Chapter Text
“Can't see the hurt for the fixes
Can't see the wall for the borders
Can't find a friend for the niceness
Can't find the law for the justice”
- Pointless, Teapacks
Thursday, August 15
16:00
“Why doesn’t the airport shop have the good halva?”
McGee sighed and leaned forward in his chair. “Seriously, Effie? That’s what you called me half across the world for?”
“No, I called you because I’m bored. The airport is boring.”
“Which is exactly how we like airports. And it doesn’t matter what halva the shop has, you only like that one place at Machne Yehuda market.”
“It’s all Elit! It’s not even Barake!”
“Buy Bamba,” Tim advised.
“My suitcase is full of Bamba,” Effie retorted.
“Yes,” Tim agreed, “but your girlfriend has been complaining that the Bamba here is not fresh. After she’d harassed half a dozen FBI agents until the found one who knows where to find Bamba in DC.”
“You know where to find Bamba in DC,” Effie pointed out.
It was Tim’s turn to retort, “Yes, and I’m not at the FBI-Shin-Beit workshop. Just buy the Bamba, Effie. She’ll love you for it tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t need to bribe her with Bamba for that.”
“Fine. I’ll love you for it.”
“I love it when you beg. You should write it into your next book.”
“Effie -” Tim began, but she’d already hung up. Of course.
Tony was giving Tim a very certain smile. “Trouble in paradise already, Timmy?”
At least Tony finally got tired of calling him McThreesome,Tim figured. “No, just the usual care and feeding of Israelis.”
“Speaking of the care and feeding of Israelis, where are you taking Anat tonight?”
Tim had deliberately put off informing Tony of his dinner plans. However, he was almost out of time, and not telling Tony would be worse. “Moby Dick’s.”
“That is a bad idea, McGee. Bad idea.”
And that was why Tim would’ve preferred it if he didn’t have to tell Tony. “Do you have a better one, Tony?” Tim asked. His tone said, You’re being annoying.
“Steak. Indian. Chinese. Empanadas,” Tony listed off. “Anything, except Middle Eastern.”
Dorneget raised a hesitant hand. “But you like falafel,” he said to Tony.
“Yes, I do, Dorneget,” Tony replied. “But that is not the point. The point is that taking an Israeli to eat shawarma outside of Israel is just going to end very, very badly.”
“Taking an Israeli out to eat anything is liable to go badly, if you’re in America,” Tim pointed out. “Have you ever known an Israeli to not complain about what we Americans to do our food?”
It was true. The United States of America had a lot of things wrong with it, the food definitely being one of those - though possibly not quite as bad as the healthcare system - but, still, not all American food was bad. And yet, you could just not convince any Israeli of it. Tim liked Anat dearly, but he did not look forward to feeding her.
“True,” Tony agreed, “but taking an Israeli out to eat food she knows from home is the worst idea.”
“If this was her first day here, probably,” Tim agreed. He did think about that, no matter what Tony seemed to think. “But the FBI has been feeding her for the past three days. I’m hoping she’ll be just about ready for a break.”
Tony shuddered dramatically at the mention of the FBI. “Point.”
“Thank you, Tony.”
And because Tony couldn’t make anything easy, he followed up with: “How come I’m not invited but Delilah is?”
Tim winced and looked around, hoping that Abby wasn’t anywhere near. “Actually, tonight was going to be just Anat and me. We’ll do the double-date thing on the weekend, with Effie. Now, you’re welcome to join us tonight and hear Anat bitch about idiot FBI agents who she just needed to teach procedures she’s known since she was nineteen,” Anat had been abusing her access to secure lines and calling Tim to bitch each night for the past three days, “or you can come on Saturday and meet Effie.”
“Well, McGee, when you put it like that…”
Tim rolled his eyes, and got back to work for two more hours.
18:00
Anat eyed the restaurant dubiously. “That cannot possibly be a shawarmiya.”
“It’s not a shawarmiya,” Tim said patiently, mentally swearing around the too-close syllables. “It’s a Middle Eastern restaurant.”
Anat didn’t seem convinced. “It looks too fancy.”
