NCIS: Los Angeles: Act 2
Callen met Nell in the hall outside ops. "You found something?" he asked.
"Eric's still checking hotel servers in DC to see if somebody hacked them to find McGarrett's reservation, but I found a different link," she said. She pulled up information on her tablet, then herded him into a corner where nobody could hear them. "The newspaper in Indiana where the article about the Annapolis ceremony appeared is part of a chain, and they use central servers for all their newspapers. There were a lot of page views on the story itself — young sailor killed in action, Navy SEAL, decorated for heroism — nothing too unusual."
"But?" Callen knew there had to be more.
"But the papers all use a paywall, and your login for any paper in the chain will let you into all the newspapers. I pulled the information on all the users who weren't local and cross-referenced them to eliminate people with non-military connections to the sailor who was being honored, then ran a vector analysis and found one user that lives near Lt. Singer."
Callen thought about it for a second. "That could mean he-"
"She. Anna Peters."
"She had access to Singer to poison him, but that doesn't connect her to the lab here or to the actual attack on McGarrett." Callen looked down at the petite analyst. "Unless you know more you're not telling me."
"I'm running a full background on her, but I've already turned up several encrypted sat phone transmissions from the area near her house and her toll booth transponder has multiple trips to Washington in the past six weeks, including one yesterday. About half the trips were to Dulles airport, with return trips two to four days later. I'm still checking flight manifests to see where she went."
"Good work, Nell." Callen wondered what role this woman played. "She wasn't one of the people who attacked McGarrett, based on the information Gibbs, Abby and Ducky sent over. Those were all men."
"Peters is five feet, six inches, tall," Nell said. "The commander didn't mistake her for a man."
"Hired muscle, maybe," Callen said. He thought through all the information Nell had given him. "Nell, do a search for anyone named Anna Petrovich or Pietrovich who emigrated from Russia or one of the former Soviet republics after the wall fell."
"Peters is only about thirty years old," Nell replied. "She would have been a child when glasnost happened."
"It wouldn't be the first time the Russians used children as sleeper agents," he reminded her. "If they were already training her when the Soviet Union fell, somebody might have sent her over once there was free passage to sneak another sleeper agent into the country."
"And once she was here, they could wait until they really needed her to activate her," Nell said, her red hair bouncing as she nodded. "That would fit." She typed on her tablet, then stopped and looked up at him.
"What?" Callen asked, when she didn't say anything.
"Would Arkady be able to tell you anything?" she asked, her voice less confident than it had been.
Callen sighed. "Can he? Probably. Will he? That depends if he wants us to owe him a favor more than he wants to keep what he knows a secret." He checked the time. "Once Gibbs gets here, we can go see him."
"Don't let Sam hear you say that," Nell said. "He won't like being left out."
"If you think Hetty will let Sam go to Arkady's when we suspect a Russian connection-"
"She'd sooner drink coffee," Nell said. "I'd better go see what Eric's found. You better go talk to Hetty."
"Talk to me about what, Miss Jones?"
Callen managed not to visibly start at Hetty's voice, but this was one of those times he thought maybe they should let Deeks try to put a bell on her.
"Now, Mr. Callen, you know better than that," Hetty said. "So, what does Miss Jones think I need to know?"
Callen looked over, but Nell had already disappeared. If she learned any more from their operations manager, they were all in trouble. "Well, Hetty, it's like this," he said, outlining what Nell had found.
Before Hetty could reply, they heard a commotion downstairs and looked over the rail to see Deeks, Kensi, Chin-Ho Kelly and a young woman who must be the fourth Five-0 member.
"Gibbs and his team should be here shortly," Hetty said. "Perhaps we can save this discussion for then."
~NCIS~H50~LA~NCIS~H50~LA~
Chin remembered the OSP team from the smallpox case, but he didn't know the Washington team at all. Sitting back and observing until he knew how the personalities played together would be his best play right now, especially since the technology Eric and Nell had at their disposal put anything he had to shame.
