DiNozzo strode out of the elevator, with Bishop right behind him. "I can't believe Gibbs left us at the hospital!" Tony was complaining as he neared his desk and threw his gear down on the floor.

"Gibbs left you at the hospital?" McGee repeated in surprise, knowing there was more to the story than that. "How did you get to the crime scene to find the phone, then?"

"He had Ducky give us a ride," Bishop reminded Tony as she stowed her own gear behind her desk and sat down. "It's not like Gibbs abandoned us there!"

"He left us so he could take this MacGyver character back to his house for a nap!" Tony grumbled, pulling up his email with angry clicks of his mouse.

"This 'MacGyver character' is a witness to an attempted murder, Tony! He's so exhausted that he fell asleep in the middle of a briefing. If we're going to get any useful information out of him, we need him conscious!" She ignored Tony's grumpy face as she pulled up her own messages and quickly scanned through them. "Still nothing from The Phoenix Foundation on MacGyver. I wonder why an organization with such a good reputation of working with Law Enforcement is being so uncooperative with us? I'm going to call them and request that file again."

Tony turned to McGee as she picked up her phone and dialed. "What did you and Abby find? Any further antiquated technology that will be the silver bullet in our chain of evidence?"

McGee picked up the remote and put his findings up on the plasma screen. "To be honest, MacGyver had an elaborate tracking device placed somewhere on our victim… It's still pinging from the hospital, and we can't quite figure out where it is on his person; we have all of his clothes here for processing. That device feeds into a GPS and Satellite monitoring program on MacGyver's laptop that will hopefully give us everything we need to know about his physical location...and that's the only part of that laptop that we managed to get access to before it locked up on us. Abby's at work on the phone right now. The warrant came through, and we're tracing Schwimmer's cell phone and credit card usage. The only thing we still don't know is why Schwimmer was looking for The Cougar in the first place. I can't wait to get access to the rest of that laptop; he's probably got the remainder of our case wrapped up in a neat little bow."

"I don't believe you understand me," Bishop exclaimed into the telephone, her voice still professional but growing in volume. "I am Special Agent Ellie Bishop, from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and I'm asking for information on a Phoenix employee by the name of MacGyver, first name unknown. This is in reference to an attempted murder we are investigating!"

Tony and McGee watched as she drew a deep breath and tried to calm herself. "I wonder what's going on," Tony mentioned in an aside to McGee. "Something's really strange here."

"Agreed," McGee nodded.

"I am not authorized to allow you to speak to Mr. MacGyver at this moment; he is currently with our Senior Field Agent….nor am I cleared to comment on his condition." She held the phone away from her ear for a moment as she shook her head at Tony. Pressing the phone once more to her ear, she continued. "If you don't have clearance to provide this information, Assistant Director Malloy, perhaps your Director would! May I speak to your director?" Bishop listened to the response, disbelief crossing her face. "What do you mean, 'you're not authorized to allow us to speak to your director at the moment'? I am trying to… He's out of town? Please have him call us as soon as possible. Thank you."

"I don't believe this," Tony said, standing and crossing to McGee's desk. "How about we do a little investigating of our own on this guy?"

McGee's fingers were already flying across the keyboard. "Way ahead of you, Tony… I just need to circumvent the firewall….? What on earth…?"

Tony leaned over his shoulder, not understanding the zeros and ones at all. "What's up, McGee?" he asked, as Tim scowled and dove back in.

"I thought the encryption on MacGyver's laptop was crazy! I have never seen cyber-security like this before. It's actually a tougher set of code to beat than the Pentagon!"

"What is The Phoenix Foundation up to?" Bishop asked as she joined the party behind Tim's desk. "I've heard the name, but I thought it was tree-hugging eco-rescue stuff."

"That's part of it," Tim nodded, abandoning his first attempt and trying something different. He accessed the Foundation's web page, attempting to tunnel in that way. "It's a 'Think Tank', heavy into research." He found a new page, and started reeling off the Foundation's current projects. "Their scientists have pioneered eco-friendly pesticides that don't harm the environment, they've developed new technology in the field of alternative fuel sources for the automotive industry, made incredible advances in the healthcare industry; specifically artificial limbs and organs for the catastrophically injured…" McGee paused as he read something that surprised him. "They've created satellite locators for military personnel that can be implanted subcutaneously and are undetectable to ground-based scanners, so if someone is lost or taken prisoner, they can be tracked anywhere on the planet… which explains how MacGyver was able to tail Schwimmer so closely!"

"So this sounds like a great organization," Tony had to admit. "But why are they giving us the stone wall?"

McGee didn't answer, instead working his magic with the keyboard. "I think I might have found a way in," he said in triumph as a personnel file flashed up on the screen. "Wow…the folder of mission synopses alone is nearly five gigs! I've got specs going back thirty-five years… Some of the stuff he's been involved with has been crazy!"

"Print it," Tony ordered. "I want to know as much as I can on this guy before I'm comfortable working with him."

"Gibbs seems to trust him," McGee reminded him. "You know how good a judge of character Gibbs is."

"Something about him… I don't know what to make of it." Tony spun to the printer, waiting for the pages to collect. "He knew my name!" Tony exclaimed suddenly, whipping around to stare at McGee.

"What?"

Tony ground his fist into his other hand. "When I interrupted what I thought was Gibbs about to kill our suspect in Interrogation, Gibbs introduced MacGyver to me, but didn't introduce me to MacGyver, who then called me, 'Tony' when he asked me about the evidence we'd collected. When they came up to the bull pen, MacGyver called me, 'DiNozzo'!"

Tim looked thoughtful. "He knew Abby, so maybe they… No, he knew her when she was in High School and apparently hasn't seen her since. You know what? When he and Gibbs came into Abby's lab, MacGyver asked me to run The Cougar's plates."

DiNozzo shook his head. "How would MacGyver know to ask you to do that?"

McGee paused to give Tony a confused look. "Maybe because I was standing in the Forensics Lab, and that's something normally done there? That's not what got me, though. He called me 'Tim' when he did it… Gibbs hadn't introduced us yet either," McGee remembered.

A large enough stack had collected on the top of the printer, so Tony picked it up and paged through it. "This is an unbelievable amount of information!"

Tim kept reading. "Distinguished service awards from his service in the military; bomb disposal in Vietnam, apparently. He then worked as an agent for something called the DXS…"

Bishop's head jerked up. "The Department of External Services? I thought that was just a myth!"

Tim shrugged. "After that not-so-mythological agency dissolved in the mid '80's, he and Pete Thornton became heavily involved with the Phoenix Foundation, and… Okay, so that's why we weren't able to track down the Director!"

Bishop tilted her head to the side. "Why not?"

"Because MacGyver IS the Director! He has served in that office for the last eleven years, since the founder and first director, Peter Thornton, passed away."

"Why is a field agent turned Director of a think-tank research organization trailing a Navy Officer through DC?" Bishop asked.

"MacGyver said that he was doing this as a favor to his 'friend', Jack Dalton," McGee remembered. "Gibbs seemed to know this Dalton as well, but I get the feeling that they were much less than friends."

"And this guy knows a whole lot about us, having just met us over a pair of handcuffs," Tony added darkly. "I think we need to get reading."