Chapter 38

"Ma'am?"

Zahara was startled out of her daze. She'd been staring out the window of the plane, trying not to think too hard about what was happening in Egypt. She looked up and saw Hammami looking down at her.

"Yes?" she asked.

"When we get back to the States, would you be willing to come to McLean to give a report of what happened? I know that you have your children to think about and if you would prefer to wait, that is doable. But the more details we know, the better it will be long term."

"I don't know. Do you need to know my decision now?"

"Not right this moment, no."

"Then, I will ask that you wait."

Hammami actually smiled sympathetically.

"Yes, ma'am."

He withdrew and sat down beside Drake once more. Zahara sighed and then looked over at Ziva who was, surprisingly, sitting beside Jonathan and Salma and reading them a story. That wasn't usually Ziva's choice of activity. It was far too staid. Zahara smiled to herself at that thought. On a plane, there wasn't much else anyone could do. Having no excitement was a good thing at this point. She was so glad that Ziva was there with her. It just gave her a little bit of extra support.

She changed seats and sat down on the other side of her children. Jonathan instantly crawled onto her lap and leaned against her. Zahara shifted over one more seat so that Salma was in between her and Ziva. The story seemed to be just wrapping up.

"But first she made him get a haircut and a shave. For she was always practical. The end," Ziva said.

Salma clapped and then looked at Zahara.

"Mama, do you make Baba shave? Are you practical, too?"

"What do you mean?" Zahara asked.

"This story is called 'The Practical Princess,'" Ziva said. "The princess saves a prince who has been cursed to count sheep and fall asleep and his hair and beard had been growing for years."

"This is a strange story. I don't recognize it."

Ziva held up a well-used book that Zahara recognized as being loaned to them by Sarah. She said it had been her favorite book when she was young.

"Oh, we haven't had that book very long. I have only read a few stories in it."

"Do you make Baba shave, Mama?" Salma asked again.

"No. He chooses to shave on his own," Zahara said. "I am not very practical most of the time."

"Can we read Dr. Seuss, Mama?" Jonathan asked.

"Yes, I think so."

Zahara pulled the book out of their bag and felt a tightness in her throat. This was Tim's book. It was the book about making choices. Could she get through it? Still, she had to do it. Jonathan had not been his usual active self and he had begun to cling to her. Zahara knew that she needed to do something that would help him feel safe again. While he was too young to understand everything, he could tell that something was going on and he knew that his father wasn't there. She started to read, letting the children help as they always did. She kept on through it, thinking over and over of what Tim might be doing back in Egypt... and what was happening to her brother.

But finally, they got to the end of the book and they recited the last two lines together as Zahara turned the book upside down.

"'Think left and think right and think low and think high.
Oh the thinks you can think up if only you try.'"

"Mama?" Jonathan asked.

"Yes?"

"Why didn't Baba come with us?"

Zahara almost wanted to cry again.

"Because he is helping to find Ahmed so that he can bring him home. When he does, he will come home."

"I want Baba to come home now," Salma said.

"I know, Salma. So do I, but it will take time. I hope it is not long."

Zahara looked at Ziva and saw her sympathy. And then, Ziva again, intervened.

"Salma, Tony and I got your bags from the hotel when we came to Egypt. Would you show me what you bought as souvenirs?"

"Me, too!" Jonathan said.

"Yes, you, too," Ziva added, smiling.

Zahara watched as Ziva pulled out the bags from before their lives had seemingly been torn apart and she prayed that the normalcy represented by the trinkets they had purchased would come back again.

Silently, she prayed.

Please, God, bring my husband and my brother home.

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Tim sat in the bathroom and stared at his phone for a long moment. Even though he had kind of already made the decision at various stages over the last year and had made the decision when he had taken the SIM card out of Salma's toy, he was now making the decision to use it and that was a hard decision to make.

For another few minutes he stared at his phone. Finally, he turned it back on and made the decision for the last time. There was no going back from this decision. Every other decision building up to this point had been reversible. This one wasn't.

Once his phone had booted up, he accessed the extra SIM card. There was only one program on it. It was encrypted and secured by a password. Tim entered the password and then decrypted it.

He took a deep breath and set the program running.

It was a tracing program, but not just any tracing program. It was the reason his life was the way it was. He had never built it voluntarily. He had only ever done it under duress.

Until now.

Over the last year, Tim had secretly decided to rebuild the program that had ruined his life... or at least a streamlined version of it. He had told no one, taking Gibbs' rule about keeping secrets to an extreme. What he had just said to the others was more than he had ever said before, but no one realized because he had never said anything before, not to a single soul. He had started doing it as another admittedly desperate attempt to get his life back on track. This was his nightmare or at least the cause of it. If he could overcome his fear of this program, maybe he could be better. So he had done it. Only this time, he had done it slowly over the course of months instead of breaking himself down doing it in days or weeks. In fact, it had taken nearly a full year of work.

And he had done it without actually being connected to anything until the final pieces. He had constructed the coding from memory and only made the satellite connections, the NSA connections and the CIA connections at the last moment. Once it was all done, he had streamlined it as much as as possible, every piece of unnecessary coding removed. It ran way more efficiently than it ever had before. The other times, it had functioned and he hadn't been in a state to care about finesse. He hadn't even wanted to do it at all. This time, he had done it, making it as good as possible, but still with a kill switch. Any attempt to access the coding without approaching it exactly as Tim himself did would activate the switch, and once he turned it on, he had to reset a countdown. All in all, he had done everything he could to secure this program now that he had intentionally built it. His main fear was, of course, that it would be discovered, which was why he hadn't ever said a word about it to anyone.