Because of course that would be her problem. It hadn’t occurred to Tim that Moby Dick’s might seem too fancy for Anat, after three days at whatever fancy hotel the FBI had chosen to host the conference. This explained why she needed so badly to change out of the blouse and khakis and into the camisole and shorts she was presently wearing.
“It’s really not fancy,” Tim said, trying to sound reassuring. “It’s a chain restaurant. It’s a local chain, but it’s still just a chain restaurant. It’s,” Tim paused, trying to locate the right parallel. “It’s like Achla. Really. And they make the shishkebab without yogurt.”
That was his winning ticket - most Middle Eastern restaurants in DC had the tendency to make the meat Greek-style, with yogurt. Anat wasn’t observant, not exactly, but she wouldn’t eat anywhere that served meat with dairy.
Anat went silent and kept walking, though she still looked grumpy and suspicious. Tim wasn’t particularly worried. Complain was what Anat did when she was tired, and having to put up with Americans who outnumbered her twenty-to-one had to be no fun at all. Anat’s natural compassion and open nature made her significantly easier to work with than most Shin-Beit personnel - than most Israelis, if Tim was frank - but that didn’t imply any greater ability on her part to understand Americans, only a greater ability to not make them cry. And Anat had been short-tempered for the past two months, anyway: she was still adjusting to being Chief of the Raffah desk. Tim fully expected Anat to be a grouch, and wasn’t going to start worrying unless she was still in a foul temper after they’d had baklava. And coffee. Coffee was always go-
Everything went white.
He hadn’t been thrown to the pavement. Tim blinked away spots. His entire body was sore. His ears were ringing, but he could still hear: not screams, not yet. The street was a mess, he registered as his vision cleared; the restaurant’s glass front had been thoroughly smashed.
The screams started.
There’d been an explosion.
Where was Anat?
McGee scanned around even as he pulled out his cell phone - to call Gibbs or 911, he hadn’t decided yet. Those people who weren’t running in hysterics were frozen with it. No one was lying on the ground, he noticed; only one car had been seriously damaged in the explosion, and it was still burning. The bomb couldn’t have been that big, then. Except…
He was missing something. Tim knew that, but he had no idea what that was. This wasn’t his thing.
Where the hell was Anat?
Someone else had called 911; Tim put his phone back in his pocket and went in search of the missing analyst instead. She’d been standing right next to him when the bomb went off. DC had had too many bombings and this was going to be bad even if they didn’t manage to lose an Israeli intel analyst on the scene. She’d been standing right next to him; no one appeared to be seriously hurt; this made no sense.
He had to cross the street over to the restaurant before he could see her. She was standing next to the still-burning car. Tim rushed over and grabbed her arm. “Anat, get back -”
She shook him off, not even sparing him a look. “Get a team, we need the area taped off -”
“Anat, you need to step back from the burning car.” Tim tried to get her away from the flames. No luck. She was locked on.
“The explosion originated from this car. Shape charge,” she indicated the broken glass on one side of the burning car versus the clean street on its other side. “Remote detonation,” she gestured at the car - presumably at the lack of bodies inside it. “We need a vetted medical team - one of the bodies inside will be the target.”
If Tim looked at the restaurant, really looked, he could see what were probably bodies under upturned tables and broken glass, thrown back by the explosion. Shape charge.
Anat had to have run straight at the burning car before Tim even regained his senses.
Shape charge. That was what he’d been missing. He tried to keep his focus on that as he pulled out his cell phone again, to call Gibbs. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
“Look at the other cars, they’re -”
“Anat, I -” believe you, he was going to say, but then Gibbs picked up with a gruff Yeah. “Boss, I need a full MCRT team here and Ducky and Palmer, too” Tim said. “Anat and I are at the Moby Dick’s in Arlington, 3000 Washington Boulevard. There’s been an explosion.”
“Moby Dick?” Gibbs demanded. “Isn’t that the Middle Eastern place, McGee?”
“Yes, boss, it is,” Tim confirmed. “Boss - it might be a shape charge.”
Gibbs hung up.
Thankfully, Tim knew his boss well enough to interpret that as We’ll be right there. “They’re on their way,” he told Anat.
