Reading Time: 142 Minutes
Title: A Greater Sacrifice
Author: SASundance
Fandom: NCIS, Eureka – minor crossover
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Episode Related, Fantasy, Kid!fic, Paranormal/Supernatural, Science Fiction
Relationship(s): Gen, background pairings
Content Rating: R
Warnings: Discussion of suicidality, suicide missions, canonical level of violence
Word Count: 200,260
Summary: When Anthony DiNozzo is told by Director Vance that he must take one for the team, following the death of Mossad Officer Michael Rivkin, never did he imagine that the cost would prove so high. After a year filled with taking one for the team, Tony decides that he is not going to Tel Aviv, until he is blackmailed into going along by opportunistic politicians who see a chance to change the balance of power. Forced onto the plane taking Rivkin’s body home, an injured Tony isn’t sure that he will make it out alive or if there is anything left for him to come home to.
Artist: Lailath Quetzalli
Chapter 26
Tony woke up from his nap – and damn it, he felt like a decrepit nonagenarian needing to sleep in the daytime just because he’d sat around on deck, impersonating a lizard, and enjoying the sun for the first time since arriving in Israel several weeks ago. It was astonishing just how exhausting it was. Of course, Dr Blake cornered him for a chat about himself and Jeanne, and their future. That sure had tired him out too, especially since he was still recovering after the emotional bloodletting, the day before.
He heard Xavier snuffling a few times before he settled down again, so he made himself comfortable, waiting for the toddler to wake up on his own. Tony had learnt that the hard way. He settled in on the bed, which was much more comfortable than the bed at the Aharon Clinic, he turned onto his side to watch his sleeping child as he thought about the final difficult discussion Jeanne shared before he was discharged on Wednesday in the middle of the afternoon, arriving in Cyprus just over 24 hours later.
After their second talk, they couldn’t continue their fragmented discussion for a couple of days. Xavier started cutting a tooth and was out of sorts, and producing some gas-mask worthy diarrhoea that was scalding to his sensitive little posterior. He also had a low-grade fever and was irritable. Then there was the massive drool-fest, his mouth was red and sore, and his sleep poor. If Tony hadn’t been feeling so worried, he might have been amused to hear the medicos insisting that loose stools and fever weren’t symptoms of teething. Especially when the three mothers, who were also doctors, Helen, Jeanne, and Allison also admitted that their babies and toddlers all without fail, had diarrhoea and elevated temperatures when teething.
Tony felt sad that Xavier was so miserable and he couldn’t do anything to fix it. Sure they gave him cold facecloths to gum on, and a pacifier they’d stored in the refrigerator, plus acetaminophen and cold applesauce but it was hard seeing him so out of sorts. This was why neither Jeanne nor Tony was in the right frame of mind to continue their talks, given how crucial they were to the future. Jeanne was much calmer than Tony, about the whole teething business, but as she explained, she was a doctor and had been through it four times before, when Xavier’s top and bottom central incisors erupted.
Tony plaintively asked how long before Xavier cut all of his teeth, horrified to learn that all 20 of his baby teeth should appear by the time he was three years of age. That meant not counting this lateral incisor, there were another 15 to go. Why did cutting milk teeth have to be so hard? He remembered when his 12-year-old molars and then his wisdom teeth came through in his teens it didn’t seem nearly as bad as this.
It wasn’t until their last day at the Aharon clinic that Tony finally got to have the third and probably the most crucial conversation with Jeanne. The doctors had allowed him to get out of bed for the first time since he arrived in Haifa and he’d had a shower and that felt like heaven, even if he was under the watchful eye of Nurse Yita the whole time. It also made him realise just how much weight he’d lost and why they continued to use the feeding tube to supplement his food, especially since he wasn’t eating very much. Although he tried, just like when he’d had the plague and pneumonia, it had taken weeks for him to get his appetite back.
After his shower, he decided to sit up in the comfortable-looking recliner and after being subjected to the delights of eating applesauce with his son, was time to find out the answer to the question that was plaguing him. But first, he started off by telling Jeanne about John Carson and his death. He told her how they worked a case together – Carson’s last case and he was there when he died as Tony tried to stem the blood from a gunshot wound. As she cried, he told her almost the last thing John said, was how he regretted losing her because he cheated on her with her best friend. But in the end, he didn’t regret meeting and loving her because when he lost her, he finally admitted he was an alcoholic and gave up drinking.
As he watched her break down in tears, he wondered if he should have told her but Tony decided if they had a chance of having a civil relationship for Xavier’s sake, there could be no more deception between them. And after all, if Wendy died, even if he would never want to get back together with her, it didn’t mean he didn’t care if she lived or died. Once he’d loved her enough to propose marriage to her and that feeling might have turned to anger and hurt, but he wouldn’t wish her dead. He had to think it would be the same for Jeanne with Carson, too.
“Annie heard about his death on the grapevine and emailed me,” she said. “But I’m glad he had gotten his life together and didn’t regret us being together.”
Tony shook his head, “It’s weird! When I found out later at his funeral that he was the guy I was jealous of, whose head I wanted to knock off his shoulders for stalking you when you were with me, I was shocked. I really liked the guy, and I watched as he bled to death, unable to stop it. Had I known who he was while we were working together, I’d have hated his guts on principle because he hurt you, but I didn’t, and he seemed like a pretty decent guy who made the biggest mistake of his life and I felt sorry for him.”
She gave him a watery smile. “Thank you for telling me about John. I assumed that you knew all about him before your director engineered our ‘meeting. It kept bothering me, even when Papa kept insisting you loved me, and after he died, my mother kept telling me the same thing, that they could see it in your eyes. I kept thinking about how jealous you seemed when John wouldn’t stop calling and I decided you must have been an incredible actor.”
“Jeanne, I honestly had no idea about John or what happened between you. I was told by Director Shepard that you had broken up with your boyfriend but not that you were engaged, or he cheated on you with your best friend. I’ve no doubt she knew though and held those details back deliberately.”
“Why would she do that? Don’t you need to know everything about a mark?” Jeanne asked with a touch of anger.”
“Normally yes, but I was in a bad place at the time, and she seemed to be the only person who had my back. I made the terrible mistake of trusting her and I don’t trust people easily. As I found out later, she was so desperate to bring your father down, she played me like a pro. It was no doubt recorded in my personnel file in the psychosocial section that my fiancée left me the night before our wedding and that I went through a rough patch before reinventing myself as a player.”
“How long were you with her?”
“The first or the second time? The second time, I ran into her while I was a detective in Baltimore PD, and we were together for a little over a year. She was a music teacher, and she came to DC with me when I joined NCIS.”
“And the first time,” she asked curiously.
“I was fifteen and she was my music teacher,” he said. “And yes in hindsight I know how wrong that is, but you have to understand that emotionally and psychologically, I’m a mess. I never thought I wanted kids, although when I asked Wendy to marry me I had this crazy dream that we’d have a house with a white picket fence, two kids and a cat and a dog. After she left, I wondered if she left because she realised I would be a lousy father. Someone told me she’d married some guy and was expecting a baby.”
“I’m sorry, Tony.”
“At the time it was no solace for the hurt, but I’ve come to see that it would have been that much harder if she left after we were married,” he said biting his lip.”
She nodded. “That’s probably true.”
“Anyway, even though at the time, I felt like Shepard was the only one who believed in me, I’d like to think I would have never agreed to date you had I’d known that you and John were engaged or that he cheated on you. I can kind of imagine what you were going through, even if Wendy didn’t cheat on me…at least I don’t think she did.”
“Where does that leave us?” Jeanne asked the question that had been hanging in the air between them since Tony regained consciousness.
“Hold that thought for a bit. I need you to know some things about me,” he told her determined to get the issue with Xavier hashed out today.
Looking apprehensive, Jeanne stood up and went over to the roller table and poured him a plastic beaker of water. “You need to drink, Tony.”
Everyone was still a little hung up about his kidneys, which were affected when the infection had spread and had been about to start him on dialysis when Dr Fargo came to the rescue with his nanites, like something out of the movie Fantastic Voyage directed by Richard Fleischer and Harry Kleiner, who wrote the screenplay. It had been based on a story by Otto Klement and Jerome Bixby, although, because Isaac Asimov was hired to write a novelisation of the screenplay, so most people believed the movie was based on his novel when it was actually the other way around. The story was about a submarine and its crew who were shrunk down to enter the body of a scientist with an injured brain, to repair it. Well except that in Tony’s case, there were many of those smart robots who were sent on a search and destroy mission to devour the microbes that were slowly but surely killing him!
So the docs and scientists had been monitoring his kidneys closely, which basically meant blood tests – lots of blood tests. Gah he hated needles! He had his fill of them when he had the pneumonic plague four years ago. However, he didn’t protest when people forced fluids onto him and told him to drink, Tony was just grateful to be alive and it looked like maybe his lungs might, in time, be almost as good as new. After he drank about half of the beaker, he handed it back to her and nodded his thanks. Then she sat down in her seat, and again he began speaking.
“I lost my mother to cancer when I was eight, although, for the last two years of her life, she became a monster when drugs and alcohol took over her life. I was alone with her in her hospital room as she was dying, my father was too busy making money to stay with her. I didn’t even understand how sick she was.”
He went on to tell her about his father, who Tony wasn’t sure had ever really loved him. How he was never good enough, how he was left in a hotel room alone for two days before someone (not Senior) noticed he’d been abandoned after his father flew home to New York on business. How he disowned him not long after and packed him off to Rhode Island Military Academy. Tony told her of the constant stream of girlfriends and stepmothers, how his father stole his trust fund and went through his mother’s fortune. Jeanne looked appalled.
“Aside from your father’s neglect and emotional abuse, were there other forms of abuse? I’m asking because of your fiancée’s sexual abuse. People like her can sniff out emotionally damaged targets without consciously trying. And if you were fifteen and she was an adult, it was sexual abuse, Tony,” she said as he squirmed uncomfortably.
“There was physical abuse, no sexual abuse, although one stepmom got a bit handsy with me. But Senior got jealous and sent me away to summer camp. When I came home three months later they’d divorced.”
“And the physical abuse?” she asked gently.”
He shrugged. “Backhanders when I wasn’t suitably grateful or dared to question him. A few times, when he was angry, he laid into me with his belt. You have to understand that he is an alcoholic, and although he’s charming to strangers, he didn’t hold back where I was concerned.”
“Was that all?”
“Almost. Apart from one time, I got good at realising when he was in a violent temper, and I’d hide in my room in the closet. A few times I managed to outrun him and climbed to the top of this big old pine tree in the grounds of our house and I wouldn’t come down ‘til he passed out drunk.”
“You told me that your Mom called the fire department when you refused to come down. Was any of that true?”
Tony grimaced. “Bits of that were true. I did climb right to the top, but it was mostly fear that drove me. Usually, I’d climb about halfway up but Senior was really scaring me, told me he was going to kill me because I tore my pants good trousers. I was so freaked out that I kept climbing until I got to the top. The view was beautiful,” he sighed wistfully, as he stole a glance at Jeanne.
“But when I realised how high I was, I got scared and froze. Louisa the cook called the fire department after Senior crashed out drunk in his study and one of the firemen climbed up and rescued me. Of course, on Long Island, nothing remains secret for long, and Senior found out and I got thrashed for embarrassing the DiNozzo reputation.”
Tears were in Jeanne’s eyes as she asked, “Any other times?”
“Does falling down the marble staircase because I was trying to get away from him count?” he asked seriously. “I mean, that was my fault for not being fast enough,” he said honestly.
“Yes, it counts, Tony. Why were you running away from him?”
“Because it was Halloween and I badgered Louisa, our cook into taking me trick or treating. My mum used to take me before she got sick, and it was the year she died. I didn’t have a costume and Senior promised to get me one, but he kept forgetting, so I made my own using one of his old snow suits and the gardener Marco let me wear his motorcycle helmet to be an astronaut. I thought I was so cool,” he smiled reminiscently.
“Unfortunately, he didn’t see it that way. Senior was furious when he found out I’d cut up his $2,000 snowsuit, even though he always bought a new one every year. He told me he was going to break my hand to teach me not to take other people’s things,.”
He told her about his lack of friends when he was young, due to being homeschooled because he was supposed to be a musical prodigy. How he was sent to school the week after his mother died and was bullied for being weird. He explained how his love of movies came from spending time with his mother watching old movies on the television, and how he was needy and drove people crazy because his energy levels were off the charts, which was why he played a lot of sports as a kid.
“And it was a good way to explain all the bruises,” Jeanne whispered cynically.
“Well yeah, when I was younger, before I was sent away from home and never went back there. But by then, sport had become a way to cope with my loneliness and helped me to gain acceptance. I was always small for my age, and I was bullied until I finally started to grow when I was 14. But I was super-fast and agile so, for games like soccer and lacrosse, I excelled.”
Jeanne interrupted him again, insisting he drink more fluid and eat a snack. She knew he had a sweet tooth and ducked out to the nurses’ room where she’d stashed a bunch of small snacks for Xavier and came back with a chocolate pudding-like concoction and made him eat some of it. He dutifully ate about half, but the sweetness made him feel nauseous.
Finally, they returned to Jeanne’s question – where did it leave them?
“Now you know why I decided after Wendy that I would make a really bad parent, and I want you to know that I’m determined to be a good father to Xavier because I can’t help loving him,” he admitted.
“I don’t want him to think that I don’t love him or want him. I don’t want him to go through his childhood wondering, like I did, why he isn’t good enough to be loved by his father.”
They were silent, Tony tired and more than a little overwrought after spilling his guts about his childhood for the first time ever. He’d never even been so honest with Wendy. Occasionally, Tony shared small snippets with her, turning them into funny stories, as he did with his team members at NCIS. Haha, my mother drank my pet sea monkeys because I left them in a glass in the kitchen and she mistook them for mint julip…so funny!
He had a ton of funny stories, and not just about his mum, either. There was his father and leaving him in Hawaii or making a ten-year-old dress up in a stupid uniform and carry around a bucket so a bunch of assholes could crap in it while they were playing civil war soldiers. At first, he thought that maybe his father had begun to care about him but when he heard him laughing about Tony and calling him the little poo boy to the other losers, he realised Senior did it just to humiliate him.
Finally, he got control over his emotions, too distraught to realise he wasn’t the only one. He looked at Jeanne and asked, “Now that you know the bad and the ugly stuff about me, I need to know Jeanne, will you still let me play a role in Xavier’s life, as his father?”
“How can you ask me such a question, Tony? You saved my life – twice now, and you almost died doing it this time. It’s entirely possible if the CIA came after me to make you do what they wanted, Xavier could have got caught up in it too if they’d used another car bomb. Of course, I want you to be a part of our lives,” she said reproachfully.
He shook his head. “No, that’s not what I mean. Gratitude fades. It is fleeting and it isn’t enough to build a future on,” he told her adamantly.
As Jeanne shook her head, denying what he said, he shrugged. “I’ve seen it before, Jeanne. I saved the lives of every member of my team, and every time, I put my own life on the line. But they soon forgot, and they betrayed me,” he said. “Okay, McGee didn’t betray me, but he did disparage me and question my intelligence and expertise. He was constantly insubordinate, even though I saved him from a car bomb,” he said dejectedly.
Jeanne looked sad. “I know about what you did to save your boss,” she said. “What about Ziva? Was she there for the car bomb?”
“That was Special Agent Caitlin Todd, but she died the next day, shot by the person who placed the car bomb at a crime scene. No, Ziva and I were undercover, and we were cornered by the bad guys in an elevator at the hotel. They were going to kill us, but they wanted something. I convinced them it was hiding in our hotel room and that only Ziva could find it so one of the bad guys took her back there to retrieve it and the other one stayed with me.”
“How did that help?” Jeanne asked curiously.
“I knew that McGee and Gibbs were waiting in our hotel room when we went silent. They took out the bad guy and the second perp was just about to cut my throat with a scarily sharp knife when I distracted him, by telling him who I was. Then with him distracted, I proceeded to kick the crap out of him until he was unconscious.”
“Wasn’t that a bit excessive?” she asked, and Tony knew she was thinking of the drug addicts she’d probably seen in the ER, roughed up by overly zealous cops.
He smiled briefly. “Ordinarily, I’d say yes but not in this case.” Seeing her look of disapproval he gave a weak chuckle – he was fading fast. “Guess I forgot to mention that the scumbag had me tied to a chair and my hands were behind the back of the chair, so I didn’t have the luxury of physically restraining him.”
“Oh, wow. I’m sorry, Tony. When you got hold of Nick Kerry’s gun in the hospital, you could have shot him, but you fired a warning shot,” she said, chagrined. “I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.”
It was on the tip of Tony’s tongue to quote Rule 8, but he stopped himself. He’d spent the last eight years, give or take a margarita safari, and his own four-month sojourn as an agent afloat, but he wasn’t going back to NCIS or the MCRT. Vance and Gibbs had burnt those bridges when they both forced him to go to Tel Aviv to pacify a despotic narcissist Sure their reasons were vastly different, Vance for politics and his own career prospects and Gibbs because he was trying to protect his surrogate daughter. But the bottom line was, that both threw him under the bus and that was a burnt bridge too far!
“Anyway, as I said, gratitude isn’t a good enough reason to let me into Xavier’s life. I don’t want to have him put in a position where one day, you realise that gratitude isn’t enough, and you regret letting me close and decide it was a mistake.”
“You’re afraid I might take him away from you?”
“Well, I’d be lying if I said otherwise but I’m mostly concerned about how he would handle it if I suddenly wasn’t there anymore. I know you are a good mother and that you have your mother to support you, but I want to be a father to him too.”
She leant forward and took his hand, automatically noting it was cold. Even though it was summer, the air conditioning in the Aharon clinic was very efficient and with his weight loss, he was liable to feel cold, very easily. She fetched a blanket and arranged it around him as he nodded his thanks.
As she took her seat, she said, “I want you to be a hands-on father to him too,” she said. “In fact, I want us to try to be a family.”
Tony felt a sense of dread. “What exactly are you saying, Jeanne?”
“I want us to try again. We were good together, we could be again.”
That’s what he was afraid of. As gently as he could,, he said, “I don’t think that is such a good idea, Jeanne.”
“Why not? I still love you and you said that you love me.”
“I lied to you, how can you trust me?”
“I know, but I understand that you were doing your job. It’s like a doctor sometimes has to do things they don’t want to do because it is their job to save lives. You were trying to put a stop to Papa selling weapons that killed people, in wars, was your job. I’ve seen the devastating effects of those weapons in third-world nations in Africa and corrupt governments, Tony. I get it.”
“Maybe intellectually, but I’m not sure that emotions are logical. Sometimes love isn’t enough, Jeanne.”
“And you can’t forgive me for what I did,” she said nodding.
“Actually, I already have forgiven you. I’m good at forgiving people, although I’m not sure that I can forgive my team this time,” he said
Then if we love each other and we can forgive each other, then what is standing in the way of us trying again?”
He sighed regretfully. “Because I suck when it comes to being able to trust people, too many people have let me down. Right now I’m struggling to deal with the fact that the person I trusted more than anyone, stood by and he did nothing when I was forced to kill someone and let our agency throw me under the bus for political reasons. It was illegal for our director to order me to fly to another country to be held to account for defending my life but he never said a word.”
Jeanne looked upset. “So where does that leave us, Tony?”
“I don’t know, to be honest. I don’t know if I can ever trust anyone again. But maybe right now we can just focus on trying to build a friendship since we have a child together. Can we focus on that, so that our son can have both parents in his life?”
He knew it wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but it was all he had to give right now. Sometimes love just wasn’t enough to sustain a relationship and although he loved her, Tony wasn’t sure he’d ever trust her again, and he honestly thought she would struggle to trust him too. He didn’t know much about successful relationships, but he was pretty sure that trust was equally important to love, respect and forgiveness, having watched Senior go through various step-moms and an assortment of girlfriends after Lucinda died. So he knew a lot about unsuccessful relationships, and he didn’t want that for Xavier.
Now as he stretched out and waited for Xavier to wake up, and there were signs that Tony learned were Xavier’s tells as he began to rouse, he thought back to his and Jeanne’s final talk in Haifa and how defeated she’d seemed afterwards. So, he was glad that she’d decided to go into Larnaca today with the others and hopefully enjoy herself. They’d been in Haifa for more than two and a half weeks, hanging around the hospital (which he seemed to recall Ziva saying once was a beautiful place) and never got a chance to go sightseeing. He was feeling more than a little envious, since Cyprus was supposed to be beautiful, and its history dated back to antiquity.
He sighed, knowing that Captain Kyriakides intended to stop off in Crete which would take them between 3 to 4 days after they left Cyprus to pick up fresh supplies. Allison was talking about flying back to Oregon, but she was also talking about Tony getting more tests done – blood tests to check on his kidneys, and scans of his lungs if possible so she might stay on until they reached Malta, he supposed.
Crete was one place Tony longed to visit but life had kept getting in the way. Some of his frat brothers had gone there when they toured Greece during the summer break from college, but he couldn’t afford to travel. He was putting himself through college since Senior had stolen the money that his mum had left him and although he had a scholarship, he needed food, clothes and petrol for his car during term times, so he spent the summer break working. And now he was going to be in Crete, literally a stone’s throw from Knossos where the Minoan Place was located but he wasn’t physically capable of exploring it.
Maybe if they stopped off in Malta as they had debated on their way to Marseille, he might be fit enough for a short expedition, but Tony felt frustrated that he was so close to all of these amazing places and not able to explore them. Considering that just over a week and a half ago when he was certain that he was going to die, he shouldn’t feel so ungrateful. He had a lot to be thankful for, but he’d also lost a lot – his life as a federal agent, his country since he couldn’t see how he could go back home, and worst of all, his faith in his agency and his teammates had been shattered.
He just wished that the Mediterranean wasn’t such a beautiful place or that he was cleared to fly.
Hearing the familiar little snuffling sounds that Xavier made as he awoke, Tony rose and stood beside the porta-cot as the toddler opened his amazingly blue eyes, the same shade as Jeanne’s, and Tony with filled with awe at the thought that he – Anthony DiNozzo was his dad. Not just his father, but Xavier Berkley’s dad and wasn’t that enough to make up for everything that he’d lost when he dared to kill a Kidon-trained assassin who was trying to kill him?
