The Price of Honesty: Chapter 29

A/N: I've had a few comments about how long it took Gibbs and Co. to get to Burley's apartment and for Tony to make the "Rear Window" reference. Although a lot of time in RL has passed since the first chapter, it hasn't been that long in the story; they arrived in Bahrain around midnight on Monday night (local time), Tuesday was spent getting caught up on the case and the old cases and fighting jetlag (not the episode; this has nothing to do with Paris), Tomblin was arrested on Wednesday. It's only Thursday morning. Yes, they could have gone to Burley's apartment on Tuesday morning, but with the body gone and the crime scene cleared out, there was no reason for anyone to anticipate finding anything.


If David Cohen had his way, missions would consist of a month of planning—preferably by someone else—followed by an hour of action. He knew that Ziva David, with her metsada background, likely felt the same way. Shava Cremieux, trained in psychological operations and deception, measured missions in months, sometimes even years. And Avrum Dardik, as long as he got a couple of hours a day to play World of Warcraft or whatever the current game was, was happy no matter how long the mission was taking.

Spending a day and a half traveling for a mission with poor intelligence meant he had entirely too much time to do nothing but worry and come up with 'worst case scenarios', each worse than the last.

"Your nervous anticipation is making me nervous." He took a deep breath as he reluctantly rolled onto his side and into a seated position on the floor where he had been doing his pushups, to see Shava watching him with eyebrows raised.

"I do not like waiting," he admitted as he rose to his feet, using the tee-shirt he discarded to wipe the sweat from his forehead. "Where is Ziva?"

Shava shrugged a shoulder, her eyes returning to the book resting in front of where she was reclining on her bunk. "Likely running up and down the stairs in the lower compartments," she answered. She looked back up at Cohen. "What exactly is the story Agent Dunham gave the crew of this ship? A group of Jews who exercise fanatically typically gets some attention."

"He paid them enough money that they do not care to make theories," he replied. She raised her eyebrows briefly to that before her attention returned to her book. Cohen watched her for a moment as he grabbed a clean shirt and tossed it on. Remembering his conversation with Ziva the evening before, he decided it was time for a talk with the young operative.

"How do you like Bahrain?" he asked conversationally. Shava glanced up again before slowly placing a bookmark and closing the book.

"It is different than my previous work," she finally said. "But not necessarily in a bad way."

He nodded slightly. "And outside of work?"

Shava's eyebrows rose, her dark eyes slightly wary and slightly amused. "I do not mix work and pleasure," she said as a response, and Cohen chuckled and shook his head at the way she misinterpreted the question, before becoming serious.

"That is not what I have heard."

Instantly, the look on Shava's face became challenging. "So we are going to do this now?"

He spread his arms to indicate the empty room. "We have the time. I am not going anywhere else."

She reluctantly drew herself to a seated position on the bunk. "I would ask you what you have heard, but I have heard all of the rumors, so there is no need. Yes, I was having an affair with a high-ranking Mossad officer. No, I am not going to tell you who. No, I was not pregnant." She rolled her eyes slightly. "I am not nearly careless enough for that."

"And then?"

"And then I ended it and asked him to use his position to get me out of Tel Aviv. He did."

"Just like that."

She shrugged a shoulder. "I might have hinted that his wife would find out if he did not."

Cohen couldn't help but smile at the innocent way she said that. "Devious."

"Devious was my job." She sighed and fluffed out her hair slightly. "Why is this suddenly important? We have been working together for six months."

"We have not had any major operations in that time. Now we do. We are going to be in a confined area with a lot of weapons involved. I like to know as much as possible about as many people behind those weapons as possible."

"You have not questioned Officer David."

"Ziva and I have worked together before," he informed her. He didn't bother to explain that it was one very quick mission and they exchanged maybe ten words in that time. "Besides, it is impossible for Officer David to have any secrets, for her entire life."

"Because her father was the director." Cohen nodded. "But she has been in America for six years now."

"And you think Mossad has not been keeping tabs on her in that time? I am sure you could find somebody in Mossad who could tell you how many nights she has slept at Agent DiNozzo's apartment in the last month. I would not recommend you bring that up to her, though."

"I think maybe it is easier to keep secrets than you may think." She gave him another tight smile before purposefully opening her book again, telling Cohen without a question that the conversation was over.

