Chapter Two
Tal Shiar
Gibbs pushes himself slowly out of his seat, his temper rising ominously as Stillwell shrinks back into her seat and his voice carries her doom. "Starfleet?"
"Please, I can explain."
"Good idea, Ensign."
She still keeps her distance, looking up at the towering agent. "Bill isn't a real Commodore–"
"Ya think? Are you a real ensign, or is your story that you're from the Enterprise–?"
"Please! Yes, I'm a real–. That is, yes, I'm real. And I really am assigned to the Carrier Enterprise. My sister Elizabeth, and Bill Rolonio, you see, they're … not."
"What are they?"
"Elizabeth's a Real Estate Agent, you see. Bill's a Florist. They met at StrepCon about two years ago, they belong to two different RPG groups in Virginia."
Gibbs opens his mouth to speak, but the voice everyone hears is McGee's. "Boss?"
The next person to cut him off will regret it. "What?"
"It's an S.T.R.P.G. gathering, a Star Trek Role Playing Game Convention."
x
Gibbs slowly reseats himself, not willing to ask if the Elf Lord had attended. He'll find out later how McGee came across this arcane bit of knowledge. He remembers too well the fantasy convention this past Memorial Day and has no intention of repeating the experience.
"So," Gibbs turns to the apprehensive woman, "your sister and this William Rolonio met at a Science Fiction convention and play roles. And now she wants to kill him?"
"Well, er, you see, kind of."
Gibbs has held his patience for too long. "Kind of?"
"Well … you see, Liz has … problems. She's been diagnosed with schizophrenia, you see. She's fine, when she's taking her meds, you see, but I found out she…."
"Hasn't been taking her medications. I get that."
"When she's off her meds, she can sometimes … slip."
'Where's Ducky?' "And what happens when she slips?"
"Well," Stillwell gropes for a diplomatic answer, can't find it. "Sometimes her grasp of reality isn't the greatest. Her … personality is … she's influenced by things, you see. When she takes them, her meds, she's fine," Stillwell insists rapidly, "she's the sweetest, most harmless thing, she'd never hurt a fly. She's stable, can do her job, you'd never know she had something wr–"
"Ensign!" The sharp word blasts the woman back into her chair.
"Yes, sir?"
Gibbs doesn't want to browbeat her, but "Why is your sister going to murder William Rolonio?"
x
"Sir, I came home to our apartment – I'm on a four day pass while the Enterprise is in Norfolk – and found her journal. Then I found that her gun is gone. Then I found a month old, thirty pill prescription three-quarters full. I read her journal and…." She pulls a black book, five inches wide by seven high out of her jacket pocket, hands it to Gibbs. "Sir, you have to believe me when I tell you Elizabeth wouldn't hurt a fly, but 'Zabeth', she's–"
"Zabeth?"
"Sir I realized, when I was reading her journal, I wasn't just reading Elizabeth's words; as it went on over the past few months, you see, I realized things were changing, gradually, and I wasn't reading Liz's words anymore, I was reading Zabeth's. Remember the Role Playing? Zabeth is an Operative in the Tal Shiar."
"McGee?" Gibbs calls without looking.
"Romulan Empire's version of the SS or KGB."
"That why she has a gun?"
"NO! That is ... she bought it for protection. It's licensed."
"What kind of gun?"
"A Beretta 92FS full automatic."
The specifications shoot through Gibbs' mind, 15 bullet capacity, empty the entire magazine in less than one second with one squeeze of the trigger. He won't say anything about granting a license to someone with psychological problems; as far as he's concerned, no one but Marines and Special Agents should ever have weapons and he's known too many exceptions there too. "So what is she to Rolonio?"
Stillwell swallows hard, plunges in despite the danger. "About a month ago Bill Rolonio broke up with her, you see. According to what I read in her journal and could find out from friends, Liz took it really bad. She stopped associating with her friends, stopped taking her meds…. Agent Gibbs, the Tal Shiar is to the SS or KGB what Starfleet is to America's Navy. Bill's a Commodore in Starfleet, Elizabeth plays a Tal Shiar Operative – peaceably in her RP games – but she's slipped. I think her … weakened personality– Agent Gibbs, Bill broke her heart and I think she's going to kill him for it!"
x
"McGee, show us Romulans." Unreal though the characters are, the agents need to know what they're dealing with. He remembers having heard the word before, had little idea what they are and could not have cared less. Now, while the man digs up his computer facts, NCIS has a real case to deal with.