By 1800 Xavier, Tony, and Allison (and their DHS protection detail) met the exhausted but happy sightseers at ‘Christakis’, an eatery by the marina where the Aurora was berthed. Despite having to be ferried there via wheelchair, Tony felt happy to be doing something as normal as eating a meal in a restaurant. Of course, the fact that he was currently wearing borrowed clothes, his own duffle bag that he’d packed in DC having gotten lost in transit, was mildly embarrassing to Tony. His appearance mattered to him – no doubt a legacy from his childhood with Senior always harping on about clothes maketh the man, but needs must, as Ducky often said. Besides, even if he had his own clothes, he figured having dropped roughly twenty pounds in the last three weeks, most of them, especially his jeans and trousers wouldn’t fit him.
As Tony stared at the menu, he was a little disappointed that his digestive system wasn’t up to trying any of the Cypriot dishes which sounded wonderful. He was especially intrigued by the Cypriot version of the Greek dish Moussaka made with beef, lamb and pork and layered between aubergine, potato and zucchinis with a cream sauce made with butter and Halloumi cheese. The other dish he would have liked to try if he had been up to eating rich food was called Makaoronia tou fournou. According to the Christakis’ server, it was an oven-baked pasta dish that was like lasagna, but they used penne pasta in place of flat lasagna sheets and pork. Instead of a red sauce, it was flavoured with onions, garlic and local herbs like mint and parsley and the creamy cheese sauce on top consisted of halloumi and butter.
Given his proud heritage of his great grandparents emigrating from Italy, he would have certainly liked to compare the Cypriot version of such an iconic dish, but he knew after a mouthful or two, he’d be feeling ill. Rich food wasn’t something he could handle at the moment – even the thought of his beloved pizza turned his stomach right now. He was craving protein, but even red meat was not something he thought he could cope with. So, he settled on the grilled swordfish and figured he could share it with Xavier, as long as they made sure it had no bones.
Less than an hour after arriving at Christakis he was struggling to stay awake. Everyone was enjoying their meal and Brad, Jeanne, Helen, and Allison were all on their third Brandy Sour – a Cypriot cocktail. Captain Kyriakides told them it was first invented back in the 1930s at the Forest Park Hotel in the mountain resort of Platres for Egyptian King Farouk as a substitute for iced tea. After three cocktails, the atmosphere was extremely convivial, although the DHS agents stuck to Perrier and lime, like Tony, except that they’d all had a moderately sized glass of wine with their dinner. He was getting ready to ask one of them if they’d mind taking him back to the Aurora, even though it would have embarrassed him badly since he hated to appear weak (a throwback to his father’s rules and later, Gibbs with his rule six).
Fortunately, Special Agent Henderson announced she had to go back to give her boss a sitrep, so Tony was spared the ignominy of having to ask someone to take him back to the yacht. Since Xavier was finished eating and was looking tired too, he suggested that they take him back to the boat too. Of course, Tony was under no illusions that the sitrep to Morrow could have waited, and he caught the quick wink that Henderson exchanged with Allison, but he was very grateful for her discretion. Somehow, she made it easier for him to show his vulnerability to her.
He wasn’t even sure why he was so determined to put on a show for Morrow’s agents. It wasn’t like he was going back to NCIS, so why bother – but it did. Needing Henderson’s help still chafed at him, but nowhere near as much as the others. Perhaps because she was a former navy nurse and after the plague, he’d been conditioned to obey them.
After they’d put Xavier down for the night, Henderson (call me Annie), helped him wrangle the tired child into a clean onesie, and then she carried him over to the porta-cot. Tony settled him down and sang to him while Annie went to get the encrypted laptop so they could contact Deputy Director Morrow and keep an eye on the toddler. Everyone was mindful that they were on a yacht and needed to watch him closely.
Morrow was demonstrably pleased to be able to talk to Tony. A man who didn’t show his emotions readily, it seemed odd to see his face wreathed in a huge smile.
He asked, “How are you feeling, Anthony?”
Tony decided honesty was the best policy. He owed Tom a lot.
“As weak as a three-week-old kitten, Sir. But I’m alive. Largely thanks to you and the folk from Global. Thank you.”
“Not just me. Secretary Bose was also instrumental in approving the nanites, Son. From what Drs Pitt and Blake had said, they’d have preferred that you remained at the Aharon Clinic for another week, unfortunately, Orli Erbaz was keen to get you out of the firing line before they arrest Director David and his cabal of supporters.
“So they found his files then?”
“Yes, in the last place they expected them to be. Apparently, when the David daughters were small, the family used to spend summers in Haifa, which was why they wanted you, gone asap. The house they used to stay in was rented, but when Eli decided to move his files, he bought the property but paid the previous owner not to transfer the deed. It was some distant relative of his wife’s,” Morrow told him.
“So how soon will the arrests happen?” Tony asked.
“Sometime in the next 48 – 72 hours but they are going through the files, trying to determine who else is loyal to Eli, although is it loyalty if they are being blackmailed?”
That was a philosophical question for which perhaps the was no right or wrong answer.
After discussing their itinerary with Annie, including that Dr Blake wanted to take blood tests to monitor his renal function and chest x-rays, CT scan and lung function tests to check on his lung regeneration. Tom said he’d try to set it up in Heraklion, which all things going well, was their next stopover. He also said that when Erbaz turned over the files that related to US officials who were part of Director David’s Kompromat files, they would start making arrests too. Director Vance and SECNAV Davenport were amongst the first.
After reiterating how glad he was that Tony had survived, Tom promised to keep them in the loop about what was happening, and he wished them a safe journey to Crete.
~oOo~
They had set sail from Larnaca Marina several hours ago after enjoying a pleasant dinner. They’d persuaded Captain Kyriakides to join them, and he’d shared stories of his life growing up in Cyprus and sailing around the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. They lingered for a long time at the restaurant enjoying the freshly cooked seafood and most of them had gotten a little tipsy, sampling the national drink Brandy Sours (a cocktail that combined Cypriot brandy, Cypriot lemon squash, soda or lemonade, and a few drops of bitters) before they switched to drinking Commandaria after they’d eaten. The captain explained that the amber-coloured dessert wine was thought to be one of the oldest wines in the world, first mentioned in 800 BC. Captain Kyriakides told the group that the wine was indigenous to the Cypriot region, exclusively produced from sun-dried Xynisteri (white) and Mavro (red) grape varieties, native to Cyprus. He recommended that the dessert wine with its complex notes of honey, raisons, carob, and spices was best with nuts, dried fruit, or mature cheese and he was right, which was how Helen, Jeanne, Brad, and herself got more than a little tipsy.
Okay, not everyone…the DHS guys had limited themselves to sampling a glass of local wine with dinner, and one then switched to non-alcoholic drinks. Kyriakides, who was going to be in charge of the Aurora as they left Larnaca later that night, permitted himself two drinks over the nearly four hours they spent lingering at the table enjoying themselves, and Tony stuck to drinking water. Jeanne managed to sweet-talk Costas into getting several bottles so that when Tony was feeling stronger, he could try Commandaria, too.
In fact, he’d only lasted an hour, eating less than half of his grilled swordfish before he started to look exhausted, despite having a two-hour nap when Xavier did. Allison was about to offer to take him back to the boat when Annie Henderson announced she needed to check in and give her boss, Deputy Director Morrow a sitrep. Tony looked relieved and asked if she minded if he tagged along, too.
“No, not at all. I’m sure Morrow would like a chance to have a chat, Tony,” she told him, smiling. As she turned away to collect her purse, Annie gave Allison a wink.
Tony looked at Xavier, who was also starting to fuss and rub his eyes and asked his mother. “Did you want me to take Xavier back to the boat and put him to bed?”
She looked at Annie and the DHS agent who was also an RN nodded. “Although Xavier doesn’t know me all that well, I’m sure with his father there, between the two of us we can get him into PJs and into bed.”
The little boy was more than happy to go off with Tony. He sat on Tony’s lap, babbling away to his besotted father, who was holding tight to the little boy as Annie drove the wheelchair. You’d have to have the blind not to see that he hated having to use it tonight to get to the restaurant but having Xavier ride along as a passenger who was clearly delighted to be with his dad, helped distract Tony.
As they disappeared from view, Costas observed, “That little boy loves his patéras.”
Allison listened to the various people agreeing that Xavier was besotted, and Helen noted that it wasn’t one-sided, and she couldn’t help thinking about her own son, back home. She missed Kevin, but it wasn’t practical to bring him along. Her son was a highly gifted child who was autistic, so routine was critical for him. Nathan, her former husband, loved Kevin and offered to stay in their home and care for him while she was gone, so she knew that her son was well looked after. She just missed him and watching Xavier’s exuberant interactions with Tony was bittersweet since Kevin had never been like that as a toddler.
After they all returned to the Aurora, Allison sent an email to Nathan, asking how things were going back in Eureka and if Kevin was okay. Logically, she knew if there were any major catastrophes, and to be honest, Eureka had more than their fair share of those, she would have heard already but she just needed to touch base. After forcing herself to drink at least a pint of water to lessen any hangover that might make her regret tonight, she was surprised to see Jeanne seated outside on the deck, staring up at the sky.
She went out and sat beside Jeanne. “Xavier sleeping?”
“Oui, Brad brought him to our cabine, and he never stirred. Sleeping like bébé,” she said, smiling fondly.
The bilingual doctor was yo-yo-ing between French and English. Clearly, Jeanne had quite a few drinks tonight. Going back inside, Blake filled up a large glass of water.
“Drink,” she said in her no-nonsense doctor voice.
“Merde! I’ll be up all nuit peeing,” she pouted.
“Better than waking up with a mother of all hangovers,” Allison told her dryly.
“I’m not ivre,” she protested.
“Jeanne, you are speaking half English, half French. I’d say you are definitely more than a little drunk!”
“Oh, I am? Peut être just a little. I hate seeing Tony so down.”
“He has a lot on his mind, I think he’s justified in being depressed. The agency sold him out after eight years of loyal service. He’s trying to figure out how to deal with that and what to do with the rest of his life.”
“He said he has problèmes trusting people. A lot of people have betrayed him. I did too when j’ai menti and said I saw him shoot Papa. That’s why he can’t trust me,” she started crying. Not sobbing, just tears leaking out of her startling blue eyes.
“Is that what he said?” Allison asked gently.
“Oui, he says that we don’t trust each other and should concentrate on being friends.”
“Maybe he’s right. Trust is such a big issue for him, his team’s betrayal is hitting him hard. He lives for his work. When you accused him of killing your father, try to imagine if someone falsely accused you of committing medical negligence.” She looked at the young doctor and realised that Jeanne finally understood the enormity of what she’d done.
Even more gently, Alison continued. “Maybe if his team hadn’t betrayed him too, the people he trusted his life to, he might be more open to the idea of you two reuniting, but he’s been hurt. Badly hurt. A huge part of his identity has been ripped out from under him since he’s decided he can’t go back to NCIS.”
“He feels à la derive, lost oui?”
“Yes, he’s trying to work out what to do with the rest of his life. I think he’s feeling very… isolated.”
“And I’m not aident, wanting to get back together, am I?” she asked tearfully.
“Probably not, Jeanne. I think what he needs right now is support, not added pressure.”
“Un ami.”
“Yes, be his friend. Maybe one day he will be able to trust you again, but even if he can’t, he is still Xavier’s father and he’ll always be a part of your family.”
—
Notes:
oui – yes
cabine – cabin
bébé – baby
merde – shit
nuit – night
ivre – drunk
j’ai menti – I lied
peut être – may be
à la derive – adrift
aident – helping
un ami – a friend
patéras – father
Chapter 27
“So they’re a day out from Heraklion,” the Secretary of Defense asked Tom.
“Thereabouts,” Tom confirmed, not wanting to jinx them. “I’ve called in some favours and found a doctor who agreed to write DiNozzo a referral for blood tests to check his kidneys and various tests that Dr Blake wanted done,” he said.
Robert Bose looked pleased. “I appreciate you organising that, Tom. If they are all positive, perhaps she’ll fly home from Crete. Given how often Eureka experiences emergencies, I’d feel happier if she was there to manage them.”
“Wasn’t that the plan? Dr Fargo flew home from Cyprus, Dr Blake from Crete, and Dr Pitt will leave from Malta, so they don’t attract too much attention?” Attorney General Elaine Woods asked.
“Yeah, but Allison’s talking about staying on board ‘til they reach Malta. Says there’s something about the relationship between Agent DiNozzo and his son that she wants to check up on,” he said, with a shrug. “Scientists are a different breed.”
The Attorney General asked, “Have the Israelis given us a timeline yet as to when they are going to arrest, given us any indication when they will forward the files of US targets of the kompromat?”
The Deputy Director of Homeland Security nodded. “Yes, for what it’s worth, they are saying 24 hours until they have everything in place to arrest him and all his major allies. There are obviously some of his people who are on missions, although they will try to get them too. As for the handing over his files on US citizens, they are saying that they will release them to us as soon as they have finished rounding up their own people, so 36 hours hopefully.”
Bose to the Attorney General, “They’ve already ruled out passing us files Eli kept on average citizens. They are going to give us all the files implicating government personnel, politicians, intelligence personnel and high-ranked military.”
“And they are making us wait because?” Woods asked, exasperatedly.
“They say that it’s because they don’t want us acting pre-emptively and giving Eli David a heads up that we have his files so he disappears,” SECDEF replied with a touch of cynicism that the Attorney General zeroed in on.
“What? You think they have other agendas.”
Tom looked at Bose before answering. “Secretary Bose and I have discussed this and asked ourselves if we were the ones who got our hands on the files, would we turn them all over.”
The Attorney General ran her hand through her thick dark bob. Her caramel-coloured eyes looked shrewdly at the two men. “You think they might hold something back?”
Bose gave a shrug before he responded. “That’s what I’d be tempted to do, in case I needed to curry favour further down the track,” he said as Tom nodded.
“You’re probably right,” the AG said glumly. “Still, getting to clean up most of Eli David’s people, even if they were turned reluctantly, will be a lot better than the state of play right now. We’ll just need to weed out the rest of them ourselves,” she said pessimistically.
“Well Secretary Bose and I have already planned to administer polygraphs to everyone at NCIS and other federal agencies. In light of this massive national security breach, I think it could be argued that it was necessary in other departments too.”
Woods nodded. “Definitely, in the DoJ and the State Department. Speaking of State, our Acting Secretary of State, Anna Elliot is demanding that the Files be turned over to her immediately. She says she was the one who organised the undercover operation with Israel, to give them cause to arrest Director David. She has been pestering Rosen, the PM’s aide, wanting first access to them.”
Bose and Morrow nodded. “Yes, and we know why. Orli Erbaz hinted that she was in the files. Elliot probably wants first dibs at them so she can edit them. They are concerned that she might tip Eli off if she doesn’t get them,” Tom responded.
“But what point would it serve to tip him off? The Israelis have already retrieved the files,” the AG objected.
Tom gave a smug smile. “Yes, but she doesn’t know they’ve found them. She’s been kept in the dark and fed BS by the Israelis since they found out how she blackmailed Agent DiNozzo into agreeing to a mission he was sure was suicidal for him.”
“Well he was right,” Robert said, pounding the table with his fist, still angry at how one of his people had been coerced. “I suggest that we set her up. Give her a copy of the list but don’t tell her we already received it. If she surrenders it to the DoD and DoJ and her name has been deleted, we’ve got her on more than whatever it is that Eli’s been holding over her,” he said with a malicious gleam in his eye.
“And that way, if she thinks she’ll have first dibs at the file, she won’t tip off Eli,” Woods grinned. “I like it!”
Tom added his own agreement. “Your mind is evil, Mr Secretary and I salute you,” he said raising his coffee mug in a mock salute, although his sentiment was as genuine as they came. Robert Bose was badass!
~oOo~
The Aurora was eight hours out of Heraklion, the capital of Crete, where they would berth the yacht so that supplies could be obtained. Morrow notified them via encrypted laptop to inform Allison and Tony where he could have medical tests carried out. The Deputy Director of DHS also wanted to let them know that former Director Eli David had been detained on charges of failing to recall an out-of-control Officer Rivkin out of the US when he was explicitly ordered to leave the country by SAC Lara Macy who obtained a FISA warrant, ordering him out of the country. David was also charged with conspiracy to commit the murder of a United States federal agent, who killed Officer Rivkin in self-defence after the Kidon assassin resisted being taken into custody for killing a federal Immigration Customs Enforcement agent. Agent Sherman was killed after Rivkin carried out a botched attempt to spy on an interagency intelligence summit in DC.
“Obviously, there will be further charges laid, those were just for starters,” he said looking pleased. “The Israelis have already begun mopping up, arresting all the rest of his loyal officers, particularly Ilan Bodnar. Some of his followers, the ones who he had kompromat on, would be given a chance to redeem themselves if they were minor players. But all his lieutenants were under arrest and will be charged with as many crimes as they can come up with.”
“What about Ziva?” Tony asked?”
Tom realised that Tony hadn’t been informed.
“No, she didn’t return to Washington. Amit Hadar told us that she was sent by Eli to pinpoint the location of the Somalia training camp that Rivkin located when he killed Abin Tabal. Hadar told us that Eli was not happy with Ziva because she didn’t report Michael’s alcohol problem, so he ordered her to finish what Rivkin started. But the Jordanian registered freighter, the Damocles, sank off the coast of Africa in bad weather and there were no reported survivors.”
Aware that the DHS agents were all present, Tony just nodded. He wasn’t about to comment or bare his soul about the death of his former teammate and besides, he wasn’t sure how he felt about her death – he had mixed feelings. Relief that he wouldn’t have to worry about the woman who demanded he pay with his life for killing her lover, even if it was in self-defence and that at least on paper, Rivkin had a huge advantage and should have made mincemeat out of Tony. Anger that she was dead and would therefore escape punishment for her crimes, not just against him, but in helping to cover up for the real killer of Special Agent Tom Sherman. Yes, hurt at her betrayal of him when he’d watched her back for four years and saved her ass on a few occasions as well. Regret that she hadn’t appreciated… he shut down his thoughts.
“I see,” he said noncommittally. “Has it been confirmed?”
“Yes and no. The Damocles definitely sank, and no one was rescued. Officer Hadar confirmed that Ziva was on board with another officer, but no bodies were recovered from the ship, either.”
Okay, that wasn’t equivocal as to her being dead – not in Tony’s book, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.
Tom continued. “The Kompromat files concerning US citizens in positions of trust will be handed over to us in the next 24 hours and then we can begin arresting SECNAV and Director …Vance,” he told Tony. “I’ll let you know how that goes, he said, wrapping up the call by wishing them a safe journey.
~oOo~
Trent Kort arranged to meet SECNAV in a park about a mile away from Davenport’s home and he was visibly annoyed at Kort’s message to meet him urgently. Philip didn’t like to be told what to do.
Looking distastefully at Trent, who was sitting on the park bench with an air of studied insouciance that the CIA assassin/agent knew annoyed people, Kort smiled smugly at the Secretary of the Navy.
“So glad you could make it, Philip.
SECNAV frowned, obviously not pleased by Kort’s lack of formality. Evidently, he did not consider the CIA operative to be his equal.
“And what was so damned urgent I had to come immediately. Is it our program?” he said brusquely, referencing Operation Frankenstein.
“No, Philip,” Trent smirked, knowing he was pissing off the SECNAV by using his first name and relishing it. “I thought you might like to know that the Israelis have arrested Director David and his loyal troops for ordering Rivkin to carry out multiple illegal acts on US soil, that culminated in the death of a federal agent…”
“Oh please, that’s bullshit. Why would they arrest him for that? They do it all the fucking time,” he said angrily. “As do we. Everyone does it.”
“Ah, but this time they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar and POTUS made an official protest to their Prime Minister, all thanks to the interference of that annoying Agent DiNozzo.”
“Well, at least he won’t be interfering anymore.” SECNAV scowled. “Eli was livid that Rivkin couldn’t kill him. Demanded that Leon bring him to Tel Aviv, so Officer Rivkin’s death be avenged.”
“Well it was quite the embarrassment, wasn’t it. A bumbling agent managing to get the better of a Kidon assassin, even if Rivkin was pissed as a fart,” the CIA agent taunted.
“Yes, it was. Eli was severely embarrassed since he probably should have recalled Officer Rivkin the moment that the FISA warrant was granted, plus Michael was one of his protégées. Eli could hardly let DiNozzo live, he needed to send a message to all of the terrorists who might contemplate taking on Mossad that it wouldn’t tolerate it,” he said.
“So you and Leon ordered that stupid sonofabitch to Israel and handed him over. Frankly, I’m surprised that Gibbs permitted it,” he said casually.
“To be honest, I was a little surprised myself. Thought I’d have to make it a direct order, but he’s so damned protective of Eli’s poor little daughter, he didn’t bat an eyelid when Leon ordered them all to Israel. Anything to make Ziva David happy!”
“And you aren’t at all worried that it might come back and bite you on the arse,” Trent asked curiously.
“For a screw-up like DiNozzo who took part in Jenny’s unsanctioned op against La Grenouille and fucked up the CIA’s operation? For an agent when his director was killed on his watch in LA? For an agent who hacked into the Pentagon on board the Seahawk?” he scoffed. “He was lucky not to end up in Gitmo for that. Should have been fired years ago, according to Leon.”
“DiNozzo certainly had a genius for pissing people off. But it didn’t trouble you that you were effectively signing his death warrant handing him over to Director David?” the spook pressed Davenport.
“SECNAV shook his head. “Why the fuck would it? He was a pissant annoyance. Eli is a powerful ally and an even more formidable enemy – you do the math. Besides, Eli was going to help us weed out the NCIS mole who keeps sending out that fucking file on Leon that we keep destroying.”
“Don’t tell me another surfaced?” Trent asked with a straight face.
Davenport scowled at a pigeon that was hopping around looking for crumbs. “I had to confiscate one from Gibbs. Fortunately, he never opened it, but he suspects Leon of something. Find out who keeps sending out that file and fix it, Kort,” he ordered Trent in his typically arrogance manner.
