Chapter 36: What To Do?
"Bad news, Jethro," Jenny said as soon as Gibbs walked in the next morning. She was seated at his desk, obviously waiting for him.
"How much worse can it get?" he asked rhetorically.
"I'm getting pressure from above to release Blaser. He's lawyered up, and unless we can get some hard evidence, he'll be out on bail. And you know what that will mean."
"Isn't shooting an unarmed woman enough evidence?"
"Apparently not," Jenny said, her voice rough with anger. "There are people who don't care about the casualty rate, only the results. You should know that better than anyone."
"How long do I have?"
"I can't guarantee beyond today. There's just too much pressure from the higher-ups. We need something that doesn't depend on the testimony of people who are unable to speak." She looked at Gibbs and grabbed his arm as he glared at her. "I'm sorry. Jethro, I know that you are all worried about Sarah and McGee, and I know where you'd rather be right now, but if we don't get him soon..."
"We'll get him." Gibbs said. "That's a promise."
Jenny nodded and went up to her office. In spite of his assertion, she was afraid that Blaser would disappear from custody and from surveillance long before they had evidence.
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"Gibbs, I need you to get down here!" Abby crowed in triumph.
"What do you have, Abby?" Gibbs asked. Tony and Ziva looked up tiredly from their computers. They had searched Blaser's car, his home, his office and come up with nothing. It had been a very long day which had been preceded by very little sleep the night before.
"It's not what I got; it's what Tim got! Just get down here. You have to see it to believe!"
"Alright, we're on our way down."
"Good. Hurry it up!" Abby disconnected.
Gibbs exchanged glances with Tony and Ziva and headed to the elevator.
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"Wentworth Blaser?" Gibbs said as he sat down across from the man he wanted to destroy.
"Could you hurry this up, Agent Gibbs? I have things to do."
"I'm sure you do. Things to do, people to kill..."
"That's out of order, Agent Gibbs," Blaser's lawyer put in quickly. "If you have nothing more than baseless accusations, we have nothing to say."
Gibbs smiled, but that smile only served to make both of the men nervous.
"Do you know a Dr. James Tanner?"
"I can't say that I do, Agent Gibbs." He was good. Gibbs had to give him that. There was no reaction to the name.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure I'd remember him. I don't see doctors very often."
Gibbs looked down at the top page of a sheaf of papers he was holding.
"Dr. Tanner: Leslie Adams personality becoming unstable. Recommendations? Signed, Wentworth Blaser."
Blaser made a small sound of protest, but it didn't have a chance to become an actual word because Gibbs plowed on.
"Dr. Tanner: As per recommendations, kill command is to be delivered to Leslie Adams ASAP. If there is a failure to make connection, a team will be sent out to remove plant. Signed, Wentworth Blaser."
"Forged signatures," the lawyer said.
"How about this one? Handwritten. Dr. Tanner: Unexpected failure of personality. Immediate elimination. Signed, Wentworth Blaser." Gibbs paused and looked up. "The handwriting has been verified."
"When?"
"You signed your name when you were booked. We also have samples taken from your home."
"My home?" Blaser was outraged.
"Of course. You were seen by NCIS agents killing an unarmed woman. We easily obtained warrants to search your residence, as well as your car and office. Shall we go on?"
"How..."
"Dr. Tanner: Revisions to personality program are needed. Too many plants have been destroyed. Signed, Wentworth Blaser." He put down the paper and picked up another. "Dr. Tanner: Congratulations on successful plant. Timothy McGee performance is exceeding expectations. Over the last five years, eight missions have been preserved due to reports. Signed... Do you want to guess whose name is on this one?"
"Where did you get those?" Blaser asked, his eyes flashing.
"Don't say another word, Wentworth," his lawyer said.
"Shut up, Richard. Where?"
"Dr. James Tanner. Do you have anything to say?" Gibbs waited. When Blaser didn't say anything. "That's alright. You'll have some time to think about it." He stood and leaned across the table. "You're not going anywhere." He left the room and went to observation.
Jenny glanced at him as he entered. "Where did you get those? We didn't have a warrant to search Tanner's place... although we could have gotten one."
"We didn't need one. Tanner left a note for McGee to get into his safe. Whether he had intended us to get all the emails and memos from Blaser is irrelevant. Abby was going through McGee's bag this morning and found them inside. It's the evidence you need to hold him."
"You know it's not going to be that easy though. He'll be offered a deal."
"If we can take down his network, then I won't lose too much sleep over it."
"How will you do that?"
"Let him stew for awhile. Then, when we find out what deal is offered, we can make it contigent upon his cooperation."
"How very political of you, Jethro. What we really need is a member of one of these teams who can testify to being ordered to commit murder."
"Hey, Sarah is a civilian. He'll have to be tried in civilian court for that. Besides, I would think that the CIA and FBI would want to be in on taking down a man who was able to steal information from their organizations."
Jenny turned away from the mirror completely. "Just how much information is in those papers?"
Gibbs smiled. "What I was reading only scratches the surface. We have names, dates, locations. We don't have team names, but we do have the conscious and unconscious traitors, probably from the beginning of the company. If any of them were placed in the FBI or CIA, we can verify it. We also have the dates of the orders for their deaths."
Jenny returned the smile. "I think some inter-agency cooperation might be just what we need right now."
"Is anyone in the FBI and CIA still speaking to you?" Gibbs asked slyly.
Jenny inclined her head in acknowledgment of her past missteps. "If they won't talk to me, I'll get Fornell to do the talking, but I think dangling Blaser as a carrot will open a lot of doors. I'll arrange for his continued incarceration and talk to some people. I'd like to have everything we know available." They walked out of the room and headed back to the bullpen.
"Abby's organizing all her information as we speak. Ziva and Tony are doing the same. You should have it all within the hour."
"You've been busy."
"I don't think I could keep them here for more than a work day, not with McGee and Sarah still in the hospital. It seemed wise to move them along."
Jenny's smile faded. "How is it looking?"
For the first time, Gibbs allowed the doubts to surface. "Bad. Sarah is in critical condition and the doctors aren't hoping for much."
"And McGee?"
"The nurse told me last night that he'll be dead within a week if they can't figure out what's wrong with him."
"Well, if wishing can make it so..."
"If wishing could change things, none of this would have happened in the first place."
"Of course. Well, I won't try to insist that you all stay beyond the end of the work day, not that I think it would do much good if I did."
"You could come yourself, Director."
"Not if I want to keep our friend under lock and key. Sometimes, the presence of authority is enough."
"That's why I never want to be in charge."
She smiled again. "At least, not officially."
"That's the only way to go." He stepped off the elevator, leaving Jenny to return to her office while he went to help his team.
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Liz sat on the bed, curled up in a ball. She called it her thinking pose. She'd been doing a lot of thinking over the last day. Her first inclination had been to just go back home and forget what she'd tried to do, but when the taxi driver had asked her where she wanted to go for the third time, she realized that she couldn't just leave. She'd already reserved a hotel room by the airport and she figured she might as well use it. She'd called her parents and Cassie but hadn't told them anything about what was going on. She didn't know how to explain it, and she didn't think they'd believe her anyway.
"What do I do?" she said aloud. Five times that day alone she'd stood up to leave... heading somewhere, but she'd always sat down again, undecided. On the one hand, he was her brother, but on the other...who was he really? What could she expect of someone who was unconscious in a hospital bed? What could he expect of her? A million questions, none with answers, flitted through her mind as she continued to sit and think. Life wasn't supposed to have these strange events in it.
"What do I do?" she asked again.