Chapter Text
The Station
Somewhere on 17th Street NW
Washington, DC
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
12:25 PM
NAPOLEON
Once upon a time, there were twelve time-travelers called The Reisenden who came to visit from the year 2227 in their TimeShifter machines. Their assignment had been to observe and record a series of events on Earth between 1947 and 2012, then return to their own time period in their TimeShifters without detection and without altering the time stream.
If only it had been that simple, Napoleon Solo mused.
And what that would mean in twenty-four hours after the planned Summit the next day, he didn’t know.
He stood at one of the large windows of his new eighth-floor corner office just blocks away from the White House. He was far from his life in 1968 working with his partner Illya Kuryakin for the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, based in New York City. They had both worked for UNCLE for years, partners for the last four of those years, and together they had led agents in Section Two: Operations and Enforcement.
When Illya had suddenly been ordered to return to the USSR for reassignment at the end of January 1968, the partners—in the middle of a huge assignment—had scarcely even a few days to discuss what limited options he might have. Going back to Moscow meant merciless interrogations, torture, and imprisonment. As their boss Mr Waverly had said, death was not Illya’s worst-case scenario.
It turned out they never even had a few days. He and Illya had been kidnapped on a mission, thrown inside two Reisenden TimeShifters, and brought forward through time. They’d landed, for lack of another word, on December 7, 1995. As luck would have it, they were helped out by none other than Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, two people who were quite used to the unusual X-File cases they dealt with on a regular basis.
But their journey through time continued. A few weeks after their arrival in 1995, Napoleon and Illya were captured in Switzerland while trying to contact April Dancer. Illya was put in another TimeShifter and sent forward in time eighteen years to 4:00 AM on December 27, 2013.
Napoleon’s journey to the same date took a different route. April Dancer’s EHH security force had rescued him before he could disappear after his partner, and Napoleon had stayed on with her until February 1996, and then he spent over a year from May 2002 to June 2003 in Washington, DC, working on various projects under various names before being reunited with his partner in Woodbridge, Virginia, twelve hours after Illya’s arrival on December 27, 2013, just four days ago now.
And straightaway, on the eve of 2014, they were fighting a new battle, one Napoleon had been preparing for in his travels forward in time, and one that Illya was just discovering his role in.
Napoleon Solo was now known publicly as Antonio Solórzano. Illya Kuryakin was Nikolai Ivanov. They were the Director and Deputy Director of The Station, a clandestine facility in the process of opening with a designed purpose that was twofold: to watch for alien activity on the planet and to secretly provide storage for the remaining TimeShifters, allowing the Reisenden to return to their own time, depositing depleted time machines and picking up newer TimeShifters as they travelled forward.
That was the plan anyway.
The paint literally wasn’t dry on the top floors of the building, and staff was just now arriving. The location would be publicly known as KICG—The Kersh Investigations and Consultation Group—a respected business expanding to a new location. The KICG’s advertised specialties were pre-employment investigations, due diligence and background checks, threat assessment, investigations, and security risk analysis. And they did all that, yet the Station added a lot more.
Outside, a fierce winter storm continued to wreak havoc on Washington, DC, and the entire area, mirroring in many ways the uncertainty they were living with around the potential disaster of the upcoming Reisenden Summit scheduled to begin at noon the next day, January 1, 2014. Despite their careful planning, so much could go wrong, spinning out of control and out of their hands. So much was already going wrong, Napoleon thought, watching a snowplow on the streets below.
Some of the twelve Reisenden were now dead. Some were still travelling. Some were working with them, some against. Some were missing. TimeShifters were depleted or unaccounted for. And some of the Reisenden and those people they had aligned with, such as the Legacy Group, wanted nothing more than revenge.
Without warning, Napoleon felt a wave of disorientation send a now-familiar shiver through his body—not from head to toe, but seemingly from his left side to his right this time, as though something had passed through him. It had happened several times now, ever since the TimeShifter appeared on the floor below them the day before, and Napoleon didn’t know what it could possibly mean. No one else had mentioned feeling anything similar, but perhaps they were being as guarded as he was.