The spook was wildly amused since HE was the one that kept circulating the file on Leon Vance aka Tyler Keith Owens, and was driving the NCIS Director and SECNAV crazy. They had no idea that it was him who was giving them plenty of sleepless nights since as a co-conspirator in Operation Frankenstein the pair clearly viewed him as beyond suspicion. Trent couldn’t wait until SECNAV learnt that he had piles of Leon’s pesky file, complied by CIA Technical Analyst Roxanne Saunders, or that he had added the extra information about Operation Frankenstein to the report a few weeks ago. He knew that would attract plenty of attention.
“Yes, find the leak and take care of it,” Davenport reiterated curtly. “I felt sure after we took care of that analyst, that the file would stop showing up. Just how many copies of it did that interfering bitch make?”
“How did you take care of her?” Kort asked idly as if it didn’t matter to him.
“I had Corporal Styne, one of our recruits from the Frankenstein program cut the brake line on Saunder’s car,” he chuckled. “It was a good practice run for when we are up and running.”
Fortunately, SECNAV never realised how close he came to Kort killing him at that moment, although the CIA assassin wouldn’t take him out here in the open and in daylight. Still, it didn’t mean Kort didn’t want to kill him with his bare hands.
Oblivious to the danger he was in, SECNAV continued, “While the news about Eli is disturbing, I’m not sure it qualifies as urgent. As I’m sure you are aware, Eli has a lot of influence in Israel, particularly in government and judicial circles. It will all blow over in a day or two,” he predicted confidently.
“Oh, are you?” Trent asked cynically. “Well, I’m not so sure of that. You see, I neglected to mention that some of his agents dobbed him in, or as you Americans say, they ratted him out over his execution of Agent DiNozzo. Seems they took exception to Rivkin attempting to kill a federal agent just trying to do his job. They think that Rivkin should have submitted and let the situation be resolved via diplomatic channels and that he brought their reputations into disrepute.
SECNAV didn’t look convinced, so Kort hit him with the best bit that he saved ‘til the end.
“Eli has been charged with DiNozzo’s execution and falsifying his death. Per my boss, the Israelis have just been waiting for an opportunity to take him down. He’s made plenty of enemies with his carrot and stick modus operandi,” Trent told him gleefully.
Davenport looked suitably shocked if not a little scared. Eli David was considered by friends and foes alike to be absolutely bulletproof. He’d spent many years ensuring that he was untouchable after that incident when he was placed on mandatory leave some 15-odd years ago when his marriage imploded.
“That puts you and Leon in a very awkward situation, Philip. I suspect that the Department of Justice will be gathering evidence to indict you and Leon shortly for conspiracy to murder Special Agent DiNozzo,” Trent taunted him.
SECNAV looked decidedly green. “Perhaps Leon will be indicted,” he conceded. “I was careful not to leave any evidence that I knew of his appalling conspiracy to murder a very fine and respected agent like Anthony DiNozzo, who located Agent Sherman’s real killer,” he said as Kort smiled at him ferally.
“You’re a real piece of work, Philip,” he said cynically.
“Yes, well, Leon should have been more discreet. He made no secret of the fact that he was jealous of Special Agent DiNozzo. I think he fell in with Director David’s request out of pure malice. I wouldn’t put it past him to have planted the whole idea into Eli’s head. I had high hopes for him when I nominated him as director, but he failed to live up to the hype, he’s been a real disappointment,” SECNAV opined slyly.
“Is that so?”
“Yes, Gibbs was concerned too. But while it is unfortunate for Leon and his family that his career should end so ignominiously, I dare say that Eli’s career will survive. He possesses too much power and influence for a few minor charges to dethrone him when he has had so much success as a member of Mossad,” he said with false bravado.
“Ah, you are talking to his kompromat files?” Kort asked in a languid tone as he watched the ever-optimistic pigeon scavenge for scraps.
“Yes, Eli’s kompromat files. No one would dare to challenge him,” Davenport maintained. “Not even here; he has dirt on half the government and federal agencies, including the DoJ.”
“Wait, I’m sorry! Did I forget to mention that the Israelis had already located Eli’s Kompromat files? My bad! I understand that Adam Bodner was not exactly stoic when it came to Israeli interrogation tactics. He was very cooperative, but then he was not Mossad or Kidon trained,” Trent said conversationally.
“They have Director David’s files?” SECNAV asked faintly, his face ashen.
“Why so shocked? Are you in there too, Philip? What dirty little secret did he have on you?” he asked cruelly.
It was in fact a superfluous question because Trent knew damned well what David had on SECNAV. After SECNAV had Roxanne Saunders killed when she dug up the whole business about Leon Vance not being Leon Vance, Trent went digging for dirt on Davenport. As a spy, he knew everyone had secrets and it didn’t take long to learn Davenport’s. He was seeing a sex worker several times a week – which wasn’t exactly a shocker. It was amazing how many people in positions of power had a hooker on speed dial. It was so commonplace it wasn’t exactly blackmailing material in DC. Although, it was what he did while he and the prostitute were together that the Secretary of the Navy definitely didn’t want to come out. Philip Davenport got off on dressing up in diapers and sucking pacifiers and milk out of bottles. His wife had (grudgingly) indulged him for years until he wanted her to smack his arse, and that was a bridge too far for his prissy Southern Baptist wife.
Kort even had incriminating photos and audio of him with the hooker and he’d taken it upon himself to send the data along with Leon Vance’s file to Eli David. He had pissed off one too many people himself and that this was all going to come out was too delicious for words. When Davenport found out about Saunders uncovering his little pet, Leon Vance, he was fit to be tied but the dumb fuck should have been asking how she got the information in the first place. It would have led him right to the NCIS mole, retired Special Agent Riley McAllister, who had used his identity fraud to recruit Owens in the first place. McAllister abhorred the fake Leon Vance and when SECNAV appointed him as the NCIS Director, old Riley just couldn’t stomach that and started leaking it to anyone who’d listen, including the CIA Analyst.
Davenport was lazy; he ordered Saunders to be killed, instead. Which was why SECNAV had to pay.
When Roxanne Saunders died, she was seven weeks pregnant. Trent Kort was the baby daddy and he’d vowed to have his revenge on the man who killed her and his unborn child!
Taking off the wire in plain view of Davenport, whose eyes practically popped out of his head, he told him, “In case you were wondering who was listening in,” he switched the device off, “Your boss, the Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Director of DHS asked me to have a little chat with you. See if you might incriminate yourself. I’d say you did a very fine job.”
Kort flung the device away. “I’m sure they found our conversation to be just as fascinating as I did, however, those two are the biggest white hats I know, apart from DiNozzo, but he’s not here anymore, so they win the prize. So now I want to have a private chat, just the two of us. First off, the Israelis are handing over all of Eli’s David’s files that involve government officials or people in federal agencies or intelligence to the DoD and the DoJ in the next few hours,” he said with a grotesquely twisted grin.
“And that’s what makes this chat of ours so urgent, you see. Soon you’ll be arrested for conspiracy to kill Agent DiNozzo and for the Tyler Owens fraud and Operation Frankenstein, all of which is bad. But how do you suppose your family will cope when everyone finds out that you get your rocks off by dressing up like a baby and sucking on a pacifier?
Davenport’s face turned a decidedly green tinge as the truth overwhelmed him.
“I’m guessing your wife and niece are going to be horribly embarrassed by all the publicity. I believe that Erica Jane is a special agent at NCIS with a promising career. But there is a way to save them the embarrassment of having your sexual fetish splashed all over the press,” Kort told him cruelly.
“Why did you set me up, Kort?” Davenport looked like he was about to throw up as he realised his past was catching up to him. “You aren’t exactly pure as the driven snow, yourself.”
“I’ll tell you why, you sick fuck. Roxanne Saunders was pregnant when you killed her. You killed my child and if you’d had an ounce of smarts, you’d have found out how Roxanne got hold of the information in the first place. Riley McAllister recruited Tyler Keith Owens, who was pretending to be Leon Vance. He blackmailed him into going on a mission – one that McAllister intended he never complete. He set Owens up, ratting him out to Anatoly Zhukov, who was supposed to kill the poorly trained NIS agent and persuade everyone that the Russians still posed a threat. All because the Russians were McAllister’s area of expertise and he set his sights on becoming director of NIS.”
Kort laughed nastily at the realisation of who had been behind that file trying to expose Leon finally hit Philip Davenport over the head.
“How ironic that it for Riley that it was Eli David who saved Tyler Owen’s life, inadvertently ruining McAllister’s brilliant or not-so-brilliant plan, and he never became director like he wanted. Riley was left with an agent he’d recruited, who wasn’t who he purported to be. Wasn’t that big of a deal when he was just an agent, McAllister could live with it…barely. But then you picked Tyler Keith Owens to be your director because you also knew who he really was, and recognised it gave you the leverage to control him. And you did!”
Davenport looked like he’d aged ten years in just a few short minutes, his arrogance all but vanished as he stared at Kort, worried about what he might do. Like a snake watched the mongoose, suddenly aware of just how much danger he was in. Kort could almost feel sorry for him, if he was capable of empathy for anyone but himself and those close to him – which SECNAV had taken from him. So Trent kept on applying psychological pressure on the fucker.
“Wasn’t that why you had NCIS investigate Agent Sherman’s death, because you had a damned good idea that it was our Israeli friends spying on us, but you were desperate that your mate Eli, not end up with egg on his face. You knew Director Tyler Owens aka Leon Vance would bend over backwards to ensure that didn’t happen because he owed Eli for saving his life back in Amsterdam.”
“And it would have worked if DiNozzo had followed orders and had let the case lie,” SECNAV whined.
“Yes the white hat, he was damn irksome when it came to doing what was right,” Kort said dismissively. “But with Riley, you failed to understand your foe. His jealousy and hatred of Vance was too strong. When McAllister realised that the imposter he blackmailed into going on an undercover op., had become the Director of NCIS, he couldn’t stand by and let that happen”.
Davenport asked faintly, “His conscience wouldn’t let him?
Kort laughed nastily. “Oh, I don’t think it had anything to do with McAllister’s scruples or integrity – if he has any to begin with. No, it was hatred of Tyler Keith Owens, pure and simple, with maybe a side serving of racism thrown in as well. If you’d just asked yourself who gave Saunders the information, it would have been a simple matter to narrow it down to him, but you were lazy and decided to kill the messenger instead. And now, you know what has to happen.”
“You’re going to kill me,” Davenport said woodenly.
“My dear Philip, don’t be absurd. I’m not going to kill you, it would cause a huge kerfuffle, and your dirty little secrets would be revealed. You, my friend, are going to die by your own hand. That way, your family will be spared the horrible embarrassment of your pictures dressed up as a baby in an adult diaper, splashed all over the television and newspapers,” Trent said gaily, as he turned and walked away.
~oOo~
They arrived in Heraklion just after lunch, having sailed a little over three and a half days to reach Crete, and Tony was almost climbing the walls. Brad recognised the signs from the plague hospitalisation and his second sojourn after pulling Gibbs and a young woman out of the Potomac 18 months ago. As his doctor and friend, Brad knew how badly the former Buckeye handled being inactive. Although he wasn’t bedbound, he was still weak and easily fatigued, and that made him even more restless since his overactive brain refused to shut down. He knew Tony used exercise to switch off and relax, but it wasn’t an option right now.
When the Aurora had berthed and cleared Customs, Brad suggested they all take a trip to the beach since he didn’t have to go to the clinic for testing until tomorrow.
Brad had surfed the internet and discovered a beach five minutes from downtown Heraklion called Ammoudara Beach that sounded like a perfect place to chill out, and with waves that were perfect for Xavier as well. Tony was feeling rather despondent about being so close to the Palace of King Minos at Knossos – believed to be the mythical labyrinth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The place, reputedly built around 2000 BC was world famous, and while the frescos on the walls were reproductions, the originals were in the Archaeological Museum in Heraklion, and Tony wanted to see them.
But a trip to the beach sounded like it was something he could actually cope with physically and it might be fun to go to a real beach with Xavier. They hired a car and driver to take them to Ammoudara Beach, and the golden sand, the clear blue sea and the inviting sun loungers and umbrellas were perfect. Tony splashed around in the water with his son, and he forgot his frustrations about being in such an amazing place and not being able to explore it properly and napped in the sun. They returned to the Aurora tired but happy, okay Tony was exhausted and barely ate any dinner but was in a much better frame of mind.
The next day, Brad and Allison accompanied him to the small clinic that Tom had contacted, and the doctor examined him before signing off on the tests that Allison and Brad wanted done. Naturally, they didn’t tell the doctor the whole story of Tony’s near death and experimental treatments. They simply said that he had previously contracted a bad case of pneumonia several years ago and recently fought off a serious chest infection that spread to his kidneys before he responded to treatment. Now, they wanted to check on his kidneys and ensure that the last pockets of infection were clearing from his lungs before continuing their holiday.
At the end of the day, they were going to meet the rest of the group in the Old Town for an early dinner, and they had managed to squeeze in a visit to the Loggia (Town Hall), which had been a cool respite from the heat. It was considered Crete’s best-preserved Venetian building, constructed in 1628 and a much smaller reproduction of the Basilica in Vincenza. And while Allison went to check out the Central Markets, Brad and Tony sat drinking coffee in a café near the Morosini Fountain. It was constructed by the Venetians in the same year as the Loggia was built, providing drinking water for the citizens of Heraklion via a 14-kilometre aqueduct from Mount Juktas. Again, after dinner in the Old Town, he fell into bed, exhausted but happy that the day was over since he hated medical tests.
The next day, while they were waiting for the results of some of Tony’s tests to come back, Brad suggested that they head out to the Knossos Palace. Tony pointed out the archaeological site was huge, and there was no way he had the stamina to see the entire site.
“Hell, I doubt I’m fit enough to walk around even a tenth of the site,” he gripped, knowing he was being petty since he shouldn’t even be alive.
“I know that Buckeye. Doctor here,” he said, doing jazz hands and making Tony cackle. “But you really want to see it, and so do I. Seeing a tenth is better than not seeing any of it. We’ll pick out the best bits!
And so they did!
While Tony was disappointed that he didn’t make it around the entire site or even a tenth of it, Brad was right, seeing a little was better than not seeing any of it and he vowed he’d come back one day in the not-too-distant future. The majesty of the palace was a reminder of what humans were capable of, not just the lying, scheming, and politicking that had resulted in him once again looking for a job… well he would look for a job when he was fully recovered. After all, this wasn’t really a pleasure cruise, he was on a yacht in the Mediterranean because the docs didn’t want to put his regenerating lungs under additional stress.
The two old college adversaries, and now firm friends arrived back from Knossos barely two hours after leaving the Aurora, it was apparent that it had worked wonders on Tony’s state of mind, even if they didn’t even get to see a tenth of the site. Although the former Buckeye and Wolverine had made a pact on the way back to the yacht that they would come back next year and explore the whole damned palace and see the original frescos in the Archaeological Museum.
~oOo~
The Secretary of Defense, Robert Bose, Attorney General, Elaine Woods and Tom Morrow, Deputy Director of Homeland Security, were ecstatic when Trent Kort managed to get Philip Davenport to incriminate himself over the conspiracy to murder Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo. It would not be admissible in a court of law, but there was no way SECNAV would end up there anyway. Nor Leon Tyler Owens Vance either, since the revelations of what they had been up to vis-à-vis Operation Frankenstein, appointing a director who was a fraud and the whole shocking debacle regarding Domino was all too classified to have aired in an open court. Of course, the original situation that had kicked this Pandora’s box open, the conspiracy to kill DiNozzo, if that had been all there was, most likely would have been subject to a closed court, but the rest was even more damaging. Far too damning to be released publicly.
No, secret military trials awaited both men, with a lot less onus on giving them the benefit of the doubt regarding being innocent until proven guilty. Likewise, after they were found guilty, and they would be, they were both going to end up in a very secret high-security prison run by the DHS.
The trio listening in had been a little unnerved about the abrupt ending to the discussion between Kort and the Secretary of the Navy, but Kort had gotten the goods on Davenport, who in this whole shitstorm who’d been the hardest to pin guilt on regarding DiNozzo. Now that they had him dead to rights, they went about planning the arrest of SECNAV and Owens-Vance the next day. Deputy Director Owen Granger had already been notified that the NCIS Director was about to be arrested and they wanted him in DC to take the helm when the shit hit the fan.
Richard Parsons had also completed his report and he found several new areas of concern. These were separate from the two obviously huge issues of Agent Foster-Yates and her deliberate destruction of the listening device planted by Officer Rivkin. Her action ensured that the Chief Forensic Scientist, Dr Sciuto had to spend critical hours forced to reassemble it before she could locate who had been listening in, giving Rivkin plenty of time to plant it in Tabal’s hotel and set him up. The second major issue that directly contributed to Rivkin’s death and DiNozzo’s injury in Ziva David’s apartment was when Director Vance prematurely declared the case of Tabal’s death closed before all of the evidence could be processed and properly analysed.
The DOJ investigator also did not hold back on his criticism of Ducky’s findings for suicide, stating he was far too quick to call cause of death and suggested that his ‘psychological autopsying’ may have clouded the degree of scepticism required by a Chief Medical Examiner when investigating the death of the final member of a terrorist cell. Particularly in the context that most of the cell members had been assassinated by Rivkin literally days before.
Parsons was also scathing regarding Doctor Mallard’s security protocols for preserving evidence. He stated that Ziva David was left alone with Rivkin’s body before his autopsy, which, given her relationship to the case (including her lying to protect Rivkin and harbouring him despite a FISA warrant existing, ordering his removal from the US), should never have occurred. She snuck down to the morgue without permission, surprising Dr Mallard and his autopsy technician when they found her there.
Parsons noted that spending time alone with the body was certainly not permitted for other friends and family of the deceased before an autopsy as it was vital to preserve evidentiary integrity. It was necessary to prevent tampering (intentionally or unintentionally), which, as Parsons rightly pointed out, as a trained member of Mossad, had she wanted, Ziva David was more than capable of doing so. Especially as she had been so vocal in her accusations that Agent DiNozzo killed her lover because he was jealous of Rivkin.
He also singled out Dr Mallard, criticising him for compounding the very serious security breach by offering her additional time alone with the corpse. Obviously, he had made that offer for compassionate reasons, and because she worked there, but there was no excuse for not observing protocol.
In another stunning breach of investigative protocol, Richard Parsons also identified that Mossad Liaison Officer Ziva David admitted to examining the crime scene photos of her burnt-out apartment. This was despite acknowledging that she had ignored a direct order to not involve herself in the investigation because she was compromised – for various reasons. By defying orders, she had been able to access the evidence since Special Agent McGee left them unsecured, running on his desktop computer in the bullpen, where Officer David had full access.
Thanks to Agent McGee, she didn’t even need to hack into NCIS’s database to access them. Parsons was scathing, stating it was a shocking breach of security – a rookie error. He was recommending severe disciplinary measures. Parsons was also highly critical of the fact that the MCRT was even permitted to investigate the case of Rivkin’s death and stated that as two of its team members were involved in the case, Gibbs and Director Vance should have brought in another team. In fact, they should have brought in the FBI since Agent DiNozzo was injured during the attempted arrest of Rivkin, and thus it was their jurisdiction.
Another area of concern, Parson’s highlighted, was allowing Agent Foster-Yates, who had already destroyed evidence, to enter Dr Sciuto’s lab, where, in theory, she could have contaminated further evidence. The ICE agent did not have any official status in the investigation into ICE Agent Sherman’s death, (nor per protocol, should she), so there was no excuse whatsoever for her to be in the lab where she had access to crucial evidence.
Parsons also recommended that charges be considered regarding Special Agent Gibbs’ failure to prevent Agent DiNozzo from being illegally forced to fly to Tel Aviv, supposedly to be questioned by the Director of Mossad, given that he knew the likely outcome of the trip. Parson’s questioning of the junior agent on the team, Special Agent Timothy McGee, revealed that Gibbs had already predicted that Mossad would kill Tony in retribution for the death of Michael Rivkin. Gibbs and McGee were on their way to Officer David’s apartment, and Special Agent Gibbs interrogated McGee about his knowledge of the situation between Ziva, Tony and Rivkin. Agent McGee told his team leader that he saw Tony snooping around Ziva’s desk before she went back to Tel Aviv for a short break after the team was reunited. Also, he thought Tony talked to Rivkin when he answered Officer David’s phone when she wasn’t there. He then expressed the concern’ that Tony would kill him for telling Gibbs this.’
Gibbs told him, “Not if Mossad gets to him first.”
Horrified, he asked Gibbs, “You don’t think the director’s just going to just hand him over Boss? Rivkin tried to kill him.”
Gibbs replied, “Tony’s word against a dead guy’s”.
At this point, Agent McGee argued that surely Officer David would back him up because Agent DiNozzo didn’t just murder people; obviously, the shooting had been self-defence. Before they concluded their conversation, Officer David’s building exploded; the epicentre of the explosion was David’s apartment. The explosion was later determined to have been carried out by Mossad. In Parson’s opinion, their intent was to destroy evidence and impede the investigation by NCIS or other agencies into Officer Rivkin’s activities. It was Agent Gibbs’ sworn duty to uphold the laws of the United States, not to concern himself with diplomacy since he was an employee of NCIC, not the State Department, Parsons felt the senior supervisory leader was negligent in not attempting to stop Director Vance’s illegal and very deplorable decision to force Agent DiNozzo to go to Israel.
Regardless, as team leader, he should have immediately protested that Special Agent DiNozzo was injured, given the severe swelling from Rivkin’s choke hold on his throat. In combination with his bruised ribs and scarred lungs, Gibbs failed in his duty of care by letting his agent undergo a long-haul flight in an unpressurised plane with no access to a doctor or medic if a medical crisis occurred. According to the professionals Parson had consulted, given Special Agent DiNozzo’s pre-existing illness and swelling to his larynx and bruised ribs, there had been a distinct possibility of him going into respiratory distress or even suffering from a collapsed lung.
While there had been other minor failures of procedure and protocol, because Parsons was what Secretary Bose referred to as a nitpicker, the other point he highlighted most disapprovingly was that there had been an atmosphere of fear at the agency of evoking Gibbs’ fury. That toxicity when combined with an inappropriate amount of hero-worshipping, plus a misguided desire to protect him from learning the truth about the Mossad agent he treated and protected like his child, rather than a foreign operative, and daughter of the former head of Mossad had created a dangerous dynamic on his team.