“Kibalti,” she answered distantly and in Hebrew. Roger. She was still standing too close to the burning car, still not looking at him, her back straight and her feet planted at shoulder-width. Tim knew that body language: Anat was standing as if she was in uniforms and the scene was hers to command. Tim wanted to pull her out of there, badly. But - he looked at the restaurant instead. Not everybody had run off or was dead. The ambulances would be there in moments, but, in the meantime, Tim walked into the glass-covered floor, pulling his jacket off as he did so.
Gibbs assessed the scene as he drove the truck in. The cars parked three spots down from the blackened wreck were unharmed. This bombing had not been designed to kill as many as possible; quite the opposite. Everything about the scene screamed that this was anything but random. But then, this was why Gibbs was driving the ME’s truck: getting Ducky first on the scene had won Gibbs more than one case before. And if this was targeted and the target was a person, then the dead body - or bodies - were the most precious piece of evidence.
“Goodness gracious, Jethro,” Ducky muttered as he made his way off the truck. Palmer just looked extra pale. Gibbs only spared them a cursory glance - he took a few sharp turns, but none that were actually hadn’t sharp enough to give anybody whiplash - and continued to scan the scene instead. DiNozzo and whoever he’d grabbed would be there in minutes, and in the meantime -
There, at the back of one of the ambulances. Gibbs strode purposefully towards where McGee and Mejaled were arguing. McGee was covered in blood and missing his jacket. He had a bandage on one forearm and his face was covered in dirt, but otherwise he seemed unharmed to Gibbs’ eye. Mejaled’s hands were dirty as well. She had something white in her hand - balled-up wipes, Gibbs reasons. She held them loosely, though, not making any effort to wipe the soot off her hands. Her body was mostly operations-relaxed, too, but she held her head high and her neck very straight, constantly craning it to keep tracking the scene.
“Boss, thank God you’re here,” McGee said. He sounded exasperated, high-strung and worn. “Will you tell Anat that she needs to go the hospital, please?”
Mejaled looked about as irritated as a wet cat. So that was what she and Tim were arguing about. Gibbs looked at the medic whose very posture screamed that this was a colossal waste of his time. “Do they need to go to the hospital?” Gibbs asked, indicating both McGee and Mejaled with his head.
“No,” the medic replied shortly.
“Toda be’emet,” Mejaled bit out. She hopped off the edge of the ambulance.
Gibbs put a firm hand over her shoulder - that camisole didn’t give any spare fabric to grab. “That doesn’t mean you get a run of the scene, Mejaled. DiNozzo’s got that. There they are.” The MCRT truck and two sedans pulled up outside Metro’s tape. This number of agents was possibly overkill, but every agency in DC was still jumpy from the ballroom bombing, and NCIS more than most, what with Secretary Jarvis’ death.
Mejaled subsided. Barely. She gave a curt nod and stayed put, but her body was still screaming tension, masquerading as the controlled calm of an ops-trained person.
Something about this seemed off to Gibbs, not quite adding up, and it wasn’t just because he knew her operations experience to be from the perspective of Command rather than hands-on. He wasn’t sure what was wrong, but just because he couldn’t pinpoint it yet didn’t mean that he was wrong. He turned his attention to McGee. “You all right, McGee?”
“Yes, boss. Just my ears still ringing, but not like I busted my eardrums. This can hold.”
“That’s an awful lot of blood.”
“Not mine, boss,” McGee replied automatically.
The medic growled something appreciative-sounding which confirmed Gibbs’ suspicion of what became of McGee’s jacket.
“All right, you two,” Gibbs said, fixing both of them with a glare. “Hospital or not, you’re still getting out of here. Let’s g-”
He turned around, and straight into Tobias Fornell, arms crossed on his chest and three FBI agents standing in formation behind him.
“Fancy meeting you here, Jethro,” Fornell said. “Are you taking custody of my guest?”
Gibbes raised his eyebrows. “Your guest, Tobias?”
“Well, the Bureau’s guest,” Fornell conceded.
Right. Were the Bureau just nervous about appearing as if they almost lost an Israeli Intel guest, or was more than that going on? It compounded Gibbs’ dislike of the situation.
“And here I thought your conference was over.”
Fornell looked defensive, but in a way that suggested that, yes, the Bureau was just running around in hysterics.
