CHAPTER 5

Eradication

"Right now I'm having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before."

~ Steven Wright

While they were trying to determine the identities of the jet's passengers, Jackson Gibbs returned from the diner flanked by his protective detail. He was smiling and bearing a box of pastries and a tray of coffees, which he offered first to Tony. It was at that point that Tony realized he was starving. He dove into the box and chose a croissant with white icing and almonds, took a coffee and sweetener, and thanked Jackson with a thumbs up and an appreciative sound.

Tony had just taken a big bite of the croissant when Ziva sauntered over. "I must apologize to you, Tony," she said. "I did NOT mean to hit you… well, I did mean to, but not to hurt you. I did not know you had been shot in that arm. Please accept my apology."

Tony took his time chewing and swallowing as he watched McGee settle Jackson at a desk with a couple of newspapers. He then took a sip of his coffee and gave Ziva a long and deliberately dubious look. She seemed sincerely apologetic, but with her, who could tell? With a curt nod, Tony said, "Sure," in such an offhanded way it was obvious he didn't mean it.

Ziva narrowed her eyes. "That is all you have to say? Oh… I understand. You plan to hold this over me, and expect me to… to enter all the old cases in the database, and restock the van for the next year, and…"

Chuckling, Tony said, "So nice of you to volunteer. You hear that, Gibbs?"

With an affronted expression, Ziva said, "If you expect me to do your menial tasks–"

"Ziva, leave him alone," Gibbs barked. "And if you think stocking the van or doing casework is menial, then you have another thing coming. I'll gladly show you what menial means, and we can start with latrine duty." As soon as he saw Tony grin, he added, "And you, stop baiting her. Ziva, follow up on that list of passengers and see if you can find out anything. Where did the passengers go once they disembarked? Did they have a vehicle? Was a Mr. Anthony with them and if they had fake IDs or passports, how the hell did they get through customs?"

Jackson piped up, "It's called greasing the palm. Used to do it all the time… back in the old days." He looked over the top of his reading glasses and smiled at his son. "Somebody was looking the other way. Just saying."

Gibbs nodded and said, "McGee, check out the Customs officers. And I want to know the country of origin for all the passengers, and do a deep dive into their backgrounds."

"Uh, even Senator Landry?" McGee asked. One look at Gibbs' expression and he said, "Of course, Boss, deep diving."

While Ziva did as asked, Tony mused, "You don't think that Mr. Hernandez is…?"

McGee replied, "Sounds like an alias. Alejandro Rivera's father was Pedro Hernandez, a well-known drug cartel leader who was killed twenty years ago…"

Gibbs did not seem to like that suggestion, and was about to respond, when his phone rang. As soon as he finished a brief conversation, he said, "Abby wants to see us." McGee rose to join him, but Gibbs pointed at Tony. "Only DiNozzo."

On the way down to the lab, Tony leaned against the elevator wall.

"You holding up okay?" Gibbs asked.

Shrugging, Tony said, "I'm good for now. Sorta tired. And my arm's sore."

Gibbs scoffed, "Gee, I wonder why?"

"I didn't exactly ask her to hit me," Tony protested, thinking Gibbs was accusing him of asking for it.

"She needs to learn to keep her hands to herself. I don't like the way she's always trying to cut you down," was Gibbs' answer.

That was a surprise, and Tony rather liked knowing that Gibbs was firmly on his side. "She's like one of those little girls who likes a boy, but can't figure out how to tell him, so she punches him in the arm."

As they walked into the lab, Gibbs said, "Well, I like you, but I'm sure as hell not gonna punch you."

Tony grinned and followed him, asking, "Wait a minute, is this your way of telling me you like me? 'You like me, you really do!' That's a quote, Boss…"

Abby came forward the second she saw Tony and gave him a careful hug. "Tony! Tony! How are you? How's your arm and your head, and why would anyone want to punch you?" She turned to Gibbs. "I got two sets of partial prints off the hit list you gave me, one belonging to Alejandro Rivera. The other one is harder to track because the owner of those digits had a chemical peel of sorts to remove his prints."

"Eeew," Tony said.

