AN: I couldn't find a way to have Ray in the same area as his wife at the crucial time; but as I sat chatting with ytteb over lunch a couple of weeks ago, she came up with the goods. It's taken me this long to get there, but sknaht, ytteb!

I Thought You Were a Lady

Chapter 5

Molly the Mole looked at the empty bull-pen thoughtfully. It had to be a case; they wouldn't all have gone otherwise. She put a large envelope with a VA postmark, similar to the one she'd left yesterday with the photos of the two 'fathers' in it, on Agent DiNozzo's desk, lingering over it, reluctant to let go. It had the same writing... more photos of the same men? Or more possible fathers? It couldn't be that... what sort of a woman had Agent DiNozzo taken up with? And why was he so keen to help?

Molly stood in the shadow of the staircase, wrestling with temptation... it was instant dismissal if you tampered with mail, but it was killing her not knowing... She put the envelope back on the cart, pushed it briskly round the corner, and drew into the niche that everyone knew wasn't covered by the cameras, and was a haven for people using cell phones to make dates. She pushed up the corner of the envelope; it was one of those that had stiff card on one side, and the type of glue that peeled. She prodded it carefully, and sighed with disappointment. The photograph was face down to the card; she could only see the back. Her courage failed her – there was no way she was going to take it out of the envelope... then she saw the writing on the only corner she could see.

'This is Doris's dad – ain't he the real thing?'

Molly heard footsteps, patted the glue down again, and pushed the trolley as if she'd never stopped, her mind racing. Who was sending the pictures? And she thought the woman's name was Liz. Doris? She was beginning to doubt Agent DiNozzo's judgement altogether. Who was this Doris's father? Was he an important man? She didn't realise she was standing still, staring hypnotically at the envelope, now on the SFA's desk, until a polite cough came from behind her. It was a wonder she didn't land on the mezzanine, she jumped so violently.

"Agent DiNozzo isn't here right now, Miss... er..." Molly sulked internally, even as she fought to control her fright. Nobody ever remembered the names of the mail room clerks. Well huh, they couldn't all be field agents. "Miss Parker. And I'm sure the rest of the building is very anxious to receive their mail."

"Yes, Director... of course..." she took off like a rabbit with her cart, leaving Vance staring after her in bewilderment. He picked up the envelope, which had absolutely nothing remarkable about it, put it down again and went on his way with a shrug. After Gibbs' call, he had far bigger things to think about.

NCISNCISNCIS

"It's a heck of a tale so far," Tim said with feeling, "and I don't know about anyone else, but I could do with a coffee and a moment to digest it, before we hear any more."

The tiny, flicked look that passed between him and Tony went unnoticed by the other two men, but Tony pushed his chair back. "That word digest sounds good," he agreed as he got to his feet. "Anyone want anything from the canteen?We won't stop, we'll bring back, OK?" After taking orders the two agents set off down the corridor. Once out of earshot, however, they stopped. "What's on your mind, McAgitated?"

"I am not agitated, Tony. Maybe perturbed a little..."

"OK..." the SFA said placatingly – he knew protective McGee when he saw it. "What's wrong?"

Tim looked him in the eye. "Rule three, and rule ten."

Tony frowned as he thought about it. "Ah. The other way round... Never get personally involved... and that rule three, never believe what you're told. You think I feel a connection, and I might not be as objective as I should."

"Just felt I had to say it. If it were Gibbs you would have done," Tim told him steadily. His friend was silent for so long he thought he'd offended him. "Tony... I know you hate talking about it when a case brings up things to do with your childhood, and I could see we were getting the edited version... whenever it came to that young lady being neglected. I just... wouldn't want to see you played."

"You think that's what she's doing?"

"I don't know, I've not spoken to her. And I trust your judgement. Doesn't stop me worrying."

Tony grinned. " Well now, that's kinda good to know. Er no, not that I want you to worry about me... I don't think she's playing me; hey, it's been a long time since anyone played me! DiNozzos don't get played...but I'm double checking. Or rather, Julie Lautner is, the detective who sat in with me. For my protection, not Angelica's! Or so I thought at first... she's back in her holding cell now, with a polite warning of what'll happen if she keeps shooting her mouth off... I asked Julie to take her some food and then start checking everything she could of what she'd heard."

