Doubt (2 page)

FOR YEARS, BINA AND AARON
tried to have a baby—honestly, it was she who wanted it more than he did. When Bina couldn’t conceive, she sought help from the best Israeli fertility specialists. When Aaron took the job at Global Nation (GN) University in New York City and uprooted them from their home in Tel Aviv, she hoped the change would help.

Her prayers were answered twelve months later when Harrell Doub was born.
He was perfect. From his wavy brown hair, to his ice blue eyes, and his chubby fingers and toes. Unfortunately, Aaron never cared much about the baby. He let Bina do all the parenting.

“
Harry, you were born to do something memorable,” she often said to him. “You were meant to do great things.”

* * *

After the death of her husband, the strange dreams began. Many nights, Bina woke from her sleep with the dreams still clinging onto her like the cobwebs that sprawled across the doorway of their garden shed. She started documenting all the details in her journal that she could remember. She kept the private journal locked in her nightstand, safely hidden away.

Now that Aaron was gone
, Harry was taking care of the household—buying groceries, preparing and cooking meals, and paying the bills. The inheritance money Aaron left for them was substantial…enough to bring out all her long lost in-laws out of the woodwork. Aaron’s brothers and sisters travelled all the way from Tel Aviv and brought their high profile lawyers to claim their share of the inheritance, which left Bina almost penniless.

***

Four years later, Harry was feeling optimistic about the future.  He was in his room at his desk, staring at his laptop, re-reading an email that was open on his screen.  He had read it so many times that he knew it by heart.

Dear Harry
,

Although you will
be receiving the official documents from our legal department, I wanted to write to you personally to say that it was a pleasure meeting you. We at Google Inc. are delighted to acquire the rights to your Truth Seekers online game. The legal documents and bank draft have been sent to your home address.

Please
reconsider the job offer as we could use someone like you on our team. Feel free to swing by Google Inc. headquarters the next time you are in California.

Sergey Brin
Co-founder, Google Inc.

Harry smiled as he picked up the courier box from his desk. His mother stuck her head in the doorway of his room.

“
Dinner is ready, Harry,” she said. She watched him as he opened the box. “Is that what you’ve been waiting for all day today?”

“
Yes, Mom,” he said. “It’s finally here.”

He
ripped open the box and pulled out a thin binder of documents. He reached in again and pulled out an envelope.

“
You never told me how much money you sold the Truth Seekers game for. Like I always say, ‘a mother understands what a child does not say.’ You know you created that game when you were only eight years old. I hope you didn’t just give it away to those Google schmucks,” she said as she walked up to him.

She frowned,
placing her hands on her hips. Harry stifled a chuckle. What could he say? She was just being who she was—an overprotective mother.

Harry
tore open the envelope and pulled out the bank draft; the smile on his face stretched wider.

“
Harry, did you hear what I said?” Bina asked, raising an eyebrow, her patience coming to an end.

He
waved the bank draft in her face. Bina squinted her eyes to read what was on it.

“
Is this a joke, Harrell?”

S
he often referred to his legal birth name when she wanted a serious answer from him.

“
No joke, Mom,” Harry said. He leaped up, grabbed her around the waist and gave her a big hug. “Our money worries are over!”

She nodded her head
in support but the frown remained on her face.

“
But Harry, this Truth Seekers’ game is your baby. How could you sell it for that
pitsvinik
? It’s not enough!”

Here we go again.

“Mom, are you kidding me? That’s a ten-digit figure. What do you mean it’s not enough?”

She took a deep breath and said,
“So my brilliant son thinks ten digits is enough. Why not twenty digits? Thirty? Your game is your life. You know this is true!”

Harry put his arms around his mother
’s waist, planting kisses on her cheeks. She pretended to push him away, but he knew she enjoyed the attention he was giving her.

“
Stop it, Harry. That’s enough.”

He stepped back and shrugged
, hiding his smile from her.

“
Okay, if you say so.”

“
Oh? You stop so easy? Harrell, don’t you love your mother?”

Her eyes were wide with surprise.