"Have you spoken to Rolonio, warned him?"
"I tried," Stillwell insists. "I can't reach him. He doesn't answer his phone. I don't know how to reach him. I can't get an answer to my emails. I went to the police, they took a report! They say Elizabeth hasn't done anything yet, that she hasn't broken any–"
Gibbs knows too well the limitations of the MPDC, but also its advantages. He just hopes that one of those advantages will not come in the form of Homicide Detective Lieutenant Jeffrey Carpenter. "Who's her doctor?"
Stillwell pulls out the prescription bottle and hands it to him, he tosses it along the right side of the bullpen to DiNozzo at David's old position. Fortunately, the man is as good an agent as a ball player and doesn't need to be told what to do. When Gibbs leaves later, he'll bring the bottle with him to get Ducky's input. Meantime, he turns to McGee's former location while determining to resolve this problem swiftly and painfully.
"Palmer, get me everything there is on Rolonio. McGee, after you get those Romulans, track down these PGR groups, names and addresses of their top brass, especially this Tal Shiar bunch. If she works for them, what kind of tactics will she use? Ziva, Mossad to Tal Shiar, can you think like her? Can we anticipate what she'll do and find her?"
"I shall try."
He won't say aloud that they should check hospitals and morgues, they're alert enough to check without his having to say it in front of the sister. With Elizabeth Stillwell's familiarity with her target, she might already have accomplished her mission.
"We need to know from you," he tells Carolyn, "who she's most likely to know best."
I'm … not sure, you see. She and I–"
"Does she live with you?"
"Yes."
"We'll go to your home, search her records."
"Boss, I have the material on Romulans and the Tal Shiar," McGee announces.
That was satisfyingly fast and interrupted any objection Stillwell might have raised. He looks toward the plasma screen between Palmer and McGee's new positions, determined to correct this disorientation as soon as their guest is out of earshot. "Let's see them."
x
A webpage, white on grey with blue hyperlinks and several scattered color photos, appears on the screen. "The site is Memory Alpha, it's a Wiki similar to–" he notices Gibbs' glare in time. "This page deals with the Tal Shiar. That's," he indicates with the cursor pointer a middle aged man with a sufficiently forbidding gaunt, angular face, "Koval, Chairman of the Tal Shiar in the Deep Space Nine episode 'Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges'." That sounds sufficiently forbidding: 'In time of war, the law falls silent'. What worse can they expect?
"The other," McGee directs the arrow past another man's face down to a woman's, "is Deanna Troi when she was under cover as a Tal Shiar operative." Aside from the pointed ears, and foreheads made up not quite as heavily as a Klingon's, what the figures have in common is a hairstyle reminiscent of a helmet, which ends in sharp edges that frame their faces.
McGee clicks on a Search box, types a word and the image changes. The woman depicted wears a similar uniform but her helmet-styled hair is blonde. "That's Sela, played by Denise Crosby–"
"Isn't she 'der Bingle's' granddaughter?" DiNozzo asks, grateful to have something to focus on.
"She is. I just wanted to show they're not all black haired." He glances pointedly at Carolyn Stillwell's blonde tresses.
"Surprised you didn't know that, DiNozzo," Gibbs bites.
"I do movies, not tee-vee. And the movie ones didn't look anything like her. Wish they did, she could interro–"
"A little less fantasizing, DiNozzo!"
"Shutting up, boss."
x
Gibbs returns his attention to Carolyn Stillwell, who appears equally shaken by the on-screen revelations and the mini-confrontation. She'll have a lot to be shaken about later. "Does your sister dress up like that?" He doubts it. Given the make-up, it would make Zabeth too easy to find.
"She had that haircut the last time I saw her, before I shipped out."
"And that was?"
"Three months ago."
"She would not have the Romulan face," Ziva predicts. "In her own mind, she probably considers herself under cover, disguised as a human, possibly wearing a wig to disguise this haircut."
It's a logical deduction, Gibbs decides, though he'll jump to no conclusion. He'd like to track a uniformed Romulan agent, but knows it'll never be that easy. "Do you have a picture of your sister?"