As liaison on his team, she had failed to inform them about her association with Rivkin and his activities in the US. Agent Gibbs’ own failure to confront the liaison about her lies. It also directly contributed to Special Agent DiNozzo going to Ziva David’s apartment alone, hoping to persuade her to come clean and tell Gibbs the truth after he learnt that the computer recovered from Abin Tabal’s hotel room, had been connected to the internet at Officer David’s apartment. DiNozzo admitted going to confront their Mossad liaison without backup because he knew how much Gibbs cared for her and was concerned it would destroy Gibbs if she betrayed them. (Given how protective of her that SSA Gibbs was during his ‘investigation’, it seemed to be an accurate assessment.)
However, Agent DiNozzo’s concern for his boss’ emotional state that had led to him failing to take backup to ensure his own safety was appalling, given she was a foreign agent, not just a team member and who in their right mind authorised that? The DOJ investigator was highly critical of Gibbs for fostering such a dangerous and toxic work environment, where loyalty to him and the team was considered his number one rule. Parsons made it clear that he categorised it as more a cult of personality than a team of agents employed to uphold the laws they were supposed to be enforcing and he was deeply critical of management for not addressing the situation before its catastrophic implosion.
When the Secretary of Defense and Morrow read Richard Parson’s report, they both agreed it was a devastating indictment. Whoever took over the directorship of NCIS was going to have their hands full cleaning up the mess.
When Owen Granger arrived from the West Coast, reporting to the Pentagon in preparation for the arrest of Director Leon Vance, aka Tyler Owens and several others tomorrow, Granger needed to be read in on the situation in preparation for him assuming the role of Acting Director. Trying not to overwhelm him with the deluge of information all at once, they handed him Investigator Parson’s report and left him to digest it while they ordered in some takeout Thai food. It was going to be a long night and Granger had already had a long flight to DC.
Robert looked at Morrow as they ignored the muttering, swearing and occasional banging on the table as Granger read Parsons’ very thorough report.
“So you mentioned that you got to the bottom of Foster-Yates’ interference in ICE Agent Sherman’s death?”
“After I confronted her and told her we had Eli David’s files in our possession, she knew the jig was up. She confessed it wasn’t her that Eli had dirt on, it was her mother, who is a career diplomat. While serving as the US ambassador to Thailand, Ambassador Moira Foster had an affair with the wife of the then Minister of Finance and somehow, Eli David found out about it and let her know that in return for his ongoing silence, he would call on her from time to time. She persuaded her daughter to look the other way or alter records of Mossad operatives entering the US. After Tom Sherman’s death, Agent Foster-Yates received a phone call and was told to find and destroy the bug Rivkin planted but she never had a chance to look for it properly before NCIS showed up.”
As the men digested that information dump, Tom concluded by saying, “Of course, she was terminated and taken into custody.
“So, she was the first victim of Eli’s files to be held to account,” Granger concluded, furiously, showing he’d been following the conversation too.
“No, not the first,” Secretary Bose retorted wryly.
Chapter 28
Owen looked at Secretary Bose quizzically. “Who was the first casualty?”
“Hold that thought?” Robert requested and Granger acquiesced.
“Okay,” he agreed.
Bose assessed the soon-to-be Acting Director of NCIS as the former Marine took deep breaths that appeared to be a concerted effort to control himself. Unlike another well-known former Marine, Granger seemed to consider an angry tirade in the presence of the Secretary of Defense and his former Director to be very bad form.
Tom couldn’t help but empathise with Owen.
Hell, he had a similar reaction the first time he’d read the report. Actually, he’d read it at least ten times now and he still had the same damned reaction as Granger. The AG Elaine Woods hadn’t been exaggerating about Parson’s ability to find all of the weaknesses, even if it had started out as more of a diversionary tactic to let them make more delicate inquiries into the Tyler Owens debacle and Domino.
Bose evidently decided it was time to kick the meeting up a notch. “So Deputy Director, I take it you’re done reading the IG investigator’s findings?”
“Kinda, Mr Secretary. There’s a lot to take in, particularly when I haven’t been read in on the full particulars of what’s been going on here in DC.”
Morrow who’d worked well with Owen Granger while he was director of NCIS, chuckled somewhat bitterly. “Granted, Owen. However, I’m afraid there is a lot more that’s been going on than just what Richard Parsons was asked to investigate. Tip of the iceberg so to speak.”
Owen groaned. “Is it too late to back out now,” he said seriously.
“Yes!” both men chorused emphatically.
Bose expanded, “I know Deputy Director Craig has more seniority than you, but we need a fixer. Someone who will get the fuck in and clean- house. We don’t need someone cautious and by the book right now, we need someone who is ruthlessly capable of taking hard decisions and not agonising over them. Which one of the pair of you sounds more qualified for the job?”
The deputy director screwed his eyes up and sighed long-sufferingly. “Yeah, point taken. Jerome’s a measure twice and cut once kinda manager.”
“Oh please, Owen,” Morrow interjected incredulously. “Jerome’s a measure ten times before you cut kinda guy and his methods are warranted in certain situations, but this isn’t one of them. He’d probably need time in a padded room after a few days dealing with this mess if we appointed him as the acting director.”
“Oh, Good Lord, this sounds really bad,” Granger groaned even louder.
“It is! And it doesn’t matter how loud you groan, Owen, you aren’t getting out of this assignment, so suck it up,” SECDEF told him unsympathetically. “You’re a Marine, god damn it. Act like it!”
Morrow took over, reminding him that everything was classified, particularly the data they were about to share. He then started to read him in on how the whole situation started with Tom minding his own business at DHS when he was urgently contacted by a State Department’s odious Gerrit Driessen (aka Anna Elliot’s pissant little fixer), who begged him to get to Special Agent DiNozzo’s apartment in less than an hour, as he was threatening to kill himself.
He could tell by Owen’s expression that he’d caught him by surprise.
“Why you?” he asked.
“For reasons that will become apparent, he had no one else that he trusted and said that I’d always seem honest and not pathologically driven by ambition or personal agendas. I had to use a helicopter to make the deadline and I’m damn glad I did.”
He went on to explain that the State Department warned DiNozzo that SECNAV and Director Vance had made a deal with Director David to hand him over to Eli David. The Director of Mossad had suffered a huge loss of face because Agent DiNozzo had killed one of Eli’s proteges and a feared Kidon-trained assassin. Eli David wanted to execute DiNozzo to send a message that his people were off limits and re-establish his reputation as someone you messed with at your peril.
“DiNozzo was already planning on hiring a layer before the heads up by Driessen and refused to go since it was an unlawful order but what Driessen told him made him more determined not to go to Tel Aviv as ordered to by Leon Vance,” Tom told him sombrely.
“But he did, so why did DiNozzo change his mind and why was he threatening to kill himself?” Granger asked looking grave.
Morrow explained the whole insane plot, hatched by the Acting Secretary of State and an anti-Eli faction in Israel who wanted to dethrone him. They came up with this crazy idea to fake DiNozzo’s death so that they would have leverage to remove Director David.
Secretary Bose asked Granger if he’d heard of David’s files.
“His kompromat files, of course. I don’t think that anyone in law enforcement and intelligence of management rank and above doesn’t know of them. It makes him Teflon Coated,” he said seriously.
“Well Elliot generated enough collaborators, who in turn got POTUS on board, but Agent DiNozzo rejected the idea of going undercover.”
“Can’t say as I blame him,” Granger muttered.
Tom explained the plan and how Tony had dodgy lungs, made worse by a swim in the Potomac in November to save Gibbs’ butt last year. At that point, Elliot’s fixer got heavy with DiNozzo and threatened to have him charged with treason and then informed him that a kill notice was still current for himself and Dr Jeanne Benoit from the CIA. Trent Kort had neglected to rescinded the notice at the end of the LA Grenouille mission, . Driessen told him that they’d have La Grenouille’s daughter killed if he didn’t cooperate.
“Basically he had to do the mission, or he was dead anyway or jailed for espionage. So he pulled his Sig and threatened to kill himself and demanded to talk to me,” he said, his face dark with anger.
“Espionage?”
“Yes, that was how we learnt about a massive threat to National Security. SECNAV and Leon Vance hid it from the Pentagon (to save their own careers), for five months with a lamebrained scheme that ultimately failed. Gibbs found out about it because the petty officer who stole the Pentagon file finally turned up dead, and he was assigned the case. When he learnt about the missing file, he rattled cages, and the case was solved in under a week. Unfortunately, to find out what was stolen, they involved Agent DiNozzo, who was Agent Afloat aboard the Seahawk. Agent McGee walked him step by step on how to hack into the Pentagon database to find out what the dead petty officer had stolen which was Domino, by the way.”
“Domino was floating around for five months, and they failed to report it?” Owen asked incredulously. “What the fuck were they thinking!”
“Of their own asses, obviously. And those ass wipes at State were blackmailing DiNozzo with treason because Gibbs ordered him to do what McGee said,” Bose spoke in clipped and measured tones, but he was visibly angry.
“Unfortunately I couldn’t persuade the President to abort – his aides had done too good a sell on the importance of helping the Israelis to remove Eli and get hold of those files. I did however get a Presidential get-out-of-jail-free card for DiNozzo on the treason charge. He was the one who had the least knowledge of what was going on, and the POTUS ordered the CIA to tear up the kill notices on Tony and Rene Benoit’s daughter. Those sons of bitches forced him into doing the mission and it damned near killed him!”
“Wait, so DiNozzo isn’t dead?” Granger demanded.
“If not for some highly experimental treatments, Special Agent DiNozzo would have died,” the secretary of Defense confirmed with a grave expression. “It was touch and go there for a long time.”
“So his funeral?”
“Faked, so the conspirators didn’t realise they’d been played.”
“And to piss off Director Vance and SECNAV so it wasn’t entirely a waste of time,” Tom smirked.
“But that’s not all,” SECDEF said, as Granger grabbed his head in his hands.
Bose quickly ran through the information about the identity switch between Tyler Owens and Leon Vance, and also Operation Frankenstein. Naturally, as a former Marine and special ops trained, Granger was nearly apoplectic with fury.
“This is confirmed?” he said through gritted teeth.
“They walked him through the overwhelming evidence that they’d gathered, explaining that they’d used the IG’s investigation into Officer Rivkin’s death to distract SECNAV and Vance from their own investigation and obviously, not tip Director David off either.”
“I take it that you have enough evidence to arrest them since you need an acting director, thus you’ve decided I’m capable of dealing with this shit show,” he hazarded a guess.
“Morrow nodded. “Good guess, but the most important thing was the Israelis arrested Eli David approximately 72 hours ago, so we are free to make arrests. We had unequivocal DNA proof from the director’s sister that the man who is sitting in the director’s chair is not Leon Vance – he is Tyler Keith Owens. Plus an autopsy report that the man who was purported to be Owen has a surgically repaired detached retina, the same injury and same eye that occurred during his basic training in the Marines and which saw them give him a medical discharge.”
“And my people have been gathering evidence on Operation Frankenstein – which started out as Tyler Owen’s research project at the Naval War College that he attended after Vance, was given a medical discharge. Which is when Owens took over Vance’s identity. Anyhoo, regarding Operation Frankenstein, we’ve got lists of recruits – all psychologically unstable personalities with a plethora of personality disorders including psychopaths, narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder that were being recruited and trained with some godawful methods,” Bose revealed grimly.
They went on to explain that the Kompromat files had been located, and since DiNozzo was crucial in bringing down Eli David, the Israelis had shared files that concerned US citizens in the Government’s employ.
“Like the ICE agent’s mother and US ambassador, you were discussing earlier while I was reading the IGs report into NCIS investigation of Rivkin’s death,” Granger commented, showing like any good leader he could multi-task.
“Former Agent,” Tom replied, still angry about her part in what ultimately meant that DiNozzo was set up and used up for a horrific mission.
“And that also leads us back to my previous comment about Foster-Yates not being the first victim, Owen. I’m afraid that Philip Davenport beat her to it,” SECDEF said with a significant look at the deputy director of DHS. “We believe that Philip Davenport was the victim of the kompromat files. He committed suicide last night,” he said bluntly.
“SECNAV killed himself?” Granger asked in a faint voice, sounding very much like he’d reach his limits in dealing with any more outrageous news. He confirmed it by saying, “I don’t think I can handle much more explosive information. My brain feels like it’s ready to explode.”
“Morrow smiled grimly. “I can only imagine, Owen.”
Bose nodded sympathetically. “Approximately four hours after Trent Kort managed to extract a confession out of Davenport in the conspiracy to execute Special DiNozzo, SECNAV left his office and went home, sending his protection detail away. His wife who was spending the day at some fundraiser returned home and found him dead. It looked like a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
“We are investigating his death, which obviously, has been kept super hush-hush,” he said, shooting a warning look at Granger who nodded his acknowledgement.
“Does Kort have an alibi?” the Secretary of Defense inquired of Morrow.
“Of course he does, Mr Secretary. After obtaining the confession we requested, he went back to Langley and was there all afternoon and all through the night. He expressed astonishment that SECNAV decided to kill himself, said he didn’t see it coming.”
Both men looked sceptical. They thought it was not a coincidence that roughly four hours after talking to the spook/CIA assassin, Davenport turned up dead but so far, all the forensics was pointing to SECNAV committing suicide.
Morrow looked askance at Bose. “So Davenport was one of Eli’s kompromat files? Is it confirmed?”
“Yep, the AG contacted me a short time before you arrived,” Bose said before switching on his computer screen and showing Morrow and Granger the pictures of Davenport, then he clicked on a digital video file with audio as all three watched, unable to look away.
“Oh my!” Tom managed. “I guess that explains why when Philip learnt that the Israelis had Eli’s files and planned to share them with us, he decided to kill himself. He wanted to save his family the huge embarrassment, if these were to be leaked to the press,” he said, looking as if someone hit him over the head with a piece of two-by-four.
All three men were silent for several minutes before Owen Granger dared to ask, “What now?”
“Now, we eat dinner, Gentlemen. I hope you both like Thai!” Robert Bose said firmly.
“And after dinner?” Owen persisted.
“After dinner, we plan how to go about storming NCIS tomorrow and arrest Tyler Owens and several others who have committed serious crimes or are in Eli’s kompromat files for illegal activity. DOJ is going to be working through the night to come up with a list of NCIS employees who pose a serious threat to national security,” Secretary Bose answered dangerously.
~oOo~
Several hours after Trent Kort had met SECNAV in the park and inveigled a confession out of him, with the Aurora less than 4 hours from Malta, Deputy Director Morrow had made contact with his agents for a routine check-in. Annie and Carter gave him a Sitrep, basically the same as previous times – that there was no indication anyone was showing undue interest in them. As far as they could tell, they weren’t being followed, which was comforting. Tom decided to give DiNozzo the good news, requesting a private conversation with Tony.
Fearing the worst, that the President had reneged on his pardon, and they intended to charge him with espionage, he was relieved when Morrow stated honestly. “You’re looking better, Anthony. I know you weren’t thrilled about sailing to London, but I think the sea air has been good for you.”
“It’s not that I don’t like sailing, Sir. I love it but of all the places to be on a yacht and not to be able to go sightseeing, I have to say that sailing the Mediterranean Sea is cruel and unusual punishment. Sailing with some of the most gorgeous islands and not being able to explore them, is sheer torture. And it’s not just the incredible scenery, Deputy Director, it’s the history of all three islands that hark back to ancient times, particularly with the occupiers who’ve all left their mark on Cyprus, Crete, and Malta. I just wish I was up to taking in all the culture, history and archaeology.”
“Right, I understand. I thought you didn’t like sailing, but I can see your point. I admit, Malta is somewhere I’d like to spend some time, too,” he confessed. “I’d love to tour the Lascaris War Rooms.”
“What are they?” Tony asked curiously.
“An underground complex of tunnels and chambers that housed the War Headquarters where the defence of Malta was conducted during WWII. The secret complex contained operations rooms for each of the services and it was where not just Malta’s air defences were coordinated, but also some of the greatest battles in the Mediterranean were fought.”
Seeing that Tony looked interested rather than bored, Morrow said, “In July 1943, the Lascaris War Rooms served as the advance headquarters for the Invasion of Sicily (codenamed Operation Husky) that took place led by Generals Eisenhower, Montgomery, Alexander and Clark and Air Marshal Tedder and Admiral Cunningham.”
Tony looked intrigued, “Maybe I could manage that tour, it sounds awesome. Brad and I also want to visit the Lower Barrakka Gardens to see the Siege Bell Memorial. It commemorates the 7500 service personnel and merchant seaman whose lives were lost during the Battle for Malta, in which over 1500 civilians lost their lives too. The Luftwaffe and the Regia Aeronautica flew a total of 3,000 bombing raids during the two-and-a-half-year siege. They dropped 6,700 tons of bombs on Valletta’s Grand Harbour alone,” he said before shaking his head at the sheer loss of life, particularly for such a small nation.
“But I’m guessing you didn’t ask to speak to me alone to marvel at the fortitude of the people of Malta in resisting the Axis Powers in WWII. What’s up, Sir?”
“So this is for your ears, at least for now. The Brass is still discussing how to handle this, but the Israelis handed over Eli’s files that he held on relevant officials and miscellaneous individuals whom Eli held kompromat on. It will be one helluva task sorting out those coerced into carrying out tasks for him and those who may not have even known they were on his list. But that is not our concern, thank goodness,” Morrow said with a heartfelt sigh of gratitude.
“I just wanted you to know that ICE Agent Julia Foster-Yates was terminated and also arrested for interfering in the investigation of Tom Sherman’s death when she deliberately destroyed the listening device that Rivkin planted. She was acting under Eli’s orders.”
“She let him infiltrate SECNAV’s home?” Tony asked. “I didn’t see that coming. I just assumed she was incompetent. McGee will be crushed.”
“Agent McGee will be too busy worrying about what is about to go down at NCIS,” Tom said dryly. “And no, she was contacted by Eli after the fact and told to delay the investigation and to destroy the bug. Did no one think it was odd that Ziva handed the listening device Ducky found under Sherman’s body to Foster-Yates rather than Fornell or Gibbs? Rivkin wanted time to plant the receiver at Tabal’s hotel and set him up as the spy.”
“And Foster-Yates was part of Eli’s kompromat files?” Tony asked incredulously.
“No, but her mother was a US ambassador,” Tom said furiously. “And some good news, we managed to get a confession out of SECNAV that he was up to his neck in the conspiracy with Director Vance and Eli David to force you to fly to Tel Aviv on the pretence of helping with their inquiries into the death of Officer Rivkin so he could execute you to save political face,” he said.
“Although we had him over the whole fiasco with Domino, I wanted to be able to charge him with what he did to you, and we have a great confession. It’s a taped conversation that wouldn’t hold up in a court of law, but for his sins, he’s facing a secret military trial, and this will be admissible. The plan is to arrest him and Director Vance tomorrow, but I thought you deserved a heads up for what they put you through,” he said.
They talked for a couple of minutes more in a desultory fashion before Tom excused himself, saying that after talking to Tony he decided he was going to visit Malta with his wife Lynnette as a reward when they finished cleaning up this mess with NCIS and Eli’s kompromat.
Tony was simultaneously happy that Davenport and Vance would face consequences for their actions with Domino and Rivkin, but he worried about what the former NCIS director meant about McGee being too busy worrying about what was happening at NCIS? What did that mean, other than the fact they were looking at a new director. That would make whoever it was the third one in the space of four years. Not that it would affect him since Tony knew there was no going back there for him – it was time to forge a new future. One that included Xavier – he was going to be Tony’s priority now.
Just before the video call ended, Tom told him he would call him after the raids were completed to update him.
Six hours later, Annie Henderson received a message from Deputy Director Morrow to advise that although he promised Tony an update, he was going to arrange for it to take place at the US Embassy and for them to stay put in Valletta until he could arrange it as it might take a day or two but to enjoy the Lascaris War Rooms in the meantime.
~ oOo ~
The plan to arrest the Secretary of the Navy and the NCIS Director had been to divide and conquer – Morrow and his DHS agents to tackle NCIS. Secretary Bose would descend, accompanied by seasoned Marines of impeccable reputation, who were NOT part of Eli’s kompromat files (at least not the ones handed over by the Israelis) and arrest SECNAV. Of course, with Davenport’s suicide that is no longer necessary. With the forensics confirming that Davenport’s death was indeed a suicide, even if it seemed a little too convenient after Kort’s tete-a-tete, the CIA spook did have an unshakeable alibi and not much of a motive other than the involvement in Operation Frankenstein, which Kort had already blown the whistle on. So, it would seem that the discovery of Eli’s files and what they contained had been the catalyst in SECNAV’s decision that he didn’t want his secret to come out. Plus, there was the grim prospect of him facing incarceration in a secret security prison for the rest of his life.
Now, after a swift change of plans, the Secretary of Defense would now lead the charge in removing the Director from his position as head of NCIS. Something Tom suspected Robert would take enormous satisfaction in doing. Then Morrow would place the imposter under arrest; they had a very comfy cell awaiting him. Okay, maybe it wasn’t so comfortable but once he was locked in, a lot of other people would be very comforted.
Tom would also arrest the agents found to be on the former director of Mossad kompromat files, who would then need to convince the DHS and the NSA that they had not compromised National Security. As he’d pointed out to the higher-ups, if they hadn’t committed any crimes at Eli’s behest, they may not even know they were on his hit list, although they would need to take a polygraph to confirm it. They would probably lose their jobs, even if they’d remained ignorant about being a part of his kompromat because it meant that whatever information he had on them made them vulnerable to coercion.
Of course, if the file contained evidence of them having committed a crime and they’d gotten away with it, naturally, they would be charged. However, if it was a kompromat of the type of non-criminal nature that could be used to coerce them, that still made them a potential threat to national security. Eli David might be incarcerated, it was true, but who was to say that there weren’t backup copies of his files made. After all, what if the property in Haifa had been burned down? Eli was bound to have at least one backup copy stashed somewhere.
Also of concern, the New Director of Mossad had managed to arrest all of Elie’s faction bar a handful of agents who were out of the country, and they were still trying to track down. So, it was conceivable that a few may evade capture and if there were copies of Eli’s files accessible, they could use them for their own nefarious purposes.
