Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended. All characters originated with CSI:NY. Poetry not otherwise referenced is original.

A/N: And the case gets a little more complicated. But that's okay – so do the people! Thanks as always to those reading, and those reviewing.

Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".

The Patriot Game

The Irish bard sings of the Patriot Game

And the time it can take for a nation to flame

Into hatred and lies and a bitter refrain

And the killing of children again and again.

And the peace that is won is thrown off like a toy

And the men who march off return broken young boys,

And the old men who sent them refuse to take blame

And they say it's all part of the Patriot Game.

And the splintering of families and the cries of the jailed,

Before powerful men the dissenters who quailed

Are acceptable losses to the ones without name

Who profit from the sport of the Patriot Game.

SMT2007

Come all ye young rebels, and list while I sing,

For the love of one's country is a terrible thing.

It banishes fear with the speed of a flame,

And it makes us all part of the patriot game.

Irish Rebel Song

Chapter 36: Gamesmanship

Hawkes sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, trying to ease the tension that had settled over his shoulders. Knocking heads with a macho dick FBI agent had never been his favourite pastime and this guy was one for the record books. Hard-headed, overly confident, and completely uninterested in anyone's viewpoint but his own: that was Troy Grant.

However, he had finally agreed to let the three doctors go home for the evening, putting off any further questions until the next morning. His white eyebrows had risen far into his perfectly tanned forehead when Miriam and Kathleen had given the same home address and phone number, but he had carefully refrained from making any comments. Evidently, thought Hawkes, sensitivity courses could at least teach one when to hold one's tongue.

Hawkes had offered to take Nasreen home, but the panic in her eyes as she politely refused made him step back. Miriam had assured him that they would see her safely home. "Or perhaps," she had said, worry lining her face, "I'll just make her up a bed at our place. She's terribly shaken by this."

Hawkes wanted to howl. Why? Why had Grant blamed Nasreen, of all people, for an attack on the clinic? Why was Nasreen accepting the blame? He wanted to sit her down and make her answer his questions, but the cold tone he had heard in her voice had turned to ice in her eyes, and he was afraid to push for any more information.

Once he had seen them off the premises, he went to find Jen Angell. If he couldn't get the answers he needed from Nasreen, he would have to see what he could find on his own.

"So, Angell, what have you worked out so far?"

"Shouldn't you be gone by now, Hawkes?" she countered, eyes steely.

"Come on, Jen. It can't hurt to have another set of eyes on the scene, and I promise to step back if things get sticky, okay? Just talk it through as if I weren't here at all, and let's see what happens."

Angell looked at him carefully for a minute before she nodded crisply and started to go through the sequence of events.

She pointed to the door, "Just on closing time. They stay open until 6:30 or 7:00, depending on who's around and how many people are waiting to see a doctor. Lots of walk-ins, lots of people wandering in and out."

Hawkes nodded. He remembered how busy the small clinic had been the last time he had been there, with children running around underfoot, women sitting in corners talking quietly, a gentle ebb and flow through the building into the courtyard outside.

Angell walked to the front door; the glass had been broken and it hung loosely on its hinges. "They came through here: at least four boys."

"Boys?" Hawkes' voice was quiet.

Angell frowned, considering, then gave a sharp nod, "Varied impressions from different witnesses, naturally, but they all seem to agree they were young. Late teens, I'm guessing, maybe very early 20s. Mostly jeans and hoodies, with the hood up and faces covered. One was wearing a headscarf – you know, the black and white one like Arafat used to wear?"

"A keffiyeh," supplied Hawkes.

Angell nodded, "It was pulled over his face, so there was no way to identify him."

"You sent someone out there to talk to the watchers?" With a nod of his head, Hawkes indicated the small group of men who seemed to hover around the entrance to the clinic at all times.

"None of them would answer in English. Grant has requested a translator."

"Good luck to him. According to Nasreen, they speak several different languages." Hawkes had asked her about the men as they had walked past to get coffee; her answer had been typically brief and uninformative.

Angell shrugged, "So he'll have to find several translators." Her tone left Hawkes in no doubt that she was no more impressed with the special agent's arrogance than Miriam had been.