He paused, wondering if Tim wasn't going to like what he said next. It didn't matter, it needed doing, and he sure couldn't do it himself. "Look, I need you to go and help her." Tim opened his mouth, but Tony went on, "She knows the whole story, you'll just hear it from her, not from me. And she hasn't got the sort of computer skills you have. Everything Angelica said needs checking – although, like I said, I think she told the truth. We need all the information we can get, way before Gibbs gets here, and then my gut says we need to be out of here and back over to Gunnerson's, and the Duet area."

Tim nodded. "I was going to say 'good idea'."

"Oh. Never assume..." he headslapped himself.

"Well," Tim said cheerfully, "I noticed Julie. She's blonde, and nice looking..."

"McLusty, I'm surprised at you. And thanks, by the way."

Tim just grinned as they went on towards the canteen.

The 'girls' as Nick called them, not one of them under fifty, who ran the place, liked to fuss over their charges, and sent up enough food to make sure that everyone was properly fed and watered twice over. They settled back round the table, and Tony asked,"Thoughts?"

"On the story so far? I think we need to talk to our two 'we don't know anything's again. You think Miss Cardoza's telling the truth?"

"Wait until you hear the rest of it," Tony said seriously. He honestly didn't think Angelica could make something like this up, although, like he told McDoublecheck, that's what they were doing. He took a swig of coffee, and told them what he'd been told.

Marguerite Bresson had been Jack Burns' PA for nine years. And for seven of those nine years, her daughter had known he was a crook. She'd known because, whenever her mother couldn't get child care – which was often, because the more ignored she was, the more difficult Angelica would become, she'd been dumped in Marguerite's secretary's outer office with something to 'amuse her'. What amused her most, was listening to everything and everybody; and although at ten years old she didn't understand all of what she heard, as she moved into her teenage and on into young womanhood, she bitterly accepted that all the horrible things dear Jack was into, her mom was armpit deep in too.

"I used to listen at the door when the secretary went out of the office, because I thought my mom and Jack were having an affair, and I wanted to know. They weren't, but I heard plenty of other things. When the secretary went in there, I used to put the intercom on, and I heard lots more..." She paused as her thoughts went off at a tangent, and then said angrily, "How many years ago did you say that Liz lady last saw my dad? Sixteen?" Tony nodded sadly. He knew what had just hit home to her. "How long were they married before he left?"

Tony didn't make her pain worse by telling her it hadn't happened that way. "Four years, I believe," he said gravely.

There was another sharp burst of profanity, and this time Tony did react. "Hey!" he said sharply. "It's not big and it's not smart, and it doesn't make you look good. Step back and listen to yourself, and see if you wouldn't prefer to find some other way to communicate."

"Can't take it?"

"Grew out of it before you were born." He softened. "Yes, he was already married to Liz when your mom got pregnant with you. I don't know whether she knew or not, you'd have to ask her." He waited, his face saying 'I know you feel bad', although he didn't voice it. He didn't want to give her a chance to sneer again if he could steer her away from it.

"As she got old enough not to be dumped in the outer office," Tony went on sadly, "she took to out-and-out snooping in other ways. She used to still go to the office, on the pretext of wanting to talk to her mother, but only when she'd looked at an email or listened to a phone call that made her want to know more. She decoded every password her mother had, simply by – I quote – 'knowing far more about how she thinks than she ever takes the time to consider, and far more than she knows about me.'"

There was silence for a moment, then Nick asked tentatively, "Are you saying that she has passwords into Jack Burns' affairs?"

The SFA said just as carefully, "It's possible. We don't know, and we're not going to go blundering into anything. If we've struck gold here, it has to be extracted carefully."

Nick winced. "Ve-e-ry carefully," he agreed.

"Tim's having a cautious look, and there's also an FBI cryptographer being alerted to work with him, once we've got this Gunnerson thing wrapped up. It could be big, yeah. If she's telling the truth. If you ask me to stick my neck out, I think she is. Need Gibbs for a second opinion. But why do I think she's on the level? Remember I mentioned Abby heard about some stock market activity?"

