Trojan Horse (NCIS)

Infobox Television episode
Title =Trojan Horse
Colour =
Series = NCIS
Season = 4
Episode = 23


Airdate = May 8, 2007
Production = 4x23
Writer = David North
Director = Thomas J. Wright
Guests = Scottie Thompson as Jeanne Benoit Armand Assante as La Grenouille David Dayan Fisher as Trent Kort
Episode list = Episode chronology
Prev = In the Dark
Next = Angel of Death

"Trojan Horse " is the 93^rd episode of the drama television series "NCIS". This is the first episode to give any sort of hints as to the nature of Director Shepard's connection with La Grenouille.

Plot

Gibbs is made acting-director of NCIS while Jenny is attending an Interpol-conference in Paris but he is fed up with all the paperwork and is glad to hear about a new case: A dead man has been found in a cab outside the Naval Yard. According to the driver, he was on his way to NCIS and he did not realize he was dead until the Marines tried to check his ID. Gibbs returns to lead this case and does not care that Cynthia is constantly reminding him about the work he has to do.

Ducky examines the body but is not able to find any reason for its demise and thus Abby has to run its blood through her equipment which does take some time. In the meantime, the team finds out the dead man's identity, proving him to be a gardener at an embassy and who only holds a tourist visa, albeit for an indefinite period. The attaché of the embassy reveals that he in fact was not a gardener but a student who was just given the job to be able to stay in the country and study. Being reminded of an old case, Gibbs thinks that the dead man might be involved in some kind of terrorist activity.

While the team investigates and follows up on clues about people whose names are on a list found on the dead man in the taxi, Abby rechecks evidence on an older case which is soon to go to trial. The lawyers of an accused murderer claimed that Abby's ballistic tests might have been flawed and, as Abby does not want to be proven wrong, she double-checks on the tests. Meanwhile in the basement where evidence is stored, a man sneaks out from within a hollow front seat in the taxi. The man breaks into the evidence locker area to switch the weapon involved in the aforementioned case, so that the test will indeed show that Abby's test was wrong. When she goes down to the basement to retrieve the weapon to retest it, she finds a bit of foam on the floor inside the evidence locker. Puzzled, she picks it up and takes it to her lab to test it as well, only to prove it to be identical to the foam found in the taxi, but by the time she gets the test results processed, the cabbie is already is on his way out of the Navy yard compound. Gibbs, independent from Abby, has already figured out that the list of names was a decoy to distract the agents' attention. When Abby reports to Gibbs about the foam, he alerts the sentries at the main gate of the Navy Yard and they stop the cab at the gate and arrest both men. The cabbie offends Ziva by comparing her to his wife and his mother-in-law. Ziva asks Gibbs for permission to shoot the cabbie, for whom she had previously felt sympathy when she thought him an innocent bystander.

In the side story line, Jenny, in France, meets with Trent Kort, the CIA man in La Grenouille's organization, who tells her about a Russian general who might help her. The general, in hospital dying from lung cancer, tells her about her father, that both he and the general had fraudulently signed weapons inspection certificates to allow La Grenouille to do illegal arms trading, and can ask her father to confirm it. Jenny calls the accusation a lie, and says her father died 12 years ago. The general says her father is quite alive and had visited him 3 weeks ago. Jenny is shocked at the accusation and at the news that her father is alive.

The episode ends with "To be continued in two weeks".

Trivia

Hector, Shepard's car driver in Europe, is reference to the hero of Homer's The Iliad of the same name.

Quotes

*Trent Kort: After Pulp Fiction, Guns aimed at me in a car makes me nervous. (This is a reference to the scene in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction movie where Vincent Vega has a gun aimed at Marvin, while Samuel L. Jackson allegedly drives over a speed bump causing Vincent's gun to go off, shooting Marvin in the head spreading the remains of his head across the rear window of the car. (This is the third time NCIS has referenced to "Pulp Fiction".)