Tony looked down at the piece of paper in his hand in awe. He could believe he had it. He actually had it. It was right here in his hands. After all that work. Well, work done by McGee but it was still a lot of work!

Did it matter that McGee had pointed out that it was more than slightly stalkerish?

In fact, what McGee actually said was, "You know that this basically makes you a stalker, right?"

"I am not," Tony had replied, offended.

"You tracked down a relative of a co-worker who told you not to talk to said relative. Said relative who is halfway across the world and you had me hack phone companies to get her information!"

Tony winced. Okay, maybe it did sound a little bit like stalking. Anyway, it wasn't even about the photos any more (though, of course, he did want to see them). This was about following through. He'd gone this far so he may as well see it through to the end. McGee just didn't understand that.

Speaking of McGee had left basically as soon as he handed over the piece of paper with the number on it. He had actually held onto it by the tiniest piece of corner he could get away with. As if that would stop Ziva from figuring out who had given Tony the number. If she even found out about this. Which she wouldn't if he had anything to say about it. But if she did, she wasn't stupid. They would both go down if she found out. It was in McGee's handwriting, after all.

But still, the younger man left quickly - probably using Abby as some sort of sanctuary. Which left Tony alone. With the phone number of Ziva's Aunt. He had Ziva's Aunt's phone number. Again. And he was going to be talking to her. Again. Well, he hoped so anyway.

If he remembered correctly (and he had an excellent memory), Nettie had liked talking to him. She had laughed a lot, anyway.

Tony held the piece of paper with two hands and stared at it. He really did have the number. It was right there. And his phone was on his desk in front of him.

All he would have to do was unlock his phone, type in the number and he would be talking to Nettie David. Yes, they had found out that she was Eli's sister. Older sister, in fact. Tony didn't know why that little fact mattered but it was something to store away. You never knew when such knowledge would be useful.

But that was all he had to do to get in contact with the woman. Unless his phone didn't make international calls. He put his phone down again and gave it a thoughtful look. Did his phone make international calls? That was probably something to check before he even tried, right? No point in being underprepared.

Okay, it turned out that his contract did allow him to make international calls, he just had to go onto his account and turn the damn feature on - it wasn't enabled by default. Probably to stop people from accidentally making international calls but he wanted to make one. So, je turned it on and gave it a go.

Nope. Phone didn't let him. He frowned at the device and tried again. Still nothing. Had he typed in the right number? He triple checked each digit and could see nothing wrong. So, what was the problem? He logged back into his account and saw that his change in settings hadn't been saved. The save button had definitely been clicked, he was sure of it. But, no matter, it was an easy thing to fix. Two clicks later and - hey, it had just unselected his international calling option! He had clicked that! Was he going crazy? It was starting to feel like he was going crazy. Buttons on websites should work, shouldn't they? That's why they were on websites!

Deep breaths, deep breaths. This was supposed to be the easy part of this whole operation (Yes, it was now an operation). He just had selected 'Yes for 'Allow International Calls' and then agree that he understood that those calls may be charged differently and then hit save. There!

He refreshed his page and scrolled down. No! Why did it keep undoing his selection? See? This was why he didn't trust computers. They just did their own thing! Now how was he supposed to call Israel? It wasn't like he could use MTAC for this!

Okay, maybe he was being a bit drastic again. Which could probably sum up this whole... situation he'd out himself in. He was a highly competent and skilled federal agent. He could sort out a silly phone issue. A few weeks breaths and he would be able to think clearly.

Ah ha! See? Thinking clearly again. He just had to call his phone company. Surely, they'd be able to sort it out?

[xxxxxx]

After being on hold for far too long with Justin Bieber music of all things and way too many click through of menus later, Tony finally got talking to a person and explained his problem. They also tried the same thing he did to no avail. They'd actually had to go get a higher-level tech person to try and sort it out.

Okay, it turned out that his account had been categorised under a children's account which is why it wouldn't let him make international calls. Which was fair enough except for the small problem that he was an adult! A federal agent, at that. Though, apparently saying that didn't make a different to the tech operator on the line because they needed physical proof.

Which is why he was now at the fax machine so he could send them over his freaking birth certificate. Seriously? Seriously? This was a company phone too, how on earth did it get put down as a child's account? He wasn't a child! Tony could just here Gibbs' snarky comment now. Yeah, no one on the team was ever going to hear about this. No way.