Dorothy, we're not in Kansas anymore.
The line echoed through what was left of McGee's muddled brains. The only problem was that the line wasn't delivered by either the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, or the Cowardly Lion. The words, as McGee heard them in his head, had that distinctive DiNozzo airy tweak to them as though the man was once again regaling his comrades with his encyclopedic knowledge of movie trivia.
That wasn't the most unfortunate thing. Once the line had finished rattling around inside his mind, the Flying Monkey music took over and wouldn't quit. It was enough to make him sick to his stomach.
No, that wasn't what was making him sick. It was the hangover effect of whatever those men in hoods had shot him up with. It was the fact that he was stuffed into the trunk of a car, air hot and foul, with another hot and stinking body lying next to his. It was the jouncing up and down and side to side with every turn the car took, inflicting bruises whenever he hit something else.
Which was when McGee realized that he was already processing the scene: tied up. Second body. Moving to another location.
Memory came back in a rush: getting hoisted out of the salon window after Professor Eppes, with the men in hoods believing that McGee was Professor Penfield. Getting stuffed into some sort of burlap bag was another remembrance, right after getting stabbed with a hypodermic needle.
He could have done without any of it.
McGee swallowed hard, sternly commanding his stomach to behave. He was an NCIS agent, trained to deal with these sorts of situations.
Actually, no, he wasn't. He defied any of his instructors at Quantico to come up with a scenario that approximated this slice of real life for anyone except those destined for undercover work. McGee would have been very happy with the occasional foray outside of the office to pick up evidence for Abby, Queen of Forensics and The Night, and then return to his beloved computers to track down evil-doers in ways never imagined a generation ago. Doing his crime-fighting seated in front of a flat screen would have suited him just fine.
Time for a little deductive reasoning: it was reasonable to suspect that the foul-smelling body next to him belonged to Professor Charles Eppes, the man who had been kidnapped along with pseudo-Penfield. He tried to test that hypothesis: "Dr. Eppes?"
That was what he tried to say. What actually emerged from between his lips was muffled and in no way resembling actual words, which meant that Special Agent McGee was unable to test his hypothesis as to the identity of his fellow passenger in the trunk of this vehicle. He was, however, able to glean another small piece of information: he was now gagged.
McGee sighed, and tried to brace himself as best as he could against the sides of the trunk, trying to prevent both he and his fellow captive from the bruises that would inevitably be produced.
It was going to be a very long journey.
But considering what lay at the other end, McGee suspected that the journey would end too soon.
"Forensics is on its way," Fornell announced, glaring at the room as if the place ought to be writing out a sworn affidavit as to what had occurred.
He wasn't about to get any information from the most recent occupants. Not one was awake, and by now the last ones were being carted off by ambulance attendants. The most awake of the collection of mathematicians was only able to mutter incoherently.
Not drunk. Of that, Don was certain. He had seen his brother drunk on rare occasions, and believing that a collection of mathematicians, engaged in hot debate over whatever theory took their fancy, had simultaneously gotten inebriated to the point of unconsciousness was not going to happen. If something hadn't interfered, then they all would have been at it right now, screeching at each other as to when, why, and how two plus two failed to add up to four.
Likewise, waiting for Forensics to show was also not going to happen any time soon. It was a toss up as to which city possessed the worst traffic that would slow up the wagon, which meant that the D.C. Forensics guys wouldn't be here for another half hour or so. Don had more important things to do. He had a brother to find.
Fornell had already called for the hotel hired help to be sequestered for questioning. That would take manpower, and Don had other thoughts in mind. The crime scene was now littered with the footprints and wheel tracks from stretchers removing drugged bodies.
David moved in. "You think the guy impersonating Penfield was the one to slip the drugs into the drinks?"
"Maybe. It fits. We can take it as a working theory."
There was another method of escape, for a way to take a body out of the room unnoticed, and Don moved toward the heavily drape-encrusted windows, sliding the velvet fabric aside. Instincts correct: there were some scratches in the paint on the sill of the window and the scratches were recent. The edges of each scratch was crisp and clean. "Bingo," he called out grimly. "This is how they took Charlie out, without being seen." Reflexes honed in Fugitive Recovery kicked in, and he looked carefully along each edge of the window. "They went up from here," Don determined, noting the matching paint scratches on the top edge. "Rope burns." He pushed open the window, craning his head to look up along the tall wall of the hotel. "How far up?"
