Consequences of Love and War: Chapter 23
A/N: As promised, your recap: Dr. Alyse Aachen, a Navy lieutenant, was abducted from her office at Camp Phoenix, Afghanistan. Her husband and one of Gibbs' former Marines, Peter Kirkan, contacted NCIS to find her. There were few leads initially; the best one appeared to be a Mossad operative, Ezra Hardoon, who had been captured and held in American detainee camps for about a month. However, after they located Hardoon and questioned him about the abduction, they discovered that he knew nothing about who would want Dr. Aachen, or any other American physician. He did, however, have the name of a man who had been financing Taliban activities around Kabul, Afghanistan, and may therefore know something. He is currently in the Hamptons, which is where Tony and Ziva are heading in order to apprehend and question him. Kirkan was about to follow them north in order to confront this financier, Zajac, himself, but changed his mind and ended up visiting a friend, former Army captain Bryan Lindemann, instead, who helped him realize that maybe terrorist activities can't explain everything about this case.
In other manners, Mossad Director Ruthven has been threatening to terminate Ziva's position with NCIS since he ascended to that agency's top office, prompting her and Tony to seek alternate arrangements. Tony has been trying to convince Director Vance to promote him and give him his own team, preferably Bahrain after Stan Burley completes his time there, and has been studying anti-terrorism policies and practices in order to strengthen his case for promotion. Gibbs, recognizing DiNozzo's new-found expertise in these manners, was able to figure out why, and now knows that Tony and Ziva are planning on leaving as soon as positions become available.
I think that's pretty much everything that's been going on.
Tony pulled the Mustang up to the front of the house that looked straight out of a Hollywood movie set, down to the stone façade and white columns and roundabout driveway complete with a well-landscaped fountain in the middle. A currently non-functioning fountain, surrounded by a small team of maintenance personnel and landscapers, but a fountain nonetheless. The whole situation was so different than the man Ziva had lived-with-but-not-lived-with for the last two years, the man who rented a non-descript one-bedroom apartment in DC and paid extra for his ideal parking space, who knew good food but didn't like taking the time to prepare it, who could make her laugh and annoy her with the same movie quote inside of a week.
Men like that didn't grow up in estates with stone facades and fountains.
Before Tony could even slide the gearshift into the 'park' position, a well-built man in his late fifties or early sixties stepped out of the front door and headed toward them. "Mr. DiNozzo, Ms. David," he said, his tone completely neutral. "Would you like your car taken to the garage?"
"No, thanks," Tony replied automatically. Ziva did her best to hide her smirk; Tony didn't let anybody drive his car, except her—and that was only when he didn't have a choice. "I know where it is."
"Very well," the man—butler?—replied, his voice still neutral. "Some help with your luggage, then?"
Tony looked ready to refuse again, but changed his mind at the last second and nodded, turning off the car to get out and unlock the trunk. Instead of just letting the other man move their bags into the house, he grabbed the heaviest of the bags and carried them himself; another thing people who grew up in houses like that didn't do.
She was strangely proud of him at that moment.
When he returned to the car, he glanced over at her with a tight smile on his face, and she surprised him by leaning over and kissing him, her fingers lightly brushing his jaw. When they separated, his smile had turned into a grin. "I'm glad you're here," he said honestly. She just smiled in return as he turned and again started the car to head toward the detached garage.
"You want a tour of the grounds?" he asked after parking the car. "The beach is just down that way, and—"
"Tony," she interrupted, her tone emphatic. "You can not avoid going into the house forever."
"You sure?" he quipped in return, the expression on his face making it obvious that he was going to avoid talking about anything serious. "'Cause the garage is climate-controlled, and we can get my father's houseboy to bring us our meals—"
"I am sure," she interrupted, turning and heading toward the door of the garage. He had to jog a few steps to catch up, and when he did, grabbed her hand and laced his fingers between hers. She looked over at him and rolled her eyes, but gave his hand a reassuring squeeze anyway.
The entered the large stone estate to see a tall, thin, young blond in a designer tennis outfit berating the butler who had helped Tony carry the bags into the foyer. She stopped when Tony and Ziva entered and frowned at them, a severe expression that somehow didn't make her any less attractive. Tony guessed former model; the only question was whether she was his father's girlfriend or his wife. "And who are you?" she demanded of them, her Russian accent obvious.
Tony gave her his best 'aren't I charming?' grin, which made her eyes narrow dangerously. "Tony DiNozzo," he replied. "Alessandro's son. And you are?"
Her entire manner changed instantly, going from hostile to seductive in the blink of the eye. "Oh," she said, somehow making the syllable sound like an invitation to go to bed. "Tatyana Ulshanovna. I am Alexi's fiancée." She practically sashayed the few steps closer to where Tony stood, her eyes sweeping his entire body. "I can see that Alexi passed on his good looks."
Tony had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from snorting in laughter, seeing what was going on: that she was a gold-digger was obvious, but what was humorous was the thought that she could go from father to son and still end up on top. She obviously wasn't privy to the fact that the younger DiNozzo had been cut off from his father's fortune, just as she wasn't aware that Anthony DiNozzo came with a state-sponsored assassin.