Mejaled muttered something in a Hebrew-Arabic mix which had McGee appearing constipated and facepalming. She placed herself between Gibbs and Fornell and pushed each of them a step back, seemingly oblivious to how she barely even reached Fornell’s shoulder.
“Stop with the territoriality wars,” she said, in the no-nonsense voice of military officers everywhere.
Gibbs raised his arms. So did Fornell, who also said: “Until the nature of this attack is clarified, the Bureau would feel better if…”
Mejaled cut him off, her tone brooking no argument. “I’m safe with Gibbs and his people. If my bosses sit on you, tell them to talk to me. That all?”
“Well, this case is not really NCIS’s jurisdiction,” Fornell said, but Gibbs knew that tone; indeed, Fornell followed that up with: “But given that I know better than to argue with Doctor Mallard and I noticed his truck on scene, I believe that we can work something out.”
“I believe we can, Tobias,” Gibbs replied mildly. Fornell shot him an irritated glare. Gibbs continued as if he didn’t. “Agent DiNozzo’s over there, if you’d like to help. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to take statements from my two witnesses here.”
Talk about coming back with a blast, Tony thought as he stood on the sidewalk, keeping an eye on the agents and crime scene technicians processing the scene. Some of the same people had processed the ballroom bombing barely a month before. Tony himself had been absent from that one, of course; Tim and he had only been reinstated in the wake of that, after Parsons withdrew his condemnation of Team Gibbs.
Four weeks before, Tony was still trying to figure out what else to do with his life. Now he was back to being MCRT’s most senior agent other than Gibbs; it was entirely possible that his career would end up benefitting from this mess with Parsons. And yet, even as he maintained command of the scene, Tony had to struggle to keep breathing, and not just because he’d be happier if he’d never needed to breathe the aftermath of an explosion ever again.
Ziva could have her badge back, too, but Ziva was taking what was possibly the first extended vacation of her life and didn’t seem particularly inclined to return any quicker than she absolutely had to - and Vance hadn’t found it in himself to make her an ultimatum, yet.
It was all good. It was supposed to be good. Something about it was absolutely wrong, and Tony couldn’t figure out what.
“Do you think it’s connected?” Dorneget asked hesitatingly.
“What is, probie?” Tony asked distractedly. He was getting to like Dorneget; kid had had the guts to prank Tony right back instead of sulking for three years like certain people, and he seemed to understand that Tony still called him “probie” despite that he’d stopped being a probie months before because Tony liked him. Kid wasn’t all that bad, despite his tendency to look at Tony as if he’d hung the moon in the sky.
“This explosion, and…” Dorneget trailed off.
“Nah,” Tony replied. He felt comfortable enough making that statement. “Ballroom was a high-profile target and a big, messy bomb. That one was meant to intimidate. This was something else. Focused. Different kind of a target.” He shook his head. “We really need to break people out of the idea that they can keep bombing our capitol city, though. Nasty habit, that.”
Four weeks later, they weren’t anywhere nearer catching whoever had killed Secretary Jarvis than they were when Tony got that phone call. He really hoped they were going to have better luck with this one.
No, Tony decided as he watched Ducky and Palmer walk away with the last of the bodies. This time, we’re going to make ourselves a better luck.
19:30
He’d promised Kayla and Jared that he’d be home for dinner. He’d promised. It wouldn’t be the first time he didn’t deliver. Leon didn’t make those promises lightly, not anymore. It was more important to be honest with his children and, more often than not, the truthful answer was: “I don’t know.” This day, though - he’d really thought he could make it. He really did. Then he’d stepped out of his office, briefcase in hand, and immediately knew that something was wrong.
And so Leon Vance turned around, went back into his office - might as well get more paperwork done - and waited for Pamela to tell him that Gibbs, DiNozzo or both returned to the Navy Yard.
When Gibbs stepped out of the elevator, Vance was already watching from the top of the platform. He wanted to be down there. Intellectually he knew that Gibbs had never been at risk, that McGee had nothing worse than a scratch, but that knowledge didn’t run all the way through. It didn’t used to be like this, but Jackie’s loss had knocked some things open that Leon had kept locked up tight for most of his adult life.