There were property magnates involved, Angelica had told him; people with Greek and Italian names, and Mediterranean addresses. Cruise liners, and sunshine vacations, island retreats... and a very neat plan to cut out all possible rivals. One such businessman had approached Marguerite's secretary to spy for him, and after protesting for a while that it was too dangerous, she'd agreed – having gone straight to the PA. The information she had given the man so far to draw him in, and the package she'd promised, were, carefully devised by Marguerite and her boss. The rival had no idea he was paying a lot of money to a double agent for rubbish.

The massive Mediterranean travel deal that had been whispered on Wall Street was being assembled at Burns' headquarters in DC, and the information that his rival mistakenly thought was going to show him the way to undercut it all, needed to reach him in New York.

"It wasn't that simple though," Angelica said with that same bitterness twisting a face that was far too young to be coping with such things. "The rival had a rival. Don't they say something about honour among thieves?"

"They say it," Tony agreed. "Any of these honourable men have names that you heard?"

"The one paying my mom's Jurgen Koch, based in Munich, but he has offices in New York. City, I mean. That's where the information was supposed to go. The other guy's Swiss, they're both into transport and travel, I think. Eric Visp. They hate each other, and Koch told mom that Visp has links to the Russians, whatever that means."

Tony nodded gravely. "It means nasty, Angelica, and whatever happens, you need to be out of it."

"I want my damn amethyst back!" Tony raised an eyebrow and just looked at her, and her shoulders slumped. "I'm worried about him... I should hate him – I should give up on him, but I don't..."

"That's credit to you, not to anything he's done. But where does he come in to all this?"

He was surprised to see tears forming; if she was faking she was better at it than any seventeen year old should be.

"Mom had this brilliant idea," Angelica spat out. "Why not use the ex you still think hangs round his daughter as the courier? Jack's organisation had no problem at all locating him... told him some tale about a friend saying he was reliable... I wanted to warn him, but I didn't know where he was, even if everyone else did!"

Tony shook his head slowly. "It was difficult for the kid to take, however tough she claims to be. Angelica didn't know how to find him, but two days later he called her. She met him at a diner in Springfield, and he explained that he'd realised almost at once that he was being followed. The guys who'd hired him to deliver this memory stick hadn't realised that he'd acquired certain skills in eleven years on the run."

He'd escaped in the rental his hirer had given him, having no option but to be herded in the opposite direction to New York, only to be chased down. He'd crashed the car near Alexandria, escaped on foot, hopped a freight train to Springfield, hidden and and phoned his daughter.

"She gave him money and her car – she remembered taking the key from her fob because she wanted to keep the gemstone. She told her mother later that the car had been stolen – as she expected, Marguerite told her to deal with it herself since she'd been so careless. She asked him what he was going to do. He said he hadn't a clue, but he'd tell her where to find her car as soon as he could. We've put out a BOLO on it, especially here in Virginia, because there has to be some reason those guys think he's coming here, no matter how dumb they're acting."

"We also need to politely ask them to reconsider their story that Angelica was just a hitch hiker," Nick said snarkily.

A uniformed female officer came in at that moment with a written sheet of paper and handed it to Tony, who thanked her and scanned it. "So far... crashed rental car in Alexandria with Cardoza's prints... hired by a name that's cropped up on our lists already – Mace Croft, remember? One of Burns people. 'Clive' is most likely Burns' DC head of security, Clive Bruford. Eric Visp entered the country last week, flying from Berne to New York via London, where he picked up three colleagues, one law and two muscle. Koch is also in New York right now. Manager at the diner in Springfield confirms people matching the descriptions of Angela and her father were there a week ago. He remembers because the man left in a hurry, the girl had to pay and she was angry. Had a dirty mouth, he said."

"Things are beginning to add up," Simon said, "we know why Angelica thinks her father's here, but why do Prater and co think so?"

"Let's talk to them again," Nick Bale said. "You want to watch, Si?"

Half an hour later, an incandescent Simon Townley was being calmed, by, of all people, Gibbs.