“Catch.”
Napoleon turned around on time to snag a wrapped sandwich that had been tossed his way with little regard to his ability to reach it on time. “I’m not—”
“Helena said we had to eat, regardless of whether we were hungry. I was not about to argue with her.” Illya Kuryakin stood in the doorway of Solo’s office thoughtfully regarding his own sandwich. “I believe I shall pick my battles with Miss Helena Robertson carefully.”
Helena was the Station’s office and building manager, formerly with the FBI. She was fierce, no-nonsense, and brilliant which is why Napoleon liked her... and kept his distance. “Good plan,” he said to Illya. “Is your meeting over already?”
“Lunch break. Apparently these regular eating times and breaks are assumed here.” Illya had been leading a meeting of their new staff. “Mulder’s doing great.”
Former FBI agent Fox Mulder was introducing the staff to who the Reticuli were, the alien group who were seeking to take over the planet and rid itself of its inhabitants. “He’s a good lecturer, has a long history with his topic, including his kidnapping by them, and he has a... a dry sense of humor that takes some of the sting out of what he’s telling them.” Illya paused, then continued, “To be honest, Napoleon, I’m not sure what I believe about all this talk of aliens, but considering what we are dealing with, I will suspend my disbelief. At the moment, we’re taking a forced lunch break, and then Rico will take over and explain who the Reisenden are.”
“Good. It’s a lot for the new staff to take in, but they knew it was something big and something strange when they were hired. Was there any speculation on Bodie and Avril’s daughter’s kidnapping?”
“Perhaps it will be the chatter over lunch. There are a lot of serious faces among those gathered.” Illya looked around the room without stepping inside. “And where is your gathered task force?”
“They’ve moved to Walter’s office. He’s leading it. I have work to do here.”
Just when things seemed to be somewhat normalizing with the group, two hours earlier they’d been informed that Guy and Avril Germond’s daughter Geneviève had been kidnapped by Alberto Terrano, a man who was making demands that Napoleon could not agree to.
“It seems strange,” Illya said, frowning, “calling her Avril Germond now, not the April Dancer from... before,” the Russian-born former agent said. “But I suspect when I see her... it will be easier. She was in her late twenties in my memories, while this Avril Germond is...”
“Seventy-one,” Napoleon supplied.
Illya nodded. “Seventy-one? Seventy-one... Difficult to comprehend. Mr Waverly was in his mid-eighties, was he not? When we spoke... Just a few weeks... ago...”
Napoleon stood as Illya seemed to falter. He remembered feeling this way before, lost in time. Just the day before, Illya had been dying, horribly burned over his body from a bomb blast, missing one hand and part of the other... And then four hours later, Illya had disappeared, then reappeared a few seconds later wrapped in a medical armorsuit tailor-made for his partner, a gift from Charles Doherty, a man from the future who seemed to come and go—from the future and back—without using a TimeShifter.
And then at four in the morning the day before, Illya had woken, the man who was “the wind beneath his wings...” Napoleon smiled as the song filtered through his thoughts, and Illya stared over at him alarmed. What had they been talking about? Napoleon nodded. Yes... April Dancer. Avril Germond. “Avril is much the same. I saw her a few times over the years, and she was just as dangerous then as she was during our UNCLE days, more so when she took over UNCLE.”
“When did you see her last?”
“For me, it was a few weeks ago, but looking at a calendar, it was over ten years ago.” Napoleon glanced up from his desk. “They’ll find their daughter Genny,” he said confidently.
Illya looking at him curiously. “You chose that taskforce very quickly out of those gathered, Napoleon. A lot of older... ex-agents. Are they up to the job?”
“As you said, I chose them. Why do you ask?”