Carolyn takes her wallet from her pants, opens it, pulls out a picture and hands it to Gibbs. "That's Liz on the left."
As he'd supposed, the woman is blonde. Does she look enough like Carolyn - though a younger version - to pass on a quick glance? Enough to get her on, say, the Enterprise? Gibbs doesn't want to believe anyone could be unobservant enough to be fooled but he knows better. Rather, he has to hope Elizabeth Stillwell won't be so far removed from reality that she'd seek her Starfleet target aboard the Enterprise.
This way leads to madness and not just for their quarry.
"Got any of her as a Romulan?"
Stillwell shrugs. "She was in a Costume Parade at a convention last May."
"At the Hotel Meritz?" McGee cuts in. "The Greater East Coast Comic Art Convention?"
"You were there?" Carolyn is surprised, eyes widening when she looks again at the agents in this new light, this time recognizing them from the dramatic on-stage chaos of that Costume Parade.
"Oh, we were there," DiNozzo confirms archly. Between NCIS and the FBI, the chaos of that final event of the convention had led to a shocking dénouement to the hunt for a killer, enough chaos to sear the event into too many memories.
It had taken several months for the lives of the agents to be resolved after that debacle. The event, and its many aftermaths, had broken and led to the later breaking of more of Gibbs' rules than any other case in their history. It's an experience none of them ever wants to repeat.
x
"We'll need any pictures you have," Gibbs tells Stillwell, more to override the recognition in her eyes. He glances to the woman standing near the bullpen entrance. "Agent Abbate, escort the Ensign down to Ducky. I'll be with you in a few minutes."
As Carolyn Stillwell leaves with the agent, she asks "Where are we going?"
"Autopsy."
No one left behind in the bullpen sees the color drain from Stillwell's face.
x
"DiNozzo, McGee, Palmer: front and center." None of them are foolish enough to hesitate. When they're lined up before his desk, he comes around it. At the same moment, Ziva steps behind the trio.
"I like strong women." He glances at the new bullpen configuration. "How strong do you think David is?"
Ziva, standing behind them, hits the men with a double strike.
"Thank you, boss," DiNozzo says, as though he'd been the one to inflict the punishment.
"Have those desks back and everything working in twenty minutes."
"Twenty minutes, that's impossible boss. It took us–" Ziva gives him another and he turns on her. "You know, that hurts!"
"Good."
Gibbs signals the men to begin work and turns his attention to Michelle.
"I didn't do anything, sir. I wasn't even here."
"No, you just aided and abetted their escape."
She backs away, hand to the back of her head, and collides with Ziva. "You wouldn't." Suddenly she's not so certain of their 'understanding'. But though Ziva, with whom there is no such understanding, is ready Gibbs shakes his head, calls her off.
"No," he decides. "I think in your case, I'll talk to your husband." She blinks, surprised at this turn. "I'm sure he can find a better place to smack." He sends her to help with the moving, takes the pill bottle off DiNozzo's desk and departs for Autopsy, leaving the trio under Ziva's supervision.
Back turned to them, none of the agents see Michelle's growing smile as she considers tonight's lesson. 'Maybe being bad isn't such a bad thing.'
xxx
Halfway across the District, on New York Avenue, Reverends Siobhan O'Mallory and George Donaldson discuss less dramatic changes to their own office arrangements.
"So, big day coming fast," George Donaldson says broadly to his partner at the desk to his right. "You all ready?"
She laughs. "I'll be ready on the 18th."
"I wasn't referring to that," he quips, but his suggestive tone makes her blush.
"Neither was I."
"So," he says to 'spare' her, "your gown looks good."
"Thanks." She'd tried it on yesterday to get his opinion. It's an off-the-shoulder white enhanced by numerous sparkling faux-gems intended to catch the light of the tall, stained glass windows as well as the chandeliers of the catering hall.
"I notice there's no train."
"I'm a modern woman. Besides, there's only one man who should be thinking about my caboose," she smiles, glad to get him back in turn for making her blush.
"You'll be gone a long time on this international sabbatical of yours."
"Only 15 days. And you'll have a lot to do while I'm gone, just changing the signs and letterheads."
"So you're going with 'McGee'?" He'd never had any doubt but can't miss the opportunity to tease her. She does it to him often enough.
