Chapter 17

"So what's this guy's name again?" Tony asked.

"Zeke Balogh," Ziva said.

"Okay. You can say it. I don't want to put him off by mispronouncing his name. ...unless you think he has something to do with this."

"Tim did not think so," Ziva said. "Abby is looking for more, but there does not seem to be anything about him that would link him to Carew."

"Okay."

They pulled up at a small auto shop, only one bay, and got out. As they headed for the bay, a man came out, dressed in coveralls. He had oily hands that he was wiping on a rag and his smile was open.

"Hello, can I help you?"

"Zeke Balogh?" Ziva asked.

"Yes." His smile faded a bit at how official that was. "Who are you?"

"I am Agent David, and this is Agent DiNozzo. We work for NCIS."

"What's that?"

"Navy cops," Tony said, helpfully. "We just need to ask you a couple of questions."

"About the Navy? Why?" Zeke asked, confused. "I work on cars, and I don't even like boats."

"No, not about the Navy," Tony said. "It's about a record request you made a few weeks ago."

Ziva stepped forward and held out the copy. "This is your signature, is it not?"

Zeke looked at it and swallowed nervously. "Yeah? So? It's public information."

"Yes, it is, and it is information requested shortly before the owner was attacked in his home and abducted," Ziva said.

Zeke's eyes widened. "What? You think I had something to do with that? No way!"

"Then, why did you ask for the information?" Tony asked. "No offense, but it doesn't look like you're rolling in the dough and that property would be expensive, even if it was for sale. Which it's not."

"I wasn't! I just... I was just curious, all right? It's a coincidence."

"Coincidence," Tony repeated and smiled at Ziva. "We should have brought Gibbs along. You know what Gibbs says about coincidences?"

"No."

"No such thing. Why did you look up that information?"

"If you keep lying to us, you will be arrested as an accessory to attempted murder and aiding and abetting a kidnapping," Ziva said, seriously. "And if we do not find who was responsible, then, you will be charged with those crimes. That will leave you in prison for the rest of your life! Is that what you want?"

"He never said anything about killing someone!"

"Who?" Tony demanded. "Who are you talking about?"

"I don't know his name. He asked me to look up a piece of property somewhere down in Virginia and said he'd pay me for it."

"Didn't you find that kind of fishy?"

"He said he wanted to buy some property but it was for a business and he didn't want anyone to know that he was moving on it. If a nobody looked it up, no one would think twice."

"And you believed him?" Ziva asked, skeptically.

Zeke ran his hands over his head.

"No, but I didn't ask any questions. He paid me really well. He told me where and I gave him what I found a couple of days later. I made more from that than from fixing his car. Like you said, I'm not exactly rolling in the dough here."

"He had repairs done here?" Ziva asked.

"Yeah. The car was a real clunker, but I got it working again."

"Do you have video of him?"

"Maybe. It's been a few weeks. I don't remember if I kept it. If I don't have any trouble, I don't usually bother keeping all the security videos. And he wasn't any trouble."

"Did he pay with a card?" Tony asked.

"Nope. All cash."

"You have a record of his car?"

"Yeah."

"Then, we will need to see it."

"Wait. Do you need a warrant for this?"

"Only if you refuse to show us," Ziva said.

"And considering you're facing an accessory charge, it won't be hard to get that," Tony added.

"Fine. Look, I had nothing to do with anything. All I did was look at the property. He paid me for my time. That's it!"

"Then, help us by telling us what you know and that will remain all," Ziva said.

"Okay. Come on back."

As they followed him into his shop, Ziva leaned over.

"He has nothing to do with this."

"Except that he saw the guy. You have the photo of Logan?"

"Yes."

"Good. Maybe we'll luck out."

"We can hope."

Zeke sat down at a cluttered desk and opened a file drawer. After a couple of minutes, he pulled out a receipt.

"Here it is. He had an '85 Cavalier. Gray, and it had seen better days."

Tony took the receipt. It wasn't the same name, and there was no license plate number. He was unlikely to have kept the car long-term, anyway. But it was information they hadn't had. One last test, though.

"Mr. Balogh, is this the man who asked you to look up the property information?" Tony asked, holding up the photo of Logan.

Zeke looked at it.

"Well, he looks younger in that photo, but I'd say it's the same guy."

"And have you seen him since then?" Ziva asked.