Illya shrugged. “I am thirty-two, if we go by how old this body is. You are thirty-six. The age limits for UNCLE agents was once forty. You say Avril is seventy-one. The two British guys, Bodie and Doyle, are in their early sixties and haven’t been agents for over thirty years, if I understand them correctly. Walter Skinner is sixty. Ellison is fifty-one—I checked his file. Even DiNozzo is forty-one. Are they able to do the job?”
“What else would you have me do?” Napoleon asked exasperated. “We don’t have time to go out and recruit and train field agents. We don’t need field agents. We need experience. People with brains in their heads and the ability to work out issues beyond their training. And I need you doing your job—bringing that room full of staff up to date—and I need to work on these papers.”
Illya held up both hands slightly. “Okay. I will leave you to your papers,” he said, placating his partner, and Napoleon winced at how he must have sounded. “Also,” Illya added, “Rico is back here now with his family, using one of the guest suites on the seventh floor.”
Napoleon watched him leave. He felt torn between staying involved in the kidnapping his team was investigating and doing the needed preparations for the Summit, happening now in less than a day. There was so much he wanted to discuss with his former partner. Discuss with someone. But there wasn’t time. Much of the next twenty-four hours was firmly on Napoleon’s shoulders. Time was ticking.
Walter Skinner's Office
Government Liaison, KICG side
12:40 PM
SCULLY
Dr. Dana Scully came into Walter Skinner’s office with a tray of sandwiches, coffee, and tea. The small group gathered around the table looked up wearily, and she couldn’t tell if they had bad news, worse news, or still, no news. Tony, the guy from NCIS, and Jim, the guy from... well, Scully wasn’t sure—were both texting on their cellphones, and Skinner was standing impatiently waiting for someone on his cell phone at one side of the office, leaning back against the heater below the window ledge. Bodie (who had multiple tie-ins with the Station) and Doyle (who was with Bodie) were hunched to one side of the table. And Ducky, Dr Mallard, appeared to know everyone it seemed, and he sprang up to help her with the tray.
Scully felt she was starting to figure out how all these people were connected. She and Mulder had started a private wall of sticky-notes in their new apartment here at the Station, trying to draw threads between everyone. Seven members of this group had been snowbound at the ‘House on the River’, the large home on the Potomac River that Mulder and Scully had been living in the past few years, managed by Walter Skinner, but apparently, they discovered, ultimately owned by Napoleon and Illya. That small piece of information had involved a lot of threads.
During the blizzard and hurricane, Napoleon and Illya had been stuck with Mulder and Scully at the ‘House’ for a few days, as had Walter and two NCIS special agents—Antonio (Tony) DiNozzo and his boss Jethro Gibbs. Much of that time they’d been battling to save Tony’s life when he’d been mistakenly poisoned by Palek and Wevers, two members of the Reisenden who had been ordered to do so to a different Antonio, Napoleon’s alter ego. Palek and Wevers came to the realization that Voster, another Reisenden, was actually their nemesis and had tried to find antidotes to the poison to help DiNozzo. Tony ended up being transported in a TimeShifter ahead two days, so they had time to locate help for him.
It was confusing, although a little less so with their wall of links, Scully thought, appreciating Mulder’s skill at putting up post-it notes.
Tony DiNozzo had showed up that morning at the first meeting of all Station staff, and it was announced by Napoleon that Tony would occasionally be working at the Station or KICG, seconded to them by the Secretary of Navy as he was needed and available. Tony was an interesting choice to be brought into the secrecy of The Station, Scully thought, especially as he had immediately been moved to this taskforce scarcely thirty minutes later. Tony knew, of course, about the Reticuli, the Reisenden, the TimeShifters, and the Station. Scully had gotten to know him over the last few days, and really liked him and his affectionate and warm irreverence with his boss, Agent Gibbs, who’d also been trapped with them during the snowstorm. Gibbs was different, though. He did not want to know anything more to do with aliens and time travelers but had reluctantly allowed Tony to continue an association with the Station, it seemed. More lines had gone up on Mulder and Scully’s wall, including Ducky—who she and Mulder knew, as well as Bodie and Doyle. Duck was also employed by NCIS Naval Yard where Tony and Gibbs worked. Small world.