"I still might get a hit, so I'm running them through Interpol and some other databases."

"I'm sorry you're on the list, Abby," Tony said, giving her another hug.

"I've been in worse company," she replied, smiling.

Tony held out one arm in invitation. "C'mon, Boss, join in! Group hug. Hey, it is your fault, for making Paloma your enemy."

Gibbs rolled his eyes and joined them for a brief hug, but then he got right to the point. "What you got, Abs?"

Turning on a dime, Abby went straight to her computer. "So, I ran Tony's blood sample through Major Mass Spec, and most of the readings matched the hospital's lab results – and Tony, your cholesterol and other numbers are really good for a guy who eats so much unhealthy food…"

Tony prompted, "But…?"

Abby brought up a screen showing a chemical breakdown. "I'm not surprised their tests didn't find this… and yes, there is a drug in Tony's system," she said excitedly.

"Shit, what is it? And what do you mean 'is'? It's still in me?" Tony asked, peering at the screen over Abby's shoulder.

"And how did he get drugged?" Gibbs demanded.

"One thing at a time, gentlemen," Abby admonished. "The hospital report mentions a small mark on Tony's neck, which they put down as a bug bite. She pointed to the side of Tony's neck. "It's small but you can see it's an injection site, probably from a rapid release syringe, like they use in psychiatric hospitals for aggressive patients."

Tony burst out with, "Abby! How can you be so calm when you say someone tranqued me like I was McMurphy?"

She turned to him and laid an assuring hand on his arm. "It wasn't a tranquilizer. Well, it was, but that wasn't the purpose of the injection."

"It wasn't? Okay, that's good, I guess," Tony said dubiously.

"No, actually it's much worse than them giving you a knock-out drug," Abby said apologetically.

"What? What?"

Seeing that Tony was about to lose it, Gibbs put an arm around his shoulders and told Abby sternly, "Get past the dramatics, and damn well tell us what's going on."

"You guys take all the fun out of this," Abby complained. When Gibbs growled, she held up her hands and said, "Okay, okay! Someone drugged Tony with something to knock him out, but I also isolated a chemical, one that creates a void of sorts in a specific part of the brain. The sole purpose is to remove any memories… and this is the cool part … it was designed to totally eradicate all memories during a specific time frame. This is amazing, a huge scientific breakthrough! Okay, it can be engineered to affect the previous hour or two, or from the time of the injection forward. It's called PCP-R and the reason they couldn't detect this chemical is because… technically it doesn't exist."

Tony was reeling with this information. Finding out that someone had injected him and then deleted a section of his memory was… disorienting and more than a little scary. He shuddered and tried not to throw up.

"What does 'technically' mean?" Gibbs asked.

"It means it was created in a specific lab and has never been released from that lab. They're the only ones who have possession of the drug. Only… it looks like someone has been playing around with it because this sample I identified in Tony's blood, it's been altered."

"Fuck, tell me this wasn't GBH?"

"Definitely not GBH. This is far more sophisticated than any sedative or date-rape drug," Abby said, as if that was going to ease his mind. "Although the idea is the same, to incapacitate the recipient, but be able to exert some control over them – and when they wake up there's absolutely no memory of anything that's gone on during that blacked-out time period."

"You're saying someone injected me with a mind-control drug? Is this MK-ULTRA all over again? And why me?" Tony asked, his mind reeling with questions. He felt perilously close to losing his grip.

Abby shrugged. "I don't know, Tony. Maybe you saw something you weren't supposed to? Or they chose you on purpose? Or you just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time? What I do know is you guys will figure out who did this to you. Gibbs will get to the bottom of it. He always does."

"What I'd like to know is what the hell someone was doing walking around with a syringe filled with this PCP stuff," Gibbs said angrily.

"I'd like to know if I'm ever going to get my memory back, and if I'm going to lose my mind altogether, because right now I feel like I'm halfway there," Tony said. He'd been worried about his amnesia, and what had occurred during those missing hours, but now he was scared that he might lose all his memories.

Abby gave Tony a sympathetic hug. "You know, you're the luckiest guy in the world?"

