look, the call was coming from the Northern Hemisphere of the earth or the half that is north of the equator which includes North America, Central America and the Caribbean..." Seeing Gibbs' impatient look again, McGee just blurted out, "They're calling from somewhere in the Caribbean, Gibbs."
"The Caribbean, McGee? That's a lot of territory to cover." Tony tried to think of a place in the Caribbean where his father might have gone to ground.
Noticing Tony's furrowed brow, Gibbs asked, "You got something, DiNozzo?" Tony now felt the heat of Gibbs' impatient glare turned on him.
"Trying, Gibbs, but I just can't think where my father might be hiding in the Caribbean." Feeling drained and disappointed, Tony leaned back on his pillowed headboard to ease his hurting shoulder.
"That's because Senior's not hiding in the Caribbean." Fornell had just returned looking even grimmer.
NCIS NCIS NCIS
Anthony DiNozzo, Senior was picked up on a Greyhound bus heading to the borders of Mexico and the US because the FBI couldn't mind their own business and had placed his picture and a bolo for questioning alert out on him at the airports. So he couldn't fly commercially unless he wanted to get arrested and his friend wouldn't risk confiscation of his private jet, but he had to get out of the Country and soon. This was Junior's fault.
The clumsy guy following him around spying on him had been his first clue and he just knew that Junior had set it up even before the missing money issue. He had even bumped into the guy deliberately one day and could smell the staleness and cheap booze permeating his clothing and breath. The man may have been good at cloak and dagger stealth at one time but he had long since lost his edge. Senior eluded the man with two quick turns and a dark alleyway then made his way to the bus depot where he waited for two hours for his bus. He laughed at his cleverness. Whoever was paying that guy was wasting his money.
He had boarded the bus in obscurity, found a window seat in the middle of the bus and prepared to remain there inconspicuously unimportant for two some odd days. He would only get off the bus for questionable food and beverage at the germ breeding grounds euphemistically referred to as rest stop restaurants. A limousine was to meet him at the border then transport him across and drive him to his friend's mansion.
Circumstances out of anyone's control, certainly not his, had the border police and their vicious dogs randomly checking the bus that DiNozzo just happened to be on for a drug dealer and the drugs he was carrying. DiNozzo, a man usually in supreme control of himself and his environment, panicked as he watched the police heading towards the middle of the bus where he was sitting, absolutely convinced they were after him.
He foolishly jumped up and pointed a finger at himself, here I am, when he tried pushing his way past the armed police to escape out of the bus' front door. Police had no choice but to detain him at the local jail where his fingerprints were processed and he was identified as the elusive Anthony DiNozzo, Senior, wanted for questioning.
NCIS NCIS NCIS
"He was picked up on a bus headed to Mexico by border police who were on a routine search and seize for drugs and known drug dealers. He's being transported to NCIS as we speak, be there this afternoon."
"Is Emily alright?" Gibbs questioned his old friend.
"With Diane, at home."
"And the money, Fornell, the threat to the schools?"
"Hate to say this, Gibbs, but that money was yanked from a suspected, I repeat, suspected dealer in all kinds of crap, but we can't hold onto it. We got evidence that will convict the ex-Senator, plenty of it, but we don't actually know where that money came from, illegally gained or not, and the search warrant doesn't cover it. The account number the money is to be transferred to is the same but with a different name.
"To make a long story short, Gibbs, the higher ups say let it go, it's not worth hundreds of children's lives to keep it."
Gibbs nodded, nothing else to do but agree with the sentiment, children come first. The US policy of not negotiating with terrorist would take a blow but couldn't be helped.
McGee stepped forward with assertion that he hoped he pulled off in spite of his quaking insides and the beads of sweat starting to form. This idea of his would work.
"I've been working on a tracking system, on my own time that is...that, well it's not perfected yet but, I think it might work in this instance." Heads turned to look at McGee, who tried to feel nothing daunted at the stares, and he cleared his throat.
"I can hypothetically track the money through hyperspace using a randomized algorithm that...I can follow the money but not in real time to its eventual end destination," McGee clarified.
"What is it with you and all this calculating, McAbacus?" Tony's wry comment put a slight quirk to his mouth but at least he was sounding better through that mouth; the split lip healing, and not so nasally through the broken nose.
Ignoring him, Fornell's ears picked up at the save-face possibility of McGee's plan. Releasing that money made a mockery of the FBI's long-standing policies and the utter humiliation of the agency falling flat on its face because of the act of homegrown terrorists was not an option that Fornell was willing to accept.
"Will this even work, McGee, what you said?"
Gibbs gave the answer to his question. "What choice do we have, Fornell? You're releasing the money anyway, might as well see if we can figure out where it goes." Gibbs was nothing if not realistic. That money would be a lost cause in catching these criminals unless McGee's plan worked. Even if it didn't work, it was finally dawning on him what an asset the computer genius was to his team.