Prater had caved as soon as they'd shown him he'd been caught in a lie. "No, she wasn't a hitch hiker, Kev... you went to her college. We have witnesses who saw you speaking to her." Nick didn't crack his face; Tony hadn't said anything about witnesses – but he didn't doubt he'd find one if they needed one. In the observation room the door opened quietly, and Gibbs entered, to stand by Simon just as Tim went into the room beyond the mirror, and silently put a handwritten note in front of Tony. They exchanged grins, and Tony pushed the paper over to Nick as his younger colleague left the room again.

Tim had remembered Greensboro; when he'd spoken in MTAC to Cardoza's shipmates, they'd mentioned a friend who'd been invalided out of the Navy after a torpedo rack had fallen and wrecked his kneecap. Jez Hyde now worked happily as a landscape gardener in the North Carolina town, and once prodded, Prater revealed that Ray had been doing casual work for him when Burns' fixer Croft had first sounded him out about the courier job.

Now, Ray had apparently done something quite amazingly foolish. Pursued by both Koch's men and his Swiss rival's, he'd gone to the nearest library – and plugged the USB into a laptop. Marguerite had received a frantic call from him, asking for help in return for her boss's stolen information back; she'd told him neither she nor her boss had any interest in it. He'd threatened to go to the police with it – and worthless or not to the Europeans, there was still plenty on that stick that was incriminating to Burns.

Now the hapless Cardoza was being seriously hunted, and if Koch and Visp ("Sounds like a comedy double act," Tony had remarked darkly,) were after the USB, Burns was after blood. Nobody crossed him and lived. And once again his organization had the best intelligence. Nobody knew where Ray was, but Burns knew he had a wife somewhere. A search for her name brought up an article celebrating a Virginia man's hundredth birthday at the famous Gunnerson's diner – an article in the Appelt News and Informer.

"You can't write nothing about anybody because one day someone might recognise a name," Gibbs told the furious journalist, and Simon had to admit he was right. He was still seething gently when Tony came to join them.

"So there you have it," the SFA summed up ten minutes later. "'Someone' – sounds like Croft again from the description, told Ray's pal that Liz lived in the area; he passed it on innocently to Ray. Who, by the way, is now carless because he had no money left to buy gas, last time he phoned Jez, so he's been lying low, living rough and was trying to make his way on foot to Liz's place, last time Jez heard from him. No cell response any more, and although Angelica gave us the number we can't track it, the battery must be gone."

He looked round everyone. Tim said thoughtfully, "Angelica's innocent according to everything I've found. I wonder what Jack Burns' loyal right hand woman of the last nine years is going to say when she finds out her boss has dragged her daughter into this. Assuming she doesn't know, of course."

Simon shook his head. "I guess he wanted to use her as bait? Surely her mother wouldn't go along with that?"

"I spoke to Angelica," Gibbs said.

"You did? And?" Tony's eyebrows shot up.

"Told her I'd put her over my knee if she ever used language like that again. She said she didn't really want to. She does want to be in on finding her father." He looked at Tony., who frowned and thought for a moment.

"How's this, then? It's all going to go down at or near the diner. You set the place up as you see fit, you and Ziva, and Nick and his people. Protect Liz, and Angelica. Hey, and Min. My idea would be that the bad guys never get inside, but plenty of people to assist on the outside."

"And what'll you be doing?" He gave Tony a look that was outwardly sour, but smothering amusement. "As if I didn't know."

"Well, Boss, how best to search for a man living rough?" He pointed to Tim. "Man-Who-Tracks." To Simon. "Man-Who-Knows-Land."

Gibbs rolled his eyes and sighed. "You, Kemo Sabe?"

"Man-Who-Has-Doris."

NCISNCISNCIS

She stood in the yard, ears pricked, huffing happily and looking wide awake. The gangly Jim, that Tim had ridden stood close by, with Simon's favourite mount, Coco, and Elmer the short sighted mule. Tony grinned as Amos and Sally came out of the tack room.

"Hey – looks like Man-Who-Is-Grumpy-but-Wise's coming too."

Sally glared at him. "Woman-Who Is-Not-To-Be-Messed-With is telling you not to come back broken again. And don't break my husband either."

Tony, rubbing Doris's nose, ran over and kissed her before he swung up into his saddle.

"Keep tellin' ya," Amos said, "Get one of your own."

TBC

AN: I had no idea the explanations would take another whole chapter. Action coming up.