Directed by Alrick Riley
Written by David J North, Scott J Jarrett, Matthew R Jarrett, & Brendan Fahey
A discombobulated Torres wakes up in an abandoned fishing boat with no memory of the previous twelve hours. Meanwhile, Mallory and Clark start to wrap up their private investigation of Vance.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Borrowed Biometric Bypass: While Torres is under the drugs' influence, the responsible party photographs his irises and creates contact lenses with his iris patterns to get through eyeball readers.
- Good All Along: Clark turns out to have been investigating Vance and his team for the past six months for two legitimate reasons. The first one is since Vance was a captive of a foreign enemy and has an important position in the U.S. Government, the CIA needed to do the standard operating procedure to guarantee he didn't become a double agent during his time as a hostage. The second reason is that Clark had discovered that the U.S. Secretary of Defense Wynn Crawford possessed a quarter-billion-dollar slush fund, and he wanted to make sure Vance and Team Gibbs (who he all deeply respects) was trustworthy before he asked for their help in the investigation.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: The uncut diamonds were hidden at the bottom of the small shark tank.
- Out-Gambitted: Vance gifts Mallory with a ruby necklace. It turns out to be a recording device, which confirms Vance and Gibbs' suspisions the former was being spied on.Gibbs: [When he and Vance confront Clark and Mallory] Never spy on a spy.
- Slipping a Mickey: What happens to Torres via his protein shakes.
- Wham Episode: Vance and Gibbs figure out Clark's surveillance on the former. When the two men go confront him, it turns out that Clark was spying on Vance because he needed NCIS' help with investigating U.S. Secretary of Denfense Wynn Crawford's embezzlement slush fund; the surveillance was a way to check Vance's trustworthiness.
