Cristal(25)

Harry grabbed her by the arm. “No, you’re not going anywhere.”

She froze, unsure of what to do. Harry Doubt wasn’t a touchy feely kind of guy. For all the years she knew him, she never witnessed him even pat a guy on the back before.

“You can’t stop her from going, Harry,” Kerim said. His words were respectful but firm.

Harry didn’t move, but his hand squeezed her arm tighter. “When I asked you to be a Truth Seeker,” Harry said, “I never promised to tell you everything. You knew that and you accepted the invitation. I’m not going to apologize for not telling you about my mother. I didn’t tell anyone about her.”

His jawline was tense and she felt like his words were coming at her like sharp knives.

She tugged at her arm, trying to remove it from his tight grip. “I don’t want to play your game anymore, Mr. Doubt,” she said. Her words revealed the bitterness she felt in her soul.

Harry stepped closer to her. His gaze was magnetic. His eyes were a deeper blue than she had ever recalled seeing before.

“It’s not about me, or you, or any of us. And you know it. Your dad still communicates with you. You told me that yourself.”

Her eyes widened. She glanced over to see Kerim’s dark frown. Turning back, she could feel her heart pounding wildly against her chest wall.

“What does that have to do with anything?” she cried. The shrill tone in her voice could have broken glass. She looked over her shoulder to see Dr. Saeed standing with them.

“It has a lot to do with everything,” Dr. Saeed said. “Your dad and all your friends’ missing loved ones are trying to communicate. We need your help to find out what your dad and the others are trying to say.”





Part Two


Nothing is What It Seems





A beacon bright in the blackness,

Fragile sanity within all this madness.

They fill her dish with love and

Broken promises.



AR Vasquez





Chapter 14


Land of Milk and Honey


THE SUN WAS POURING into the musty hotel room. Cristal walked over and closed the shutters, which were made out of flimsy aluminum, the white paint peeling on the edges. They made little difference blocking out the blistering heat or the sounds of car horns blaring and the chatter from the street below. She had arrived in Tel Aviv ten days earlier, but she still could not adjust to the climate or the culture.

The days were blurred with meetings at the GN office in Haifa in the day and mission meetings with Harry, Dr. Saeed, Gabriel, Kerim, and Rinaldo at night. After the earthquake one week earlier, many GN computer networks had a melt down. Harry used the opportunity to get a temporary transfer for Cristal and himself to the GN Haifa office citing that the data that she had recovered all point to Israel being the location where their missing family were being held. Dr. Saeed must have made arrangements, too, because he arrived a few days after they did.

She could have pretended that she was vacationing, if she wasn’t staying in a shabby two-star hotel where the only good feature was that it was close to the Bograshov Beach and restaurants. Global Nation proudly stated at their regular all-staff meetings that they did not misuse their donors’ funds for unnecessary travel expenses. Of course, that same rule didn’t seem to apply to senior management. She recalled how her senior manager, George Beaver once bragged that when he went with Lionheart to a convention in Brazil, they had stayed at a “Five Star All-Inclusive Resort.”

Her room was on the fourth floor and was modestly furnished. It had a queen-sized bed with a mattress that had a huge depressive dent in the middle with wired springs that jabbed into her back when she slept. Two wooden chairs were positioned by the window that looked like they were held together with rubber bands. The other furniture included a wooden side table and a small twenty-four-inch old style Cathode ray tube television that sat on a metal bracket hung from the ceiling in the corner of the room.

Although she had a “non-smoking” room, she spent the first morning “airing out” the room to get rid of the cigarette smoke stench. And despite the fact there was an air conditioner, she preferred to keep it off, because instead of the box spewing out cold air, it filled the room with smelly dank air. To top it all off, the bathroom was so small that she could do her makeup, have a shower and sit on the toilet all at the same time.

She spent the first day by herself staring at the worn marble tiled floor and at the walls with their ugly strokes of lumpy plaster covered with salmon-colored paint.

Instead of staying at the same hotel, Harry had decided to camp out with his aunt who lived fifteen minutes away. He had told them that he needed to connect with his family in order to help them with their missions.