And then there was the remainder of the MCRT – Ziva having reported to have perished in a mission of her father’s, of the coast of Somalia had got off lightly in Tom’s estimation. Not so Timothy McGee! The Pentagon was baying for McGee’s blood over the four-month lapse in failing to notify them that Domino had been stolen. Well, obviously, they were baying for SECNAV’s and Vance’s blood, too but they were incensed that the agent who spent four months trying to break an encryption hadn’t reported the theft as soon as he realised how complicated the task was.
Just how long would McGee be prepared to remain silent if the petty officer who stole it hadn’t landed on Ducky’s autopsy table? Six months…a year? As the JCS pointed out, the fact he was the son and grandson of two decorated Rear Admirals made his failure to report the theft even more egregious for failing to uphold his sworn oath. They demanded his head and SECDEF and the president were inclined to give it to them.
Finally, it would fall upon Tom to arrest Gibbs for his failure to report his strong suspicions that Leon Vance was not the real Leon Vance but Tyler Owens. The President and the national security community had demanded he be arrested – any favours he may have accrued over the years with his Black Ops missions having been swept away in the seriousness of his failure to report his strong suspicions – hell most people would say proof that Leon Vance was not who he claimed to be. Quite frankly, Tom was desperate to find out why Gibbs, who was passionate about his beloved Marine Corps would allow an imposter to dishonour the Corps by claiming to be one of them.
Thus, the phalanx of DHS security agents, including Fornell (who was on Special Assignment and begged to be part of Vance’s arrest), DOD agents and deputy directors of Homeland (Morrow) and NCIS (Granger), plus the Secretary of Defense, Robert Bose and his protection detail, converged outside the NCIS building. They had already planned for most of the Homeland and DOD agents to take the stairs and fan out to take into custody those employees who were a part of Eli’s files. While it only involved four agents in the DC office so far, about a dozen more from the agency overall were being rounded up and taken into custody. But at the Navy Yard HQ, five other staff members (who were not agents) had turned up on Eli’s list, and they were all coincidentally in DC headquarters. An evidence technician, a paralegal, a forensic technician and two cyber security personnel were also on his list; statistically four agents and five support staff seemed like an extraordinarily high number to be concentrated in this building.
Morrow may be nasty and suspicious, but he wondered if the significantly higher number of targets might have something to do with Ziva David’s four years at the Navy Yard. The Mossad spy was in a prime situation to gather dirt on others. He didn’t know if it would be possible to determine if she was responsible or not, but now was not the time to be going off on tangents. Plenty of time for that later!
As the NCIS security guards at the front desk took in the composition of the contingent in the foyer, their collective eyes nearly popped out of their heads. SECDEF ordered them not to announce their arrival and stationed one of his own at the front security desk to ensure his orders were obeyed. After separating into teams, one of the DHS agents paired with a DOD agent, forming nine teams, took to the stars to take the agency personnel into custody. The rest of the DOD and DHS personnel crowded into the back of the elevator, then the two deputy Directors and finally at the front, Secretary Bose, taking point. It was a weird quirk of the building that one couldn’t take the elevator from the ground floor straight to the mezzanine level where MTAC and the Director’s office were situated. You had to get out on the floor below, where a third of the investigative agents and foreign analysts worked (including the MCRT bullpen), then switch to another elevator or take the stairs.
As they emerged from the elevator, there was an immediate lull in the activity levels as everyone realised something big was afoot. Everyone rose in deference to Robert Bose’s presence; it wasn’t every day that SECDEF turned up at NCIS. Tom also noted that more than a few of the agents he used to work with as director, acknowledged him with restrained but respectful nods and more than a few smiles. Gibbs was stony-faced and appeared to be a shadow of his former self, but he too briefly acknowledged Morrow. Of everyone on the floor, he must have had an inkling of what was about to go down, although he didn’t know everything. Not Operation Frankenstein, or that they knew about the ludicrous Domino situation or that he and McGee were about to be arrested after they got through with the NCIS director.
Still, he knew enough, and Owen Granger’s presence was a massive clue.
Gibbs like everyone else, would find out soon enough, Tom thought grimly, as SECDEF started to climb the stairs to the Director’s office, his posse following faithfully behind him. By this time, the director had heard the chatter about Robert Bose’s appearance since the Secretary of Defense didn’t turn up unless something massive was about to hit the fan. By the time they swept past the director’s executive assistant, Pamela, like an unstoppable force and into his office, he was trying to get hold of SECNAV to find out what was going on. Of course, he was not having any luck; people from the DOD put in place in his office were telling people that the SECNAV was unavailable to talk to the NCIS director, which was no lie.
“Have him call me as soon as he can,” he ordered replacing the receiver on his landline. “Gentlemen, to what do I owe this honour?” he asked, his voice steady.
Morrow told him, “I’m afraid you’re going to be waiting for a call back for a very long time, Leon,”
“And why would that be Tom?” he asked as his eyes took in Deputy Director Owen Granger and licked his lips nervously, even though his eyes remained hooded and cold. Like a snake, Tom thought uncharitably.
A look at Bose who nodded, and Tom directed his agents to secure the office. Two grim-faced agents exited the office and politely requested that Pamela vacate the office. Tom briefly wondered what had happened to Cynthia Sommers, who had briefly worked for him before she became Jenny Shepard’s EA. Cynthia would have put up a fight, refusing to leave until Tom or Jenny confirmed the order. Vance’s executive assistant didn’t wait for Vance’s permission; Pamela had shot out of her office like a scalded cat. The DHS agents locked the outer office door before they and most of the agents stepped out into the outer office.
Three lucky agents with clearance, all Special Agents in Charge or higher, including an ecstatic Tobias Fornell, had earned the privilege of remaining in the director’s office to watch as the drama unfolded. Tom activated the Sensitive Compartmentalised Information Facility mechanism, further unnerving Director Vance.
Leon looked ill at ease. “Are you going to answer my question? Why would I be waiting for SECNAV to call me back for a very long time?”
Secretary Bose decided to answer the question. “Actually, Deputy Director Morrow, I do believe you misspoke. It would be far more accurate to save that Philip will call him back, when Hell freezes over, as in never. He can’t, because yesterday Davenport took his own life after he learnt that the Israelis had arrested the director of Mossad, Eli David on conspiracy to execute a foreign national without the benefit of a trial,” he said pointedly.
The NCIS director blanched as he grabbed hold of his desk.
Tom cleared his throat and then joined in. “With all due respect, Mr Secretary you forgot to mention that the news that our Israeli friends also located his infamous kompromat files seemed to trouble Philip greatly.”
“True, true. Do you think it was because he was in them?” Secretary Bose asked as Vance started to sway on his feet, and he staggered before collapsing into his office chair.
“Morrow chuckled, “Why would he kill himself just because Eli had evidence of Philip’s fetish? I mean what’s the problem with him wearing a diaper, sucking on a pacifier, and having his butt spanked by a sex worker he has on speed dial?
The Deputy Director having shattered Tyler Owens’ universe, subsided, pleased with the reaction they’d created in the excessively smug individual, Tyler Owens. He just wished Anthony DiNozzo could have been here to see it.
The Secretary of Defense chuckled. “Well, it could have been that, I agree, but then again, it could well have been the realisation that we knew about his failure to report the theft of a highly classified file for five months. You both endangered US national security and that of our allies, which stupidly was finally resolved by hacking into the Pentagon and discovering what had been taken in approximately five minutes.”
Bose paused theatrically and asked, “Five minutes as opposed to five months. How many minutes do you suppose there are in four months, Deputy Director Morrow?”
Tom smirked. “Somehow, I thought you might ask me that, Mr Secretary,” he said with a Cheshire cat grin. “There are 175,200 minutes in four months, compared to five minutes which is how long you had a junior agent, Special Agent Timothy McGee working on decrypting PO Vargas’ computer. Poor time management skills, Leon!”
“That was Agent DiNozzo who hacked into the Pentagon, I had nothing to do with it,” Vance babbled, desperately trying to blame someone else, and completely ignoring a host of much more important issues.
“Oh please,” Tom scoffed. “As valuable an agent as DiNozzo was, he would not have been able to hack into the Pentagon without being walked through it, step by step. But you could have done so.”
“It was McGee; he walked him through it, and Gibbs ordered him to do it,” Vance practically tripped over himself to implicate others.
“That’s not really the point. If you had reported it as your sworn duty, the file’s contents would have been located in minutes. But you didn’t, AND now you are in a lot of trouble,” Morrow told him sharply.
Bose nodded emphatically. “Very true, Deputy Director Morrow, Although, I think the final straw that broke the camel’s back and drove SECNAV to kill himself, was learning that we had discovered your little side op. I believe you call it Operation Frankenstein.”
Morrow watched on as Vance stumbled onto his feet and proceeded to throw up in his trash can. The former NCIS director experienced an intense helping of schadenfreude and made no apology for it. This imposter wasn’t fit to be a federal agent, far less the director of NCIS.
After he’d finished unloading his breakfast, Owens appeared listless, he took a sip of water before spitting it out.
Glaring at him, Secretary Bose started speaking, his tone arctic. “Well, enough of the speculation about Philip. It is my sworn and solemn duty to inform you that due to your despicable and criminal acts, I am relieving you of your position as director of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. And with my solemn duty concluded, I would just like to say on a personal note, you disgust me, Mr Vance. You are a blight on the reputation of this agency.”
Morrow, who was enjoying himself hugely cleared his throat again. “Mr Vance, Secretary Bose?”
Grinning ferally, the Secretary of Defense sighed. “Quite right, Tom. My bad! I should have said, that you disgust me, Mr Tyler Keith Owens.”
Morrow saw the dawning horror on the disgraced ex-director’s face when he realised the extent to which he was well and truly fucked. He would be lucky if he spent the rest of his natural life in a secret high-security prison whose presence was only ever hinted at in whispers. That was IF they didn’t charge him with espionage, which carried the death penalty.
Tom then proceeded to read out the long list of charges he was facing, all terrifyingly serious felonies, as Tobias Fornell gleefully slapped the cuffs on Tyler Owens, and they forced him to do a perp walk from the director’s office across the gantry to the elevator. Morrow could tell that Fornell was disappointed, wanting the perp walk to descend the stairs to the lower floor, and through the bullpen to the main elevator, but Tom wasn’t entirely sure that Owens was physically capable of taking the stairs, not without collapsing. Maybe more to the point, that he wouldn’t try to throw himself down the stairs. No matter, they would still need to take him across the third floor below, which was filled with agents, so they could access the main elevator. He could tell that their imposter would find it utterly humiliating and that was good enough for him.
As they finally gained entry to the main elevator to the ground floor, Morrow couldn’t resist rubbing a little salt into Owen’s wounds. “You want to know the irony of the situation you find yourself in, right now Tyler? If you’d done your duty, stood by Agent DiNozzo and refused to pander to the whims of narcissists like Eli David and his daughter, none of this would have ever come to light. By throwing an agent, who, according to Davenport, you despised, under the bus and allowing him to be murdered by Eli, you and Philip have brought all this down upon your own heads.”
Bose, who no longer felt constrained to afford the former director any respect now he was relieved of his duties, chortled sarcastically. “Ah, the absurdity of the situation. How does it feel to be one of the architects of your own downfall, MISTER Owens?”
Owens gave him a hate-filled glare and bit his lip. Tom wasn’t sure if the action was designed to stop him from responding to the taunt or if it was because Tobias had removed any toothpicks from his pockets. Tyler would have to get used to not having toothpicks to chew on…such a filthy habit!
Having turned Tyler Owens over to the extra DHS in the lobby, he and Secretary Bose requested that security inform all staff members that their presence was required in fifteen minutes on the third floor. In the meantime, both men, accompanied by Deputy Director, now officially Acting Director Granger, ducked outside, followed by SECDEF’s protection detail to grab coffee from the coffee cart and to de-stress after the scene upstairs.
Chapter 29
Tom took a look around his former workplace, wondering sadly how NCIS could end up in such a mess. They had been stumbling from one crisis to the next in the four years since he’d transferred to Homeland. All of the crises involved the two directors appointed after his departure.
Shepard with her La Grenouille obsession, her brain tumour. Then there was the Svetlana Chernitskaya fiasco – she failed to take out her target and hoped it would go away and then came back to bite her on the ass and two others died because of it. A young innocent woman and a former agent, William Decker. And then there was Leon Vance who wasn’t Leon Vance, who in one year as the director had caused so much damage – Domino, Operation Frankenstein, Rivkin and his failure to back up Lara Macy and pressure Eli to call him home. Plus, there was his highly personal investigation and misuse of agency assets to look into the death of the real former Marine Leon Vance. Tyler Owens scathing disapproval of Shepard for the chaos she’d caused seemed pretty damned arrogant, in light of his efforts after only one year of doing the job. At least Shepard had needed three years as the head of the agency to fuck everything up!
Soon, Secretary Bose would declare that Leon Vance had been relieved of his duties due to him being charged with a series of federal crimes, and in the interim, Owen Granger would fill in as Acting Director until a permanent replacement could be found. He would also announce the death of the SECNAV, although the brass was holding back the cause of death for now. The information about Vance and Owens switch of identities, Project Frankenstein and Domino would be buried as the damage to the agency and fallout for all its investigations was just too great.
They would however announce that that one of the charges Owens was facing was conspiracy to kill Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, since many of the agents weren’t buying the ‘killed in a tragic motor accident’ explanation regarding his death, either. No decision had been made yet as to whether they would announce that their attempts to execute him were unsuccessful. Although, with some of Eli’s minions still at large, it was considered to be too much of a risk. DiNozzo would stay dead for now and to some degree, it would also be let up to him to have a say in the timing of the announcement or if it was ever released.
Then, while Robert departed back to the sanctity of DOD, Tom would interrogate Gibbs and McGee, although he already had warrants for their arrest. He was so disappointed in both agents. Plus, there was the separate issue of Gibbs murdering his wife and daughter’s killer to hash out with the Judge Advocate General, since he was a Marine at the time, albeit on compassionate leave. That mess came to light when Malachi Ben Gidon sent them a copy of the heated argument in Tel Aviv between the NCIS director and Gibbs. Tom also expected that Tyler Owens would be throwing him under the bus on that one, hoping it might give him leverage, along with McGee’s compulsive and highly illegal hacking activities.
Tom suspected he wasn’t lying when he told Gibbs if he went down, he didn’t care if the agency imploded. Tyler Owens had never really understood the whole protect and serve mentality, unfortunately.
It was going to be a long and deeply unpleasant day.
Still, he did enjoy the takedown of Tyler Owens a lot. Morrow did feel genuine sorrow for his wife and children regarding what they were about to face, though. It was going to come as a shock to learn that their husband and father had a sister and their whole life, right down to their name had been a lie. How did one move on from something that devastating, he wondered.
Tom didn’t envy Owen Granger the massive task facing him after the drama of today. It was going to be an overwhelming task, for instance, Richard Parsons had recommended sweeping changes to the set-up of the forensic lab. Agents should not consider it an extra workplace or feel free to bring witnesses down there. He had recommended a dedicated space if the forensic staff needed to interact with the public so it did not threaten evidence integrity. The issue of the MCRT being permitted to investigate cases they had a personal stake in was now moot, not that Parsons knew it when he wrote the report, but with Gibbs and McGee about to be charged with other offences, that would no longer be such a tricky issue to resolve. Everyone else would fall into line because it was SOP and it also made sense.
At the 12-minute mark, Robert, a demon for punctuality, tossed his empty coffee cup into the trash, and said, “Are we ready, Gentlemen?”
Then without pausing for a response, he strode into the lobby.
~ oOo ~
Tony was trying not to think about the meeting at the US Embassy because he realised the implications immediately. Needing to set up a secure line where they could converse meant something big had happened. Allison, in her previous capacity with the DOD, tried to finagle intel out of the SECDEF since she could see how distressed he was becoming, but Bose just told her that she could participate in the session with DiNozzo at the embassy when they could arrange it. In the meantime, he recommended they enjoy Malta.
With nothing better to do, they enjoyed Malta as ordered!
They had all ended up going off in different directions. Brad and Tony (along with several of Morrow’s agents, including Annie Henderson) visited the Lascaris War Rooms, and it was certainly well worth it. Tony found it tiring but glad he pushed himself. The next day, they all went together to the Lower Barrakka Gardens to see the Siege Bell Memorial, making sure they were there at midday when the brass bell sounded out in memorial to all the lives lost during the Siege of Malta in WWII which was solemn and moving. Allison, Helen, and Jeanne decided to check out the Upper Barrakka Gardens, above the Great Harbour, which was badly damaged by the bombing during the Second World War. The colonnaded gardens had since been restored but were first built in 1661, although they weren’t open to the public until 1822, and the ladies pronounced the garden as stunning. Xavier thought they were a fine place for him to toddle around and was happy to have some freedom. Tony didn’t feel up to all the walking involved so he and Brad and their protection detail headed off to the Grand Masters Palace. They were like a bunch of kids in the armoury, checking out the suits of armour worn by the Knights Hospitaller (a Catholic Military Order) during the Great Siege in 1565, when the Ottoman Empire tried to conquer Malta and failed, even though the Knights Hospitaller were greatly outnumbered.
After that, Tony was exhausted, so he and Annie returned to the marina and left Brad to join up with the rest of the group, headed to the National Museum of Archaeology. Tomorrow they were all going on a cruise together, to Gozo and Comino Islands, part of the archipelago of islands that made up the Republic of Malta, visiting the Blue Lagoon, the Crystal Lagoon and sea caves. It was a long seven-hour cruise, and they needed to hire a driver to take them to Sirens Quay. But despite the long day, when Tony learnt that the sea caves were used by pirates, he couldn’t resist going along. Besides, Brad and Allison were flying out when they left Malta, while he and the Berkleys would remain aboard the Aurora, sailing on to Marseille. It seemed like a perfect way to end their journey together and Tony wanted to be rested for their big day out tomorrow.
That night when the others went out celebrating, he finally relented, ending up telling Allison about his memories while he was under the influence of that damned Romeo & Juliet cocktail of drugs, meant to fake death. He described how he was in a black void, an abyss of nothingness where he was wasn’t corporeal – just pure consciousness and he remembered feeling very afraid. How within the void he realised that someone kept singing to him, giving him something to focus on and preventing him from having a panic attack. He explained in embarrassment how he used to have panic attacks when he was younger but at college, they gradually abated, only to return again when he was drowning in his own lungs after the Y-pestis when he ended up with pneumonia.
He was wildly grateful that she didn’t seem to think he was a basket case…at least not yet. So, he decided to share more, how he remembered waking up on a helicopter unable to breathe – his lungs were burning, and Tony felt like he was suffocating before finally he lost consciousness.
“That must have been when Dr Deitsch was reversing the procedure. You went into respiratory distress. They had to intubate you and manually bag you until they got to Haifa, where they placed you on a ventilator,” Allison said. “Were you aware of anything going on around you while you were on the ventilator,” she asked curiously.
He shook his head, “No, nothing in this world.”
Seeing the sideways look, she gave him, Tony seized his courage in both hands. He hoped she was as open-minded as her stories about Eureka suggested and proceeded to tell her his fantastic story about waking in a place that seemed vaguely familiar to him. Of him finding his dead mother there and how, weirdly, he had the body of a six-year-old, which was also the last time he had any loving memories of her. He explained his memories of the wonderfully happy summer they spent exploring the Long Island coast, searching for a dragon from a song she used to sing to him called Puff the Magic Dragon
“Lucinda explained that I was in a state between the living and being dead. She told me that the place was not real, it was what she called her mind construct, which was why I appeared in the body of a six-year-old boy, but still had the consciousness of a 35-year-old adult.
“Did your mother tell you why you were there – why she was there?” Allison asked him curiously.
He shrugged, telling her it was complicated. She wanted him to know about her life before she was married because he was too little before she got sick to ask questions. All he cared about was that she was there, and she loved him. He learnt that she was a well-known singer in the UK and his father proposed to her and persuaded her to marry him and come to live in the US.
“She told me that she was invited to perform at a Command Performance held at the Royal Albert Hall for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip and I learnt about her singing teacher and accompanist.”
“And these were facts you weren’t aware of?”
“No, my father refused to talk about her. Said it made him too sad. I do know he would hit the bottle a lot harder when I tried to talk about her,” he said bitterly.
He also told her about Miriam, his nanny, and what his mother told him had happened to her.
“Have you any idea why she created such an elaborate mind construct, other than to spend time with you and tell you about your family history?”
She kept trying to persuade me to fight to stay alive, but I didn’t want to live. My boss had taken my teammate’s side and sacrificed me so I went to him and told him I didn’t want to go. I knew it was crazy to get on the plane and go to Israel, but he accused me of always thinking about myself and to suck it up. Then I found out that the Director and SECNEV were willing to sacrifice my life to curry favour with Ziva’s father. My life meant nothing, and then there was that bitch Anna Elliot who wanted me to risk my life to get rid of Eli David and score her brownie points. I was betrayed by Gibbs, NCIS and the State Department. I decided I rather remain with my mum, and I gave up fighting.”
“What changed? There was a time when you must have decided to fight because we were losing you and then you stabilised enough that Fargo had time to get here with his nanites.”
“Xavier changed it. Somehow, Lucinda – my mother managed to pull him into her construct…well both Xavier and Jeanne at first, but she wasn’t there for long.”
“How did she do that?”
Tony chuckled. “I asked her that. She said something about proximity and that they were sleeping, which she told me, made it easier to reach out to them. Jeanne apparently brought Xavier into the hospital to meet me, because she thought I wouldn’t make it. When he needed a nap, she put him down beside me on the bed after he was asleep. I think she dozed off too and Lucinda said that’s when she pulled them into her construct, but Jeanne woke up before I realised who she was. My mother wanted me to meet Xavier, hoping to give me a reason to survive.”
Allison was focused on him completely, not rolling her eyes or acting patronising. “And did it?”
“Not at first. I wouldn’t believe he was mine, and even after I finally remembered Tom Morrow telling me of his existence, right before they sedated me in Tel Aviv, I really thought he was better off without me. “
“Xavier loves you already. Anyone can see that. How could he possibly be better off without you?” she scolded him gently.
“If you’ve read my file and I suspect you have, you already know I had an abusive and emotionally neglectful upbringing. Is it that big a stretch to imagine how terrified I am that I will screw him up worse than I am?”
