On Fire

by Thomas Anderson

The stillness is broken by a distant high pitched whine. It’s the no longer missing drone, and everyone in the car cranes to see it through the now opened windows of the car.

  “I see it!” shouts Kim. “It came over the top of the building.”

  Zak leans on Kim to get a look. The drone dithers and then passes over them, heading toward University Avenue.

  “Looks like we shook it,” says Gilly.

  “We’ll have to thank Bog,” says Kim.

  The group waits out the drone, Zak and Sophie trading places in the car. They leave the Four Seasons, heading down University Avenue to downtown Palo Alto on their way to the University and the house where Ethan lives. Relieved to have escaped their pursuers, Sophie starts asking questions of Kim and Zak.

  The college downtown is filled with casual eateries, gift shops, and inexpensive stores. University Avenue is a small two-way downtown street with parallel parking on the sides, along tree lined sidewalks that bump out at the corners. On the sidewalks are all manner of students and local residents, mostly young and upscale. The Christmas season is getting underway and the downtown crowds have grown larger. The street trees are adorned with Christmas lights that circle their trunks and climb branches with just turning leaves. The traffic is tame. Drivers stop in the middle of the block to give pedestrians a chance to run across the street.

  Kim has a frustrating time trying to explain to Sophie why she and Zak were chased out of China. Kim is certain that if Wang had happened to Sophie, Sophie would be the first person in line at the offices of the local gendarmerie to fully and faithfully report all details.

  “Hey, what was that?” asks Gilly.

  A familiar black SUV with darkly tinted windows has just passed them going the other way.

  Zak follows the vehicle as it goes on to the next corner, where it abruptly pulls a U-turn in the traffic.

  Gilly sees it in the rearview mirror.

  “I’ll be damned!”

  “What?” says Sophie plaintively, her attention drawn away from her conversation with Kim.

  “I think we have company. Again.” Gilly’s voice is dejected.

  Zak can’t help it. He looks at Kim.

  “Who are these guys?” he asks.

  “Hey, I know! Why don’t we stop and ask?” Kim replies, equally annoyed.

  “This is getting ridiculous!” says Gilly.

  “Maybe we should call the police?” Sophie asks innocently.

  “With what? Did you put the battery back in your phone already?” asks Gilly.

  They reach the next corner and the light changes. On impulse, Gilly guns it, making a wild left turn the instant the traffic clears the intersection. They barrel through and Gilly keeps them going rapidly down the side street. After a block he comes up behind an SUV with a decal on the rear window showing figures of family members with first names scrawled beneath. Gilly slows down.

  “The SUV just made the corner,” Zak calls out, watching behind them.

  “Shoot! “ yells Gilly.

  They slow to a crawl behind the family style SUV. To their right is the City Hall, a conservative white office tower with mature landscaping, a plaza and a fountain. Gilly waits for the traffic coming the other way to pass, finds a break, and shoots into the oncoming lane to get around the slower vehicle. The chase SUV a block back is still coming on.

  “Where’s the other black car?” asks Sophie.

  “Taking a wee?” speculates Zak.

  “Where’s the drone?” asks Kim.

  “Out of gas?” Zak rejoins.

  City Hall has an entire block to itself. Gilly is driving past it as fast as he can, trying to elude the car that’s after them. He heads back to University Avenue and comes up to it just as a light is changing. Again, he is thinking of making the light and flying across, however late, but instead screeches the car to a halt as a woman with a tri-stroller walks into the pedestrian walk right in front of them.

  “How far back is he?”

  “Too far.”

  “Good.”

  “Where are all these people going?” asks Kim.

  “It’s the Film Festival,” Sophie volunteers.

  “Great, that’s all we need! More traffic and crowds! We’re never going to lose this guy,” Gilly grumbles.

  The conversation lags a beat and in that instant a thought occurs to Zak.

  “You’re right, Gilly. We can’t lose this guy, so why don’t we ditch the car! We can all split up, lose ourselves in the festival crowd and high tail it back to Ethan’s on our own? You can come back and get the car later when things have quieted down.”

  Gilly considers this and glances at Sophie.

  “Sounds good. You guys can split and I’ll stick with Sophie.”

  The parade of shoppers and festival goers finally dissipates in front of the car, the traffic light changes and Gilly drives the car across. They are locked into a line of traffic somewhere in the back of which waits their pursuer. Gilly quickly turns into an alley nearby, rockets down it, forcing pedestrians to quickstep or lose their feet and shopping bags. He finds a bank parking lot, swings in, drives through the rows of parked cars, and effectively hides them from the view of the street.

  Gilly turns the car off.

  “Guess this is sayonara. See you in a bit. Let’s go babe. Sorry about the car, hon, but I bet somebody can get us back here before it gets too late.”

  Sophie grabs her stuff.

  “And you have to fix my phone,” Sophie states plaintively.

  “Yeah, but first we have to get to Ethan’s and avoid this creep.”

  The doors slam as they all leave the car. Kim walks over to Gilly and turns up his collar for him. Then she does the same for Sophie. She grabs Sophie’s bag and looks into it, pulling out a scarf.

  “Here. Try this.” She wraps it around Sophie’s shoulders and then steps back to survey her work.

  “That should do nicely.”

  Gilly slaps Zak on the shoulder.

  “Later.”

  Sophie and Gilly head off arm in arm, disappearing into the shadows between the buildings that surround the parking lot. The sound of Sophie’s hard sole shoes clicking on the pavement recede quickly in the late afternoon air.

  Zak and Kim are left looking at each other.