"No. It's not like we were friends. He was getting his car fixed. I'd never seen him before, and, except when he came back to get the stuff I'd found, I haven't seen him since. If I'd known what he wanted it for, I wouldn't have done it!"

"You said you didn't believe him."

"I didn't, but I didn't think he was going to kill someone! Come on. I've never been in trouble before. I've never even had a parking ticket! He was giving me some extra money for something that didn't seem like a big deal."

Tony looked at Ziva and she nodded slightly. He was telling the truth and he was telling what little he actually knew. It appeared that they wouldn't be finding anything more from him.

"All right, Mr. Balogh. Don't plan on taking any trips and we may have more questions for you," Tony said. "That's all for now. Thank you for your cooperation."

"Yeah, great. Fine."

They started to leave.

"Wait."

They turned back, and saw Zeke looking like he'd come to a decision. A reluctant decision, but a decision nonetheless.

"Do you need the money he paid?"

"You still have it?"

"Some of it. Not all. I used some of it to pay for repairs to my equipment. I don't know if you guys could get fingerprints or whatever off it. I've been handling it myself, but...if you need it..."

Ziva smiled sympathetically. For all his obvious irritation at their accusations, he clearly had a conscience.

"If you could give us one bill, preferably one you have not been touching as much, we may be able to get something from it," she said. "You would get it back when we finished."

"Okay." Zeke went back into his shop and came out a few seconds later with a hundred-dollar bill in his hand. He handed it over to them. "It's the last hundred I've got."

"Thank you," Ziva said, sincerely.

"You're welcome."

Then, Zeke went back into his shop and they got into the car.

"Clever guy, this Logan," Tony said once they were on their way back to D.C. "Get a random nobody to do your dirty work for you. If we didn't already have an idea of who was responsible, it would probably be hard to track Logan down."

"Yes. While we are on this side of D.C., we should stop and see if Logan is the person that Carew's neighbor saw. If he can hire one random person, he can hire many."

"Or he could be working with more than one person. If he's not the one calling all the shots, someone else could have hired a whole team," Tony said. "I don't think that this guy was one of them, but there's nothing that says only Logan is involved."

"True. Then, we should go there."

"All right."

They rode in silence for a few minutes.

"I am worried about McGee," Ziva said, suddenly.

"Why?"

"He was acting strangely today, after he came back from a meeting."

"A meeting? With whom?"

"I do not know. He just said he had to meet with someone and when he came back, he said it was by the Metro. But he seemed very unsettled, although he tried to cover it up. He said nothing was wrong, but something was wrong."

"Call Gibbs and tell him," Tony said, after a moment. "Tim will have a harder time avoiding Gibbs' scrutiny than yours...or mine. We're too nice."

"Ha," Ziva said, scoffing, although she smiled. "Too nice."

"Okay. Not too nice, but he can put us off more easily than he can Gibbs."

"True. I will call him. Do you know where to go?"

"I can get us to the right area and then you can navigate."

"Very well."

Ziva pulled out her phone and called Gibbs.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

This time, the farm was eluding him. The physical pain was overtaxing his ability to ignore it. He lay there, his whole body shaking, and his mind searched for something to spare him the pain.

To his surprise, what he thought of wasn't something he'd thought of in many years, at least not while sane.

He almost couldn't get the words out at all, but he pushed to do it.

"Lachein samach...libi vayaguel k'vodi, af b'sari yishkon la-vetach."

He almost laughed that this verse of the Psalms was the first thing he'd thought of, but then, King David was someone he'd thought of before in conjunction with his own life. He struggled to get out the final two verses of the sixteenth psalm.

"Ki lo ta-azov nafshi lish'ol... lo titen chasid'cha lir-ot shachat. Todi-eini orach chayim. ...sova s'machot et panecha, n'imot bimin'cha netzach."

"Take him back to his cell. If we keep pushing, we'll kill him too soon."

The voice seemed to be coming from a far distance. He could barely hear the words, but they seemed to indicate a momentary reprieve.

"And give him some water. Don't let him choke on it."

The same cruel hands picked him up and dragged him back to his cell. They dropped him on the floor, but then, someone was there, lifting up his head.

"Don't even think of trying something this time, Director."

No sarcastic comments were coming to mind, this time. He just drank when they gave him water. He took what they gave him and said nothing. He didn't move when they left him on the floor again.