Scully wasn’t sure what else was different about DiNozzo, but he was somehow tied into the future of the program, although no one was really telling her all they knew or what they suspected. Several of the Station personnel had heard a time traveler named Charles Doherty refer to DiNozzo as The Director. This had not been passed on to Tony, but there was private speculation (between Scully and Mulder) that Tony might have Napoleon’s job down the road, if something happened to Napoleon. Tony looked to be forty, and as Napoleon was currently thirty-six, it wasn’t that one would outlive the other. Whatever it was, this mysterious Charles Doherty from the future seemed in awe of Tony. And because Doherty had also said he was a fanboy of Mulder, Mulder seemed to appreciate the man’s clear intelligence.
Doherty was on the Wall of Stickers, connected to Tony, Napoleon, and Mulder.
“Helena instructed me to bring some lunch for you all, even if you’re not interested,” Scully said, setting down the tray in the quickly vacated area of the conference table the six men weren’t using. Skinner acknowledged her with a brief nod, reaching for a sandwich, then returning to his perch, waiting for someone to come back to the call he was on hold for.
Of the men in the room, Scully had known Skinner the longest, as he had been their supervisor when she and her partner Fox Mulder were agents in the FBI’s X-Files section. Skinner—introduced this morning as the Government Liaison for both “sides of the floor” and still had the same powerful, in-shape build he’d had back then. Then again, so did they, Scully thought. Both Mulder and Scully had left the FBI years ago, although they had returned as teachers at Quantico for the past few years. Mulder taught various Behavior Science classes such as Profiling, while she usually taught the ‘Management of Death. They taught every other term, spending their off-time hiking and visiting remote locations that usually had something to do with Mulder’s passion for the paranormal. As of two days ago, they were part of ‘The Station’, Scully with sciences and Mulder being able to indulge his research with the Reticuli, aliens who had visited the planet on multiple occasions. Mulder had just finished introducing the new recruits to the very real alien encounters he and others had witnessed.
“Bodie?” she asked, setting a cup of tea before Guy “Bodie” Germond. “Can you eat something?”
Bodie shook his head at the food but smiled at her weakly when he acknowledged the tea. Bodie’s partner Doyle, his hair a mass of silver curls, appeared to be sleeping, his head pillowed on his arms on the table. The two were former partnered agents with Criminal Intelligence 5 (CI5) a top British crime-fighting group under the Home Secretary, dealing with terrorists, anarchists, gun runners, and prostitution and drug organizations. That group had long been absorbed by another group, which in turn was absorbed by another group until it could no longer be traced. The two men had once been accustomed to dealing with unspeakable violence, Ducky had told her, as he had known them back then. Bodie and Doyle had forged a lifelong commitment to each other, an unbreakable friendship for over thirty years after they’d left the service. Doyle had unrooted himself from St Ives and arrived on a flight from England the afternoon before simply because Bodie had asked him to, and with all the commotions of the day, the man was wrung out. Bodie’s hand rested quietly on Doyle’s back, his other hand over his own eyes. Two cellphones—Bodie’s and Doyle’s—sat to one side on the table. Waiting.
The crisis situation these six men were waiting on had started during the introductions to the Station staff two hours earlier, when Guy “Bodie” Germond had left to take an urgent phone call. Guy Germond was a recently retired, ultra successful diamond merchant married to Avril Germond, a woman with wealth of her own, who was also the head of spy agency Napoleon and Illya were once a part of—UNCLE—which had become the EHH. The ex-CI5 agents were in their early sixties; Bodie was just under six feet and Doyle two inches shorter. Both men were in shape and she could imagine them in their younger days, decked out in late 1970s, early 1980s garb and hairstyles.