At Fornell's resigned shrug, Gibbs turned to McGee, "Do it, McGee, and McGee?" The younger man turned back, "Good work!"
NCIS NCIS NCIS
Fornell could take the flak he got, though never within his earshot, from his FBI contemporaries about turning DiNozzo, Senior over to NCIS but really, Fornell wanted answers and soon, they had threatened his child. And in his opinion, what better way to get those answers than to release the demon of a man no one wanted on their tail if they were in their right mind, to do the interrogating. After all, Senior supposedly had his own son beaten to a pulp, whose son just happened to be one of Gibbs' agents.
The team joined Ziva in the bull pen that afternoon including Tony whom Gibbs felt it only fair that he be there. Gibbs went upstairs while McGee rushed down to Abby's lab for her help in implementing his program. Fornell sat using the phone at Gibbs' desk while he waited for the go ahead to release the money.
"They're bringing your father up now, Tony, interrogation room one is open," said Ziva as she hung up her phone.
"How come they're calling you, David, and not Gibbs?" Tony turned stiffly in his chair to face the female agent and hoped he'd managed not to show her his discomfort.
"Those were Gibbs' orders, Tony. Security was to notify me if the security detail arrived with your father while Gibbs was still in MTAC."
"Gibbs afraid I'll wring his neck?" Tony said, mostly to himself, and inwardly seethed that he had to set eyes on Senior again. Tony was so absorbed in all the ways that he heartedly disliked the man that he almost missed Ziva's next comment.
"I do not have a relationship with my father that one could call congenial, either, Tony."
"Really, Ziva?" That peaked his interest. "Your father is a dirt-bag?" Gibbs was rubbing off on Tony because he was getting good at hiding his emotions. His voice came out even and his face didn't show his surprise at the conversational tone of Ziva's opening gambit.
"I would not go so far as to say that, Tony." She sounded affronted. "But, yes, my father and I have butted horns since I was old enough to want to have my own way and make my own decisions."
Really curious now, Tony turned to her leaning forward onto his desk. "That's what father's normally do with their girls, isn't it, try to protect them from the big bad world with big bad men wanting to get into...all they can from their baby daughters?"
"You are not a girl. You would not understand. It is stifling. I was more than ready to join the compulsory military service and then Mossad to get out from my father's iron fist. What about you, Tony? Did your father not submit you to much discipline in the name of love?"
"Nope."
"No discipline, Tony, that is hard to believe?"
"I didn't say that, Ziva. Discipline, yeah, just not in the name of love." Then realizing he had probably said too much, he turned back to his computer and desultorily struck at a few keys.
Sensing the short conversation was about over but wanting to know more, Ziva threw a bone to keep Tony talking.
"My father treated me as he treated his soldiers, orders, orders, orders. I grew up saluting him instead of saying good morning before breakfast but I never doubted that he loved me."
"Good for you though it must have been rough growing up that way. Mother no help?"
DiNozzo expressed the right amount of inquiry but he was also thinking that had they been on more friendly terms he would have thought Ziva was just trying to distract him from the upcoming unpleasant meeting with his father, but they weren't on those kinds of friendly terms, just a little above aloof coworkers, so what was her purpose?
"My mother died when I was young." Ziva continued. "My father raised my sister and I until she was killed in a bombing. I believe that is when my father became so unbending, rigid, yes, that is the word. Rigid, unable to bend just a little even for the only child he had left!"
Realizing how bitter she sounded with thoughts of Ari intruding in her mind, Ziva consciously relaxed her shoulders and leaned back in her chair. She had stiffened up and become tense while they were talking about fathers and...come to think of it, he had turned things around and she had done most of the talking.
Which had not been her aim in bringing up the subject in the first place. Knowledge was power; the more she knew about him the more power she had over him. Yet Tony had basically given her nothing. The man who was always in everyone else's business, she now realized, never divulged intimate details about himself. Ziva folded her hands on her desk and leaned forward more determined than ever.
"And your mother, Tony, what was she like?"
"She died when I was young, Ziva, but you already knew that from the dossier you prepared on me." Tony finally looked away from his computer and directly at her with knowing eyes and a smirk. "Anything else you want to pretend you don't know about me, Ziva, brothers or sisters, aunts, uncles, nieces or nephews? What is it really you want to know. Must be something big, too afraid to ask, Ms David?" He laughed outright at her, making fun of her, mocking.
Fuming again at the irreverence aimed at her, she could have used skills essential to investigative work to figure out his ploy...misdirection. But as was his aim, she took it personally, angered at being called out for her snooping.
"Too afraid of you, of course not, Tony! I was just trying to have an idle conversation with you, to distract you from any pending confrontation with your father, nothing else."
"There's no pending confrontation pending!" Said Gibbs as he re-entered the bull pen.
"You two can witness in the observation room while Fornell and I interrogate your father, DiNozzo. Let's go!"
NCIS NCIS NCIS