Harry laughed and gave her an enormous bear hug.

“
Don’t worry, Mom. Google didn’t buy the rights to the Truth Seekers’ name. I already made a better Truth Seekers game and brought it underground. It’s hosted on multiple private servers. I call it the ‘interranet.’”

Bina
gave him a warm smile and pinched Harry on the cheek.

“
Ah, my wonderful boy. Your father would have been so proud.”

Harry rolled his eyes
, and said, “Yeah, whatever, Mom.” He bent over and gave her another kiss on the cheek. “Please don’t ruin my mood by bringing up Dad again, okay?”

She pressed
her lips together, holding back what she was going to say.

“
Mom, I’m starving. Something smells real good in the kitchen.”

Bina raised her hand
.

“
Wait, Harry. I wanted to tell you this at dinner, but it is better if I tell you now.”

“
Okay,” he said. “What is it?”

“
I decided I am going to Global Nation in Tel Aviv. I want to be a peacekeeper in Gaza while the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority are happening,” Bina said.

Harry
’s eyes widened.

“
Are you crazy, Mom? Why do you want to go there? You and Dad came here to New York to get away from all the politics and now you want to go back?”

“
I have to go, Harry. I need a purpose in life,” she said, as her voice broke.

He
looked at her for a long time, his anger diminishing.

“
Are you sure you can take care of yourself, Mom?” he asked.

She smiled.

“
I took care of you and your father.
Makhshava me tumtemet le-gamrei
. What a stupid question.”

***

Two months later, Harry received a phone call.

“
Mr. Doub, you are listed as the emergency contact for Bina Schwartz. We regret to inform you that Ms. Schwartz did not report to work two days ago at our Gaza office. We are doing our best to locate her and are working closely with Israeli officials to find her.”

Harry decided that his mission was to find his missing mother even if it meant that he had to infiltrate Global Nation from the inside to do it.

A NEW STATUS ALERT BOX popped up on the bottom corner of his computer screen displaying a familiar avatar—a dark shadow of mist in the silhouette of a woman standing tall, hands on her hips with her long hair blowing wildly over one shoulder like black flames.
Cristal.

Harry
made sure that the closest members of his team contacted him via the private Truth Seekers’ game messaging system, which he simply called TSVC or Truth Seekers’ video chat. He had overridden the personnel spy software, which the president of GN, Shelley Lionheart, had ordered his team to install on all GN desktops and laptops. Even though he was confident that no one could hack into his system, he made sure that everyone messaged each other using alias names and coded phrases.

Mist:
Received the latest mission you sent. Not sure why we need Shadow to be involved. His programming skills suck.

Harry smiled as he typed his reply.

Zero:
Your comment is noted. Bring Onyx with you to location.

Mist:
You chose her as a recruit without my input. So you take care of her yourself.

Harry started to type a response but paused. He could have easily walked five c
ubicles down to talk to Cristal in person, instead of texting her via her online alias
Mist
. Her recent snide remarks about his latest recruits, Kerim and Joanna, were becoming difficult to ignore.

Harry had warned
Cristal that upcoming missions would become more dangerous. His warnings, however, seemed to fall on deaf ears. He feared that her cockiness would get her in trouble. So without her knowledge, he had hired former Turkish Army Intelligence Kerim Ilgaz, giving him the alias name
Shadow
, and assigning him as Cristal’s bodyguard. If she ever found out the real reason behind Kerim’s role in the Truth Seekers, she probably would never speak to Harry again.

As for
Joanna, alias
Onyx
, he couldn’t understand what was Cristal’s gripe with her. Although Joanna was a damn good programmer and gamer, having one of the highest scores in the Truth Seekers’ game, she lacked the ability to see the big picture—a talent and skill that he found only in Cristal. He never admitted this to Cristal convincing himself that it was a conflict of interest. After all he was the head of the Truth Seekers and also technically her boss at GN.

He had to admit
though that Cristal was the only one who could see through him, past his boyish good looks and bravado. His choice of communication was text messaging so he could avoid looking into those kohl brown eyes with flecks of gold, like lasers that could detect his deepest and darkest fears. They were good friends and he wanted their relationship to stay that way.

