The hospital; Ziva waits in the corridor; Tony is there too but he is not with her. Gibbs arrives and Tony justifies himself to Gibbs, who tells him to write it up. Ziva reports Rivkin is dead and she will be submitting an IA report.

McGee is talking to Gibbs on the way to the apartment and saying he can't believe he is going to see Ziva's new apartment; he tells Gibbs he has seen Tony rummaging in Ziva's desk. As they are talking about possible Mossad reprisals, on the way from the car, Ziva's apartment blows up.

It's a double crime scene now, and Gibbs and McGee are going through it McGee finds a hidden laptop, but it is fire-damaged. Gibbs finds cuts in the gas pipes, but no-one smelled gas; they find what might be the trigger.

Ziva is in autopsy, saying farewell to Rivkin. Ducky enters and asks about what Jewish rituals might be appropriate, but Ziva brushes it off. Rituals only work for those that need them.

Gibbs asks McGee for a retrospective trace on a cellphone, Ziva's....

Now Gibbs and Ziva have a conversation; Gibbs tells Ziva about her apartment; Ziva is defensive. In a fatherly way, Gibbs tells her that this is her home, but she denies it.

Vance is interviewing Tony; Tony says he wanted to talk to Ziva because he wanted to protect her (Rivkin being the bad guy, not Ziva the traitor.)

Gibbs is down in autopsy, where Ducky confirms Tony's view of events; both here and in the Vance-Tony interview, everyone is puzzled how Tony won. But then Gibbs come up; the autopsy shows that Rifkin was drunk; that's how he lost.

Vance tells Tony off for breach of procedure and says he has to take one for the team.

Ziva appears saying she has seen McGee's crime scene photos and realises the trigger for the bomb (which conceals the odour of gas) is a Mossad technique (though not exclusively so).

At this point Vance says he will grant the favour the Israelis have asked; to send the team for a visit to Israel.

In Israel, the team (Vance, Gibbs, Tony, Ziva only) is welcomed by Mossad Officer Hadar, who asks Tony to go with him; Ziva assures Gibbs Tony is in no danger; only two people have the authority to hurt him - her father and Ziva herself.

We see a cold greeting between Ziva and her father, and a wary one between her father and Gibbs; though Director David does say Ziva speaks of him, Gibbs, very highly.

Tony is waiting in the interrogation room, or, as Director David corrects him, a meeting room. Tony carries on with what Vance calls his smart-ass attitude; Gibbs says Tony knows what he is doing.

Director David tells Tony he knows all about him; then he asks about Rivkin; he suggests Tony was ignorant about Rivkin and had gone to Ziva's apartment to confront him because he was jealous of him.

Tony responds that Director David had a history of sending out of control agents, even his own son Ari; David is taken aback - I'll be damned, says Vance to Gibbs.

Gibbs speaks to Abby and McGee; they are optimistic they can get something out of Rivkin's laptop; and also Ziva did speak to Hadar (as Gibbs guesses) 6 hours before the blast in her apartment on an encrypted line

Cut immediately to Ziva with Hadar in a headlock asking him to talk and suggesting he completely went against her request to get Rivkin out safely. Hadar says Rivkin was "in chaos" (having killed an American agent) and Ziva did not tell her father. Hadar says Ziva called him too late and was herself responsible for Rivkin's death.

Ziva tells Gibbs Mossad set the fire and she feels betrayed by everyone except (so far) Gibbs.

Director David is now in conference with Vance; Vance resents Mossad's feeling that the US is too lax about domestic threats, he says they have to be patient and that is why one agent on each side is dead. After all, in this case Rivkin was following Mossad orders.

David says the mission is that Mossad is looking for a terrorist training camp in N Africa, and had sent Rivkin to the US to locate it through one of its offshoot sleeper cells in LA, for the intel but killing the cell along the way. Vance understands but David says not everyone in the US does and Rivkin was spying on the 'softer' side when he killed the US agent by accident.