“The fact you’re aware of the potential to harm him, tells me that you are already streets ahead of most parents, particularly your father, Tony. You’ll do fine!”
“Maybe, but it doesn’t mean I’m not terrified that I will mess up.”
“What changed your mind about giving up?”
“I realised how much I loved him in, even in that short time we spent together. I wanted to watch him grow up, even though I’m terrified I’ll make a mess of things.”
Allison smiled.
“What?” Tony asked.
“We were all really worried about how much time Xavier spent sleeping and how he would kick up a fuss if we tried to take him away from you. But he needed to be sleeping to go to Honah Lee. Did he interact with Lucinda too or just you?”
“Both of us. Lucinda taught him to call her Nana,” he said with a wicked smirk.
So that’s why he refuses to call Helen Nan.”
“Yes, he thinks it’s a name like he thinks my name is Dada, not Tony.
“So, she is Nanan and who is pahpah?”
“Puff the Magic Dragon, who my mother created. First, she made him a baby dragon for Xavier to play with, and later as a fully grown dragon he rescued us from Captain Bluesy Beard. We went on adventures with him and flew on his back.”
“Oh, no wonder he got crabby whenever we woke him up to feed and water him,” Allison shook her head. “He was having way too much fun hanging out with you and his Nan.”
“So you don’t think that I’m imagining this stuff?”
She thought carefully. “Well, it is a strange and wonderous story, I’ll grant you that, but I’ve seen much stranger things happen in Eureka. And it explains why the skin-to-skin contact worked – you were both forming a strong relationship. You know that you can research much of what your mother told you about her life and see if any of it is true.”
“I fully intend to do that. Just as soon as I’m fit enough, I’m going to London to find out about her side of the family.”
“Just don’t be in too much of a hurry and push yourself. Your body is regrowing a new set of lungs, and that takes a massive amount of energy. We might need to repeat the procedure in three months. We’ll do scans first to see how things are progressing. If they need a boost of stem cells, then it sounds like France would be a good place to do it; from what Helen tells me, the Benoit farmhouse is very private.”
That night, Tony slept really well. Not only because he was physically exhausted from the Grand Masters Palace and the Siege Bell Memorial but because it had felt good to finally tell someone about what had happened to him while he was on the ventilator. Allison Blake was not like any other doctor/scientist he had ever encountered, and it made him pretty darned curious about the town of Eureka that she would find his experience probable enough not to suggest he was losing his mind.
Their cruise was wonderful, and something he would remember for a long time. He even went swimming in the Blue Lagoon, which was amazingly beautiful. They’d brought along the toddler-sized lifejacket Jeanne purchased when the Berkleys sailed from Larnaca to Haifa, so Brad took Xavier swimming in the Blue Lagoon, much to his delight. But the toddler was even more excited when, on the trip back, they detoured to check out some sea caves used by pirates. Xavier got really excited, babbling away about Pah pah pah, and Tony felt bad at having to explain to him that there was no Puff the Magic Dragon living in these caves.
It had been a memorable day, and tomorrow, after Allison and Tony’s appointment at the US Embassy at 1130 for the confidential bring, she and Brad would head to the International Airport and fly home to the US. DHS Special Agent Eddie Lopez would accompany Brad and Allison back home, and Special Agent Annie Henderson would continue on to France with them. She had offered to swap protection details with Lopez since he needed to return to DC asap as his father needed emergency heart surgery. Annie said she wouldn’t mind hanging around for the rest of the journey, maybe providing security in Limousine if the situation still warranted it although Tony could tell that Brad was a little disappointed. He’d really gotten into the whole undercover story of them being a romantic couple.
So tired as Tony was after such a huge day, he suggested they go out for one more dinner together in a little eatery by the Marsamxett Harbour, where Aurora was moored and invited the captain, Costa Kyriakides, to join them too.
It was with a certain degree of trepidation that Tony and Allison fronted up at the US Embassy the next day, Allison showed her DOD credentials, and he showed his passport in the name of Dylan Paddington. Tom had used his mother’s maiden name and his former middle name to come up with a new identity for him to travel under. He would figure out later what name to use. Now he was mentally preparing himself for what Tom needed to tell them. Tony figured it was going to be shocking.
He was right!
Tom started by commenting that Tony looked less pale and for a few minutes, they talked about going on the cruise yesterday and his trip before that to the Lascaris War Rooms. He told Tom how, when he was fully recovered and fit enough, he wanted to come back here and explore the place properly, there was so much he didn’t see. Then the Deputy Director of DHS all too rapidly turned the conversation to serious matters – after all, he hadn’t arranged for a highly secure chat with Tony at the US Embassy to discuss sightseeing.
Tom started off the briefing by stating that they had obtained a confession from SECNAV about his role in helping Eli David kill Tony, in return for help to find a mole in NCIS. Although a confession sounded like a good thing, he was pretty sure bad news was in the offing. So, when Morrow told him that Philip Davenport committed suicide rather than face the consequences of his actions, after learning that Eli David was arrested, and his kompromat files had been located and shared he was kinda prepared for something huge. It turned out that Eli had a file on Davenport that would have caused his family huge embarrassment, so he shot himself.
Tony assumed that was the information that required them to have this video conference at the Embassy since it was massive news and evidently, they didn’t want it to get out, but he was wrong, there was much more to come. Morrow detailed the NCIS Director’s removal from office and his arrest, in a light-hearted moment mentioning that Tobias Fornell had won the DHS office pool, earning the honour of slapping the cuffs on Mr Vance, who was now awaiting a secret trial.
Owen Granger being appointed as acting director was not really a surprise although Tony had never met him, but he had a solid reputation. He was rather shocked though that they arrested some agents and technical staff at the DC office, who were all in Eli’s files since all these people were supposedly vetted before getting hired! How the hell had that happened? He was also reeling at the news that Agent McGee was also arrested for his role in Domino, specifically his failure to uphold his oath and report the theft of a highly classified file for four months.
Tony figured that Tim’s arrest was on his head because he had been ranting to Morrow about what a stupid move it had been breaking up the team, supposedly so Gibbs could find the mole. Yeah, sending Tony, who was second only to Gibbs when it came to investigative skills, to serve as agent afloat was a dumbass move. He’d never realised that McGee had been taken into Vance’s confidence for so long though – why would he? The Toothpick didn’t even read Gibbs in – he was just supposed to sniff out a mole with no heads up that there was one. How idiotic was that? Which was why he never even thought that Tim had known about the missing file for four fucking months – he assumed the information was compartmentalized as in decrypt this file, Agent.
Tony realised in his relief at being back on terra firma again after four excruciating months at sea as an agent afloat, he’d wrongly assumed McGee had been read in on the full details because Gibbs caught the case of PO Vargas and co-opted McGee. Because it was a pure Gibbs move to order him to hack – he didn’t stop to think that McGee was involved right from where the team was split up. The idiot should have known better, but he was probably gloating to himself for all those weeks down in Cyber that he knew shit that not even Gibbs knew about.
Not quite as shocking to Tony, was news of Gibbs’ arrest for failing to report Vance and Davenport to the DOD for illegally ordering DiNozzo to fly to Israel, ostensibly to make Tony defend his actions to a foreign government. He was also being charged, per the IG’s recommendations for failure to ensure that Tony was medically fit to undertake the illegal trip to Israel and without recourse to legal counsel. Since he thought Tony was going over to straighten out the shooting, he should have made sure he was fit to make the trip. The Director on the other hand knew he wasn’t coming back so he didn’t care if he was medically fit to fly.
However, it was other charges that his former bosses faced which shook him to his core.
Morrow floored him with the explosive news that the NCIS former director, who was in the post for just over a year, was not Leon Vance. He was an individual called Tyler Owens who had swapped identities with the real Leon Vance after he suffered a career-ending injury that resulted in his discharge from the Marine Corp. Owens probably saw it as a way for him to get a free degree from an esteemed college but had ended up being recruited by NIS. Morrow explained that Gibbs had discovered the truth, during the fake Tyler Owens case, months before and stayed mum about it. Even though the director’s false identity made him a target for coercion, and he was a massive risk to national security, even his recruitment by a former NIS agent to the agency and SECNAV appointing him to the top job was based on the fact they both knew about his false identity. Effectively, they’d used it to turn him into their puppet.
Eight years ago, when Gibbs encountered Tony who was a homicide detective working in Baltimore, he had Chris Pacci run an extensive background check on him, wanting to know who he was dealing with. Yet just months ago, in the course of an investigation, Gibb found out the man in charge of the whole damn agency was an imposter and he turned a blind eye to the grave risk Tyler Owens posed?
What the hell was with that and when the imposter demanded that DiNozzo report to Eli David in Israel – which was highly illegal, Gibbs could have easily stopped the whole nightmare right then and there. Gibbs’ failure to act in that situation and his failure to speak up and protect Tony was a highly personal betrayal. How could the former Marine fail to have his six after Tony gave him eight years of loyalty – and instead chose to protect a man who was lying about his entire life, who Gibbs had only worked for one lousy year? Why did Owens do that had earned Gibbs’ loyalty, and made him ignore his sworn oath?
If Tony had been devastated by Jethro’s decision to throw him under the bus before, this inexcusable dereliction of his duty to the agency and his country was incomprehensible to Tony. By the time, Tom went on to outline the whole Operation Frankenstein private assassins for hire, his brain was reeling. He could tell by Allison’s body language she was as pissed off and shocked as he was.
Tom explained that it started out as a class assignment that the fake Leon Vance dreamed up while he’d been at the Naval War College on the taxpayer’s dime. Davenport had quickly seized upon it, someone there must have sent it to Philip Davenport or one of his contacts, and he’d seen its potential as a way to create his own private militia and to make a lot of money out of Assassins 4 Hire. So much betrayal that it left Tony who was still physically weak and emotionally fragile on the point of physical and mental collapse.
Before they ended the Sitrep, Tony managed to ask in a strangled tone why the Deputy Director was sharing all this with intel him.
Tom replied sombrely, “You almost died but for two highly experimental treatments. You were fucked over by two directors with personal agendas. If not for you reaching out to me for help by blackmailing that Driessen creep, much of this would have continued to fly under the radar. Secretary Bose is particularly grateful to you for everything we’ve achieved in cleaning up this mess, but first and foremost, because we uncovered Operation Frankenstein in time to save many of the men and women in the armed services who they were planning on recruiting.”
Tony looked over at Allison who looked equally appalled at the depth of corruption that had been uncovered. “This is so much more than anyone could have anticipated,” she murmured in shock.
Morrow scowled. “Yes, it certainly is, and by the way, I nearly forgot. The Israelis are also in your debt for assisting them in removing Director David from his position. To apologise for what you’ve gone through, they have deposited $5,000,000 in a specially created bank account in the name of Dylan Paddington,” he told Tony.
He exchanged a look with Dr Blake, knowing he hadn’t really taken in all of the ramifications that it had been part of Eli David’s personal wealth which had been seized. They had awarded it as damages for what the former director had put him through.
“We decided that you deserved to know the truth of what you helped us achieve. Don’t get me wrong, Agent DiNozzo, I’m not saying for a moment any of it justifies what you were put through. It doesn’t – I just hope that in the weeks and months ahead, it will be of some solace for you to know that massive good came of it. Honestly, if anyone deserves to know the truth, you do.”
There was some desultory chatter that Tony tuned out, unable to handle social niceties. In fact, he had to leave abruptly to find a bathroom so he could throw up his stomach contents. Tony felt ready to collapse under the weight of so much greed and corruption that had been operating right under the noses of most of the good, honest agents at NCIS. He felt violated and contaminated by them and longed to have a long hot shower, something that wasn’t available on the Aurora.
When Allison emerged from the secure videoconferencing room a few minutes later, she found him slumped over the toilet, voiding everything he’d eaten. She was soon bustling around in doctor mode, taking care of him.
She bundled him into a taxicab, and they headed for a swanky hotel in downtown Valletta having already arranged for a reservation to be made by Tom’s executive assistant. Blake rightly suspected that he wouldn’t want anyone onboard the Aurora to see him in such a distressed state and, Tony had honestly been too dazed to object. He compliantly let her whisk him into the bathroom so he could take a shower, and she somehow arranged to have some fresh new clothes to be sent up to the suite. It wasn’t until some hours later that Tony recalled that she and Brad were supposed to fly out tonight for the US when his brain fog was starting to dissipate.
“Thought you were supposed to fly out tonight, Doc?”
“That was the plan, but in light of your revelations about your incredible experience and my desire to pump you for every last iota of data, I decide to stay on board until we reach Marseille,” she said airily.
“And you delaying your return to Eureka and Kevin had nothing to do with my massively embarrassing emotional collapse during our conference call with Morrow?” he asked disbelievingly.
“Well… perhaps just a little, but you see, I’m just a bystander to all of this, unlike you and my head is reeling over the things we learnt today. Plus I’m furious. I can only imagine what you are feeling, being caught up in this and knowing all of the players, especially your teammates,” she said in a way that made Tony think that perhaps one of her own people who was close to her, had betrayed her too.
“I also realised that you and I can talk about this between ourselves, but if I went back home, neither of us could debrief properly, and I certainly feel the need, so I know you do too. I talked to my ex-husband, and he said that Kevin’s doing fine; the first few days after I left were tough on him, but he is coping fine without me now, so I decided to remain onboard ‘til we reach France.”
Tony wanted to tell her there was no need, that he was fine, but he knew that was a lie. He was far from being okay and decided since he had been given a chance at a new life, perhaps it was time to stop pretending he was bulletproof. And he wanted to set an example for Xavier that it wasn’t a weakness to admit when you needed help – just the opposite. It took courage!
If he wanted Xavier to be better adjusted emotionally and psychologically than he was, Tony needed to start walking the talk. So he merely nodded his acceptance with a heartfelt thank-you.
“But I’m missed seeing Brad off,” he lamented, wondering if he would ever see him again.
“No, he decided to catch a later flight – he’s leaving tomorrow at 1100. He didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye, either.”
“Because I’m a fragile little flower who can’t handle a simple briefing,” he said, his tone full of self-loathing.
“Not a fragile little flower, someone who undertook a dangerous mission to save innocent people like Jeanne, Helen, and Xavier, even knowing you might die, and very nearly did. That is someone who has great strength of character and is courageous,” she told him firmly.
“And that was not a simple briefing, Tony. Just a few hours ago, you learnt the people in charge of the agency you’ve worked at for eight years were utterly corrupt. They betrayed their sworn oaths to their country over and over and betrayed everyone who worked under them. Honestly, if I were you, I would be either catatonic or in a murderous rage over what you just learned. So stop being so hard on yourself.”
Then she bullied him into eating something light, pointing out that it was only six days ago they’d finally pulled the PEG feeding tube that the doctors in Haifa had inserted. It was on the proviso that he needed to eat and regain weight because the last thing he needed was to catch any more viruses or infections with his fragile immune system while his lungs were regenerating. So, he’d ordered some grilled fish and tried to eat, even if everything tasted like cardboard.
Later, he said, “McGee admitted to Tom that he never reported the theft of a highly classified Pentagon file for four months even though he knew it was his duty to alert someone. It must have been obvious that neither the director nor SECNAV were going to their duty and inform the Pentagon. He said he remained silent because Vance promised that after he decrypted the file, he would transfer him back onto the MCRT and promote him to senior field agent. Tim endangered his country and put Israel in jeopardy for a fucking promotion,” he said in disgust.
“Greed and power are strong corrupters, Tony. I’m sure I don’t need to point that out to someone who investigates murder. Don’t forget that the Director, well the ex-director, was offered the top job by SECNAV if Vance… er Owens would find out what the file was and hunt down the mole. He stayed silent because he wanted to retain the top job in the agency, and the SECNAV covered it up to save his own skin. McGee, Owens, and Davenport tried to find out what the file was and who the mole was inside the agency without alerting the proper authorities instead of putting national security before themselves, and it was shameful.”
“Unconscionable,” Tony retorted, livid at their arrogant disregard for their duty.
“And Gibbs must bear partial responsibility for McGee’s poor attitude. He was his team leader,” Allison opined
“The Boss played all of us off against each other, supposedly to solve cases more quickly. Gibbs continually undercut my authority, even with Ziva, who was just a liaison, she was not even an agent. Maybe if Gibbs had observed the chain of command, McGee wouldn’t have felt like he was more qualified to be the senior field agent on the team, with just five years of field experience over my eight years as a federal agent, plus six years as a cop, including earning a detective’s shield.”
“True,” Allison agreed. “Intentionally fostering competitiveness was always going to end badly. I am constantly battling with it at Global Dynamics. Half of our crises result from jealousy and competition between the scientists. And it is stupid in an investigative team that DOES have a chain of command because who’s to say that those great results that he used to justify it, pitting you all against each other and undercutting your authority, wouldn’t have been even BETTER if he’d supported you. If he fostered respect and cooperation, instead of competition and divisiveness.”
“I did try to argue with Gibbs about how he led the team, but he wouldn’t listen. ‘My way or the highway, DiNozzo!’ ” he shook his head in disgust.
“And for all his supposed pride in the Marine Corps he served in and the values they espoused, he let Tyler Owens disrespect them by pretending to be a former Marine when he was nothing but a two-bit imposter. He let Vance…Owens put the agency and the US at risk because Owens was fundamentally vulnerable to coercion…”
“And that was amply demonstrated by the way he callously impeded the investigation of the death of a federal agent and covered up the fact that Officer Rivkin was spying on the heads of multiple intelligence agencies because his boss didn’t want to do anything to embarrass Eli David,” Allison interrupted him sharply. “Ultimately, it led to you fighting for your life against a Kidon-trained assassin and he also bears responsibility for everything that followed on from there.”
Tony shook his head, still trying to understand those people he had trusted with his life, who so thoroughly betrayed their principles. But had they really…or did they have principles in the first place? Had they just been paying lip service to those values all along. He honestly didn’t know!
“Gibbs told Morrow that he didn’t report the Director because he liked his family – as if that was a reasonable excuse. When Tom pushed, he admitted that Owens knew that Gibbs killed the man who killed his wife and daughter down in Mexico while he was still a Marine. He kept quiet about him because Gibbs didn’t want to lose his job and end up in Leavenworth.”
“Some Marine huh! And the irony of it is that he’s going to jail, not just for revenge killing but for failure to enforce the law,” Allison observed with much cynicism.
“So much corruption, naked ambition, greed, and obsession with power. Makes me feel dirty just thinking about it. Meanwhile, honest agents are trying to do their jobs, dying to uphold their sworn oaths to protect and serve,” he thought of Catlin Todd, Chris Pacci, Special Agent Afloat Jack Patterson and Paula Cassidy, all good, and honest agents.
“It’s obscene!” Allison agreed. As a former agent at the Department of Defense, she understood.
“As is being paid five million by Mossad,” Tony spat out. “It’s blood money!”
“Think of it as a fee for being forced to relocate your whole life, Tony. And if that doesn’t work for you, invest it, and don’t touch the principle – only use the interest. You’ve also helped save people who were Eli’s files for reasons other than criminal ones, don’t ever forget that. Everyone who has committed crimes will have to resign from jobs that have put the public at risk.”
He nodded. “I guess so,” he said exhaustedly.
“And you mustn’t ever forget about the military personnel identified as potential targets for Operation Frankenstein – they would have ended up as mindless assassins. It seems to me like you earned that fee a dozen times over,” she told him with genuine conviction.
He didn’t know what to do yet, but he would take Allison’s advice and do nothing, for now. Just invest it – he could always donate it to charity.
Afterwards, although exhausted by the emotionally charged day, Tony was too wired to sleep, and they decided to watch a movie. Tony had hoped that they might be able to watch Fantastic Voyage but the 1965 film wasn’t available. He’d have to track it down on eBay sometime. Instead, on a whim, he discovered the Rick Moranis movie, Honey I Shrunk the Kids which was kind of a variation on the theme and settled in, hoping to switch off for a couple of hours. Both of them appreciated the mindless diversion after all the revelations of today’s chat with Tom Morrow, and Tony was definitely grateful not to be alone.
He slept poorly and figured that he probably would for some time. What they’d learned today was the stuff of nightmares.
It was hard, really hard to face up to just how rotten things had been at the top of the agency – it was like an iceberg. On the surface, everything appeared to be normal; all the agents investigating crimes against Navy and Marine personnel. All the support staff, including the forensic people, slugging their guts out to uphold their oaths to hold lawbreakers accountable for their actions and protect innocent people. Yet, just under the surface, there was an enormous web of corruption and monsters jostling for power. It sickened Tony, as he wondered if the last eight years had been a complete waste of his life.
The next morning, he was pleased when Brad stopped by on his way to the airport to eat breakfast with them and say goodbye, even if he was still dejected. Despite his poor mood, Tony wholeheartedly thanked his friend and doctor for putting his personal and professional life on hold to have his back when Tom asked him to.
“When Morrow told me you were on the way to Tel Aviv to have my six, it helped me not to give in to complete panic and despair,” he said in a rare show of vulnerability. “You helped save my life again.”
“Well, hopefully, I’ve even the score after breaking your leg and destroying your chances of a professional basketball career,” he joked, trying to cheer his friend up. “And this isn’t goodbye, Buckeye,” he reminded Tony.
“Yeah, well, it feels like part of an ending, Brad. I’ve had enough of those to know what they feel like. Trust me on that – this was my fourth job in law enforcement. You are in the States, and I’ll be in France for a while, and I’ll probably end up living in London since I have a UK passport. Do the math – you can’t be my doctor anymore.”
“That’s true, it’s probably too far for a house call,” Brad said, half-seriously. “But it’s never too far for a friend to come for a visit. Besides, have you forgotten we’re going to Knossos to explore every nook and cranny of that Minoan palace when you’re fully fit. And coming back here to Malta to see everything we wanted but didn’t get a chance to.”
“I’d really like that, and I hope we’ll stay friends,” he said wistfully. “I don’t have many real ones, and there’s no one I trust more, Wolverine,” Tony said, struggling visibly with his emotions.
“Same goes for me, Buckeye,” he told Tony before grinning mischievously. “Although, I think after everything that we’re more than friends. I think we qualify as brothers now since I finally convinced your son to call me Uncle Brad,” he announced, looking very smug. “Gaga Helen is very jealous, but Jeanne welcomed me to the family.