Mist
: I’ll meet you after work to discuss this further.

***

Cristal was standing outside
the building waiting for him. He saw her through the glass doors when a gust of wind blew her long chestnut hair away from her oval face revealing her dainty nose and lips like pink rose petals. Her taupe silk dress hugged her curves.

I have never been so jealous of silk before
, he thought to himself.

When Harry invited Cristal to join the Truth Seekers, she gave up her scholarship at MIT and transferred to G
lobal Nation University. Both of them had been fifteen years old and the youngest students in GN’s history to attend the university. Now at twenty-two, they still felt out of place being the youngest staff working at Global Nation.

“Coffee shop is too busy and we really need to focus,” he said.

“
Okay, so where do you want to go?”

Cristal
looked briefly at her watch.

“
Thought we could go to my place,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady.

She raised an eyebrow
but then grinned, and said, “Yeah, sure. I’ll be the first Truth Seeker to get to see Zero Doubt’s new crib.”

He laughed.

“Just don’t post that on the website, okay?”

“
Too late, I already tweeted everyone, posted it on Facebook, and all the gaming blogs,” she said with her usual snappy retort.

A group of GN staff exited from the building
and walked past them, chatting amongst themselves.

Cristal grabbed his arm and said,
“Let’s go.”

She pulled him
towards the bus loop.

“
Afraid to bump into Joanna? You really have something against her, don’t you?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes.

“Come on, Harry. Can we please
not
open that topic again? I have better things to think about right now. Like, why you want me to hack into Shelley Lionheart’s private folder on the GN cloud network?”

He
turned away from her and sighed.

“
You know, I can’t tell you that. Your job is to complete your mission and not ask questions, right?”

“
Yes, Mr. Doubt,” she said, her sarcasm seeping between the words. “So sorry…I forgot that you’re all work and no play.”

Now it was his turn to roll his eyes.

Later that evening
,
Cristal and Harry were sitting at his dining table with their laptops set up in front of them. Cristal was busy scribbling notes on her pad of paper.

“
You have the best laptop money can buy and you’re writing on paper,” he said, shaking his head.

“
Writing with pen and paper helps me brainstorm.”

She frowned
as she concentrated on her scribbles.

All Harry
wanted to do was touch the strands of hair that fell seductively on her porcelain cheek. He watched as she snapped a barrette on the wavy locks against her face.

“
Geez, my hair is driving me nuts. One day, I’ll lose my patience and shave it all off,” she mumbled under her breath.

Harry stared at her in disbelief
.

“
You don’t mean that, right?”
Doesn’t she realize how beautiful her hair is?

She made a face and said,
“Long hair is just a pain to keep up. It would be much easier if I cropped it really short, like yours. Don’t you think?”

She put both her hands under her chin, gave him an innocent smile and blinked her eyes.

Not only was she
amazingly adorable, she had a great sense of humor. He chuckled to himself.

“
What’s so funny, Harry? You don’t think I’d do it?” she teased.

She punched him on the arm playfully.

He turned his eyes away from her.

“
Why do I care if you cut off your hair or not?” he said, shrugging his shoulder.

“
Oh, whatever, Harry. I can’t figure you out sometimes.”

From his peripheral view
, he could see her sulking in her cute way, her lips in a pout and her eyebrows furrowed together.

Global Nation was behind the disappearance of his mother Bina Schwartz. A
conglomerate non-profit organization with offices and universities all over the world, he had enough data to prove that GN hid behind its peace, educational and social activism initiatives to do experiments on innocent people. He needed more data to find out where his mother was and why GN kidnapped her.

Romance was not on his agenda. There were more pressing things at hand.

Focus on the mission,
he scolded himself. He didn’t have time to be distracted by anyone. Not even Cristal.

***

Eight months earlier, Harry had put his first mission into motion: landing a job at Global Nation’s head office. It was a simple plan and easy enough to pull off by himself. After all, getting his PhD before his twentieth birthday meant that all the biggest companies were lining up and offering him dream jobs with six-figure salaries.