Vance says the location of the camp was never found; David says it is about the head of the camp (presumably the hunt for him will occupy some of Season 7)

Now Ziva and Tony are arguing; Tony says he has no choice but Ziva is still angry. Tony suggests she might wish Rivkin were alive and he, Tony, dead. Ziva says Tony took advantage of Rivkin's drunk condition; Tony says Ziva's account is all wrong; Tony suggests Ziva hit him, and she does; we see she feels guilty she was not there in the apartment.

Back in NCIS McGee and Abby have resurrected the information on Rivkin's laptop. But it's not Rivkin's, it's Abin Tabal's, the dead handler of the sleeper cell. All the info about N Africa is there; Rivkin used the laptop for e-mail (seems as if he swapped it over with his own after killing the handler) but there is correspondence with Ziva, so she had been withholding information.

Now Ziva is confronting her father; she did not know Rivkin's mission- she asks why she was not told? And her father says that it is because he does not know whether he can trust her any more or whether her loyalties are actually to NCIS. If she wants to show her loyalty, let her perform her Aliyah by completing Rivkin's mission.

The team is getting on the plane back; Tony is jolly, pleased to be going. Vance gives Director David the information off the laptop, and David sends thanks to Abby.

Now Ziva speaks to Gibbs; she says she is speaking from the heart (which is not of course the case, we know from the previous scene.) She says she is still not sure Tony is telling the truth and she thinks one of them should be transferred as they cannot work together. Of course she thereby makes Gibbs choose Tony. Gibbs kisses Ziva on the cheek in parting and wishes her well. One short? Tony asks; he does not seem entirely surprised. Ziva is left misty-eyed on the tarmac.

Abby gives the team a comically happy welcome; the mood of course plummets when Tony explains Ziva is not coming back, and that it was Gibbs' decision.

In the next scene, we see Ducky visiting Gibbs in Gibbs' house. Gibbs explains it wasn't his decision, it was Ziva's own. Ducky can see there is a special bond between Ziva and Gibbs and that it happened much more quickly than with any other agent. Of course we see a flashback to Ziva killing Ari in Gibbs' basement. And of course Gibbs denies the bond, saying that Ziva had proved herself; whatever she did, says Ducky, it wasn't so significant.... or was it?

A freighter; soldiers, Ziva in combat gear pasting the photo of herself and Ari, saved from the fire, on the wall; her father's office with the same photo framed. Gibbs telling Vance that there are good replacements, but Vance knows he hopes Ziva is coming back. The way Gibbs puts this is to say he hopes Ziva will think about it and realise who she can trust.

The conversation between Gibbs and Vance gets more heated; Vance says he feels Gibbs is always watching him, but counters that Gibbs has no idea what he is trying to discover or why he does not trust him.

Vance says Gibbs made the right decision to leave Ziva behind; at this point Gibbs is about to reveal what happened 4 years ago when Ziva killed her brother. But Vance forestalls him, in a twist that is so typical of spy stories; it was all a "plot" by Director David. Because Ari was out of control, David sent Ziva on a mission to kill him. In this sense, he played Gibbs, says Vance; Director David managed to get rid of Ari and get Gibbs to trust Ziva in one move. But Vance admits, so far Ziva has been loyal to NCIS.

Vance argues that if Gibbs is right about Ziva, she will remember and serve NCIS well in Israel; Gibbs counters that if Vance is right about Director David, we won't ever see her again. Tony is trying to call Ziva, and not succeeding - Guess she'll call when she's ready, he says.We kind of know, don't we, that the Ziva we are used to will reappear in Series / Season 7? But meanwhile.....

Last scene- subtitled Somalia, Horn of Africa. Guerrillas and a prison cell; Ziva is sitting in a chair and she has been beaten up and tortured. A soldier enters, plucks the Star of David off her neck and says: 'Tell me everything you know about NCIS.' I guess this could be a major antagonist for Season 7.