He leaned against one of the support columns while Kensi and Deeks bantered and Deeks and Kono talked surfing. Callen took his own shots at both Kensi and Deeks while Sam put a frightening amount of attention into setting up chairs in the space. The former SEAL radiated a different kind of intensity from McGarrett — more Zen, fewer explosions — but it was almost a force field around him. The energy levels in the room were buzzing, and with a whole other team coming in, plus McGarrett and Danny, it wouldn't take much for tempers to flare.
"Do not worry, Detective-Lieutenant Kelly." The voice down near his elbow was pitched low enough that only he could hear her. "If Agent Gibbs has not head-slapped your voluble colleague into a concussion by the time they arrive, I believe this collection of investigators will prove to be far more impressive than the sum of its highly skilled parts."
"Head slaps?"
Hetty smiled, much the way a kahuna had smiled at him once before all hell proceeded to break loose. Chin was wary of those smiles.
"Jethro has little tolerance for foolishness or poor judgment and takes the admonishment to slap some sense into people rather literally," she said. "I suspect Detective Deeks will find him an even more challenging supervisor than myself, in some ways."
Before Chin could reply, he heard "Danno, this place is so cool!"
Chin stifled his grin as Grace's voice floated through the hallways.
"I believe our guests are here," Hetty said. She stepped out into the middle of the bullpen just as the team of people Chin had seen on the video conference walked in, along with McGarrett, Danny and a girl with the palest skin Chin had ever seen.
"Hi, Hetty!" the girl said. "Eric's upstairs?"
"He is indeed, Abby," Hetty said. "Send Miss Jones down, if you would."
Abby moved upstairs faster than Chin would have imagined since she had on giant boots that must weigh five pounds each.
"Abby Scuito is the best forensic scientist in NCIS, and probably in all of Washington," Callen said to him. "Don't let the clothes fool you — she has three master's degrees and is almost as old as I am."
Before Chin could say anything, Grace ran over to hug him. "Uncle Chin!" she said, as she wrapped her arms around him. If she was holding on a little tighter than normal, well, this was a lot of new people and Danny was busy trying to make Steve sit down, with little success. Chin knelt down. "Hey, Gracie," he said. "Howzit?"
"Miss Abby and McGee read to me on the plane," Grace said. "McGee does good voices — almost as good as Daddy's." A giant yawn stopped whatever else she was about to say.
"Ah, Miss Grace," Hetty said. "I'm Hetty, and I understand from your father that you like tea."
"Mommy makes it for me all the time," Grace said. "She's English, and she says they make the best tea."
"They do indeed," Hetty said. "While I am not, I did spend enough time there to learn how to make a decent cuppa myself, so if you'd like, I can make you some tea and then you can take a nap in my office. It's rather a lot quieter there."
Grace looked over to Danny, who was still arguing with Steve, then up at Chin.
"I'd listen to Miss Hetty," Chin said. "It sounds like Uncle Steve and Danno will be busy for a while, and so will Kono and I."
Grace nodded, yawned again, and followed Hetty.
~NCIS~H50~LA~NCIS~H50~LA~
Steve ignored Danny's fussing as he scanned and assessed the OSP office. It was more like a cover building in a foreign country like Morocco than anything he'd ever seen in the United States, but Sam had told enough Hetty stories over the years that he supposed he shouldn't be too surprised.
"Danno, I'm fine," he said, as Danny tried to get him to sit.
"Steven, you have said that after being beaten, stabbed, shot and rescued from countries you shouldn't even have been in," Danno retorted. "You are not fine and you need to sit down before you fall down or you're going to have to sit this one out."
"Danny's right, Bossman," Kono said. "Sit down so we can figure out who's trying to kill you."
She looked like she was ready to find a sniper rifle just to threaten him with if he didn't listen, so Steve gave in and sat.
"Oh, good, Commander, you can occasionally listen to reason," Hetty said as she returned to the bullpen. "From the stories I've heard, I had begun to wonder."
"Don't look at me," Sam said, holding up his hands. "I know better than to tell Hetty some of your stories."