It was said assassin who cleared her throat loudly. "And I am Ziva David," she said, her voice somehow sharp and dangerous without sounding harsh. Tatyana gave her an uninterested look before returning her attention to Tony, giving him another bright smile. Tony could practically feel Ziva rolling her eyes at the blond.
"So," he said, taking a step back when Tatyana's hand drifted toward his arm, "any idea where I can find my father?" Had this been a movie, he would have been chuckling at the awkwardness of the situation; how did one balance the desire to get away from his father's gold-digging fiancée with the desire to avoid his father?
Tatyana gave him a pout before turning away. "I do not know," she said, her voice now laced with disinterest.
"I'm right behind you." Both Tony and Ziva spun at sudden voice to see a tall, lean man step out of the hallway, dressed casually in a dark polo shirt and pressed khaki pants, his hair entirely white but his dark eyes still sharp. They stood there in silence for a long minute until Alessandro twirled the glass in his hand absently, the wet clinking of the ice breaking the quiet before he spoke again. "I thought you would be here hours ago."
"We decided to stop and get something to eat along the way," Tony replied automatically. It had been the better part of two decades since he had seen his father face-to-face, and now that he was right there, he found he couldn't look away. Although he knew that his father was now in his seventies, and looked relatively young for a man of his age, he couldn't get over how much older he looked than the last time he had seen him. That thought made him wonder what his father thought of the passage of the years in him; after all, he wasn't as young as he had been, either. "Dad, this is Ziva David. Ziva, my father, Alessandro DiNozzo."
"It is nice to meet you," Ziva said politely, offering her hand. Alessandro's eyebrows rose as he accepted it, appearing to study her closely.
"Israel?" he finally asked. Now it was her turn for her eyebrows to go up.
"That is correct," she replied.
"Middle Eastern accent with a Star of David," he said to her unanswered question, nodding toward the charm around her neck. "That narrows down the choices significantly."
Her hand went involuntarily to her neck before she nodded slowly. "It does," she agreed. She finally turned to look to Tony to find him looking on with an expression that was an odd combination of amusement, annoyance, and hostility. She gave him a slight smile and ran her fingers down the back of his hand subtly. He gave her a smile in return as he captured that hand and gave it a squeeze before dropping it.
Alessandro appeared to have watched the entire exchange with amusement and no small amount of scrutiny. "I had Michael prepare the guestroom in the east wing," he finally said. "But if you prefer, we can have him make up the guest cottage out back."
Tony glanced over at Ziva, indicating that she should decide, but Tatyana jumped in before either could say anything. "There is no need to be all the way out in the guest cottage," she said. "After all, you are family." Still looking over at her, Tony didn't miss the slightly homicidal glint to Ziva's eyes, and if he were anywhere but the marble foyer of his father's house, he would have laughed. It wasn't every day he saw her even remotely jealous.
"There is no need to change plans," Ziva reluctantly agreed. "The guestroom will suffice." There was a flash of a triumphant expression on Tatyana's face before it returned to her previous practiced disinterest and boredom, and Tony again had to resist the temptation to smirk. Ziva David was one woman Tatyana Ulshanovna did not want a cat fight with.
"Great," Tony said, a bit too loudly and too enthusiastically. He flinched at his own tone. "Well, it was a long drive, so we'll just get our bags…" His voice trailed off as he looked around him, not seeing the luggage he helped Michael carry into the house from the Mustang. "Where are our bags?"
"They're in the east wing guestroom, Mr. DiNozzo," Michael, the off-season caretaker and jack-of-all-trades around the estate, replied. "Would you like me to show you the way?"
"No," Tony said quickly. This time, the smile he gave was one that didn't reach his eyes, the one he gave when he was faced with a fact he wasn't comfortable with. "I know the way." He gave his father a tight nod, and an almost questioning look to Tatyana, who had latched herself around his father's waist and was glaring in Ziva's direction, as if she was somehow marking her territory. She was going to be an interesting one, he had to give his father that. Just, not quite the type of interesting that was the good type of interesting. More like suffocate-you-in-your-sleep-to-collect-life-insurance interesting. Of course, he was the one sleeping with a trained assassin, so maybe he didn't have much room to talk.
"Anthony," his father interrupted when they were half way up the marble staircase. "Will you and Ziva be joining us for dinner tonight? We weren't planning anything formal or big, just bread, salad, crab legs, and wine, perhaps out on the veranda, if the wind doesn't pick up."
"No," he said, turning to Ziva and giving her the first genuine smile since arriving at his childhood home. She looked at him with a slightly quizzical expression on her face and appeared almost ready to jump in and counter his words until he spoke again. "We already have plans, but thanks." He turned back to his father and gave another tight smile before resuming the climb up the stairs. He wondered in the back of his mind what he would find in the east wing guestroom. Even though he knew that it wouldn't be what he would see, part of him would always expect to find the four-poster canopy bed and heavy drapes that his mother picked out for that room during her Louis XV phase more than thirty years before.