On Fire

by Thomas Anderson

Three am in Paris and Dai Gu has just stepped onto the concourse at Charles De Gaulle Airport. He wears a dark overcoat over a suit and tie, and trails a small bag on wheels behind him. He looks around annoyed to see people to the sides sleeping on cots, covered by blankets. What are all these people doing here he wonders?

  He quick steps it down the red carpet through the tubular concourse, noting that the café/bar has a lot of empty chairs and tables and is obviously closed at this time of night. Only a few gates have any people waiting at them. He follows the signs and goes to terminal two, then down a flight of stairs in a gleaming hall to the RER station. How nice it is that they have change machines so conveniently nearby! All he has to do is hit a vending like machine with a bunch of euro coins to get a ticket for the subway.

  The platform has only a few people standing around, joined by just a few more by the time the train shows up. The cars are practically empty. Dai Gu sits alone, astride an empty car he has to himself, and admires its uncluttered yellow interior and stainless steel appointments. But then Gu’s phone rings, startling him. It takes him a few seconds to dig it out of the inner pocket of his suit jacket.

  “This is Dai Gu.”

  “Zhao. Where are you?”

  “Paris. The train.”

  “The train? How could we be talking if you’re on a train?”

  “Well, it’s really the subway to Downtown.”

  “Even so. I don’t see how you could get a signal.”

  “The wonders of modern technology. What’s up? Why did you call?”

  Zhao Yiwei had rescued Gu at Chung Yao’s request. Now Gu suspects he is being checked up on, and he finds this intensely insulting.

  “Hey, I’m just seeing how you’re doing. Are you going to be alright with this? I mean, you are operating on your own.”

  “Alone you mean.”

  “Yes, alone. Does that work for you?”

  “Of course. I’m looking into some possible assistance.” Gu doesn’t really know what he’s going to do, but until he does, he’s not going to say anything about it.

  “Hiring local?”

  “Maybe.”

  Zhao knows this is classic Dai Gu. He also knows that he’s not going to get anything more out of him at this point.

  “Look, let me know. We have resources and we don’t want you working in the dark. Yao made me call you, you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Gu falls back on his taciturn nature, and his resentments, to say nothing more.

  “Okay,” Zhao says, clicking off.

  Gu puts the phone back in his suit pocket and glances up at the route map on the wall above the set of doors on the other side of the car. Gu still has a number of stops before the RER B takes him to the Gare du Nord, Paris’s North Station, the busiest rail station in Europe. He carefully watches the stations in between pass before it finally pulls in. As Gu steps off the train onto the platform, he looks around to orient himself.

  Paris Nord has a cavernous interior that rises forty to fifty feet to a roof made partially of steel roof panels and partially of windows in grids of hundreds of panes, all of which are black with the night outside. Rows of steel columns on either side of the peak of the roof run the length of the building to lend the roof support, which they do with delicate fans of ribbing. The columns are adorned with sets of lighted milky globes which right now provide a comforting glow. There are a number of sets of tracks and platforms in the station, but very few trains at this time of night. Semicircular windows run along the sides of the building. A particularly large window semicircle with very many glass panes is found on the building’s beaux arts façade, onto which a large old fashioned clock has been centered. It only serves to remind him that he hasn’t got a lot of time for what he wants to do.

  Dai Gu hurries out the front of the station. He stands in front of its grey façade of neo-classical stone, which is complete with life-sized statues standing on platforms raised above window pediments. The building is huge. It runs a thousand feet along Dunkerque.

  Gu heads to his right up the street to the Boulevard de Magenta, which takes him past the rear of the gothic Lariboisiere Hospital. He walks past a small park that has a statue of Charlemagne and crosses traffic to an elevated railroad bridge on the Boulevard de la Chapelle. The Boulevard is parallel to the much quieter Boulevard de Paris, where he crosses a bereft two lane street and a string of traffic bollards that run along the curb. This brings him onto a sidewalk before a block long building housing a big twenty-four hour discount store. The store looks old and run down, its red over pink banner signs faded by the sun, its bins of cheap merchandise pushed out to the sidewalk, brightly lit by the garishly strong lighting coming from inside.