"This place has got thirty six floors." Fornell came up beside him, David and Colby in his wake. "It'll take too long to investigate all of them."
"We don't need to." Don kept staring at the windows marching up in a straight line. "The next three floors should be more than enough." He pulled his head back in. "Let's move, people."
Yuri Schinoff lived in an elegant older mansion on the outskirts of D.C., in a neighborhood, DiNozzo reflected, that ought to house a better class of people. He pulled up in front of the place, putting the car in park. Neither Gibbs nor Ziva waited for him to finish turning off the engine; both were already out of the car and halfway up the walk before DiNozzo could catch up.
At this time of year, the azaleas were in bloom. DiNozzo allowed the periphery of his vision to enjoy the gentle profusion of pink and white petals that lined the walk to the front door. The large dark panels were of fake mahogany, the owners of the mansion having replaced the real wood with more durable plastic and tacked long panels of colored glass alongside of the double doors to make the place seem welcoming. Three stories tall—DiNozzo could look up, and up again, seeing garrets jutting out stark against a single passing white cloud just underneath the quarter moon. Lovely place; DiNozzo had grown up around such elegance.
Currently, he preferred something more spare. More modern. More in keeping with his paycheck.
Gibbs rapped on the door, eschewing the doorbell set in fake wood to the left of the door. The sound echoed hollowly in the entry hall beyond the door and seeped out to the front stoop where they waited.
They waited. Gibbs lifted his hand knock again, this time more impatiently.
The door cracked open before he could apply knuckles to plastic. A chubby face appeared. "Yes?"
Gibbs flashed his badge. "NCIS. We're looking for Mr. Yuri Schinoff."
"Not here. This is night. Go away."
Gibbs stuck his foot in the door, preventing the man from closing it. "Not a good idea, Mr. Schinoff, lying to federal agents. Your picture is plastered over several walls."
Schinoff gave in with poor grace, holding the door open for them. "You ask questions. You go." His accent was thick.
"You give us the answers we want, we'll go even quicker," Gibbs promised him. He glanced around, taking in the crystal chandelier and the brocaded furniture. "Nice place."
Schinoff wasn't interested in showing off his home. "Go faster. Ask, then get out."
DiNozzo played along. "Not very hospitable of you, Schinoff," he complained. "Here we are, admiring your lovely home. What business did you say that you were in? Oh, that's right: you didn't say."
Ziva was circling the room like a shark sniffing out blood. "What business are you in, Mr. Schinoff?"
"I put business deals together. You finished now? Is bedtime."
"Not quite." Gibbs too was taking his time, looking at everything there was to see. Not that any of them expected to see something, not out in the open, but that wasn't the point. The object of the game was to rattle Schinoff so that something would drop. " A bunch of people were discussing code-breaking. Your name came up."
"What of it?" Schinoff started to say, then chose another tack. "Means nothing to me. Not involved."
"Really? Never do business with Banc Suisse?"
"I do business with many banks all over world."
"So I imagine that Banc Suisse would be one of them," DiNozzo purred. He picked up a gold-rimmed dish and pretended to inspect it before putting it back onto its shelf. "Nice. Wouldn't work for smuggling a code into the country, though."
"I don't spy," Schinoff insisted. "Don't smuggle nothing." His accent was growing thicker; a clear sign, DiNozzo decided, that the man was getting nervous. "I am upstanding, honorable businessman. You have no right to question me."
Gibbs loomed over him. "We have every right to question you, Mr. Schinoff." He slipped around to the back of his quarry, so that his voice would whisper into only one ear from behind. "You made a call less than an hour ago, Mr. Schinoff."
"Not me. I call many people, have many friends."
DiNozzo closed in from the other side, blocking the smaller man between them. "Maybe someone else in this house did the calling? Perhaps we ought to search the place? Make sure that you're here alone? That way you wouldn't have to take the blame. They execute spies, you know."