More threads on the Wall of Stickers. Scully and Mulder had tried to sketch out how all these people at the Station were related, what their ties were. Avril Germond, for example, had known Napoleon and Illya back in the late 1960s when they all worked for UNCLE. She’d been known as April Dancer back then. Alvin Kersh, the former deputy director of the FBI had worked for UNCLE as a young man, on Napoleon’s team. Skinner, Mulder, and Scully had all worked under Kersh at the FBI, as had Napoleon Solo while he was in Washington, DC, for over a year in 2002-2003.
Avril Germond was one of four people including Skinner and Alvin Kersh who had waited through the years and purchased the building they were now in and set up this Station. It was Avril’s money and influence, Skinner’s government ties, and Kersh’s legitimate business that allowed them to hide in public sight.
Ducky—Dr Mallard—seemed to have connections with everyone. He was the Medical Examiner for NCIS, but he’d also known Bodie and Doyle thirty years earlier when he was a doctor in London brought in to help Doyle back to health after a vicious attack. And he had some connection with Illya Kuryakin. Tony was of the not-so-private conviction that the two were actual half-brothers.
Scully sat down at the table next to the sleeping Doyle inviting herself to join the group. The all-male group, but she was used to that. The six men were also intriguingly handsome—she wasn’t blind, after all. But...
“Have you heard from your wife?” she asked Bodie. Avril was being held hostage by her godson Alberto Terrano as a means to get into the Summit Napoleon had planned for everyone the next day. But Terrano had just figured out that Avril alone wasn’t going to get him into the Summit, where he wanted an equal seat at the table, believing his hidden TimeShifter could be traded in for leverage. Avril had found a way to notify Bodie that his daughter—their 28-year-old daughter Geneviève—had just been kidnapped by Terrano when her private plane had landed at the Washington, DC, airport. Terrano was threatening to kill Genny if they didn’t agree to his demands.
Scully and Mulder had faced their own violence during their years at the FBI in the X-Files. And even since leaving eleven years before, their lives had been repeatedly victimized and hunted down by a man they had learned was part of the Reisenden. Voster.
Tony stood, pulling on his heavy jacket and checking his weapon, even as he put a ham sandwich in jacket pocket. He was talking on the phone, a map flat on the table in front of him, and checking a few details with Walter Skinner and Bodie, on the small airport in Washington, DC, where Bodie’s daughter had been taken from. Tony was becoming impatient with the answers from the airport police on the other line. He barked out a complaint and name-dropped someone that was getting him put higher up the food chain at the airport.
The sixth man was James Ellison, and he was nodding to himself, appearing to be listening to conversations on Tony’s telephone, jotting notes. He stood suddenly, standing next to Tony, and shrugging into a heavy coat. Scully really didn’t know much about Ellison, other than he was a former Cascade, Washington, police detective who now worked for... well, she wasn’t sure who he worked for, just as she wasn’t sure who Walter Skinner ultimately worked for. Department of Defense, or something called the Department of HomeWorld security, or someplace called Stargate Command. Or likely all three. Somehow, whatever it is that Ellison brought to the table, and Scully wasn’t sure... some secret power, it seemed, to tell humans from aliens, and maybe tell who was Reisenden or who was a time traveler. Scully was also not unaware of the man being a tall, 6’2”, handsome 51-year-old, which Scully, at almost-50, was not blind to. She was married, not blind, she told herself again. But perhaps now was not the time to indulge in enjoying the male physique.
Jim Ellison was new to her today, but Walter knew him... and she thought Tony knew him, too. More threads on the Wall of Stickers.
But there was blowup when they went to leave and Bodie wanted to accompany them, and Doyle waking abruptly as an extension of his former partner, agreed. “My daughter,” Bodie said tightly. “I need to be there. We need to be there.”
“You need to be here,” Walter Skinner said firmly. “We need to find out where Alberto Terrano is.”