He waited on top of the platform. When Gibbs stepped out of the elevator, his eyes didn’t travel up to search for Leon. Instead, he honed in on Patty Wu, the junior agent DiNozzo had left with the run of the floor - which, coming from DiNozzo rushing to the scene of an explosion, was a vote of trust. Wu took one look at the grimy Mejaled, and extracted her overnight bag before she approached Gibbs, McGee and Mejaled.
Gibbs glanced up briefly while McGee and Wu argued with Mejaled - not a long argument - but did not glance up again until after Wu and Mejaled disappeared in the direction of the bathroom, and McGee was settled at his desk with a Nutter Butter and a cup of coffee. Then, Gibbs came galloping up the stairs.
“You should be long home, Leon.”
Vance said nothing; Gibbs, of all agents, knew damn well why Leon had waited on him.
After a moment, Gibbs said: “Everyone’s fine. It’s not related. DiNozzo’s bossing around the FBI, and Fornell’s letting him.”
“The FBI?”
“Mejaled’s their guest. They were worried.”
“I see she came home with us.”
“She has opinions.”
“I wouldn’t have imagined,” Vance said dryly. “Joint investigation, I take it?”
Gibbs tilted his head slightly. “The Bureau’s better than the alternative.”
“There’s an understatement.” Not that the Bureau could keep the Israelis out of it, if Morrow’s intel was true, but at least the Bureau would take the bulk of Israeli Security’s wrath, rather than NCIS. “So what is this about?”
“I’ll let you know when Ducky IDs those bodies.”
Someone wanted someone else dead, and a bomb was the weapon of choice. Assassination. “How many?”
“Three. They were right on top of the bomb when it went off.” Gibbs grimaced.
Vance understood; the bodies may not be easy to identify. “All the more reason to be glad for the FBI’s involvement.” The FBI would come in handy if they needed to follow the bomb-maker on this one.
Gibbs just grunted. “Go home, Leon. Nothing’s gonna happen tonight that’s worth it.”
Leon nodded, and started in the direction of the stairs. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
21:00
They didn’t really need to talk about it. They talked about it anyway, because Tim needed for everything to be asked and replied to. So Anat said yes, it made more sense to stay at Tim’s and yes, they’d pass through the hotel anyway. And also, she added, she needed to talk to Patty the next day and find out where that shirt came from, because it was a very nice shirt.
“What is it?” Tim asked. They were riding the elevator up from the parking garage to Tim’s floor.
“I’m still smelling smoke. But we both changed clothes.”
“Your hair,” he pointed out.
She blinked. “Point.”
“One could almost believe it was your first scene of explosion.”
“It was my first explosion on the ground.”
“You’re just secretly a scary adrenaline junky?”
“I had work to do,” she pointed out.
“Scary adrenaline junky,” he muttered. The elevator door opened. “You go finally wash that scent out. I’ll order us some pizza.”
“On nom nom.”
Predictably, that made Tim smile.
By the time she got out of the shower - smelling of Tim’s soap, but her own shampoo - Tim was already into his second slice of pizza. Anat pulled herself a chair, tucked her feet under her, and got to eating. Half a pizza later, she noted: “You’re really quiet.”
“And you were really hungry.”
She still was. She’d ended up eating most of a large pizza. It’d been a while since she’d been able to finish more than a half by herself.
They were supposed to only get up at eight the next morning, pick Effie up from the airport at ten, and spend the day playing tourist. Supposed was the name of a fish, and that was not going to happen. “We need to be at Reagan at ten,” she said between bites.
Tim nodded. “I was going to suggest that you sleep in late and I’ll round back to pick you up, but frankly I’ll be first in line to take off my own head. Then I was going to suggest that I call in late, but it occurred to me there is no way I can convince you to sleep late tomorrow.”
She nodded. “So, six-thirty?”
Tim sighed. “Anat - you know it’s not your case, right? It’s not even mine, either - we’re both witnesses.”
It was a hunch. It was just a hunch. There were a gazillion reasons someone might plant a bomb to kill someone. Even in Israel, criminals did it, not only terrorists - many more criminals than terrorists, since the Second Intifada puttered out. There were many people - many kinds of people - who went to that sort of a restaurant. This could be any of a million things, none of which were in any way even related to Anat’s responsibilities. It was entirely possible that by the time she and Tim walked into the office the next day, the dead bodies would already be identified and their identities would take this case off NCIS’ hands. It was entirely possible.
