Consequences of Love and War: Chapter 6
A/N: This chapter is dedicated to everyone who said they wanted more Tiva. I aim to please (kinda).
The bullpen was silent, with McGee down in the lab with Abby and Gibbs up in Vance's office with Kirkan, leaving DiNozzo and Ziva alone and working on their respective assignments. After Gibbs' instructions to get in touch with someone who might know something quickly, Ziva knew she should have been on the phone to Raanan Thal, the Mossad control officer for three or four deep undercover operatives in various Taliban cells, but she remembered her own time as a control officer; phone calls, especially out of the blue, were not a pleasant thing to receive. She sent an urgent email with instructions to call back instead, hoping that the young officer was in a place where she could receive email and in a position where she could call back. If she wasn't, trying to reach her by phone would likely fail anyway. Or lead to her death.
That task completed and that morbid thought out of her head, she busied herself with navigating the various news sites on the internet for anything that might be relevant while sneaking glances to her partner, similarly engaged in searching for something on-line, but with a practiced blank look on his face that she was probably the only person in the world who could correctly interpret. "I am sorry about last night," she finally said.
"Don't worry about it," he replied shortly, not looking over at her. She frowned and felt her frustrations from the evening before come back with a vengeance.
"I do not think I did anything wrong," she snapped. "I am merely attempting to extend the tree branch."
"Olive branch."
"Yes, that."
He finally turned away from the computer screen to look at her. He figured the apology hadn't been a real one; Ziva, in true Gibbs fashion, didn't believe in apologies. "Not now," he said, his voice still tight. Her eyes narrowed before she slammed her pen to the desk, pushing her chair back to stand. She made her way over to his desk and grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him up.
"Yes, now," she snapped back. His eyes widened in surprise at the move; it had been almost two years since their relationship changed from partners-who-flirt-a-lot to partners-who-sleep-together-and-more, and in that time, he could probably count on one hand the number of times that they had brought their relationship into the office; Gibbs had made it very clear that he expected nothing less than professionalism. Despite their boss' instructions, though, he allowed himself to be pulled to his feet and directed toward the vending machines.
"Ziva, this isn't—"
"Quiet," she snapped, her voice a few steps beyond angry. "You have been acting like a petulant child for the past week, and I have been tolerant of it, but my tolerance only goes so far." He snorted at that, making her strengthen her glare. "Your argument last night just—"
"Okay, stop," he said, his tone just as angry. "Before you make this all my fault, let me remind you that you were the one who walked out last night."
"I went to my apartment, because you were complaining that I was turning the pages of my book too loudly!" she shot back. "And before that, you ordered me to sit down because you were worried about me pacing a hole in your carpet!"
"You done?" he asked sarcastically. She snorted.
"I am just getting started!"
"Well, I'm saying that you're done," he shot back, making her glare strengthen to the 'danger, Will Robinson' levels. He toned it down slightly, not really wanting to get her to the point where she would not only be threatening bodily harm, but also carrying out on those threats. "Did you ever stop to think of how you act in the week before your super-secret Mossad MTAC calls?" He could tell by the surprised blink that that was a 'no'. "You go back to who you were almost six years ago when you first arrived here," he informed her. "Right back to well-trained super ninja who showed up here to try to keep us from stopping a cold-hearted murderer." She blinked again, her expression going completely blank, and he knew that he had crossed the line with that last comment. Five and a half years after her brother's death and a year and a half after her father arranged his own assassination, comments about her family were still not well-received. Since there was no way to take the words back, he plowed forward. "You're sneaky, you're secretive, aloof, distrustful, guarded, devious—"
"You are just listing synonyms!" Ziva exclaimed.
"Fine!" he replied through clenched teeth. "Then let me just say this: you're impossible to live with!"
"Living with you is no walk through the yard, either!"
"Park," he replied. "Walk in the park."
"Whatever!" She threw her hands in the air, clearly not amused by the usual back-and-forth. "Did you stop and consider that maybe those Mossad calls are not easy for me, and that is why I am more easily distracted?"
He snorted. "Distracted? You're so far from distracted that—." He stopped talking at her hand clamped over his mouth.
"Do you even know what the call in MTAC was this morning?" He frowned, both at the question and the lower, more serious voice it was asked in.