"Commander White and I worked together a few times before," Hetty said. "'Unorthodox, yet effective,' I believe was his assessment of you."
Steve ignored that. "Do you have any better idea of what's going on than you did before we all spent six hours cooped up in a plane?"
"Mr. Callen?" Hetty said.
"Nell has one lead she can tell us about," Callen said. "Gibbs, how would you like to visit an old friend this afternoon? Na etot raz, my politsiya, ne on."
"You and Gibbs know a former Russian FSB agent?" Danny said.
"KGB," Callen said. "You know Russian?"
"I worked mob cases in Jersey," Danny said. "I know enough to get by."
"Arkady's involved?" Sam said. "Why didn't we go see him while we were waiting for the planes to land?"
"Mr. Hanna, I know you would like to solve this case, but until we know more, we cannot risk sending you into what could turn out to be a lion's den," Hetty said.
"Could somebody enlighten the rest of us?" Steve asked.
The little redhead started talking, and even though she looked like a good storm would knock her over, she had skills at least as impressive as Cath's.
"An Anna Pietrovich of the right age and coloring did arrive as a Soviet refugee, along with her parents, back in 1990," Nell said, sending photos up onto the flat-screen in the bullpen. "Her father claimed that his father had been an enemy of the state, was sent to Siberia, and with the turmoil, they weren't safe."
Steve looked at the photos of the young girl and her parents. "Do you have any photos of her father when he got older?"
"No, he died three years later," Nell said.
"Sam, look at Mr. Pietrovich," Steve said.
"He wouldn't be Pietrovich," Danny said. "He's Pieter something-else. -vich means 'son of,' so his last name was probably whatever his father's first name was with that added on. Deciphering Russian family trees is worse than Italian ones — they might all have the same last name, but at least that way you know who's in 'The family.'"
One of these days, Steve really needed to get Danny to tell some of those Russian mob stories — this was the second time they had come up in a case.
"Ivanovich," Sam said. "I'd bet money on it."
"Let me guess, the scientist you smuggled out was Ivan somebody," Callen said.
"And being an enemy of the state with a sentence to Siberia is a good excuse for somebody to disappear because he's been sent to Afghanistan to develop killer poppies," Steve said.
A stampede down the stairs stopped anybody else from commenting.
"What do you have, Eric?" Callen asked.
"Anna Peters was staying two blocks from the hotel where Commander McGarrett was attacked and she's made four trips to LA in the past two months," he said. "She left on a flight out of Reagan sixty minutes after the attack today and was picked up by a green minivan at LAX when she landed. I've got Kaleidoscope scanning for it now."
"As soon as that van turns up, Eric, you let us know," Sam said.
"Agent Gibbs' team has the lead on this," Hetty said.
"Hanna, McGarrett, you two sit this one out," Gibbs said. "Too risky."
The resulting babble was impossible to decipher, until a whistle split the air.
"Hetty," Gibbs said.
"Speaking from hard-won experience, Mr. Hanna is apt to persuade Mr. Callen to let him come along," Hetty said.
"Steve doesn't sit anything out," Danny said. "Even when he should, he won't. The last time we tried to bench him, he broke into the governor's mansion, got framed for her murder and ended up in prison until he broke out of there."
"Hey!" Steve said.
"You know Danny's right, Bossman," Kono said.
"It was efficient," Steve said.
"It was stupid," Danny retorted.
"It's not happening on my watch," Gibbs said.
"Because you've always been happy to sit by when the director tries to bench you?" Tony said.
Gibbs had the glare of the gunnery sergeant he used to be, that was for sure. Steve wondered what the story was there.
"Uh, guys? We have a problem." Eric looked up from his tablet. "The CIA flagged the file on Operation Strawberry Fields — it's been locked down. I can't get to it anymore."
"This wasn't a SAD operation," Steve said. "Why is the CIA involved?"
"McGee, go." Gibbs didn't even look up.
Steve watched the agent run up the stairs and wondered what in the heck was going on.