---

While DiNozzo and McGee were checking out the building with a view of Burley's place, Gibbs headed back to the office to do some police work.

LCDR Cunningham's leave paperwork came in via fax during the night, listing his leave address as the home of Pamela Grazier in Coatesville, Pennsylvania; a quick check of Cunningham's officer jacket listed Pamela Grazier as his mother. A phone number was listed, but while Gibbs usually couldn't care less if he woke somebody, he figured there were things he could be doing other than waking middle-aged women from sleep.

It didn't take him long to track down what Sergeant Ben Cole had been up to since he lost his leg the day Tomblin was shot. After a brief stay at Bethesda and longer stay in the rehab unit at Walter Reed, he went back home to Wise County, Virginia, and applied for a position as a sheriff's deputy. After a few rejections, they decided that perseverance should mean something and gave him a shot.

With one leg, he graduated at the top of his class from the police academy.

His cell phone number was listed in his veteran's file, and after three rings, Gibbs was rewarded with a groggy, "Hello?"

"Sergeant Benjamin Cole?"

His question was met with a brief period of silence. "Haven't heard that in a while. Yeah. Who's this?"

"Special Agent Gibbs, NCIS."

"Yeah, okay. Do you mind holding for a few minutes?" Before Gibbs could answer, he heard the flat nothingness of a phone on mute. A good five minutes had passed before Cole came back, sounding much more awake. "Sorry. I didn't want to wake my wife, and it takes a few minutes to get my prosthesis on. What can I do for NCIS?"

"Need to talk to you about Kim Tomblin."

The statement was met with another period of silence. "Wow. Okay. Not expecting that, but okay. What do you need to know?"

"Tell me about the day she earned her Bronze Star."

"You mean the day she saved my life?" he asked in response, sounding slightly amused. "To be honest, I don't remember much of that day, most of what I know is what my buddies told me afterwards."

"Just tell me what you know."

"Okay. We were in the Humvee, heading back to camp after a mission. I honestly couldn't tell you what we did, things from Iraq have blended together a bit since then. I remember little snippets of things. Corporal Owens was driving, I was behind him, and Kim was in the front passenger seat. I remember her laughing about something, probably one of Owens' fucking jokes. Sorry about the profanity, sir."

"Doesn't offend me," Gibbs replied.

"That's good, I guess. Uh, the next thing I remember is waking up in the field hospital, but my buddies told me what happened. An IED was detonated as we were driving by, blew us up pretty good. Owens, Petersen, and Doc—HM2 Mallory—were killed on impact, Gaddis died at the hospital." He lapsed into silence for a second before speaking again. "The L-T and a couple others made it away from the vehicle before she realized that I had the radio. She came back for it and me, I guess, her and Stetson dragged me out of the Humvee and into the ditch where the others were set up. That's when she got shot, but she didn't stop. The guys said she was pretty unbelievable—she got shot and all she did was cuss and switch which hand she was using to help drag me. And then she radioed it in and they got us out of there, killing the haji bastards—sorry—who were shooting at us. Someone even managed to salvage our gear after the bullets stopped flying, although the Humvee was toast."

"Pretty impressive."

"Yeah, no shit. I didn't believe it at first, because she's so small—I mean, it always surprised me that she was even able to get her gear on, and I'm not exactly a lightweight—but the guys all swore that that's what happened and there's no reason that they'd lie about that. Adrenaline or something, I guess."

"You see her after that day?"

"Once, sir. I flew out to Pendleton when the unit came back, so I could be standing there waiting for them when they deplaned. She asked what I was up to, told her I was scheduled to start the police academy a couple of months later, that I wasn't go to let a little amputated leg stop me. She said 'oorah', and I saluted, and that was the last time I saw her."

It was pretty much exactly as McGee had explained it, which was no surprise—after all, Cole himself admitted that everything he knew was from the other guys in the squad—but that didn't mean Gibbs didn't learn anything from the conversation. "One last thing, Sergeant—"

"It's 'deputy' now, sir."

"Deputy. You referred to Tomblin as 'Kim'. I was in the Corps for a lot of years, and I never called an officer by a first name." There was silence on the other end, waiting for the other shoe to fall. "Were you sleeping with your lieutenant?"