"I assumed it was just one of those standard security updates," he admitted when Ziva finally withdrew her hand. When her responsibilities as the Mossad liaison officer to NCIS first changed with the Mossad regime change after her father's death, he had been curious about everything she was doing, asking about the calls and the reports and the security conferences to the point that she was getting annoyed with the constant questions. After the first four or five months, they both got bored with that, falling into a predictable routine of not taking their work home with them, keeping their off-duty conversations as off-duty as possible. He knew when the calls were scheduled for the reasons he just told her: she became very difficult to live with a few days to a week before them. Phone calls in Hebrew, both at the office and at home—either of their homes—were not an unusual occurrence, and rarely piqued his curiosity anymore. At least once a month, he could expect to be told to be on his best behavior while she hosted some sort of high-ranking Mossad officer or mid-level Israeli dignitary for dinner at her apartment. The first time she had disappeared without any warning, eight months after her father's death, he had been beside himself with worry, calling in favors to every law enforcement and intelligence officer he had a favor to call into, trying to track her down. She reappeared after a few days, completely unharmed and unaware of the lengths he had taken to find her. She found out soon enough when the emails and phone calls from Tony's contacts—who had actually been her contacts originally—started pouring in. After that, they had an agreement: she would tell him that she was going, but not where she was going or when she was coming back. He wasn't allowed to tell anyone that she was gone, no matter how long it had been; to keep him from worrying that she was lying dead in a ditch somewhere, she had a standing arrangement with a control officer within Mossad that if anything happened to her, NCIS Special Agent Tony DiNozzo had to know.
"It was not," she said softly, getting back to his question.
"Another mission?" he asked, his voice just as low, as if afraid that speaking it any louder would jinx things. She shook her head.
"It was my semi-annual review for the liaison position," she said, looking everywhere but at him. He frowned and placed his hand under her chin, directing her eyes to his.
"And?" he prompted. "Are you still employed?"
"Director Ruthven approved another six months," she replied, nodding slightly. "But he was not happy with that." He snorted; Director Ruthven hadn't been happy about her position since he became the director of Mossad. Ziva sighed. "I am not sure how things will turn out in another six months," she admitted. "How are things—"
"You'll be the first to know if anything changes," he interrupted. He sighed and leaned his head back against the vending machine. When it became obvious that Ruthven wasn't going to be going for this liaison position forever, he began lobbying Director Vance for his own team, preferably at the Bahrain office when Special Agent Stan Burley finished his assignment there; depending on how desperate the situation became, though, he'd take anything. Their back-up plan, which neither was thrilled with, was for her to resign from Mossad and find a position with one of the intelligence agencies in the DC area, assuming that any would hire her, considering her background. They figured their best bet would be the CIA; those guys would take anyone. "Vance is only beginning to look for Burley's replacement. He still has another year."
She took a deep breath and nodded. She opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted by the ringing of her phone. She pulled it from her pocket and frowned at the display. "Raanan," she explained. DiNozzo nodded.
"You need to answer that."
"Yes." She accepted the call. "Shalom," she greeted, switching to Hebrew. She gave Tony another meaningful look before giving the Mossad officer her full attention, heading back toward their desks. "Are you free to talk?" she asked, still in Hebrew.
"Yes," the younger Mossad officer replied from somewhere half a world away. Ziva glanced over at Tony and waved him over to her desk. Although he couldn't read or write Hebrew, he was getting pretty good at listening and speaking it, and figured it couldn't hurt to have two sets of ears on this conversation.
"I am putting you on speaker," she informed Thal. "My partner at NCIS is here as well."
"And he speaks Hebrew?" Raanan Thal had an almost musical voice, a rich mezzo-soprano that seemed even more exotic as it spoke the foreign language; if the situation hadn't been so serious, Tony would have been joking to Ziva about how hot the control officer sounded, just to make her smile and roll her eyes. Instead, he stayed quiet and let Ziva handle the speaking.
"A naval officer has been abducted outside Kabul," Ziva said, not bothering to acknowledge the question. "She was a physician at a detainee center at Camp Phoenix."