Flash of eyes, flash of fear.
"Who knows what we would find when we search your home?" Ziva's smile belonged on a cat playing with a trapped mouse. "Names, perhaps? Contacts? Those names would clear up a lot of questions," she lied, knowing that a small operator such as Schinoff would never have access to the big boys of international espionage.
"Of course," Gibbs added thoughtfully, "if we got a name, someone that was a better prospect for intelligence than you, we'd have to hustle off after them. We'd have to leave you behind with just a warning about making phone calls to people who just might be enemies of the United States government."
Schinoff didn't know how unimportant he was. He only knew that he was facing imminent ruin. Exposure of his clientele, he thought, would result in either long imprisonment at the hands of the U.S. government or a fast and painful death at the hands of disgruntled clients. He wilted. "Called Kwitarunge."
"Leonard Kwitarunge?" Gibbs knew the name. "Arms dealer, out of East Africa?"
Ziva's eyes narrowed. "If we trace your call, we will find that it goes to Kwitarunge?"
Schinoff tightened his lips. "Yes."
"Not a pleasant individual," DiNozzo observed. "In fact, he—"
Crack!
The glass in the front window shattered, courtesy of a small and slender bullet crashing through it at a high rate of speed. The skull in the front of Schinoff's head likewise shattered, courtesy of the same bullet. Blood sprayed out, hitting the plushly carpeted rug.
"Sniper!" Gibbs yelled. Already his own gun was in his hand, and he was crouched behind the sofa, counting on meager upholstery to provide whatever cover it could. "Across the street!" Swift decisions: "DiNozzo, call for back up! Ziva, cover me!" He darted to the door, pausing as he opened it, hesitant to expose himself as a target.
Good call. Two more bullets buried themselves in the doorframe not two inches from his nose. Gibbs pulled back, Ziva at his elbow.
"Count of three. One, two, thr—"
Both dashed out, shoulder-rolling into bushes on either side of the walk, counting on the shrubbery and the darkness to mask their exact whereabouts. Ziva's covering fire came first, but Gibbs's came closer to the target.
It was the house across the street. Both spotted the sharp glint of something long and metallic poking out of the window, something that spit an orange lick of flame along with another bullet.
Hand signals: Ziva to the right. DiNozzo, hot on her heels and barreling out of the house, to the left. More covering fire, and the three agents advanced, using the trees as shields.
"SWAT's on its way," DiNozzo yelled.
"Gonna be too late," Gibbs growled, putting another bullet right where he wanted it.
Didn't help; the three of them heard the roar of an engine, and a motorcycle screeched away on smoking tires. Ziva threw another round of lead after the sniper, but they all knew even as she fired that the distance was too great.
Gibbs swung around. "Schinoff—?"
DiNozzo stopped him. "Too late, boss. Already a candidate for Ducky's table."
"This is it." Don didn't have to take more than two steps into the room positioned immediately above the salon from where Charlie had been kidnapped. He could smell it.
Don held himself back. As much as he wanted to dash inside and tear the room apart, he refused to allow himself the gratification. There was too much at stake, too much to lose by not following the rules. Stomp over the wrong footprint in the rug, and a valuable clue would be lost.
Instead, he forced himself to take his time, feeling both his own team and Special Agent Fornell behind, watching his every move. He allowed his instincts to come to the forefront, those same instincts that he'd honed on the deserts of New Mexico chasing fugitives. They'd served him well then, and they would serve him well now.
The room was substantially smaller than the one below that Charlie had been taken from, with the hotel-standard king-sized bed and a dresser and desk that were pretending to be expensive furniture, yet it was still one of the premier suites with the additional space to justify the high price that the hotel undoubtedly charged. There was a small smudge on the bottom left edge of the mirror over the dresser, but Don was willing to bet that it was left by the housekeeper and not the kidnappers.