“We know where he is. We were there last night,” Bodie said angrily, his voice only dropping when Doyle touched his arm in quiet restraint.
“Let Ellison and me look at the airport and then decide,” Tony said, and his voice somehow calmed the room. “If going to Terrano’s place is where we need to go, we will, and I think I know how we can do it.”
Scully found this new Tony different. She’d only really seen the sometimes-bizarre, gravely ill man at the House, and this was a fully revived, healthy man whom she’d heard from Ducky was known to think outside the box and perhaps was tapping into something different. That a personal medical suit was provided for him from the future pointed to something going on. Tony had stepped away with his cellphone to someone and she realized it was Gibbs; for some reason he was keeping his NCIS boss—who clearly didn’t want anything to do with the Station—appraised of his actions, telling him he was going to the small airport with Ellison “remember him? The guy from before?”, as Bodie’s daughter had been kidnapped and he was checking it out. Tony listened, nodding, then snorted at something the other man said, and with a “happy new year, Boss,” hung up.
Bodie made a call then, speaking fluent French, which didn’t surprise her as his name was French—Guy Germond—and Ducky had told her he also spoke Italian and was semi-fluent in several other languages.
Connections. They were all connected somehow.
This whole group, this whole damn building was confusing. And, when she sat for a moment and looked from one to another, she remembered again that everything going on was actually quite frightening. She wasn’t sure what she could offer the group.
“I’m going with you,” Scully said suddenly, standing. “No arguments. You need a third person.” With that, she turned to go get her coat. And her gun. She had about two minutes to also decide what she was going to tell Mulder, or maybe just call him from the car.
BODIE
Half an hour later, Bodie could feel his leg restlessly vibrating with such intensity that Doyle’s hand went out to steady him. If anything happens to Genny... He took some calming breaths aware of Doyle’s quiet murmur telling him to cool it. He tried to will his cellphone to ring, but it sat silent on the table.
Doyle was his lifeline. Partners once, and still, thirty years later, they were closer than brothers, their personal partnership never broken. They’d certainly survived their obstacles. When Doyle had left CI5 after a horrific case, he’d fled to St Ives, a shadow of who he was, broken and fearful. Bodie had tracked him down, made sure he was recuperated physically, then respected his need to recover on his own and Bodie had let him be to paint his watercolors: harbor, sky and clouds. Doyle had needed to be on his own, to stand on his own, and if he couldn’t, he knew who to call—and Bodie only left him when Doyle had promised to call. One of the hardest decisions he’d ever made.
Bodie had returned to CI5, ended up in France on assignment. He’d used the name Guillame Germond (Guillame, French for William, and shortened usually to Guy, and Germond was a hashing of George and Raymond). He ended up leaving CI5 ten months after his partner had, off his game without Doyle at his side. He’d married Shari, a wealthy French woman he’d gotten pregnant while on assignment, and they had a daughter, Geneviève. He used his stash of diamonds from his mercenary days to start a business, and when his wife died in a car accident, Doyle appeared in France to help him with the year-old Genny. They were an odd little family for a few years, Doyle looking after the child while Bodie built up his diamond business, and when Genny was old enough for school, Doyle returned to St Ives, and Bodie moved to Geneva where he met Avril. Genny had grown up with a father she truly loved, a stepmother who she treasured, and her Oncle Ray-Ray who she totally adored. Doyle came to visit several times a year, and they visited him several times a year, Avril and Genny sometimes visiting Doyle alone if Bodie couldn’t.
Bodie could never, ever find the words to say what Ray Doyle meant to him. Fortunately, he didn’t need to; the important people in his life already knew. They had an unusual relationship perhaps, but it came from a place of healing from unspeakable pain, a place of love finding them a way forward.
Doyle looked over at him now. “Bodie?” he asked worriedly. “You in control?”
He shook his head. “No.” He swore then, rubbing at his forehead and a pounding headache. “How many young daughters did we encounter over the years at CI5, held hostage, one group or another using them to pressure fathers into doing what they wanted.”