“Xavier called you Uncle Brad?” Tony scoffed. “Do I look like I was born yesterday, Wolverine?”
“Yes. Well… not that I think you were born yesterday, but yes, Xavier called me Uncle Brad. Of course, his pronunciation leaves a little to be desired; it will develop over time,” Brad told him with languid surety.
“C’mon, you dumbass Wolverine, what did he really call you?
“He called me Un, alright? But I know he was saying Uncle Brad. So, having established my familial relationship with your son, I’m hardly going to miss out on my nephew’s crucial early years, am I?” he said, looking inordinately pleased with himself.
“Has anyone ever told you what an utter idiot you are?” Tony said in exasperation.
“Apart from you, Buckeye? Nope, no one.”
“What about Emma, then?”
“Maybe once or twice,” he admitted with a laugh. “But I’m going to have my practice manager accept all of those speaking requests that I get from Great Britain and Europe about my heroic lifesaving treatment of a survivor of the Pneumonic Plague. So I expect wherever you are that you’ll have a bed for me to sleep in when I come to visit,” he said, in all seriousness.
Laughing at his friend’s idiocy, Tony said, “Well, in that case, Un, if you are family then we should swing past Marsamxett Marina to collect your nephew, so he can wave you bye-byes at the airport.”
As he held Xavier in his arms and they waved Brad and Special Agent Lopez goodbye as they entered to gates to board the Air Malta plane, Tony looked around him at his son and Xavier’s mother, Jeanne and Gaga, Helen. Despite Jeanne’s desire to get back together, Tony remained wary of starting up their relationship, believing that there was too much baggage between them. That didn’t mean they couldn’t be friends – the bar was much lower when it came to trusting friends with your very being. Besides, they would always share the child they created, not intentionally, but regardless, Xavier was very much loved and wanted, and it made them a family, too.
He thought of Allison, someone he’d only met less than two weeks ago, but someone he owed his life. She’d become a trusted confidant and he hoped she would become his friend, not just his doctor.
As they watched the plane taxi across the runway, Xavier started chanting, “Un un un,” as Tony recalled the last thing Brad told him before he left.
“Tom said to tell you if you’re looking for an honorary grandfather, he is happy to apply for the position, and Lynnette would be thrilled to be an honorary grandma too.”
And then, with a hug that encompassed Tony and Xavier, he turned and walked away.
As the plane took off and headed into the brilliant blue skies over Valletta, Tony murmured, “When friends say goodbye to each other, what they are really saying is, ‘Hold that thought, I will be back soon.’ So I will hold my thought until you return to hear the rest.”
Epilogue
“Some people will never understand the sacrifices you’re making for them until you stop making them. Don’t continue to be where you’re not appreciated.” Anon
Three and a half months after arriving in France, Tony making steady progress. Dr Allison Blake was flying over to France in another four days to check on his progress and organise for a battery of tests to be done. ‘Un’ otherwise known as Dr Brad Pitt was planning to crash the party too, after attending an Infectious Diseases Conference in Brussels. He and Tony had caught up a few times via Skype, as had Deputy Director Morrow but mostly, everyone had been giving him space to regenerate his lungs, regain his strength after the infection had taken so much out of him and equally important – to get his emotions sorted. His stamina was gradually improving, and Jeanne and Helen were carefully supervising his physical recovery and his fitness program. Tony was trying hard to get his head on straight!
Jeanne’s grandparent’s farmhouse about 7 km outside Limoges, had proved to be an ideal place to regroup after everything that happened to him. There was so much for him to process, especially all of the information Tom had shared about what had been going on at the agency he had worked at for eight years. In particular, everything that happened in the year since Leon Vance-Tyler Owens had been in the director’s chair. It still seemed unbelievable to Tony that the director of a federal law enforcement/intelligence agency was able to swap identities, and no one would be the wiser.
How was that possible?
The realisation had hit Tony that if the imposter had not been able to rise up to the position of NCIS director, the whole episode of being sold out to Eli David would have never happened and he wouldn’t have almost died. He would be lying if he didn’t admit that amid all the horror of the whole Rivkin matter, some good things had come out of it.
He learned that he had a son that he might never have found out about – or not for many years, at any rate, since Jeanne had been furious at him and wouldn’t have reached out to inform him until Xavier forced her to. Jeanne and he were now talking to each other and trying to repair their relationship enough to co-parent their son, although she seemed eager to resume their earlier relationship. Tony was a lot more pessimist about the possibility, believing that they had both caused each other too much pain to repair what they had before the CIA blew his cover. He did hold out hope that they could be friends though.
He learned some precious information about his mother, some of which Tony had already been able to verify about her being a professional Lieder singer, thanks to doing some online research. He already confirmed that the year before she married Anthony DiNozzo Sr. Lucinda Paddington had indeed sung in the Royal Command Performance at the London Palladium. It was confirmation of sorts about what she told him while he was on the ventilator in Haifa.
Plus, Tony couldn’t forget that his scarred lungs were healing in a way he and his doctor, Brad Pitt had never expected, thanks to Adam Hersch from Chaveleh Foundation and Allison Blake from Global Dynamics offering him a miracle treatment, not to mention, Dr Douglas Fargo with his miniature robots. Tony or Dylan was not entirely sure if he’d been compos-mentis when they had been proposing injecting microscopic Pacman robots into his veins if he would have given the go-ahead for them to be racing around his body, seeking out bacteria and feasting on them. Tony found it a pretty creepy concept, even if it had worked a treat, and miraculously eradicated the bacteria that were killing him.
Still, he occasionally found himself having dreams (nightmares) where the nanites weren’t really gone – self-destructed and excreted via his kidneys as they were designed to be but lying in wait somewhere undetectable, to take over and start consuming him from the inside out. Tony knew it was probably irrational, but considering a crazy medical protocol to mimic death was what had gotten him into this debacle in the first place, his scepticism of scientists was not exactly an irrational one.
Still, despite all it cost him, his life as a federal agent (which was such a huge part of who he was or who he had been), he tried not to focus too much on what he’d been forced to sacrifice at this point in his recovery. He had been down this path before after a certain former Wolverine and now good buddy had broken his leg so badly that any hope of a professional basketball career, went up in smoke. He knew from bitter experience that focusing on the future and the present was the only way to proceed, that wallowing in the past merely made the process of reinventing himself even harder, but it was easier said than done. Particularly when the past keeps bleeding into the here and now.
First, there were some practical considerations to deal with. Namely that Eli David’s deputy director and long-time friend of the David family, Ilan Bodnar had somehow managed to slip away during the arrest and purging of Eli and his faction more than three months ago. Bodnar was now officially ‘in the wind’ and according to Morrow, the Israelis now believed that Illan Bodnar was no longer in Israel – that they had credible evidence that he had managed to escape seven weeks ago. This information made the choice of whether or not Tony should stay dead or effect an amazing return from the dead a no-brainer, really. If Bodnar who was thought to have escaped with the assistance of his brother Adam, was as fixated on revenge and retribution as Eli and Ziva David, there was really no other choice but to remain dead.
One week ago, the decision not to reemerge back from the grave was further vindicated with the news that a USMC Staff Sergeant, Daniel Cryer turned up dead, murdered. He had gone UA almost a year ago, and the Israelis had used Cryer to get their Kidon team on board the Damocles, heading for Somalia to take down a training camp, linked to the terrorist mastermind of the cell that Rivkin had all but wiped out in the US. Apparently, the UA Marine, along with the rest of the crew of the Jordanian register ship had not gone down where it was believed to have been lost at sea. They had all died of gunshot wounds and the ship had been deliberately scuttled, it did not sink.
After recovering the bodies that went down with the Damocles, NCIS offered to process and ID the other bodies, due to the connection of their missing (now murdered) Marine. Aside from the crew, and Staff Sergeant Daniel Cryer, only one of the Kidon hit squad believed to be on board had died, also shot. Thus it appeared that there was a gunfight between the crew and the Kidon team and because no other Kidon operatives were found, it pointed to the possibility of the three other members, including Ziva David being alive.
Two weeks ago, Tom Morrow told Tony of the intel that Abby Sciuto and former Special Agent McGee had pulled from the fried hard drive that Rivkin stole and hid in Ziva’s apartment. Although Tabal’s laptop was later firebombed to clean up Ziva and Rivkin’s mess, they had recovered the location of Saleem Ulman’s training camp in Somalia. Due to Eli sending in his Kidon assassin to clean up the terror cell in LA, it was decided by the brass, not to share this data with Mossad as payback. Two weeks ago, the Joint Chiefs and the President had decided to take out the training camp, after several months of planning. They bombed the camp in an airborne attack before they sent in a cleanup crew to confirm that the terrorist in charge, Saleem Ulman had been eliminated, which he had.
The thing was that in light of the discovery of the Damocles, the cleanup crew confirmed there was no sign of Ziva’s body, or the two other Kidon team members, although, they conceded that they could have been easier to overlook than a female. Had Ziva and her fellow operatives found the terrorist training camp after making their way to land from the Damocles, Ulman may have already killed them and buried their bodies somewhere in Somalia. If so, then they were unlikely to be recovered. The second possibility was that after reaching the African coastline, in the weeks that followed, they may have received word of Eli’s arrest and the purge that took place after his kompromat files had been found. They may still be alive and on the lam, like Bodnar.
The Israelis, when pressed about the situation with the Damocles during the call to inform them that Officer Aviv Holtz’s body had been recovered from the wreck, professed not to know about the gunfight nor the location or fate of the three of their operatives, thought to be dead. Orli Erbaz did concede that if the three operatives had made it to Africa, then it was more than likely that they would have contacted Eli. She also asserted that if Ziva did contact him to report the gunfight, he would have ordered the mission to continue at all costs, as he was desperate to kill Saleem Ulman. She informed them that Ulman was credited with taking out one of his favourite cousins twelve years ago, and Eli had been determined to get him ever since.
With so much uncertainty as to the whereabouts of Ziva and if she was even alive, Tony was reluctant to reveal his survival, especially when he had the Berkleys’ safety to consider. If it was just himself, he might consider it, but it was too risky, and Tom and the Israelis agreed it was best to stay hidden for now. He suspected, as did Morrow that Erbaz would begin hunting her down.
Not that he had plans to go back to living his old life, he didn’t. The final nail in that dilapidated old coffin had been Gibbs telling him to take one for the team. Like he was the one who borrowed his teammates’ lives to write a book and made a truckload of money, or used Gibbs to take his anger out on, on the regular, or had blamed Ziva for killing his lover because he didn’t handle the fact that they were an alcoholic. Yet it wasn’t just the team that he was walking away from, it was his entire life and identity.
He had lost his apartment and all his possessions, especially his piano – his mother’s piano. Deputy Director Morrow had Tony’s financial advisor, Reese Jenner set up a series of shell companies to hide the fact he was still alive. They merely told Jenner that Tony was in WitSec overseas and that he wanted him to continue to manage his investments and financial affairs. Reese had organised for his apartment to be packed up and put in storage, although, on paper, it looked like he’d sold all of Tony’s possessions per the fake last will and testament they had cobbled together in the last hour before he flew out to Tel Aviv, with Tom Morrow named as his executor. Just in case it was needed.
Mostly it was just stuff, but his guitars were there and his mum’s baby grand and even if he didn’t play it almost every day, he wanted to keep it to pass along to Xavier one day. Plus he had one or two good antiques that belonged to his mother, and she had shipped from the UK. There had been more antiques, but Senior’s first wife after Lucinda died had snavelled them up in the divorce, or so Senior claimed. Anyway, the point was that most of his stuff, Tony wasn’t concerned about, but his musical instruments and his music could not easily be replaced, nor did he wish them to be. When he finally settled somewhere, he was going to have them shipped to his new home.
He missed being able to play and although there was a piano, an old upright at the farmhouse at Limoges that belonged to Jeanne’s grandmother Mariana Benoit, it needed some tender loving care though. He’d ordered a guitar not long after arriving in France, realising that his physical activities were going to be limited for weeks and knew that without running or his piano he was going to drive everyone crazy. He was grateful that he had it to help keep him occupied because without the guitar they would have all been miserable. At least his musical ability had managed to catch Helen and her Private Investigator by surprise, not that he could blame her for checking him out after she realised that Jeanne was pregnant. The PI had missed that important fact about him but his music was an intensely private activity that most people, including his former teammates, never knew about.
It was weird these last months, Tony expected to feel uncomfortable around Helen Berkley, yet he didn’t. In a way, there was not the same level of awkwardness that existed between him and Jeanne, who was trying hard not to pressure him into starting up their relationship again. She couldn’t truly understand his reluctance not to try again, but while his caution centred around issues of trust and the fact that they now had a child who he felt was the most important person in their relationship and never wanted to hurt, Jeanne took the opposite view. She felt that because they had a child together, they owed it to Xavier and themselves to try again. Tony believed that some things couldn’t be repaired like kintsugi (golden joinery) which was a centuries-old Japanese method of repairing pottery with lacquer and gold powder; you could always tell where the repair was.
He knew that someone had talked to Jeanne, probably Allison after the last video conference back in Valletta at the embassy where he had been so devastated by the sheer depth of what had been going on back at his agency. Even three and a half months later he had barely scratched the surface in beginning to process what had gone on at NCIS. So much happening below the surface with all the currents and eddies that took place far enough out of sight that he had never even noticed. Then again, why not – surely there should have been things Tony should have picked up on. Maybe he had noticed and just put it down to disliking the man who called himself Leon Vance because he made no secret of the fact, he disapproved of Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo. Perhaps his antipathy towards Tony was more visceral – did he think that as someone who had been undercover for the last twenty-odd years, an undercover specialist like Tony would look at him and see a fraud?
If only he had seen it, so much would have been different, but he didn’t see it!
For the last three and a half months, with too little to do to keep his brain from obsessing about what he’d missed, he’d been wracking his brain though, trying to figure out what he overlooked. Finally Tony recalled a conversation that he’d had with the beautiful Tara Kole while he was collecting her from a flight from Chicago and escorting her to NCIS.
At the time, he believed she was a witness to a crime that the Director was investigating in the Windy City, taking his golden boy, McGee, and the Mossad liaison officer to assist him. Which they had done, duly getting rid of Kole’s bodyguard, abducting her and putting her on a flight back to DC, where Tony was ordered to meet her and keep her in protective custody. Probie had thought that she was connected to the director…and in hindsight, he was right, but not as the old girlfriend that McGee, with his pop fiction writer’s mentality, had cast her as.
Tony now knew Tara Kole was Leon’s real-life sibling. Knowing the truth now about him and the real Leon Vance swapping identities some twenty years ago, he could also see how Tara had revealed that to him. Okay so it had been a subconscious slip rather than intentional, but Tony missed it.
Would he have picked up on that stumble if he wasn’t so paranoid about her connection to Vance? It was no secret that Leon Vance (okay the man purporting to be Leon Vance, Tyler Owens) did not like Very Special DiNozzo or approve of him. He had sent Tony away as an Agent Afloat, which was torture. It left him way too much time on his hands to think about Jeanne Benoit and Jenny Shepard and how he messed up. He even obsessed over Paula and what he might have done to save her because the ‘crimes’ he investigated aboard the Reagan and the Sea Hawk were mostly petty ones that didn’t require a great deal of brain power. The director also didn’t want him back on the MCRT – a cactus could figure that one out, so being back, he was painfully aware of the fact he was treading on very thin ice. Which was why the prospect of making polite conversation with Ms Kole had left him in a high state of anxiety approaching panicking.
Tara Kole had picked up on that apprehension – it would have been pretty hard not to since Tony had made an ass of himself, his mouth firing off a bunch of shit like it did when he got nervous. Tara wrongly assumed he was uncomfortable around her because she was supposedly a high-priced call girl, which couldn’t have been further from the truth. After all, he worked Vice in Philly PD undercover for a couple of years and was comfortable around sex workers.
Some of them were his criminal informants, like his friend Sapphire in Baltimore and most of his CIs still keep him in the loop about what was going down on his old turf. No, his anxiousness had nothing to do with her work and everything to do with her relationship with his boss who HATED him and was just looking for an excuse to fire him. Still, he had to say something to the woman on the drive back from the airport to NCIS, so he tried to keep it general.
“Nice flight from Chicago, Ms Kole?” he’d asked her politely
“Uneventful,” she’d responded. “Had enough excitement, though.”
“Being abducted by Leon?” he said before thinking that maybe he shouldn’t use the ‘A’ word in case she decided to sue the agency. Stupid to put ideas in her head!
“Yeah,” she said shortly. She was clearly unimpressed.
Turning the conversation to a safer topic he said, “Well, plane travel’s not what it used to be, is it? Bet there wasn’t even a movie. I’m a big fan of movies.”
Tara looked across at him, “You don’t have to make small talk with me if you’re uncomfortable.”
“I’m not uncomfortable,” he denied, untruthfully. He was damn uncomfortable with this gorgeous woman who was seemingly so self-composed, despite the situation. If he’d been hi-jacked and forced on a plane, he’d have been mouthing off to anyone who’d listen.
“It just seemed like, the way you said it, that you had a relationship with our new Director, and I said, ‘new Director’, by the way, not ‘nude erector. That’s a homophone,’” he babbled like a complete idiot.
Shit, he sounded like the Elf Lord. Still, Ms Kole kindly ignored him making a complete idiot of himself.
“The Director, he was just a ball of fire when I knew him. No direction at all. Well, I guess we were all someone else then.”
“We?” Tony zeroed in on the personal pronoun, but ultimately, he focused on the wrong detail in that nugget of intel.
“Tyler,” she replied. “He was my brother.”
The director just abducted the sister of the victim, Tony thought incredulously. Really? What the hell is he up to?
“I didn’t know that. I’m sorry,” he said compassionately.
“Thank you, Anthony. You’re very sweet. My patron saint.”
“Actually, St. Nicholas is the patron saint of…” he’d been going to say prostitutes, because how could he not know that after working Vice but caught himself, just in time. “…St. Anthony’s who you turn to when you’ve lost something,” he said because he may not have been brought up Roman Catholic as most people assumed when they heard his name, but he wasn’t an uneducated idiot.
Tara didn’t seem to take offence at his almost tactless remark, asking, “So, who does Anthony turn to when he’s lost something?”
“How do you know I’ve lost something?” he wondered aloud, thinking of the disappearance of his wallet.
She smiled at him serenely, and replied, “I may not know my saints, but I definitely know my sinners.”
He felt at the time that Tara Kole could read his mind, but of course, re-evaluating that conversation later, much later he realised that it was such a universal issue – everyone loses stuff sometimes. The whole subject of loss was so general, that even if he hadn’t left his wallet in one of the company cars, he would have convinced himself that Tara was talking about losing his heart.
But as he re-examined that conversation much more recently that he had with Leon’s sister who wasn’t actually Leon Vance, he was Tyler Owens, he berated himself for failing to pick up on the hint about the director’s identity. He had FBI training in Statement Analysis back when he was a Baltimore cop, which posited that even when people are intentionally deceptive, unconsciously, they tend to choose words that unintentionally reveal deceitfulness.
Tara had done so too, in that short conversation on the way back from the airport. She had said, “The Director, he was just a ball of fire when I knew him. No direction at all. Well, I guess we were all someone else then.”
And while she might have been talking about herself in terms of growing and evolving, which was how he took it to mean back in March when the discussion took place, he saw the statement in a completely different light now. They were all someone else then. Her brother was Tyler Owens, and the man who was just murdered by a little punk in Chicago was the real Leon Vance, a 2nd Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. She was still Tara Kole – Tara Owens back then, but in the identity swap by two stupid young men, Tara lost her real brother and the chance to be a sister-in-law to Jackie Vance and an aunt to Kayla and Jarrod, which was terribly sad. Unconsciously, maybe she was hoping he’d pick up on it. After all, she already lost her fake brother. After the reunion with her flesh and blood sibling, maybe she hoped that everything would come out and she could finally stop pretending.
However, Tony didn’t notice it, unfortunately putting it into the we were all young and stupid once genre of conversation.
While he was berating himself for not realising that the remark was anything but a perfectly innocent comment about how much they all changed over time, Morrow, to whom he’d mentioned the incident, had given him a gentle metaphoric head-slap.
“While you are beating yourself up over missing a phrase that may or may not have been intentionally uttered by Ms Kole, don’t forget that Gibbs had a lot more information to work with. He must have already figured out that Vance and Owens had switched identities, otherwise he wouldn’t have had Ducky perform the second autopsy on the man who died in Chicago.”
Tony appreciated Tom’s attempt to comfort him but knowing that his former mentor knew about the substitution and didn’t report it, didn’t help. The experience taught him that sometimes betrayals were so massive that there was no way to ‘come to terms with it all,’ just like you never really got over terrible loss. Thankfully, when everything became too much for him to bear, Tony was now fit enough to head out on his own, (accompanied by a DHS agent, often Annie Henderson or Steven Waters) and not inflict his black moods on the Berkleys or upset Xavier.
While just starting to run again after a four-month hiatus and new lung tissues that prohibited him from running more than half a mile, currently Tony had been wandering around Limoges and surrounding towns to feed his natural curiosity. The distraction helped to calm his fevered spirit and occupied his mind in much the same way as his music did. Fortunately, there was a lot to keep him occupied here. Limoges was a former Gallo-Roman city from around 10 BC known as Augustoritum, but the town also had a rich history, especially in the Middle Ages and later in the twentieth century during the Second World War.
There had been plenty of sights to keep him from fretting too much as he slowly regained his fitness. Which was a good thing, otherwise Tony knew he would be struggling to follow the fitness regime that he had agreed to, starting out. He liked to wander the Castle of Losse and its gardens overlooking the Vienne River. He also spent several days admiring the magnificence of the Gothic style Cathédrale Saint-Étienne de Limoges), begun in 1273 and only finished in 1888. Adjoining Limoges Cathedral was the Jardin Botanique de l’evêché (Limoges Botanic Gardens), where he found some interesting quirks to delight his sense of the unexpected, with plots of medicinal and culinary herbs, but also unusual plantings grouped by food colouring and plants used for traditional trades such as dyeing and tanning that were grown on steep terraces overlooking the Vienne.