Tony stared at her as if she were crazy. Abby was smiling at him in an odd way, as if she knew something top secret and was dying to tell him. Gibbs asked, "You want to tell us why that is, Abby?"

"I think I can counter the drug." Cringing a little as if she was embarrassed, Abby said, "You know how you forbade me to ever have anything to do with Mikel Mauher?"

"Mauher?" Gibbs exclaimed.

"That crazy stalker who cleaned up crime scenes?" Tony wondered where this was going to lead, and he had a feeling he wasn't going to like it.

Abby assured them, "I've had no contact with Mikel – believe me, I don't want to even go there – but Mikel's cousin came to see me a while back, to hand me a letter Mikel had written to me…."

"Please tell me you didn't read it," Tony said.

"No, and if you keep interrupting me, I'll never get to the good part."

Gibbs waved his hand at her, and Abby continued, "I ended up talking to Igor, that's his cousin, over tea, and we got really close – he's such a romantic – we spent a long weekend together," she said with a sigh. "He had this really neat old apartment in Princeton with beautiful woodwork – you'd love it, Gibbs…"

Gibbs glared at her in warning.

"But that's not important. What is, is that Igor was a neuroscientist working for a big lab, and he had just finished working on an update to… drum roll please," Abby said, looking expectantly at Gibbs and Tony.

Tony humored her and did a brief drumbeat on the nearest flat surface.

Gibbs guessed, "On PCP-R, and its use as a mind-control agent?"

"Wow, that's good, Gibbs," Abby said. "I'm impressed. Igor's work was not only with PCP-R and its effects on the human brain, but he created an updated version with a delivery system that has a coating that assures the drug sticks where it's supposed to go."

"A protective coating?" Tony asked.

"Yes, and one that can be controlled. The problem in the past was that once the drug had permeated your brain, there was no way to turn it off when enough medication had been administered." She jumped up and down in place and said, "But Igor updated it so it has a finite life."

"And what's its life span?" Tony asked, knowing in his gut that the answer was not going to be what he wanted to hear.

Abby pulled a face. "Instead of being permanent it now has a life of 180 days."

Tony fell into the nearest chair and moaned. "Oh God, I'm going to forget everything in the next six months? I can't live like that! I'm going to be Nicole Kidman in Before I Go to Sleep!"

Gibbs gripped Tony's shoulder and said, "Hang in there. Let's hear what else Abby has to say. Okay, you with me, Tony?"

Tony managed a nod, though what he really wanted to do was scream.

"I haven't finished," Abby exclaimed. "Igor knew that was too long a period, and the people paying him wanted a way of getting anyone dosed with it would be able to get back to normal – though missing a few hours – so he developed a second drug that would dissolve the coating, and allow the initial drug to get flushed out of the body!"

Tony stared at Abby. "An antidote?"

She said, "Technically it's considered a rectifier with dissolving properties… but sure, antidote works for me."

Gibbs asked, "Where is Igor now? Can we get our hands on this antidote?"

"Oh, I'm afraid not. It's so sad… Igor left the country right after our weekend together. He said the CIA was getting involved and he was homesick. Besides, the lab would never dispense the drug without years of testing," Abby said.

Tony groaned. "Can I strangle her now, Boss?"

"I'm seriously considering it myself."

"Oh no, it's all alright," Abby assured them. "Igor wanted to share his findings with someone before he left for Russia, and because I'm a scientist, and we had this immediate connection, he let me read all his research and findings – he smuggled out a copy of everything to take with him – and I never forget a formula, so I know I can create the antidote easily."

"Why didn't you say that first?" Tony demanded, raising his voice.

"It never occurred to me. You always want to hear all the details, Tony. Now, get out of here so I can get to work on it!"

Gibbs and Tony retreated, but when Tony reached the doorway he stopped. "One more thing. Where did Igor work? You said Princeton?"

Abby nodded, her pigtails bobbing. "Near there. The lab he worked for is part of an international corporation, but it's locally owned."

Gibbs ground out, "The name of it, Abby?"

"Oh, it's TrackMed, in Trenton, New Jersey," she said and, with a flourish, turned back to her computer.

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