  “You’re un-disguisable, you know that?” Kim finally offers.

  “You say the nicest things.”

  “You know how to get to Ethan’s from here?”

  “It’s through the festival. Watch for the black SUV but keep in mind that these guys could have gone to foot patrols just like us.”

  “How reassuring,” Kim remarks.

  Kim and Zak head the opposite way from Gilly and Sophie, around the block and back to the center of the downtown. They run into waves of pedestrians, but stay on the main drag, trying to blend in, checking the traffic but seeing nothing. The film festival is ahead and around the corner where a street has been blocked off.

  “I’m not seeing anything,” Kim says.

  “Neither am I. Not that I would recognize anybody. I’m figuring the SUV is parked by now and they’re surveying the street.”

  Kim is suddenly pulling on Zak’s windbreaker.

  “I see Sophie and Gilly. They’re crossing the street.”

  Zak looks and has to keep looking before he sees them. They are in the middle of the crowd. The scarf helps him find Sophie, then Gilly at her side.

  “How did they do that?” asks Zak.

  “How did they do what?”

  “How did they get ahead of us?”

  Kim just shakes her head.

  The crowd is slowing them down, so that by the time they reach the corner there have lost sight of Gilly and Sophie.

  Zak and Kim cross University to the festival. In the middle of the blocked off street is a red carpet with a backdrop made of theater flats. The flats are covered everywhere with the names of the different and varied corpo
rate sponsors to the festival, from credit card companies to makers of women’s cosmetics. A group of smiling young actors

  goofs around in front of the stagy backdrop, illuminated by a bank of professional looking lighting, having their pictures taken and being shouted at by people in the crowd. Cameras flash. The actors seem grateful for the attention. They respond playfully and put their arms around each other in a kind of mock solidarity for the benefit of the cameras and their public image. Lest anyone forget, someone to the side holds a big poster board with a colorful advertisement of the movie that all are a part of. There is a small crowd watching all this from behind a series of red ropes. Zak and Kim skirt around them.

  Doors are open in the next building and they can see arranged seating and a group attending a discussion with a number of presenters all seated at a lengthy table at the front. In a corner of the same room is another, smaller red carpet featuring a young actress being interviewed on camera.

  Zak and Kim walk past movie and food tents. Adjoining parking lots have been converted for the festival into an outdoor movie theater featuring a billboard size screen suspended in a lattice of steel beams at the rear of the lots. A large projector sits opposite the big screen, hoisted high on a scaffold near the sidewalk. Adjacent to the outdoor theater is a group of white tents where people can sign into the festival and get things like bottled water, first aide, or information such as that about festival events, contacting the press and festival management, or security.

  On the other side of the street a bandstand has been constructed where a popular local cover group entertains the crowd. Zak and Kim stand at the back underneath a large ash. In a hurry to escape their pursuers and get to Ethan’s house as quickly as they can, they are forced to a stop by the press of the people all around them.

  Zak is hemmed in. To push any further among the young people making up the crowd would be to single himself out. What Zak doesn’t notice, until it’s too late, is an athletic, strongly built man in dress short sleeves and slacks behind him. The man grabs Zak’s wrist. Zak turns to look him in the face and doesn’t recognize him.

  “I think it’s time you came with us,” the unknown man orders commandingly, pulling on Zak’s arm with a vice like grip.

  To Zak, the guy looks like a secret service fugitive because of his short haircut and the presence of a flesh toned earpiece. Definitely the guy is bigger, heavier, and stronger than Zak. Certainly the guy is much more intimidating. Never has Zak felt so much like just another college kid.

  “Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” shouts Kim. She grabs the guy’s arm, the one that is locked on Zak and has twisted Zak’s arm behind his back.

  Zak turns and sees another, similarly fit guy in dress short sleeves heading toward Kim just a short distance away. Kim’s shout has those nearby already turning to find out the cause of the disturbance. What they see is some kind of confrontation and it starts them moving away.

  Zak feels the guy’s grip suddenly loosen. This is when Zak realizes that the guy who is on Zak is being pulled away by yet someone else, someone who very quickly is placing secret service guy in a strong headlock. Taking control of the opportunity, Zak wrests himself free.

  “Come on!” Kim has pushed through and is running.

  Zak has only an instant to process that it’s Gilly who is pulling the big dude down to the ground. In what comes to him in a flash, he sees Sophie standing apart and a short distance away. The crowd is really reacting now, separating. Zak doesn’t hesitate, but takes off and follows Kim.

  Gilly uses his military training. However risky the headlock might be, it has given him the ability to ride the big man to the ground. Gilly sees Secret service man two approaching, so he lets go of the man on the ground. Festival staff are already heading his way from the direction of the administrative tents very nearby.

  “Hey! Stop this right now!” yells one of them, a much older man, far too out of shape to engage them physically, probably one of the faculty doyen.

  Gilly deftly jumps back. As much as he might like to fill in the professor yelling at him about what has just happened, he feels a greater sense of urgency to get Sophie away from all the kerfuffle. He knows he’s missing a chance to find out something about who these government types are. Gilly runs for Sophie and they take off between the buildings and down an alley.

  Kim and Zak are running through a neighborhood when Zak pulls out his phone to check their location on its mapping, only to have something occur to Kim about it.

  “Zak, they tracked us when you used your phone!” she says impatiently.

  Zak nods, a somewhat guilty expression on his face.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “Here,” he says, taking the battery out and giving it to her.

  “I’m an idiot.”

  Kim takes off running, way ahead of him before she turns back.

  “Come on!”

  Chapter 31