"Of course. What did you think?" She'd left no doubt about her intentions over the past three months. "I'm no 'liberated 21st Century girl' when it comes to this. I'm all tradition."
He doesn't consider the change of mind odd, not with her. "I was just hoping to avoid the inevitable 'Mother McGee' jokes."
"Well, get used to them. I'll have to."
"Still, it won't be the same," he says wistfully.
She gives him one of her most devastating grins, the kind designed to let him know he's in trouble. "Well, look at it this way: You're not losing a Curate, you're gaining an Agent."
"Oh joy."
xxx
"An interesting problem," Dr. Donald Mallard assures his old friend. He has seated Ensign Carolyn Stillwell in his chair while the men converse beside his desk. Palmer wisely stands well off by the far silver table. Not having a body to autopsy, they are in their civilian attire, which is fortunate because Gibbs had given no thought to this before having Stillwell escorted downstairs. "One of the symptoms of Schizotypal Personality Disorder is its effect upon a pliable mind."
"Split personality?"
Ducky shakes his head, picking up a book Gibbs presumes the man had obtained when he'd heard the initial story from Stillwell. He couldn't have known about the need for it in advance.
Could he?
"Despite common misconception, there is limited correspondence between Schizophrenia and Multiple Personality Disorder, except inasmuch as one is a subset of the other. Schizophrenia is a much broader term encompassing a wide range of disorders. I shall have to contact the young lady's psychiatrist to determine specifics in her case." He sets the book down unopened.
"For Schizotypal Personality Disorder to be diagnosed, at least four indicators must be present: Evidence of odd beliefs separating thinking from reality, High Social Anxiety, the patient must have occasional illusions or odd perceptual experience or have peculiar patterns of communication, such as metaphorical, vague or digressive speech."
'Digressive speech?' Gibbs thinks. 'Noooo.'
"One will also expect to find inappropriate or constricted emotional responses and frequently undue suspiciousness.
"It is also not uncommon to find that the subject has no close friends or confidants other than family and he, or she, will exhibit odd or eccentric behavior or appearance."
Gibbs turns to Stillwell. "How many of these things sound like your sister?"
It's obvious the woman doesn't want to admit it. "Too many."
"In what way?" Ducky presses far more kindly than Gibbs is willing to.
"Behavior, obviously." She can't help but admit to this, and eccentric behavior or appearance she can't possibly get out of admitting to. "She's never really had a lot of friends, you see, not like anyone she can confide in. She's ... well, you see, I guess I have to say she's ... socially awkward."
The men sympathize, and yet can tell there's more. They'll get the more, but know it can't be easy for the woman to be objective in subjecting her sister's psyche to the clinical analysis of strangers.
They can each see, as well, a measure of guilt, can almost read her thoughts. Could she have done something more to help her sister? Did she really have to follow orders and ship out? Could she have chosen family over duty?
"What can we do?" Gibbs asks, thinking ahead to the unpleasant prospect of having to take out a foreign assassin, or in this case a local assassin-wannabe. He hopes Ducky can give him a better alternative.
x
"Personality is a deeply ingrained thing," Ducky tells him, opening the book upon the desk without actually looking at it, easily falling into his pedantic manner, "and normally it takes vast effort or perhaps a traumatic incident to disrupt it. One's ego is generally established during the early, formative years of childhood. By the time we reach adolescence, we know who and what we are." He finally looks at the book, selects the right page and doesn't read from it.
"Schizotypal Personality Disorder, in the simplest terms, can dislodge that foundation. In the throes of the variant which I suspect we are dealing with here, one can watch a pirate film and come away thinking one is a swashbuckler, or perhaps more to the present, immerse oneself in one or more of the Star Wars films and come away thinking one is a Jedi Knight."
"I've seen that."
x
"In a normal, well defined personality, the effect of immersion into a fictional world is also present, but it is fairly rapidly dispelled.
"The influence, the euphoria of losing one's self in a new world or life, can last for minutes, but it fades as the world of reality asserts itself upon the psyche. In someone suffering from schizophrenia, however, the core personality sometimes cannot reassert itself. The fantasy personality dominates."
"To what extent?" Gibbs asks.
Ducky closes the unread book. "I'm hardly qualified to determine that based upon our current conversation and what little I've been told about the young lady's case. I would say, however, that in John Vincent DeKalb we had a rather extreme taste of it."
