Consequences of Love and War: Chapter 31
A/N: To bring you up to speed: after Dr. Alyse Aachen's abduction, Ziva and Tony contacted Mossad Officer Raanan Thal, a control officer in Afghanistan. She didn't know anything about a Navy physician being kidnapped, but she promised to share any intel she got if NCIS would help locate and release one of her operatives, Ezra Hardoon, who had been taken prisoner while he was undercover within the Taliban. They did locate him (and send him back to Tel Aviv after questioning), but he didn't know anything about Dr. Aachen, either. He gave them the name Niko Zajac, an international bad guy who had been financing Taliban cells around Kabul and might know what was going on. Zajac was currently in the Hamptons, about to attend a party hosted by the father of none other than the Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, prompting Tony and Ziva to go undercover-ish to said party to apprehend and question Zajac. Unfortunately, Zajac proved to be as clueless about Dr. Aachen as everyone else had been, insisting that there was no way his contacts in the Taliban would be interested in a female physician and that they were barking up the wrong tree (and after Tony's father realized that they were only staying with him to interrogate one of his guests, there was a confrontation between him and his son that was decades in the making). Tony just received word that Gibbs got a new lead, which is where we are now. This chapter takes place pretty much concurrently with the previous one.
Oh, and there's some profanity in this chapter. Just two or so words, but it is there. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Lyndi Crenshaw paused just inside her office door to hang up her coat and scarf. It was getting to be spring in DC, that incredibly annoying time when the weather changed unpredictably on a daily basis. Yesterday the sun had broken out of the clouds and helped the mercury rise above sixty degrees; today, she had woken to a gray and overcast sky that seemed to encourage staying in bed and forgetting about going into work.
As if she had that option. One didn't rise to her position in the publishing world by allowing the weather to dictate whether or not she should go to work.
"Yvette!" she called out to her new assistant, and within seconds, the petite blond rushed in. No, Lyndi saw as she glanced up, not blond anymore.
"The red looks good," she said with a nod. In the six months Yvette Schmidt had been working for her, she had changed her hair color no fewer than five times, but as she stuck to natural colors, Lyndi didn't see a problem with it. Besides, the recent Master's degree graduate was good at her job. "Did you get—"
"Your mail is on your desk, along with your Chai soy latte," Yvette jumped in. "John Kemp also called to tell you that he's just not going to be able to cut three hundred pages from his manuscript."
"Did you tell him that if he doesn't cut the pages, I'm going to cut them for him?" Lyndi asked as she pulled her chair up to her desk, taking a sip of her drink as she waited for her email to load. "Nobody wants to read a seven hundred page novel about a boy's coming of age. The idea's too overused to be that interesting. Letting him keep four hundred is a stretch."
"I'll give him a call back and pass along the message," Yvette promised. She hesitated briefly at the door. "I was also wondering—"
"Next manuscript from a new author is all yours," Lyndi promised. Yvette beamed at the news as she all but bounced to her own desk. Lyndi had to chuckle, but she could still remember being that young and eager to make her mark on the publishing world.
She quickly deleted the bulk of her emails, most of which were interoffice memos about one new policy or another. A few of her authors had questions for her, most of which could be answered with a few quick sentences, but a few of which she had to mark to get back to later.
There was one email buried amidst the others that made her blood run cold. "Yvette!" she called out again, and just like before, the twenty-something appeared at her office door seemingly out of nowhere. "Get Timothy McGee on the phone," she ordered. A look of confusion crossed over Yvette's youthful features.
"Who?" she finally asked.
"Thom E. Gemcity," Lyndi replied, forgetting that Yvette hadn't been working for her the last time they had to deal with NCIS in anything other than a fictional capacity. "He's a special agent at NCIS. His numbers should be in his file." She gestured toward the file cabinets lining the wall. "He and Agent Gibbs are going to want to see this." Her eyes traveled back to the computer screen, where she reread the email for what seemed like the tenth time.
Dear Sir or Ma'am,
We have Gregory Aachen's wife. She hasn't been hurt. Please tell Mr. Aachen that we'll release her for $5 million.
---
Special Agent Timothy McGee stood and smiled politely as the elevator doors opened to reveal Lyndi Crenshaw with her official NCIS escort. "Thanks, Nickerson, I got it from here," he said as he headed toward the pair. Agent Nickerson nodded and headed back for the elevator, leaving the publisher and the special agent/novelist relatively alone in the squad room. "Right over here," McGee said, gesturing toward his desk.
"When we're done with this, Timothy, we need to have a talk about your next book." He grimaced, knowing what her next words would be. "Starting with, when am I going to see a draft?"
"Uh," he stammered.
"When we're done, McGee," Gibbs cut in as he rounded the corner from the back elevators. Hibbs nodded toward Lyndi. "Ms. Crenshaw."
"Special Agent L.J. Gibbs," she drawled with a grin. "No offense, but I hoped we wouldn't be working together again."