He lay there for awhile, until he could breathe relatively normally again. This time, he thought of another psalm, only this one he had always thought of, less as a song than as a prayer.

"Adonai..." He stopped for a long time. Was it really right of him to call upon the God he'd ignored for much of his life? But then, wasn't even David a terrible sinner begging for forgiveness? And what did he have to lose?

"Adonai," he began again, "al b'ap'cha tochi-cheini, v'al bachamat'cha t'yas'reini."

It would, of course, be justice if he did suffer the wrath of God, but it didn't hurt to ask for a reprieve. God had been known to be merciful on occasion, even to sinners.

"Choneini Adonai, ki umlal ani, r'fa-eini Adonai, ki niv'halu atzamai."

They hadn't yet broken any bones. These were skilled torturers. There would be very few marks on his body for anyone to realize how much pain he was dealing with, but the physical pain still didn't outstrip his grief.

"V'nafshi nivhaka me'od, v'ata Adonai ad matay. Shuvah Adonai, chal'tzah nafshi, hoshi-eini l'ma-an chasdecha."

He could pray to be saved, but really, saved for what? Right now, the what didn't matter. Until he could get back to the farm again, he just wanted to be saved from the pain. Relief no matter what the end result was.

Once more, he pled.

"Hoshi-eini."

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Gibbs hung up and looked over at Tim. He was sitting at his computer working on something, but he hadn't said a word in a while.

"McGee."

"Yeah, Boss?" Tim asked, not looking over.

"Tony and Ziva talked to the mechanic."

Now, he had Tim's attention.

"Yeah?"

"Logan was there. He paid Balogh to get the information on Carew's property. Balogh cooperated."

"I'm not surprised," Tim said. "He probably had nothing to do with it. Did they get anything else?"

"Maybe some prints on a bill, but no video."

"But he verified that the person who left his prints at Levi's place was also a person looking for information about it. That's another step."

"So why didn't you go with Ziva?" Gibbs asked.

"I don't need to go to every place, Boss," Tim said. "Tony and Ziva are really good at interviewing, better than I am."

"That's not why you sent them."

Tim raised an eyebrow.

"Why did I?"

"You tell me. Ziva said you'd been on edge since you had a meeting with someone, someone you wouldn't identify."

Tim took a breath and sighed.

"I knew she could tell I was kind of hiding something, but I'd hoped I'd hidden it well enough that she didn't worry."

"Nope," Gibbs said, glad that Tim was admitting there was something he was hiding.

Another sigh. "My friend, Daniel."

"Who?"

"From Morocco. The CIA agent I didn't know was a CIA agent," Tim said, smiling.

"What about him?"

"He's been in town. His dad died last week and he's been having some meetings before he goes back. I called him to ask if he knew anything about Logan. I figured that, if this was as big a deal as it seemed, he would know something." Then, Tim smiled slightly. "I know how you feel about coincidences, Boss, but this was the granddaddy of all coincidences. Daniel was the one agent on the team who survived when Logan went rogue. The only one. The reason he was in Morocco was because it was so traumatic for him that he almost quit. Carew let him choose his assignment, forced him to get help. Daniel told me about Logan and...it got to me. I suddenly felt like I used to...when I was afraid of leaving the building."

"You can't start staying here again," Gibbs said.

"I know that. Zahara would never let me anyway," Tim said and he smiled.

Gibbs was glad to see the smile. Tim's ability to smile about this was the difference between now and the past when he was ready to fall apart at any moment.

"I shouldn't have given in to that feeling, but I did. I was actually thinking of calling Dr. Hicks and asking him if I could have my meeting with him tonight."

"Good idea."

"Thanks," Tim said, a little wryly. Then, he sobered. "Logan is a scary guy, Boss. According to Daniel, he killed because he wanted to, not because he needed to, and Daniel said that he's the one to worry about, no matter who is ultimately in charge. He's the dangerous one, and I've had my share of experiences with the dangerous people. I let my past take over for a little bit."

"Call Dr. Hicks. Tony and Ziva are on their way back if you want to get that done before they get here."

Tim smiled. "They'll probably corner me anyway, but thanks, Boss."

Tim got out his phone and started dialing. Gibbs decided to go and check with Abby and Ducky to see where they were at. Ducky wasn't technically needed, but he knew that Tim had talked to him already.