Gibbs had hoped his friend wouldn't make this connection. DeKalb's fascination with vampires had led him to believe he was an actual vampire, and he'd left a trail of beautiful female corpses behind him.
Abby Sciuto had come too close to being one of his victims.
x
"I am not at all familiar," Ducky continues, "with this Tal ..." he turns to Stillwell, "Shiar?" She nods. He addresses Gibbs again. "However, I can tell you that just as John DeKalb's behavior was consistent with his fixation on vampires, Miss Stillwell will behave consistently with her research into this organization of Romulans."
"So we need to find an expert in Romulans?" Gibbs almost dreads the prospect.
"More specifically, this branch of them."
"Know of any?"
"Good Lord, no, my television viewing has been geared more to Masterpiece Theater than to Star Trek."
"Palmer," he turns to the younger man hovering in the background near the first silver table, "you know anything about this bunch?"
Jimmy is reluctant to answer, but considering that things are, fortunately, dead in autopsy, an admission might allow him to actually get out in the field alongside 'Chelle.
"I watched it - that is, I know quite a bit. Not as much as Ab–" His halt almost sprains his tongue, and he realizes he'd almost talked himself out of the opportunity in favor of Gibbs' preferred resource on all things hinky. "Yes, I do."
"You and your wife put your heads together. Your heads!" Jimmy had made the mistake of grinning in happy anticipation. "Come up with what this woman's going to do."
x
Though he's never revealed it, Gibbs knows that during his retirement to Mexico and even thereafter, DiNozzo and Palmer had instituted the same sort of working relationship he and Ducky enjoy. He considers it to bode well for the next generation of NCIS. He turns back to Ducky. "Can you spare him for a while?"
"Good Heavens, I'm frequently taxed to come up with novel ways of getting rid of him. Please, he's all yours."
Jimmy, reveling in the prospect of investigative field work alongside his wife rather than the collecting of dead bodies, feels no sting from his mentor's banter.
x
Gibbs, however, isn't done. "Assuming we find 'Zabeth'," he asks Ducky, "how do we snap her back into being Elizabeth Stillwell again?"
"Well, certainly a dose of her medication would be beneficial, but before then you will have to be very cautious."
Gibbs pulls from his pocket the bottle of prescription medication, sees an 'ah-ha' in Ducky's eyes but doesn't get an explanation, so he turns to the apprehensive, silent Ensign. "Does your sister become violent when she's Zabeth?"
"I barely know Zabeth, and really only from her journal, you see. When I was deployed, Liz was deeply into RPGs, maybe because she was lonely? She's always been a fan of the show, we'd had some fun times growing up, you see, but it was only later that ... That problems developed. Not until both mom and dad had died, and now thinking back I wondered if that had anything to do with it, but her ... Problems were always controllable with medications."
"And you didn't see these PRGs as dangerous?" he demands.
"I had orders for Iraq. She swore she'd never forget her meds, what more could I do?"
Gibbs won't give the answer that they know too well. Nothing.
"All right, what about this Starfleet group?"
"There're organized into various ships, that is, the Federation side is. The class of ship is based on the size of the group. Bill's ... well, I guess you'd say he ranks as head or coordinator of a couple of groups, which is why he's a 'Commodore'. He's got seven 'ships' under him, all the groups in Maryland, you see."
"Travels a lot, then?" She nods. "How do they keep in touch?"
"Phone, e-mail, a web page, conference calls, the usual."
Their first job is finding this man, assuming he's still alive. "How deeply into this is he?"
"It's a hobby, a chance to socialize and have fun - after his florist job is over."
It's getting into Spring, with Saint Patrick's Day - and McGee's wedding - in two days. Gibbs hopes Rolonio is in his truck delivering shamrocks and that, while it's a distraction from their job, the team can get the groom to the church on time.
Case first.
He turns to Ducky and Jimmy. "Duck, get what you can out of that diary."
"Well, actually, Jethro, it is a Journal, not a diary. You see, a diary will be a record of daily, dated entries while a journal would not necessarily correspond to particular or even consecutive days."
"Duck."
"Of course, Jethro."
Gibbs starts out with Stillwell, glances back to Palmer. "Come along, Black Lung."