There was no guarantee that this would work, however. It was good, but it depended on so many variables, not the least of which was that he didn't think Ahmed was being moved around at all. Without something to tag him, it would be harder because the program would have to extrapolate from data and computers were only as good at that as they were programmed to be.

For now, Tim put in all of Ahmed's information that he knew and set the search going. It would mine cameras, satellites, GPS in phones, everything that had any connection to the internet.

Even any existing smartdust. This was the biggest difference from the way it had run before. Tim wanted it to be prepared for extensive use of nanotechnology. He didn't know if Bill had been suspicious of the times Tim had asked about smartdust developments, but Bill hadn't asked any questions. He had simply shared and Tim knew as much about smartdust as anyone. A number of countries were secretly developing their own smartdust now that it was becoming more widely known. Levi had been right. Once it had been done, there was no stopping it.

So now, he just had to wait. His phone would vibrate with a specific pattern if it found something. That done, Tim was very nervous about what might happen if this was discovered. However, he couldn't just stay in the bathroom. Tony would start worrying (if he wasn't already), and at the least, people would need to use the bathroom eventually. Tim smiled a little to himself and then flushed the toilet and walked out.

Tony was there. Looking worried.

"What were you doing in there, Tim?" he asked.

Tim noticed that only Suhayl was still in the room, but he was ostensibly not interested in the conversation.

"Things needing privacy, Tony," he said.

"Somehow, I don't think you're talking about what normal people mean with regards to a bathroom."

"I'm not normal, Tony. I haven't been for a long time," Tim said, a little grimly.

"You have been, just a different kind of normal."

"I haven't even been a different normal for a while."

"I know," Tony said.

"You do?" Tim asked in surprise.

For some reason, that simple agreement was almost a shock. It wasn't that everyone was unaware of Tim's mental state. They were all very much aware of it. But they rarely ever referred to it directly. Certainly, they didn't just acknowledge it without comment.

Tony raised an eyebrow.

"What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing," Tim said. "I'm just surprised that you would actually admit it instead of trying to pretend everything was fine."

"Would you rather I pretend?" Tony asked and it even seemed to be a real question.

"No," Tim said.

"Okay. But you seem... more settled, more okay than I thought you would be. Why?"

Tim smiled a little, although he was not fully amused. How could he explain that he somehow felt better and yet not actually better than he had since the attack on his family had begun? How many days ago had it been? It had felt like an eternity.

"I don't know if it will last, but part of it is because I'm doing something rather than sitting around, waiting for an attack that I can't stop."

Tim didn't say just what that something was. Tony looked hesitant for a moment and then he obviously just decided to say whatever it was.

"What if we find Ahmed... not in a good condition?"

"We will," Tim said, not commenting on the euphemism. "These people, whoever they are, won't be treating him well at all. They tried to kill Zahara when it was clear that I had escaped. They'll probably be torturing him, either because they think he knows something or else because they want him to be as hurt as possible just so that I'm willing to do more to get him back. But there's one thing they haven't realized."

"What's that?" Tony asked.

"I was willing to go all the way from the moment my family was threatened. If they had only threatened me, they might have succeeded, but a threat to my family means a declaration of war," Tim said, hearing his own voice harden. "And if I'm at war, I'm going to fight back."

Tim saw Tony glance over at Suhayl who was still not participating in the conversation. He might as well not be there, but if he had an opinion, Tim knew that he'd share it eventually.

"By doing what, Tim?" Tony asked.

"Whatever it takes," Tim said, firmly.

"More than it takes?"

"Maybe."

"No. You need to have a limit, Tim," Tony said earnestly.

"Why should I? They don't."

"Because, Tim, doing more than you have to will ruin you. You know it."

Tim just shrugged and turned away. It wasn't that he didn't know Tony was right, but at this point, he felt it might be worth it if it got rid of these people. Permanently. Tony grabbed his arm.

"No, Tim. You're not going to ignore this. I'm not going to let you ignore it. I'm not going to let you plan on destroying yourself because..." Tony paused and looked a little embarrassed but still determined. "...you matter too much, and I'm not talking about all the stuff you know. You matter too much to just sit back and destroy yourself. Come on, Tim. You know that. You've got to know that and we can't just accept losing you when it could be stopped."

Tim didn't like what he was hearing.

"Don't die for me, Tony," he said, suddenly afraid that was why Tony had decided to come along.

"Don't make it necessary," Tony said.

"No matter what," Tim said. "Don't make my life more important than yours. It's not."

"I won't, but it will be as important. So that means that if it comes right down to it, I won't sacrifice you, just like you wouldn't sacrifice me. Got it?"

Tim could see that Tony wasn't going to back down. It wasn't that he was planning on sacrificing himself to save Ahmed, but it could happen, and if so, he would. He didn't want anyone else in his place since all this was about his importance.

Tim knew himself to be stubborn, but his steel was running up against the brick wall of Tony's own stubbornness. It was possible that his own was stronger, but it had to last a lot longer to break down the wall.

"Got it, Tim?" Tony repeated.

"I'm not planning on sacrificing myself unless it's necessary."

"It won't be, no matter what. Accept it."

They both stared at each other, neither backing down.

Then, Suhayl suddenly made his presence known.

"We have plans to make," he said. "We should do so."

Tim looked away from Tony and at Suhayl. He saw the expression in Suhayl's eyes.

"Okay," he said. "Let's do that."

For now, that was the end of it, but Tim knew that it wouldn't stay that way.