"So, they ran in, knocked over a bunch of stuff, hurt a little kid and Rica, then, what? Jumped the wall?" Hawkes was tracking their destructive path through the clinic.

"Basically, yeah."

"So why DHS, Jen? Why did you call them?" Hawkes kept his voice low.

"We're on Orange Alert here in New York, Hawkes. You know what that means. Anything that could possibly have security issues has to be reported. When they heard it was this clinic, they had a team down here in about fifteen minutes," Angell answered in tones to match, the two of them standing head to head near the back door.

"Why? Why this clinic?" Hawkes pushed.

"Because the community doesn't like it. Those men outside? Some are here every day: different men, according to the patrols, but about the same number. It's a kind of protest – they don't like Dr. Suq working with Drs. Beniamin and O'Connell."

"So it's religious?"

"Religious, cultural, misogynist – take your pick," Angell sighed. "Anyway, they don't do anything usually: just stand there. But this clinic gets graffiti-ed on a regular basis – racist spewing, mostly. It gets on average five bomb or death threats a month, Hawkes, and often Dr.Suq is specifically named. It isn't just the men out there that don't like her, either. There are about three anonymous calls a month accusing her of terrorist activities."

"You must be kidding," Hawkes scoffed.

"I'm telling you what the callers say. In the file are reports that she is deliberately infecting Americans with AIDs, that she is only aborting white babies, that she is implanting Muslim embryos in white women. The crazies have no limit to their imagination, Doc." Angell sighed, a hint of dismay in her eyes. "When those boys did their run through, you better believe everyone went on alert."

Hawkes nodded thoughtfully. "What do you think, Angell? A serious threat?"

She shrugged, "If I said I wasn't worried, I'd be lying. That being said, probably nothing will happen. Grant and his boys will get their jollies poking around, file a few dozen reports, and nothing more will happen."

"From your mouth to – well, take your pick – deity of your choice – ears," Hawkes said quietly as Special Agent Grant stalked over to where the two NYPD officers were standing.

"Have you got everything you need, Doctor? We are about ready to shut this down. The perps were found, by the way," he said casually to Angell.

She clenched her fists, but took a deep breath before she answered. "What do you mean they were found?"

"My boys went walkabout, found them lounging down the street laughing about the old woman going to hospital. Didn't take a CSI to figure it out." The sneer was obvious.

"You didn't think to inform NYPD?" Angell's voice was cool, but Hawkes could feel the wave of anger off her.

"Consider yourself informed, Detective," Grant replied crisply. "Naturally, you are invited to listen in on the interviews."

"Thank you for that small courtesy," Angell muttered under her breath.

"The three young men have been removed to our headquarters; if you would like to follow me…"

"What about the fourth?" Hawkes interrupted, with a quick glance at Angell.

"Four? We were told three," Grant glared at first one then the other detective.

Angell shook her head firmly, "Four: three in hoodies with the hood pulled up, one in a keffiyeh, with the ends pulled over his mouth and nose."

"Shit," Grant ground out between his teeth. "Jefferson," he grabbed an agent bustling by, "Those boys? What were they wearing?"

"Jeans and hoodies, boss, just like the wits said."

Grant swore under his breath again. Letting go of the agent and turning in one smooth move, he started towards the door.

Hawkes said blandly, "Looks like your boys missed the ringleader, Special Agent."

-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-

Danny lay as still as he could, barely breathing. The room was nearly dark, the candles guttering, the music silenced. Lindsay, finally, was sleeping, her breathing soft and regular, her face peaceful.

He wanted to touch her smooth skin, to run his hands through her hair, but he didn't want to risk waking her. She had hardly slept since they left Montana, and he wasn't going to let anything disturb her now. Tears sparkled on her eyelashes, and Danny longed to kiss them off, to vow to her she would never cry again. But he lay still and silent, watching over her sleep.

It had all happened so fast in a way, although it had taken them nearly two years to get here. His friends would say it had been building since the moment he first saw her, and in a way they were right. How could they not be? Don, and in a different way, Stella, knew him better than anyone in his life ever had.

Better than his own family, no question about that. His grandmother, his nonna, had been the only in the family who had even tried to understand the little boy who preferred books to nearly everything but baseball, who wanted to learn Italian, who sat on the kitchen counter watching her cook, asking her how and why she put things together the way she did. Her death had left a hurt in his heart that could never be healed.