It must have co
me as a surprise to them, when he applied for and accepted a low-paying job working as a middle manager at the GN central IT department.

“
Don’t you think you’re a little overqualified for this position? The pay isn’t even half of what Google was probably offering you,” George Beaver had asked him during his interview.

His first impression of
the Beav’ was that he looked like a potato-head Elf—his huge bald head balancing on top of his short, stocky body.

It was obvious that
Beaver didn’t understand most of the technical terminology he was reading from the interview questionnaire, mispronouncing terms such as
GUI interface
. In the IT world, it was pronounced “gooey” not “G.U.I.”
Ah yes, a Mr. Potato Head avatar suited Beaver. Maybe he’d add a beaver tail that smacked the ground too.

“
I never really had a real job before, so I think I have to earn my stripes like everybody else.”

Harry cleared his throat hoping that he had responded in a humble tone. He would bet his last dollar the Beav
’ had a Napoleon complex.

The answer must have satisfied
Beaver, because he smiled and wrote a few notes on the paper. Then he asked Harry a few more questions and finally he stood up.

“
Wait here a moment, Harry,” Beaver said, grabbing his papers.

“
No problem.”

Harry took a deep breath and fixed his tie as he waited.
A suit and tie guy, he definitely was not.

M
inutes later, the door opened and to Harry’s surprise, Shelley Lionheart entered the room. Stylish, in a manly way, she carried herself like an Amazon queen. She was someone who would stand out in a crowd. She was in her mid-forties, wearing a fitted matte black jacket and pantsuit; her raven black hair cut short close to her scalp; blue-black nail polish and lips painted with a dark burgundy color, which contrasted against her dark chocolate skin, and slanted cat-like eyes that seemed to glow like coal-hot embers. On top of all this, at six feet tall, 200 pounds of muscle, she was definitely not one to joke around with.

Quickly
, he stood up and stretched out his hand, ready to shake hers. The night before, he had repeatedly practiced in front of the full-length mirrors in his bedroom. A confident handshake is a good first impression, his mom had always told him.

Lionheart looked him square in the eye and squeezed the circulation from his hand.

Satisfied by his lack of response, she turned to Beaver. Beaver quickly pulled back the chair.

“
This is Shelley Lionheart, President of Global Nation and GN University,” Beaver stammered.

Harry waited to see if he would pull out a trumpet to herald her regal presence.

Lionheart sat down gracefully despite her size, almost as if she was floating into the seat.

Harry pulled back his hand
quickly and sat back down.

“
Nice to meet you, Ms. Lionheart,” he said, trying hard not to let his voice waver.

She folded her hands on the table and leaned slightly towards him.

“Let’s get to business. We have GN offices in every continent. We need someone like you to help set up the security firewall for our networks and database servers globally. We had, what we call, an incident at our GN charitable office in Manila, Philippines. Long story short: The web servers were compromised and we experienced breaches in security after the recent riots. The breach involved unauthorized access to personal data of a number of our very important charitable donors. As you can see, this is a delicate matter, which needs to be resolved immediately. Beaver will arrange for you to fly out tomorrow.”

She attempted t
o smile, but the expression on her face resembled someone who had just taken a bite into a bad burrito.

“
I haven’t been offered the job yet,” he said quietly.

“Don’t be cute. Or maybe I won’t offer you anything, Mr. Doubt.” The glimpse of a smile disappeared from her mouth, as she continued, “We both know this job was yours before you walked in the door. The interview was just a legal formality.
The job is yours. As you know, we are a non-profit charitable organization. And our GN universities are funded partly by the state with some funds coming from tuitions and fees. Of course, you already knew this, being the recipient of this generosity. We count on our generous donors to help run our charitable and educational operations. So, yes, it’s not a glamorous job and probably the pay won’t be as attractive as what the private sector can offer you, but at least you’ll get to travel. Or, perhaps, you can call it payback. Consider that a fringe benefit.”

Harry tried not to smirk
.