There were signs that this was the room: the bed covers were dented. Nothing so much as rumpled—no one had taken a cat nap—but a body had been deposited onto the mattress, on top of the gold brocaded pattern, and then had been lifted off again. There was nothing to suggest that anyone had made use of the chairs in the corner, and the firm padding wouldn't lend itself to the same sort of curves as the bed linens. No ashes; in fact, no ashtray. This was a non-smoking room. He sniffed the air, and inhaled the merest molecules of something sickly sweet. A set up like this? Don was willing to bet that the victims had been given something to keep them quiet, something that would last a bit longer than whatever had been administered in the salon.
Two objects sitting on the desk confirmed that this was the target room: two cell phones, one of which looked like the model that Charlie favored. Both cells were black top of the line tech-lover devices, and both shared one highly disturbing feature: both had been smashed. The message was clear; communication from Professor Eppes was not going to happen.
Don let his gaze wander over to the window, and there he saw the marks that confirmed his working hypothesis: scratch marks in the paint on the sill, almost identical to the ones one story below. The kidnappers had hoisted Charlie up with a rope into this room, drugged him, and carried him out in a matter of moments.
All very carefully and professionally planned. That meant that they knew who they were after, and that murder wasn't the goal. That was the good news.
The bad news was scary. Charlie, with his various awards and honors, was not destitute by any means but neither was he a target for someone with a get-rich-quick scheme. No, this had to have been put together by someone who wanted Charlie for his position and since people usually didn't abduct math professors for the purpose of teaching overly bright kindergarteners, Don was willing to admit that it had something to do with Charlie's work with government agencies, one of whom was well represented in this room.
That, however, didn't make sense. Charlie had done plenty of work for Don, but none of those cases would lead anyone to think of kidnapping Charlie. If anything, they'd be more in line with a good old-fashioned assassination for services rendered, and anyone with an ax to grind would be aiming first for Don himself. Charlie was usually somewhat removed from the take down of the perps.
Next link in the chain: Charlie also had done work for the NSA, and a couple of times for both NASA and the Federal Reserve. Bank CEOs? Maybe, but those guys were more likely to whine to Congress and beg for bonuses, and Don highly doubted that this crime had been carried out by little green men from Mars.
That left the NSA.
Fornell read his mind. "I'll get my contacts working on it," he offered grimly. "It fits. Missing code, missing code-breaker."
Yeah. It fit. It fit only too damn well. "Tell Forensics to hustle." Don forced the words forth. It was tough to talk. It's Charlie! It's Charlie!
He tamped down his emotions; they'd interfere with his ability to work, and right now he needed every sense working overtime. He scanned the room, trying to read the story printed there.
The bed linens—yeah, that's where Charlie had been dumped. The lines on the cover were just slightly larger than his brother's outline. But there were lines in the carpet, waves of pile pushed this way and that—second body. That second body, he'd assumed, was the Penfield imitator. Why would they dump their own man on the ground?
Unless they thought that the impersonator was the real thing, which meant that someone else had spiked the drinks to take out an entire room of geniuses. The fact that the second cell had been smashed along with Charlie's lent credence to that theory.
"I want to question the hotel staff—" he started to say when something caught his eye. It was brown, it was square, and it was almost hidden underneath the dust ruffle on the side of the chair along the edge of where the lines in the carpet lay. Don went on point. Using a pen to prevent getting any of his own fingerprints on the object, he pushed at it until he got it free from its hiding place.
It was a wallet, worn brown leather uppermost, a second more slender leather case underneath it. Don nudged at them with his pen, dragging the two pieces out from underneath the ruffle. He slid the point under the fold of the second leather case, flipping it open. A gold badge greeted him, and he read the department that it belonged to. "NCIS." He glanced up at the other three. "What the hell is an NCIS badge doing at the crime scene?"
"Open the wallet," Fornell urged him. "Who does it belong to?"
Don performed the same operation on the wallet, stretching the leather out to its full extent. A driver's license greeted him, showing a Caucasian male, light brown hair, unremarkable features. He bent down to read the name. "Timothy McGee."
Fornell jerked. "You sure? McGee?"
"Yeah. The name mean something to you, Fornell?"
"Yeah, it means something to me, Eppes. You ever hear of a guy by the name of Gibbs?"
"No. Who is he?"
"He's the best agent that NCIS has, and the biggest pain in my ass."