"Feeling's mutual," he replied before turning to McGee. "What've we got?"
"Uh, email arrived in Lyndi's in-box this morning," he said quickly, gesturing toward the plasma. "It was sent to the publishing house's customer service email account a few days ago. The account gets several hundred emails a day, so it took awhile to get to it. The intern who read the email didn't know what to do with it, sent it up the chain until someone sent it to Lyndi, who called me. Uh, us."
Gibbs scanned the short message before he turned to Crenshaw. "Why'd you call us? Doesn't say anything about the Navy."
"Because I've met Alyse and know that she's in the Navy, so I figured the Naval Criminal Investigative Service would be a good place to start," she said dryly. "Imagine my surprise when Timothy told me that you've already been working on the case. I would have thought a physician abducted from a secured base in Afghanistan would have been on ZNN by now. Especially since that physician also happens to be the wife of a New York Times best-selling author."
Gibbs shrugged a shoulder. "Not what Kirkan wanted." The two continued to stare at each other in a silent challenge before Crenshaw sighed slightly.
"I like Alyse," she finally said. "She's witty and smart and pleasant to talk to. And she's an inspiration for Peter. He submitted a few manuscripts that he wrote before he met her. They weren't bad, but there was just something missing, something that he found after Alyse came into his life. I'm afraid if something happens to her, that he'll lose that again."
"A Navy lieutenant's life is at stake," Gibbs all but growled at her. "This is about more than selling a couple of books."
"There's no reason why both ends can't be met," she replied. He opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by the opening of the elevator doors, and out stepped the novelist in question, looking like he had aged a year and hadn't slept more than an hour since his wife was abducted, his graying hair in disarray and dark circles under his eyes. Not that McGee felt much better; the late night in MTAC combined with Gibbs expecting him to still be in at work on time meant that he was far from well-rested. He glanced over at Lyndi and almost did a double take at the stern expression on her face as she watched the author approach.
"What took you so long?" she demanded. Kirkan frowned at the question.
"Traffic," he replied. "It's not easy to get here from Bethesda. What's going on?" His eyes went from one face to another before they settled on the plasma screen. He read the words silently, his face paling as he did so. "What the fuck?" he murmured.
"That was emailed to the publishing house," McGee explained.
"So Bryan was right," he said, his eyes still fixed on the screen and his voice still barely audible. "This is about me. She gets deployed to a warzone, and it turns out that she's only in danger because she's married to me. How the hell does that makes sense?" Nobody said anything for a long minute until McGee cleared his throat.
"Uh, Abby and I are going to work on tracing the email," he finally said. "It was bounced around the publishing house's servers for awhile, so it'll take time. The original email was sent from a free Yahoo! account, but if we find any information about the originating ISP…" He trailed off when he realized that everyone was staring at him with blank expressions on their faces. He sighed. "We should be able to find out where it came from," he finished. They continued to stare at him for another long silent minute before the other three all turned away as once.
"I don't have five million dollars," Kirkan finally said. "I mean, I can get it. We have some investments. I can sell the cars and the condo, I'll talk to my father-in-law and see what else can be liquidated…"
"Peter, I already talked it over with the board," Lyndi interrupted, her eyes filled with as much compassion as Lyndi Crenshaw could manage. McGee could practically see the gears turning in her head as she translated this into book sales. It wasn't that she was cold or cruel, or even calculating, just…good at her job. "We'll pay the ransom, as long as—"
"I go on ZNN and go public," he finished. He sighed and looked away, pushing a hand through his hair as he thought about it for a long moment. McGee wondered if anybody else understood the conflict; he wondered if he fully understood. Every anonymous writer had his or her own reasons for remaining anonymous, and it would be arrogant of him to think he knew what motivated Kirkan. Suddenly uncomfortable at the thought, he found himself looking everywhere but at Kirkan, his eyes falling on Gibbs. He blinked in surprise at the expression on his boss' face, and began to wonder if maybe it was a Marine thing. He had a feeling he would never know.
Kirkan turned to Gibbs, the conflict obvious in his eyes. "Gunny," he began, his voice hesitant. "If that was your wife out there, what would you do?"
Gibbs shook his head. "Not my call," he replied. Kirkan frowned.
"I don't want to do anything to jeopardize your investigation," he said, "and I'm a reporter, so I know how difficult reporters can make it for people to do their jobs. But at the same time, I can't take the chances that these bastards are serious. Not with Alyse's life on the line."
"No matter what you decide, we won't stop until we find your wife and get the people responsible," Gibbs promised his former Marine. "You have my word."
Kirkan nodded. "I know," he replied simply. He turned to Lyndi Crenshaw and sighed. "Okay," he said. "You have a deal. Just tell me when and where for the press conference, and I'll be there." His eyes returned to Gibbs, a new determination in those dark orbs. "And with any luck, we won't have to use a single penny."