  Dai Gu picks his way through the narrow aisles of the megastore. Its tables are piled mountainously high with knock off clothing. Here and there is a customer, insomniacs and shift workers. Gu continues to the back, up a simple set of painted metal stairs. He takes the single flight two stairs at a time, the entire steel apparatus shaking at each footfall, to the mezzanine offices above, which look out imperiously over the great expanse of plain goods and equally ordinary customers below.

  “Hallo?” he says as he raises his voice to the back of one of the office doors, the one on which he knocks with a rapid application of the knuckles. A deep voice comes back.

  “What can I do for you?” The man inside has obviously watched Gu’s approach and anticipated this inquiry.

  “It’s me, Dai Gu. How are you?” Gu asks into the closed back of the door.

  “Ah me! Come in! It’s not locked.”

  Gu carefully opens the door and sees Sanchay Mati seated behind a huge table filled with every assortment of things from beauty aids to packaged dry goods to clothes to every manner of sundry. Sanchay is a skinny guy. He looks over at Dai Gu with a wide grin. The room is full to overflowing with walls, floors, tables and cabinets filled with stuff, but a narrow path remains from the door to the table that serves as Mati’s desk, and Gu takes it.

  Arriving in front of the man behind the table, Gu lifts his carry on, unzipping it and pulling out a bottle of Baijiu, the most popular of Chinese liquors. It is in a fancy box, which Gu opens. He pulls out a rotund, glassy clear bottle of Red Star Erguotou from Beijing and hands it to Sanchay. Baijiu has been around thousands of years in China and is very potent, made with up to sixty percent alcohol.

  “I hope you will enjoy this,” Gu says.

  Sanchay stands up and takes the bottle gratefully.

  “Very kind of you.”

  “Of course.”

  Sanchay takes a second to look the bottle over, sets it down, and reaches beneath of pile of underwear. He pulls a pistol, a Makarov, from beneath the clothes and along with it a small box of nine millimeter slugs, handing it to Gu. Now it’s Gu’s turn to study his purchase, one paid for in advance.

  “I should point out that I will no longer be able to fill requests such as yours. It appears that the market is changing and I will no longer have access to these types of products.”

  “You are getting out?”

  “Disintermediation. It happens to us all eventually. I can no longer compete with the corporate combines.”

  “Big boys taking over, huh?”

  “You could say that.”

  The two men exchange a few pleasantries before Gu announces he has to be going. They part amicably. Gu bounds down the banging stairs, through the store and out onto the street. It is still dark, but the first light of day is rising behind the roofs of Paris’s buildings. He consults his watch and doubles back to Paris Nord, past the statue and the hospital, onto Dunkerque, and through the front doors of the station to the ticket counter. After getting a ticket he takes himself to the long RER B platform to wait for the train. It comes, it stops and he boards.

  This time Gu watches the stops even more carefully than before, looking for Saint Michel, and when finally it ar
rives, he gets off. Gu fast steps through the tiled station, holds his carry on over his head going through the stainless steel turn style, jogs up a long concrete set of steps, and pops out, into the early cracking dawn of a Paris morning. The air is sharp.

  Before him is Notre Dame Cathedral. Next to the Cathedral is a large and heavily decorated Christmas tree, brightly lit from the night. The sun is rising behind the Cathedral, creating a ripe opportunity for a religious moment, but this is lost on Dai Gu. He walks across the mostly empty Cathedral plaza, it being a shade too early for the tourist hordes, and crosses the short bridge on the Seine to the Left Bank. He finds his way down a wide concrete ramp to the Quai, there to be greeted by a darkened limousine. The front passenger door opens and a man dressed entirely in black leather steps out. The man is holding a pistol, places it on the roof of the car, and proceeds to stare at Gu.

  After which the rear door facing Gu opens. Gu walks over to the open door, ducks and sees a the man sitting passively inside. The man says nothing. Gu glances about the Quai one last time. He takes the firearm he is carrying from inside his coat and places it, just as the other man has, on the hood of the car. This ritual having been conducted, Gu meets the gaze of the man inside for a brief second while putting his gun away. The man moves over and Dai Gu gets in.

  Chapter 48