A/N: Sorry for not updating sooner, but I've been off sick, and then had a plot bunny attack me (probably due to my weakened state), and one thing led to another...Basically, as always happens to me when I get near the end of a story, I get a great idea for my next fic, but this time the idea coincided with me having a bad case of flu, and not being able to move for 2 weeks.

I know, enough excuses. Anyway, on with the tale.

Gibbs was not happy, Kate knew, and when Gibbs was not happy, he liked to spread it around a little. Let everyone share that utterly-annoyed-to-hell-and-back feeling. The meeting with Colonel Hunter had not gone well. When Gibbs had politely pointed out that they had stopped one of the leaks (admittedly mainly through Tony's good luck), Hunter had equally politely mentioned the fact that they were no closer to finding the mole within the CIA, who was the real problem. Gibbs, for reasons best known to himself, had decided not to mention the deal they had cut with Castirovic and so had to concede that they didn't have any leads on the mole.

"Why didn't you tell Hunter what Castirovic told us?" she had asked at the start of their journey back to Pristina.

"Because Agent Todd, we don't know that the information Castirovic gave us is correct and Colonel Hunter seems to know an awful lot about the operation," Gibbs had snapped. Kate winced internally: she knew he was in a bad mood when he called her 'Agent Todd'.

"You don't trust Colonel Hunter?" Gibbs and the Colonel had seemed to get along very well, up until the argument over progress. They had been chatting like old friends.

"I don't trust anyone unless I have to."

"That may answer a lot about your marriages," Kate had replied instantly. She had received no reply, although she got the feeling that if she had been DiNozzo, a head slap would have been delivered. The rest of the journey was completed in an icy silence.

Gibbs stalked into their makeshift office and frowned in irritation. "Where the hell are DiNozzo and McGee?" he barked at Kate, treating her to one of his death-glares as well.

It had been a long couple of days and she was really, really tired. So, without thinking, she retorted, "How should I know? Telepathy?" Gibbs had said nothing, only glared at her until she pulled out her cell and dialled Tony's number. When that didn't work she tried McGee's. Looking worried, she said, "They've both got their phones switched off. Do you think they're all right?"

"How should I know? Telepathy?" Gibbs replied, half-grinning. It seemed his bad mood was passing slightly. He sat down heavily in a chair and jogged McGee's laptop. The screen flickered back to life as the screensaver was turned off. "Kate?" She came to peer over his shoulder, both staring at the message box on the screen.

"That's not good," she whispered to herself. Sending information to account owners was not a good omen. "They know we're on to them now."

"Yeah, and where are Tony and McGee?" Gibbs asked, a frown creasing his forehead. He dialled Abby's number, getting diverted to the morgue. "Abby? Ducky, is Abby there?" He paused for a second, before snapping, "Duck I just don't have time for this right now – Tony and McGee could be in trouble!"

Kate barely heard the rest of the conversation, picking up only that Gibbs ordered Abby to find out what McGee had done, and where the backtrace had come from. She was too busy studying the files strewn over the table. The top file was that of Paul Howard, open at the page that showed where he was stationed. Kate began reading through the reports Howard had sent in about Operation Floodgate, making a note whenever she came across something odd. By the end of the file, she had covered a page in neat handwriting.

"What've you got?" Gibbs asked.

"There's something off here Gibbs. I mean, look at his reports compared to everyone else's. They're either reporting nothing at all, or one big bit of intel. Howard is either the best spy in the world, or hiding something. Every report of his contains a snippet of information, not much, just enough to convince someone that he's doing his job. Some of the supervisor's notes show that most of this intelligence is utter rubbish, but no one's managed to spot that he's making things up. Occasional bits of information are accurate, which obviously kept his supervisor happy, but most of the stuff he's come up with is wrong."

"Nice work," Gibbs commented.

"Doesn't tell us where Tony and McGee are."

"It's the first step," he said reassuringly. That worried Kate as much as anything else. Gibbs was never reassuring. He hadn't ever been reassuring before, not even when Tony was chained to Jeffrey White and they lost all track of him. He must be really worried. "I need you to find Isak and Edvina, get them over here. We're going to need all the manpower we can get on this one."

Kate nodded, standing up to go before another file caught her eye. Caleb Smithson. An innocent bystander in all this, killed savagely for no apparent reason by a professional, used to killing. She turned back to Gibbs, a lump in her throat. "Are they dead Gibbs?"

Gibbs looked concerned for a millisecond before he turned to her, looking a lot more like the Gibbs she knew. "They'd better not be, for their sakes," he growled.

Abby was typing as quickly as she could, running a diagnostic on McGee's laptop. Luckily, they had been chatting only the other week about which firewalls they each used, so she was able to hack into his computer easily. She widened her eyes as she saw the bank accounts in front of her. Ducky interrupted her reverie, placing a large Caff-Pow in front of her.

"Thanks Ducky," she said sincerely. "I thought you said these were bad for me."

"They are," the Englishman replied gently. "But they make you work faster, and our friends need your help, so I am willing to overlook the damage this amount of caffeine will do to your liver one more time." Abby's grin was wiped from her face by his comment and she turned back to her computer soberly.

She dialled Gibbs' number at the same time as she started to locate the origin of the backtrace and where the messages had been sent to. He picked up immediately. "Anything Abbs?"

"Of course. Paul Howard's bank account, Swiss naturally, shows he's had $30,000 that he shouldn't have in the last three months alone. It's not coming from the CIA, Gibbs, but from another Swiss account, belonging to…hang on a sec….Vladan Mandic. That one of your baddies?"

"Yeah." Gibbs sounded tired. "I guess we've got our mole then."

"Yep. This bank is awesome though Gibbs. Really, I got to get enough money to bank here! Anyone hacks your account, they have this super-sophisticated software that instantly finds out where the hacker came from and lets the account owner know. It's incredible. We don't have this level of spyware." Abby, although concerned for her friends, couldn't help but get excited at the technology in front of her. "CIA doesn't have this level of protection, otherwise we'd have been busted days ago."

"Did McGee know about this spyware?"

"No way he could have. There's no sign of it in the system until you hack into the accounts, and even if you did know, you'd have to set up at least ten decoys and firewalls to protect your identity. And that probably wouldn't work." A deep sigh came from the other end of the line. "This is unbelievably good software Gibbs, it's more complex than any code I've seen in a long time –" She stopped abruptly and glared at the speakerphone.

"He hung up on you?" Ducky asked with a smile.

"I hate it when he does that."

"Now you know how I feel," the ME chuckled. He patted Abby on the shoulder as he left. "Gibbs will find them, my dear. He always does."