"And you would like to know who is there." Thal certainly hadn't been promoted for her musical voice alone; she knew her job. "Unfortunately, that makes two of us. I knew the Americans had detainees at Camp Phoenix, but I do not know who they are keeping there. Based on the traffic coming to and from the base, it is a short-term facility, likely only for medical care; they are treated and then sent to a more permanent facility elsewhere. For that reason, they may have tenants originating from a large geographic area."
Ziva frowned, and glanced over at DiNozzo to see a similar expression on his face. A short-term facility for the sole purpose of health care didn't fit the profile of a location that terrorists would want to attack in order to rescue a friend. It would make more sense to attack the transport convoy taking said terrorists from the hospital to their permanent or semi-permanent location.
Tony was apparently thinking the same thing: he held up a piece of paper on which he had written, Attack on convoy last night? Ziva nodded. "There was an attack on a convoy just outside the gates to the camp early this morning. Are they related?"
There was a pause on the other end. "I do not know," Thal finally admitted. "I have not heard anything about either the attack or the abduction."
Ziva swore lightly under her breath. This conversation was turning out to be completely useless. "How many operatives do you have in the area?"
Again, a long pause. "Currently, two," Thal informed them. "It was three, but one was sloppy. He was picked up by the Americans a few weeks ago." Another long pause. "That is why I have been trying to gather information on the American detainee centers."
This time, the swearing was louder and longer. "And you did not think to contact me?" Ziva snapped. "Did you think that Mossad had a liaison officer to NCIS because I like to run on the Capital Crescent Trail?" DiNozzo bit back a snort of laughter at the glare on Ziva's face. How ironic, that she would be having this discussion with a control officer on the very day she had to defend her job to her director. "What is his name? Both his real name and the one he had been using."
"Ezra Hardoon," Officer Thal said. "That is his name, but he was likely picked up under the name Kazem Shirazi." Ziva jotted down the names, unconsciously writing his true name in Hebrew and the pseudonym in Arabic. He had a Mizrahi name and was using a Shi'ite cover; he had probably been picked up as an Iraqi trainer in a Taliban camp. She glanced over at Tony to see an unknowing expression on his face; he still had a lot to learn about Middle Eastern nuisances.
"Identifying marks?" Ziva asked Thal.
"He was in a bombing as a child," the control officer said. "He has extensive scars on his right arm as well as his right hip, but that may not be all that distinguishing in that population." Ziva noticed the slight crack in Thal's voice as she mentioned the scars on Hardoon's hip, and guessed that she gathered that intel from means other than the Mossad officer's official file. She hoped that wouldn't be an issue.
"What do you have to offer?" Tony frowned at the phrasing, but Raanan Thal seemed to know what she was asking.
"I will keep the fact that the Americans have captured an allied agent quiet," the control officer said dryly.
"This is not a joke, Officer Thal," Ziva snapped. "As an intelligence operative, Officer Hardoon could not have expected any different treatment." As she knew from personal experience, spies weren't covered by the Geneva Convention; if captured, there was no one to say how humanitarian the treatment had to be. There was a reason why she was determined to never be captured alive. "You are asking the American government to reveal the location of an overseas detainee center in order to release a Mossad officer operating in their territory without their knowledge. You better have something to make it worth their while."
"Afghanistan is hardly American territory."
"I assure you, they do not agree on that point. The fact that he was captured proves that."
There was a long stretch of silence on the other end before Thal spoke again. "There is a camp in Pakistan that has remained unknown. We were planning on taking care of it ourselves, but we will share the intelligence."
"What else do you have?"
Another stretch of silence. "The possible location of two Marine pilots who were shot down," Thal said reluctantly. "It is believed that they are being held in the same place as several IDF soldiers captured earlier this year. That intel has not been verified and may be a trap. We were going to—"
"Thank you," Ziva interrupted. She didn't need to hear another one of Thal's excuses. She wondered when she had started considering herself more an NCIS agent than a Mossad operative; she had once been just as secretive with her intelligence as Thal was being, but now it just annoyed her. "I need you to listen for information on the Navy physician and the Camp Phoenix detainees. Call back in six hours, after I have had the opportunity to speak with people on my end." She hung up the phone before the younger woman could say anything further and looked over at Tony.
"Looks like you're going to be doing some liaising today," he said, his tone light but the expression on his face serious. "At least you'll have something for your next report. Maybe we'll buy ourselves another six months."