The Botanic Gardens was a part of the Bishop’s Palace Museum, the Musée de l’ Eveché, which housed one of the best collections of enamel work in the world, enamel Limoges had become famous for in the 1100s. Tony was also surprised to find a collection of impressionist paintings, including some by Renoir. When he mentioned his pleasant surprise to the two Berkleys, Jeanne smiled and told him Pierre-Auguste Renoir had been born in Limoges.
The Musée de l’Eveché even had something for ancient history buffs, including 4,000-year-old funerary artefacts from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom that a local industrialist donated, plus all of the major finds from the Roman city of Augustoritum, which later became Limoges. When the weather was too bad to be outdoors, he often took refuge in the museum or headed to one of the other museums in the town.
The National Porcelain Museum has an impressive collection produced by local Limoges companies and other examples of ceramics from around the world. After kaolin, a rock rich in fine white clay used in porcelain making was discovered 30 miles south of Limoges in 1768, a new ceramics industry had been born in the region and by the 19th century, Limoges’ porcelain was world famous. Even now, Jeanne told him that over fifty percent of France’s porcelain still came from the region. They unsurprisingly, hosted the national ceramics school, École nationale supérieure de céramique industrielle, created in 1893.
With so much ancient and medieval history in Limoges with its old parts of the city, he found plenty to capture his interest, far more than the modern parts of the city, although the Gare de Limoges-Bénédictins train station built in 1929, certainly was an impressive edifice. It boasted glorious Art Deco stained-glass windows, a clock tower 61 metres high and a 31-metre-high dome, both topped with copper. However, he fell totally in love with The Quartier Historique du Chateau with its half-timbered buildings and columned arcades full of interesting shops and cafes where he could poke around. One street – Rue de la Boucherie (Street of the Butchers) had made his smile when he thought of his Uncle Vincenzo’s butcher shop on Long Island. From the original six families living in the Village de la Boucherie, the Guild of Butchers was formed, and the guild even had its own tiny chapel, Chappelle Saint-Aurelien, built in the 1400s to house the relics of the patron saint of butchers, Saint Bartholomew.
However, he didn’t always go off on his own. Often, Jeanne, who had spent time here with her grandparents as a child, would play tour guide, and they would pack the car and a picnic lunch and all head off together.
One day, they set off to explore the village Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, a short drive to the east of Limoges, because they wanted to see the UNESCO-listed collegiate Church of Saint-Léonard. Helen told them it was considered a Romanesque masterpiece, built in the 11th and 12th centuries and unchanged, since then. Jeanne explained that its bell tower exemplified the Limousin steeple, also visible in various churches in the area, which consisted of four square levels topped by two octagonal floors, making it quite distinctive.
Tony learned that Leonard was a 6th-century Frankish noble who was the patron saint of prisoners. After his conversion to Christianity, Leonard made it his mission in life to liberate prisoners deemed worthy of freedom, becoming their patron saint after he was beatified. Although Tony was sure that Tara Koles would likely find that tale fascinating, he was more interested in the village’s gothic arched bridge than Leonard. Mind you, if Chip Sterling had succeeded in framing him successfully with that dismembered leg, ably abetted by Ron Slacks, and he had been sent to prison, Tony might have been a lot more interested in praying to the patron saint of prisoners.
As a cop and fed, most of the time, he had to deal with the fact that there seemed a revolving door for the perps they put behind bars, only for them to be released for good behaviour after serving ridiculously short and inadequate sentences. Except that he probably didn’t need to worry about that anymore, and the aggravation of bad dudes getting off was one thing he positively wouldn’t miss. He tried not to think of the stretch Gibbs could face, and Leon Vance, who was really Tyler Owen. He was not likely to be getting out for a damned long time, if ever. He felt no sympathy for him, although Tony felt compassion for his family, especially his kids. He hoped at the very least, Tyler Owens had established decent college funds for Kayla and Jarrod.
Deliberately, he turned his mind to think of other matters. He thought about Pont Saint Martial, an arched bridge built on the foundations of the Gallo-Roman crossing, which had been destroyed by an angry King Henry II to punish the city for betraying him, that was rebuilt in 1215 and still standing today. It and the seven-arched Pont Saint Etienne, a few hundred metres upriver from Saint Martial and built in 1203, were considered the best-preserved medieval crossings in France.
How unbelievable was it that those medieval bridgebuilders could create such enduring legacies? It helped to remind him that his paltry concerns, to paraphrase a favourite movie ‘don’t amount to a hill load of beans in this crazy world,’ as Rick Blaine said to Ilsa. Those magnificent bridges helped him put it all into a less emotive perspective.
Limoges had been a good place to come, despite the somewhat awkwardness between himself and Jeanne. It had helped them all heal in their own ways, although Tony was also very mindful that he had a long way to go. Some days, he would wake up moody and not fit to be around, when all he could think about was everything he lost when Eli demanded Tony be held accountable for doing his job, and his agency failed to back him up. He knew he was being difficult, and ungrateful for all the help so many people had given him, he would take himself off alone for the day and treat himself to a dose of tough love.
The first of the museums that Tony had checked out about six weeks after they landed in Marseille and made their way back to Jeanne’s 200-year-old farmhouse was the Musée de la Résistance. He soon learnt that the whole region of Limousin was a Resistance stronghold during World War II, with the Maquis du Limoges one of the largest groups in occupied France. The Musée de la Résistance was dedicated to the French Resistance fighters, and he learnt about the horrific massacres at nearby Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glane, which some believed was the sad cost paid for this rebellious spirit of resistance of the people of Limousin.
On 9th June 1944, three days after the Normandy Landings, the 2nd Armoured Division Das Reichhad rounded up men between the ages of 16- 60 in Tulle and marked 120 men to be executed in retribution for the death of 40 German soldiers by the Maquis resistance fighters. Of those 120 selected, 99 men were hung, and a further 140 men were rounded up and sent to Dachau, where 101 died, making the total number of lives lost at Tulle to be 218 men.
On 10th June 1944, in the nearby village of Oradour-Sur-Glane, northwest of Limoges, 643 civilians, including non-combatant men, women and children, were murdered as collective punishment by the Waffen-SS for the death of a German officer by the Maquis fighters. They murdered everyone they found in the village, including people who were merely passing through and others whom they brought into Oradour-sur-Glane from nearby areas. The men were shot in the legs and doused with petrol, then set alight while the women and children were locked in a church and the building burned.
Only six people survived the massacre. After the war ended, the new President Charles de Gaulle directed that the village be maintained as it was as a memorial to all those adults and children who were slaughtered there. It remained frozen in time, the possessions they left behind left to the element and slowly decaying. A completely new village was built on a site nearby.
Given its occupation and history of resistance, it was hardly surprising that a museum in Limoges should dedicated to the Maquis du Limoges, which was one of the largest groups of French Resistance fighters. Tony had been fascinated in an appalled but equally respectful fashion, learning about the fierce determination of the people in this region. He resolved to ask Jeanne if her grandparents had been involved in the resistance – having learnt that one of the six who survived the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre was still alive, Tony worked out he must have been only 18 years old at the time.
So, when Tony woke up in a foul mood, wanting to mope or get angry with the world, he would slink out of everyone’s way and head to the Village of Oradour-sur-Glane where he would wander around with the ghosts of people massacred long ago and sternly remind himself, HE HAD NOTHING to whine about. Aside from the pair of DHS agents who accompanied him, no one but Tony knew where he disappeared to when everything became too much for him to cope with. Helen and Jeanne never knew that he would shame himself, faced with the tangible reality of the villagers’ fate and then head home in a far more grateful headspace.
As the days and weeks went by, slowly he felt the worst of his anger beginning to subside as he got a handle on his emotions. Perhaps it was that he felt like he was in a holding pattern, and when Allison arrived, he would get some type of timeframe about when he could head to London. They had decided that for the foreseeable future, they would be based in London – Helen was going to be working in the practice of an old medical school chum, and Jeanne was going to go back to work and finish her studies. Tony wasn’t sure what he was going to do, maybe some consultancy – Tom said he had a contact at New Scotland Yard who worked with a private forensic consultant on certain cases and thought Inspector Thomas Lynley might welcome a similar arrangement with an investigative specialist.
At first, Tom had offered him a DHS job liaising with DI6, but Tony politely declined the offer, having had too much of all of the cloak-and-dagger stuff to last him a long time. Right now, the idea of helping out on pure investigations as a consultant sounded positively restful, but also working a few days a week meant he could share childminding duties with the Berkleys so that Xavier would be properly cared for without them having to hire anyone. It was safer for him that way. They had agreed to look for a place where they could all live, although if Tony could find something with in-law accommodation, that would be ideal for him.
They prepared to take Xavier to the Parc Zoo du Reynou because the toddler loved going there and it was a pleasant place to spend a few hours wandering the grounds of a 19th-century chateau that Jeanne informed them had belonged to the Haviland porcelain empire. The visitor path wound through the landscaped woods and parkland for five kilometres, and they had over 600 animals in their collection. Although Tony could tell that Xavier always hoped to meet Puff, he was fascinated by the giraffes or as he called them, the gi-affes and the monkeys were always popular too. There was also a mini farm with all the usual suspects of ponies, goats, bunnies, alpacas, and a miniature donkey that had taken a shine to Xavier. They were feeding the mini Eyore, who had bonded with the almost sixteen-month-old toddler carrots when they were all surprised to hear a familiar voice.
“There you are.”
“UNBAD,” Xavier screamed at the same time as his father yelled, “Wolverine.”
Helen and Jeanne accosted him, throwing their arms around the commander, too. “What are you doing here?” Jeanne demanded.
“I finished presenting my paper and I wasn’t all that scintillated by the rest of the topics, so I decided to head here instead.”
“After what you’ve seen,” Helen indicated to Tony, “I can understand why the rest seems a little mundane.”
Xavier was clamouring for attention, yelling, “Unbad, Unbad, Unbad and standing on Brad’s feet trying to climb up him like a tree.
Picking up the toddler, to say a proper hello, Brad mock scowled at Tony. “Okay, what did you teach him?”
Jeanne chuckled. “It’s all on Xavier, Brad. He heard us talking about you coming to visit, combining his form of uncle with your name, but he can’t say Rs yet, so you are now officially Un Bad. Get used to it!” she advised him, her eyes alight with laughter.
Tony, shaking his friend’s hand, chuckled. “I’ve tried to get him to call you Wolverine but it’s too much of a mouthful. Was the conference that boring, or was the Fräulein from Frankfurt stalking you?”
“Little from column A and a little bit from column B,” Brad confirmed. “Besides, I was missing my nephew, and I wanted to make sure you weren’t overdoing your running. You’re still underweight, Buckeye,” he scolded him gently.
“But healthy, and I’ve only just increased my running to a mile today, honest. Check in with my workout buddies,” he indicated to Annie and Steven, lurking at the periphery, who nodded.
“It’s true, he’s been cooperating,” Annie confirmed. “I know he’s longing to go for a long run but he’d being sensible, and he has put some weight back on, she defended him.
“Not enough,” he started to lecture about immunity when Xavier decided to interject and poke his uncle in the nose to attract his attention.
“Unbad Eeyore, Unbad.”
Helen chortled. “Xavier wants you to meet his friend, Eeyore.”
“Ya Gaga, Eeyore.”
As he was being led to the miniature donkey, Brad commented to Jeanne, “Is the donkey’s name really Eeyore? Rather unimaginative, isn’t it?”
Jeanne whispered back, “Every donkey is an Eeyore to Xavier.”
Later that night, after putting a tired toddler down to sleep, Tony played his new guitar for his son, finally perfecting the guitar accompaniment to the Carol King song, Child of Mine, to lull the overtired little boy off to sleep. Between his visit to the zoo and Brad’s sudden appearance, it had taken a long time to settle him down for the night. Tony usually sang to him most nights and though he wasn’t a professional singer, unlike his mother, he was no longer as reticent about playing, at least in front of family.
As he waited in his son’s darkened room for him to drift into a deeper sleep before he departed, he thought back to the elevator back at NCIS and the angry words that he and Jeanne had exchanged almost eighteen months ago where he’d tried to let her go, which hadn’t turned out all that successfully. He also recalled the final snatched conversation he’d managed with Tara Kole, who he liked a whole lot more than her sibling.
Tony had ambushed Ziva and Tara Kole by the elevator as she escorted her down to the exit. He knew their so-called ‘witness’ would be accompanying her husband, mobster Joe Banks back to Chicago, and he wanted a word with her.
He told Ziva, “I’ll escort Ms Kole out.”
He could see the questions in his teammate’s eyes but fortunately, she agreed without making a scene.
Once in the elevator with the doors shut, he had told Tara, “I need to speak to you.
For some reason, you can see right through my disguise,” he admitted to her. After all, she had sussed him out. In all probability, he would never clap eyes on her again, so he didn’t have anything to lose by being uncharacteristically honest with her.
She gave him a measured look and asked, “How bad’s the dry spell?”
“Saharan,” he admitted uncomfortably.
“Never been a problem before?” she inquired delicately.
“You kidding me? Not since Lisa Mullen taught me to play doctor in the second grade.”
So maybe that particular prevarication had been bravado, pure and simple. He never attended school until after his mother’s death, but he’d been embarrassed.
“What’s changed?” she asked empathetically.
He had responded truthfully, “Real doctor, real love, real bad breakup.”
She stared at him, her eyes assessing him intently. “Messed you up pretty bad, huh?”
“Kicked off a slump with women that’s unprecedented in my adult life.
I’ve tried everything. I mean I’m dating constantly, but I can’t seem to get it right.
I’m not closing the deal, you know?”
She nodded but didn’t say anything, and even though it was the oldest interrogator’s trick in the handbook – say nothing and let the perp fill the silence, he found himself babbling, “Like there’s a saboteur in my head. I’m making every rookie mistake. I’m talking about myself too much at dinner. I mean, I’m talking about my ex, I’m talking about my feelings, I scare ’em off. Crying? DiNozzo men don’t cry.”
Tara decided to respond to the topic of crying. Perhaps she had been waiting for it.
“You’d be surprised how many of my clients just want a shoulder to cry on,” she told him calmly. “Opening up is the first step.”
Yeah, well, didn’t I just do that, Ms Kole? Lay my heart bare to a stranger.
“Let’s skip to the last step,” he asked desperately.
“That’s easy,” she told him calmly. “Pick the right woman.”
Then, before he had a chance to press her for any more hints about how you do that, Ziva interrupted them, her eyes full of curiosity, and Tony realised it was useless to try to continue their intensely private conversation.
Tony wasn’t sure he and Jeanne could ever be anything more to each other than friends, although maybe in the future. Who knew what lay held but he realised with a jolt that the terrible emptiness he’d felt after the end of his affair with the daughter of Rene Benoit when it blew up so spectacularly had healed somewhat. Tony knew that he had family and that he didn’t need to be perfect or strong, that he could fail, and they would still be there for him in the morning. It was a hard lesson to learn but he was finally beginning to understand what that meant. He was no longer as afraid of having to make a new future as he was when he first woke up in the hospital in Haifa.
Tara might be right regarding lovers, but she didn’t know that the love for and of a child could heal, too.
I’ve so been looking forward to reading this story. I started reading about 15mins after posting and if my maths is correct, it’s taken me a little under 8 hours to binge read. I even tried to read this and watch the tillies play china on TV…and your story won :))
You did such an awesome job. It went in directions I never expected (puff the magic dragon) and your portrayal of betrayal and recovering from betrayal was just perfect.
Thanks so much for writing. Your efforts are much appeciated
I absolutely love this!
Not gonna lie, the beginning was a bit heavier than I expected, which isn’t a complaint! It had been a really long time since I came across a story that went so deeply into things. Events, backstory, people’s motivations. I love making worldbuilding in my stories, and tying things together to make them fit better, but I also tend to carry my stories through things fast. You didn’t. And the way you did things worked perfectly for this story, the way you weaved everything together. It must have been hell to keep everything straight, every person, every location, every motivation, the way it all fit together. It was all beautifully constructed.
Also, not gonna lie, going in I was expecting a romance between those two. Yet once we got into things, the talk of betrayal, of all the different betrayals, and not getting over them so much moving on… it makes so much sense for things to be exactly as they are in this fic.
And I love Xavier!
P.S. Never watched Eureka, but now I’m curious…
Awesome story.
Really awesome story. I binge read the whole thing only stopping to take care of biological needs. Thanks for taking the time to write!
Another outstanding story from you! I only stopped to have supper because this so good. Thank you for the story!
Love this story! I thought the story did a great job of exploring how Tony would actually handle the betrayal of his co-workers. Too bad Gibbs realized the mistakes he made far too late to do him any good.
Great story! Thank you so much for it. I adore that you had Tony’s love for Xavier be what saved him. And, as always, I was very happy when so many corrupt jerks got their comeuppance. Also, great way to bring a little Eureka into the mix.
This is one of the few stories I have read that addresses the whole Tyler Owens switch. (I daresay there are lots, but I haven’t found many of them!)
It was great to see some consequences there.
Loved Tony finding out he had a son and people who would support him.
Thanks!
So great to see Tony with people who love and respect him. Tony is great as a father.
So good to see so much at NCIS adressed, like the whole Owens switch. The show is not great at dealing with important things.
Thanks for sharing!
It was a lot. I really enjoyed it though! I think it was a good look at what really could have happened and probably has to some poor agent. I think the fact that it’s very plausible in real life make the sci-fi bits not extremely farfetched.
Really loved this story. You really fleshed out Tony’s mom amd also presented a believable reason for the different descriptions of her in canon.and I especially like Honna Lei.
Love the interactions between Tony and Jeanne and her mom.I think Jeanne was the best match for Tony, in spite of all the complications. And Xavier is adorable.
Also like the characterization of Tom Morrow, and having him take responsibility for his enabling Gibbs, and it’s always great to have Brad included.
Thank you for sharing all your stories, I am always excited to find a new one, and know it will suck me in for a few days.
RedLindy
Fantastic Story. Amazing how you took things from the show that most viewers (myself included), just don’t give much thought to, like Foster-Yates destroying the bug and her attitude to Abby and tying it into an overall conspiracy, making it so that at first it just seemed like incompetence, then becoming more suspicious when it is pointed out that the delay in Abby being able to get the needed information because she had to rebuild the bug gave Rivkin time to kill the terrorist and frame him for the agent’s death.
Also Jeanne and Tony are actually my OTP and I’m glad you took the Ziva pregnancy situation and transferred it to Jeanne (much more believable) which resulted in the delightful Xavier. I would always hope that someday Tony and Jeanne can rebuild the trust between them enough to try again, but if not at least it does seem that they will at least be friends and good co-parents.
Great use of Allison Blake, I really like her character on Eureka, and almost every Eureka fanfic I’ve found villainizes her so that Jack and/or Nathan can be romantically involved with someone else (or each other).
Liked the reference to Inspector Lynley (and Simon) and now imagine Havers and Tony on a case.
Wow! Stayed up way past bedtime to finish this one. I’d kinda hoped to see Tony end up in Eureka with all its shenanigans, but also can see why he would be avoiding the US. Thanks for sharing!
This story kept me enthralled for three days of nonstop binge reading 🙂
I am so glad that every evil person suffered consequences, though Bodnar and Ziva being unaccounted for have forced Tony to stay “dead”. (We can assume, since in canon it was Tony who rescued Ziva, that she was tortured and killed in the terrorist camp, but better to be safe than sorry). At least the law enforcement agencies in the US now know part of the story, that Tony was targeted for assassination by Vance, so his colleagues and supporters can feel some closure with Vance’s arrest. The Unsung Heroes Foundation will unite everyone he has helped, too.
And Tony needed a clean break from the US, or he would have constantly been reminded of the betrayals he suffered. I am so glad that Morrow and Brad are still able to visit him, as they have proven to be true friends. I am sad, however, that Tony has to deal with the emotional fallout all by himself, but I can imagine it would be impossible to find a therapist with that high of top secret security clearance! I just feel that Tony could use help dealing with the legacy of his abusive childhood, as well as all betrayals he has suffered in his lifetime. Thankfully, he did get some closure with his mother, at least.
I am so very glad that Tony is not jumping into a relationship with Jeanne — she cannot be trusted. While Tony feels guilty for lying, his motivations were always pure: to help the greater good (though he was deceived as to what that was), and then to help Jeanne by cutting her loose. Jeanne, however, scapegoated Tony rather than get angry at the true culprits (her father and Shepard), and
lied to hurt Tony in a way that could have gotten him violently killed as a LEO in prison, and would have have kept his son from him forever. That kind of viciousness is part of Jeanne’s personality , so I feel it is likely she would lash out to hurt Tony if their romance failed, for instance by taking Xavier from him. Tony is wise to keep her in the “friend zone”. At least Jeanne’s mother is his ally, and has proven to take Tony’s side against her daughter’s ugly behaviour.
You have given us hope, though, that Tony can build a good life in England. He can consult for Scotland Yard so his investigative skills can continue to help others, and he will be a good parent to his son. I can see him living in a duplex with Jeanne and Xavier and Helen in the other unit, and Tony could play his mother’s baby grand piano for his son, and volunteer to coach basketball at a youth centre, since his healing his lungs will allow him to enjoy athletics again.
I will be thinking about this story for a very long time, it is so immersive and profound on so many levels. Thank you so much for sharing your talent and hard work for us to enjoy 🙂
What an awesome story. I love your unique take on things and also learn so much about different topics. You are a very talented writer. Thanks for sharing with us!
This had me enthralled from start to finish. Great plot!
A brilliant story.
Fornell will always taking an agency director into custody and probably milk the story for years, but he deserves credit for not getting sucked into Gibbs’ agenda and working on the side of justice.
The ending felt realistic, as it will take more time to heal mentally than physically and things with Jeanne need to be considered after that. I liked that you acknowledged the issues on both sides and left it with them co-parenting Xavier for now.
I really enjoyed this! It’s nice to see Tony getting some justice and recognition, and I liked that you left his relationship with Jeanne TBD.
Wow, this story was amazing. I am glad that I was able to find it on this site.
This was as complex as a Tom Clancy novel. Totally impressed. I got sucked into it and lost two days reading. Good thing I’m retired. This also made me go find the rest of your stories. Thanks for writing it and I look forward to reading your stories.
Wow, thank you for sharing again a great story.