Until Don Flack, no one had ever tried to see beyond the tough New York street kid who had an amazing ability to predict where a baseball was going to pass over the plate, and calculate exactly where it needed to go next. From the ages of eight until twenty-one, that ability was the only thing the Messer family valued in him, the younger and unnecessary son.

Lindsay sighed and stretched in her sleep, and Danny froze until she lay still again, a slight smile on lips he longed to kiss.

The first time he had seen Flack had been the day his life changed forever: the day he had landed in hospital with a career-ending injury before his career had even started. He smiled ruefully at the memory: the painfully young beat cop, dark hair cut brutally short, shoes polished so brightly Danny could see his own eyes reflected in them. Flack had called the bus and stayed with him until the EMTs had loaded him up, talking to him calmly and quietly to keep him from passing out from the blow to the head that had taken him down in the first place.

When Flack had shown up at the hospital a day or so later, Danny had turned his back on him, refusing to hear the comfort the younger man had tried to offer. Flack had stood for a moment, then shrugged and handed him a piece of paper with a phone number on it. "Call me when you get out. We'll go for a drink – toast your survival."

Danny hadn't answered, but then found the phone number a few months later when he was cleaning out some old clothes in preparation to move into his own place for the first time. His change of programme had been accepted the day before: he had been in a general Sciences programme on an athletic scholarship, but after the beating, he had applied for a Forensic specialty. On impulse, he had phoned the number, and left a message at the beep: "Meet me at Sullivan's; I have something to celebrate."

Making friends with a cop while fighting a pain-medication addiction may have seemed an odd choice to others, but Danny knew himself well enough to know that even then, he had been reaching out for the help he could neither ask for nor completely accept.

Years later, he had asked Flack why he showed up at the bar that night. Flack had shrugged a little uncomfortably. "Don't know, really. Had nothing else going on that night."

Danny sighed. There was something up with Flack. He was on edge and anxious, and Danny didn't think the new relationship with Stella could explain that. He knew Flack had been panting after the dark-haired detective for a long time, and he could tell when they met the plane from Montana that they were together. Something in the pheromones: they smelled like a couple.

And yet this morning they had hardly looked at each other, speaking in the other's general direction, but not making eye contact. Something was wrong there, no question about it. At first, Danny had thought it was worry over what Lindsay, and perhaps even he himself, had been going through, but now, thinking back, he knew it was more. Don had been stressed, nervous, unhappy; Stella had been rigid, strained, edging towards anger. Something had gone wrong, badly wrong, but there had been no time.

No time to talk, to figure things out, no time to ask questions, to probe into things people didn't want to say. Danny shook his head; he had been so focused on Lindsay, he had ignored his oldest friends. Five days. It was only five days since Lindsay and he had come back from Montana. Things had been moving so fast, there had been no time to sit and consider all that had been going on. It was way past time for a review.

Carefully, Danny swung his legs out of the bed, stilling when Lindsay murmured low in her sleep, turning over with half the covers wrapped around her. She settled again and he slowly slid out, pulling on his jeans as he padded barefoot to her kitchen, stopping at the small desk in the living room to grab a piece of paper and pen.

He poured a glass of water and sat down at the kitchen table, writing names across the top of the page: Mac, Don. On one side, he added two more: Stella, Hawkes. After a moment's thought, he added Adam's, then Lindsay's and his. To the names scattered around the edges of the paper, he added a few more towards the centre, connecting them with lines: Mac to Peyton and Reed. He sipped the water, staring at the triangle a moment before adding a name off Reed's: Miranda Garrett.

Slowly, reluctantly, he wrote "Gino Messer?" drawing a thin line from it to his own name, then to Reed's, and a thicker one to Miranda's.

After a few more minutes' thought, he added his cousin Nikki's name to the list, linked to his own and to Gino's. She had asked for his help, but he was still not convinced the family wasn't somehow behind it. She was involved with a man, she had confided, a man her father did not like, a man she herself had some doubts about. She had asked Danny to look into his background, find out some things about him. She had asked him to use his connections.

It was the worst of standing between two worlds, Danny thought despondently. You could get used by both sides.

You could get killed by either.