Chapter Forty
McGee and Ziva moved quickly, exiting the bullpen and heading for the stairs. They both took precautions as the traveled down the stairs, guns drawn in case the mole - whoever they were - managed to get out of Gibbs’ aim or had a weapon themselves.
Once they got down to level one and saw Gibbs pointing his sig at Agent Lee’s head, they both wondered for a moment that maybe Gibbs had lost it. It wasn’t until he saw them and threw a cell phone at McGee that they realised he was totally sane and Agent Lee was their mole.
“I heard her call someone - I think Kamisnski - on that, I want the recent calls pulled up and see if you can get a location on him so that once we’re done here we can go and arrest him with the knowledge that this time he won’t get away, not even with a slick, fancy lawyer,” Gibbs told McGee, whilst still holding his weapon in Agent Lee’s direction.
She looked nervous, almost timid and it was hard to believe that all this time she had been pulling the wool over their eyes and had been feeding information to the man responsible for Tony’s rape. She must have told him Tony’s room number and suggested a doctor from whom to steal the ID and gotten him access to the hospital. She was ultimately responsible for Tony almost dying. She was the reason Kamisnski had known about Tony’s overdose - it had gone round NCIS like fire when they’d first found out, despite attempts to keep it within their circle. It was all making sense now, with Agent Lee feeding him information from the inside, Kamisnski would have known about every aspect of their case against him - seeing as she was the one they went to so that they could get warrants to procure information about him.
“Ziva, cuff her and take her to interrogation. I want you to let as few people know she’s been arrested, if Kamisnski thinks his mole is still running free then he’s less likely to actually run yet,” Gibbs said. Ziva did as she was asked and handcuffed Agent Lee.
“I will take the back route to the interrogation rooms, less people to go past,” Ziva replied, grabbing Agent Lee by the shoulders and pushing her out of the range of Gibbs’ gun and towards the back route to the interrogation rooms.
Gibbs lowered and holstered his weapon once she was out of eye sight and then looked at McGee. “What are you still doing here? I gave you a job to do and I expect you to do it, NOW!” he shouted, McGee looked scared, nodding and then ran back up the stairs in the direction of the bullpen.
Gibbs sighed and put his head in his hands. How could they have been so stupid as to not suspect Agent Lee in the first place? She had means, opportunity and by the sounds of her phone call, motive ��" though he didn’t know what yet, he would sure he would find out during the interrogation. He took several deep breaths to calm himself, before following the route that Ziva took with Agent Lee and heading to the interrogation rooms, he needed to do the interview fast before Kamisnski found out that his mole had been caught and ran from wherever he was hiding.
He went into the Observation room and found Ziva in there, watching Agent Lee sweat while she waited for her interview to start. “I would never have guessed it was her,” Ziva said.
“Nor me, but now we have her and it all makes sense. She had the means to see what we were doing in Kamisnski’s case and the opportunity to contact him. Today was a planned visit, she knew we already had those warrants, she just wanted to overhear what was going on with Tony so she could pass it along to her boss.”
“Tony’s been moved to yet, another private room. They weren’t too happy about it but they did it, they’ll fax the information over and I told McGee to look out for it so the chances of that falling into the wrong hands is minimal,” Ziva said, bringing Gibbs up to speed.
“Good, I’ll look it over after I’m done here. He still has the guards on his door, right?”
Ziva nodded. Gibbs smiled and then headed out of the Observation room and made his way to Interrogation room one.
Agent Lee jumped when he slammed the door and placed a file on the desk in front of her. It contained all the information they had on the mole and their doings so far. Agent Lee was looking at some time in prison, whether she co-operated or not.
“Anything you want to tell me before we start?” Gibbs asked.
“I would never willingly help someone hurt an agent, I love my job, I love the Navy and I would never let our government down,” Agent Lee replied, trying to sound confident.
“Yet, you did. Shortly, we’ll have a warrant to check your bank accounts and see just how long you’ve been feeding Kamisnski information about Tony’s case and Tony himself. How else could he have known the route Tony took when he went running? How else could he have known that Tony took an overdose following his attack? How else could he have known which room Tony was in and which ID was easiest to steal? You’ve been very busy, Agent Lee and I don’t mean that in a good way.”
“He forced me!”
“What? To take money so that you could betray a valuable colleague and your country? He forced you to take that money, huh?”
“He told me if I didn’t then things would happen to my family.”
“Cut the crap and the ‘poor little me’ act too, I know from your phone call that you enjoyed your work with Kamisnski, you were more than happy to help him. I just want to know why.”
“Tony brought it on himself,” she said, dropping the act. “If he hadn’t treated me like a spare part that he always forgot about when he was team leader I wouldn’t have been so willing to feed Kamisnski information about him.”
“You’re harbouring a grudge that’s at least two years old?”
“You weren’t here. You don’t know how he treated me. He came back from Europe and had brilliant presents for everyone, but me. Me, he gave his old stapler and tried to make me believe that it was something special for his ‘Probie’. He should have left Kamisnski alone, but no, he had to push it, he had to keep trying to get him on charges that had nothing to do with him. He deserved his punishment, and I’m proud to know I had a part in that.”
It took all of Gibbs’ strength to not throttle the agent across from him for what she was saying about Tony, but at least now he had answered his questions about what her motive could be.
“Tony is a fair man, he did not deserve to be raped,” Gibbs said, as calmly as possible.
“Oh, but you’re only saying that because he’s your life partner now. If you’d seen the way he treated me you would have understood why I acted the way I did. He let Ziva come in late every day and never questioned her. My car broke down one day and I was five minutes late to the office and he almost ripped me a new one about how I was new to being a Special Agent and I needed to get with the program. I would love to see the look on his face when he realises how good an agent I actually am. He didn’t notice me following him for weeks on end to get his running routes, he didn’t notice me downloading the information on his computer about Kamisnski, he’s not much of an agent if he couldn’t even work out he was being followed!”
“Tony is the best damn agent I’ve ever worked with.”
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that,” Agent Lee spat.
“The only reason you would have failed on his team is because of your own shortcomings, not his as a leader,” Gibbs said, then stopped because he realised he was playing her game and getting drawn into an argument about Tony’s capabilities which is what she wanted. “I’m going to charge you, then send you to Central Holding where you’ll stay until your trial. If you can convince me to be nice, I may even put you in seclusion considering Federal Agents are liked that much at Central Holding,” Gibbs said, changing the subject back to the matter at hand.
“I don’t care what you do to me. I know that my boss will manage to catch up with your precious Tony soon and then he won’t live to tell the tale.”
“You’ll care when you meet some of your fellow inmates.”
“Kamisnski’s lawyers will have me out in a few hours.”
“Oh, you really believe that he’s going to stick by you now that because of you we’ll be able to prosecute him to the full extent of our powers?”
“Of course,” she said, but her voice didn’t sound as confident as she’d tried to make it.
“Now who’s the one dreaming?” Gibbs said, with a smile on his face. He read Agent Lee her rights, then arranged for her to be moved to Central Holding. Now all they had to do was track down Kamisnski and bring him in and this time he wouldn’t be leaving.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Who will catch DiNozzo when he falls?