“Too many,” Doyle whispered, his hand still below the table on Bodie’s leg. “But... they all lived, sunshine. We saved every one of them.”
Bodie placed his hand over Doyle’s acknowledging what his partner was trying to do, and then looked up sharply at Skinner who was coming off a phone call.
“Damned storm,” Walter Skinner said, dropping down to a chair across from them at the conference table. “Where did Ducky go?”
Bodie looked over at the empty chair. “I don’t know. He left when Dana left.”
“Eat something,” Skinner said, standing. He put a sandwich in front of each of them. “I’m going to put the rest of these in the fridge and check in on the session this afternoon. Rico is talking about the Reisenden. You should go to that; it’s important information. I’ll let you know if we hear anything.”
Ray was shaking his head, but Bodie stood, drawing him up with him. “We’ll monitor it from the back of the room,” he said to Skinner. “If we don’t get Genny back today, I need to know what’s happening tomorrow at the Summit, and so does Doyle.” He picked up the sandwich, sighed, and unwrapped it. “Come on,” he said to his partner, handing Doyle a cheese sandwich. “Time to stop being the victims here, and start being warriors. And we need more intel on what’s going on.”
He was aware of Doyle silently following him from Skinner’s office. Alone in the corridor, he paused, tilted his partner’s face up, and the two shared a look that shifted from desperate to confident. He smiled and ruffled the thick curls as he had done countless times through the years. "Whatever happens...”
“We’ll get through it,” Doyle finished. And then suddenly it was there on his partner’s face. Doyle’s smile back.
DINOZZO
Tony DiNozzo glanced over at the man sitting silently next to him as he pulled his NCIS sedan out of the underground parking garage below the Station and down K Street NW. The road had been plowed again, as the light snow kept building up. He probably should have used his own car, but truth be told, his car was in the shop, and he hadn’t been able to go retrieve it yet after the snowstorm. And because of almost dying. Probably mostly the later.
Tony turned onto 14th Street NW and headed towards the Reagan Airport. He and Ellison had hardly said two words to each other while sitting around the table in Walter Skinner’s office, and Tony’s attention then had been elsewhere, much of that time trying to get clearance to go into Reagan Airport and speak with the chartered plane’s pilot and staff before they disappeared. Speaking to Gibbs had helped with that, barely. If it wasn’t for the fact it was young woman who’d been kidnapped, his NCIS boss wouldn’t have budged. As it was, Gibbs—via the Sec Nav—had agreed to arrange for the chartered flight’s staff to be detained.
“So... Jim Ellison...” Tony started. “I remember you. From a long time ago, before I was in NCIS.”
Ellison nodded briefly, looking out the side window. But it wasn’t a firm ‘yes’ or ‘no’, more of a ‘you are apparently talking’.
In the backseat, Dana Scully made a low laugh and Tony glanced at her in the rearview mirror, and smiled, then turned his attention back to Ellison. “Still at 400 Madison in Alexandria?” Tony asked. He’d lived at that location for six months a long, long time ago, and a lot of stuff had happened... including being hit on the head and being in the hospital, but he was sure he had seen this man before. Way back then. Ellison and... somebody else... had moved into the condo above his, and it had been just right at the time when all the weird stuff had happened. “Let’s see... thirteen years ago.”
Ellison didn’t look at him but did respond with a curt, “No.”
Okay, Tony thought, stopping at a light. “No, you never lived there, or no, you don’t live there now. You lived there, though? Right? Above me?” A quick glance, and he caught a muscle in Ellison’s jaw twitch, then clench.
“Did you write down what type of an aircraft she was using?” Ellison asked after a moment.
Tony schooled a smile from his face. I’ll figure this out. You aren’t getting away with no answer. “Yes, Gibbs got it for me. Remember him?”
“Hard to forget Gibbs,” Scully said from the backseat. “Those eyes.”
The smirk escaped Tony’s control.
continued