Anat may have seen something. She’d believed it enough to run to the origin point of the explosion, against all protocol, not knowing if there may or may not be a second bomb. It might not matter. She might be wrong, and then nothing ever happened, and not a word needed to be said.
She believed that she wasn’t wrong.
“Anat?” Tim asked. “What is it?”
She shook her head. She couldn’t tell him, not even that she might’ve seen something, not until this was proven. But she couldn’t make herself say Just tired, either, because there was a good chance that it would prove to be a lie. There were things she didn’t talk about, but she’d never flat-out lied to Tim, before.
He had the sense to not ask again.
23:30
His apartment was quiet and dimly lit when he stepped into it, which was just how Tony liked it. The new, bullet-resistant and very much whole windows glinted softly. Tony neutralized the alarm, shrugged off his jacket, kicked off his shoes and made directly for the kitchen. What he found in his fridge was not encouraging. After some consideration, Tony took the pasta and some vegetables out of the fridge and left them on the counter to reach room temperature while he went to wash off the crime scene.
On the way back to the kitchen he also turned the computer back on, but he forced himself to fix the pasta salad before logging into his email and chats accounts. Over the past months he’d developed a special hatred for being offline. Ziva schedule was, best that Tony could tell, completely erratic. There was no knowing when she’d make contact, and whether it would be an email, a chat conversation, or one of the rare voice chats. Yael was only slightly more predictable; her hours were around five in the afternoon EDT, or around ten at night. Those translated to midnight and five in the morning on Israel-time, so Tony figured that, like him, she checked her email when she got home and before she left each morning. He had less to actually tell her since Ziva had been gone, but he’d gotten into the habit of sending her stuff that caught his eye on 9gag; she retaliated with, of all things, baby animals. Tony tried very hard to not project, to not imagine that Yael engaged in this contact for the same reasons he did. That was probably how he was meant to feel; he couldn’t afford to forget that though Yael seemed to care for Ziva, she’d also allowed for Ziva - and Tony - to be kidnapped and held for prudential reasons.
The salad made, Tony hesitated. Usually he tried to not eat in front of his computer. It was a constant effort to remember to eat, and to remember to eat in a way that didn’t make him feel and look like shit after a week. But it was late, and Tony could expect a very full day the next day - today, he thought ruefully, looking at the time. Mind made up, he took his dinner to the computer.
There was nothing interesting in his usual email accounts - the usual mix of commercial content, and chain letters from his old frat buddies whom he hadn’t seen in forever. Nothing from Ziva. He logged out, and began the painstaking process of logging into the Samuel Jones address.
He had one new message from Suzanne Cohen. It wasn’t animal pictures; it was a Youtube link. Tony leaned back against the couch. There was a 50% chance that it would turn out to be a cat video. There was also a 50% chance that it was an actual message.
Almost two weeks before, Tony had excised eight seconds of background noise from one of his now-rare voice chats with Ziva. He could make out people’s voices and some sort of music. It sounded like he’d expect Africa to sound, but then, Ziva hadn’t tried to hide that she was in Africa. She just didn’t say where in Africa. Knowing Ziva, that made Tony worry. He’d sent the voice clip to Yael, hoping for - he wasn’t sure. He’d been berating himself for it on and off since. Yael wasn’t the one expected to give up information in this exchange. There’d been a video of a cat sleeping on a Bordeaux Mastiff’s head since, so at least he knew that she wasn’t pissed with him, but that was all.
He clicked on the link.
It wasn’t a cat video; it was a music video.
Katy Perry, seriously? Tony thought as he let it roll. And, okay, he’d sent her a 1980s Eurovision link almost half a year before, but did she have to retaliate with Katy Perry? At least it wasn’t Firework.
Maybe she was pissed with him, he thought as the tiger took out the idiot pilot but, not a minute later, the video got a whole lot more animals, none of them the man-eating kind. Perhaps he should rethink this one as a musical cat video.
We need to do something about your musical taste, he wrote back. Like, get you one. He thought about it for a moment, and added: Eggplants are the bomb.
Oversized musical cat-vid or not, these were still the brightest four minutes of his day.