21 Everyone goes to Rick's

Gibbs closes the door to the ICU room hard enough to wake Tony, though he doesn't drop the phone. Becks goes on sleeping. Gibbs sits down. "We're making pretty good progress on figuring out who tried to kill you yesterday. And I think I'm getting pretty close to figuring out why."

Gibbs is smiling, almost laughing. "You are a piece of work, Special Agent in Charge DiNozzo. You told me a long time ago that arresting you in Baltimore would be the biggest screw up in my career. You're wrong. This is easily the biggest screw up of my career. But I've finally had a decent cup of coffee and I think my head's clearing.

"Here's my mistake. I investigated this case as if you were Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, NCIS. We turned over all your casefiles, reinvestigated the chop shop. We turned out the cell of that lab rat in Baltimore. We had cells in Leavenworth tossed. We got nothing, because I'd forgotten that you're not an NCIS special agent."

"It's very special agent, but go on," Tony says.

"You're NCIS's special agent in charge, Rota Naval Base. Rota's not the biggest base. But it has a unique distinction. Every U.S. ship entering the Med calls at Rota. Every U.S. ship exiting the Med calls at Rota. Every single one."

"Everyone goes to Rick's," Tony says.

"And that makes you an interesting person. You weren't carjacked because you busted a chop shop or turned up a meth lab. You were attacked because attacking you left the NCIS office without a leader the day before a carrier group drops anchor. Kidnapping your daughter was a diversion that threw the entire base into an uproar. You want uproar? Wait till you hear what I did last night. It's the kind of mistake agents get fired for, and not just probies.

"We got an email from the kidnapper, sent from an internet café just outside the main gate. Of course we went in pursuit. And what did I do? I caused a near-riot. You'll be writing that one up for weeks. But that's not all I did. I took the MPs from the main gate. For ten minutes the gates to Rota were wide open. The kidnapper sent the email and waited for an opportunity to get on the base. And I gave it to him."

"Have you ever thought about just dropping Rule 10?" Tony asks. "It's like the speed limit. Everyone breaks it."

"I've screwed up big time," Gibbs says. "And so I can try and salvage this, you're going to tell me why the hell Chad from Chad is on the Reagan."

"Chad's on the Reagan?" Ziva asks. "You didn't tell me. You can't still be jealous."

"Oh, I can still be jealous, but that's not it," Tony says. "I was going to tell you yesterday. It's a long story, and I know how you love my long stories. Hassan Riza is Iranian, mother's a Kurd. The family left Iran just after the revolution, settled in the U.S. and became citizens. He got a degree in nuclear engineering from CalTech. But somewhere along the line he had a religious experience and he defected to Iran in '98. Where, given his education, he was welcomed with song and dance and probably 72 virgins. Or 76 trombones. I can never remember which it is.

"But he ran out of virgins, or maybe our Hassan is just one of those grass-is-always-greener kind of guys, and three years ago he started passing information."

"To Chad."

"To Chad. The Iranians are nosing around everywhere in western Asia and Northern Africa. That's how contact got made. But about a year ago we lost our cutout. Not sure whether Hassan was alive or dead, but we'd heard there was a fatwa issued, so we hoped he'd just gone to ground. He has Kurdish relatives, so we thought he might be in Iraq. But we've got really good contacts with the Iraqi Kurds and we never turned up anything. There was a chance he was in Turkey, but we don't have real good ties there, and it's an ally and a democracy, so we couldn't just go bigfooting around."

"And then there was an earthquake."

"And then there was an earthquake. Part of the Fifth was chopped to the Med for humanitarian assistance. Leon Vance decided it was the perfect opportunity to start sniffing around. Not just for Hassan, it was just too good a general opportunity to pass up. It took a while, but they turned up Hassan about two weeks ago and stashed him on the Reagan."

"Why put him on an aircraft carrier? Why not just fly him out?"

"The infrastructure's terrible because of the earthquake. No landing facilities nearby. But mostly we just didn't want to draw attention to him."

"Why did you not ask Mossad?" Ziva asks.

"I don't know. Maybe we did. But Mossad might have stolen him, or, worse, killed him. In any case Mossad attractions attention sometimes, and that's just what we didn't want."

"So what's the plan?" Gibbs asks.

"He gets off at Rota, we fly him out from here with no one the wiser. We have eight thousand sailors coming ashore on liberty. We'll have a dozen cargo flights in and out every day. No one will notice." He smiles. "Everyone comes to Rick's. And there is gambling in Casablanca."

"You've done this before."

"Occasionally. The docks at Norfolk are huge and full of civilian contractors. There are eyes everywhere and privacy's hard to come by. Rota is unique. Every single person on this base is either in the U.S. armed forces or is a U.S. government employee or dependent. We don't have a single civilian contractor on base. We don't have a single local working on base. Even the commissary and the kitchens are run by the Navy. All deliveries are dropped at the main gate. And the area surrounding the base is flat. It's impossible to get a good pair of eyes on the base unless it's from overhead, and we have other friends to make sure that's not happening."

"So that's why McGee was able to get the infrared satellite with so little notice. Extraordinary renditions?"

"Yes, but mostly money or equipment. The stuff can be loaded somewhere nice and quiet and moved here, along with all the usual cargo. Same thing in the other direction."

To Ziva, Gibbs asks, "Did you know about this?"

"About the transfers? Yes. The others do not."

Tony says, "She's my best agent." He smiles. "And I suspect she will never be a nun."

Ziva smiles back. "You have broken the Sound of Music rule."

"Okay, when this is all over, you get to sing one verse of My Favorite Things. But I prefer the X-rated version."

Gibbs says, "You might want to dial back on the painkillers. Ziva, I think it's time that Aunt Abby introduces Becks to Caf-Pow. You two go back to the office. You can come back with the others."

"Are you shutting out the womenfolk?"

"We have to talk, very seriously, about your office mates. I know they're your friends."

"It won't be anything I haven't heard Tony say already."

"You don't know that, and I don't want to wonder if he's held something back. And Abby needs the backpack. There might be print evidence."

Ziva looks to Tony, but he nods. She gathers up the still-sleeping Becks and her backpack. "You are not cutting me out of this." She slams the door as hard as Gibbs had.