On Fire
Page 89
“Kina has to check in at the School of Education. Asobi is with her and they’re heading to the library. We’ll meet at the Quad,” Sofie informs Rashida and Gilly as she clicks her phone off. The main Quad is where they’re heading anyway.
The day is warm and sunny on the Stanford campus. Students are dressed in t-shirts, shorts, sandals, and book bags. Cyclists spin past, keeping cool. Sofie tags along as Rashida and Gilly do some catching up at the Engineering School. Sophie carries things for Gilly, as his arm is in a sling.
“You guys have it bad,” Sophie comments, referring to all the work they have just been given.
“Like you don’t?” asks Rashida, popping her gum and annoyed that she is starting to sweat into her T.
“Business school isn’t like Engineering,” Sophie points out.
“You’re lucky,” Gilly offers.
They step onto a broad walkway between low rise mission style buildings and their arcades. Rows of palms line either side. Rashida notices a sign on one to their right that says Materials Research.
“I bet they’ll be at the Rodin,” says Rashida, knowing that Kina and Asobi share an interest in art, in this case of outdoor sculpture.
“How much do they know about what’s going on?” asks Sophie.
“I don’t know. I haven’t heard from them since we got back,” Rashida replies.
They walk between two large ellipses of parkland that make up a part of narrow Lomita Mall, through a set of wrought iron gates attached to columns of heavy sandstone blocks, and once again between two single story sandstone buildings with characteristic archways along their lengths and clay tiled mansards on their roofs. They walk between more palm trees before reaching a Spanish tower, passing under its twenty foot archway and into the open space of the main quad. The brick courtyard is ringed by more Spanish buildings connected by colonnades, interrupted by eight large landscaping islands filled with palms and ornamental trees.
“That way,” points Sofie.
She leads them through a triple archway that has a peak roof, where they can see the Rodin Burghers as they approach. Kina and Asobi stand nearby.
“Where’s your bike?” Gilly, surprised, asks Asobi. She is rarely without it.
Asobi shoots Gilly a look. They all know her story about the bike. If he’s teasing, she doesn’t like it.
They stand in Memorial Court, which is criss-crossed geometrically by intercepting sidewalks. The Rodin Burghers of Calais are a set of six life sized figures, copies that represent the leaders of the besieged City, who in 1347 sacrificed themselves to end an English siege. The English King agreed to lift the siege, sparing the starving residents their lives, in exchange for the surrender of the City’s leaders. They were forced to come out wearing nooses around their necks in preparation for their deaths while bearing the keys to the City and its Castle. Calais sought the work from Rodin, who completed it in 1889 as a symbol of heroic self-sacrifice. The Burghers however were lucky: the Queen of England intervened and saved their lives.
“How’s the shoulder big guy?” asks Kina, feinting a right to his injured arm.
Gilly doesn’t flinch.
“Better. Off the painkillers. Fun’s over. Back to work and all that.”
“You’ll get over it,” Kina assures him.
“Sophie’s got her guy back,” Rashida remarks.
“Yeah, but I have to carry his stuff,” Sophie complains.
“What happened to Artie and Ethan?” Rashida asks.
“Holy crap! How are they?” asks Kina, leaning against one of the black metal figures.
“Artie is still recovering in Jaipur but he’s out of the hospital. He is staying with his uncle but wants to get back here. His uncle insists that he can’t leave for at least another week. His parents, who had moved to Dehli, have been to see him,” Gilly informs them.
“And Ethan?” asks Asobi.
“He’s still in Monterey at his friend Ellie’s. They don’t want him to come back to school until he checks in again with his doctor. I’m sure he’ll be here in a few days. He nearly died,” Gilly tells them.
“And so did Artie,” adds Sophie.
“He’s working on finding his attackers,” says Gilly.
“Good luck with that,” says Rashida.
“But nobody is more mean-ass than Asobi. She kicked the bejesus out of this guy who attacked her,” says Kina, who looks admiringly at her friend.
This garners Asobi everyone’s rather amazed attention and this clearly embarrasses her. Rashida comes to her rescue.
“And Zak and Kim are in the Atlantic somewhere. Here, they sent me some pictures,”
she says, quickly looking them up and handing her phone to Asobi. It gets passed around. The pictures show the giant cargo ship bristling with cranes, the middle of an immense icy sea, Zak and Kim, and their tiny cabin. There is one of the crew and the kitchen, as well as a group shot of the passengers at a table full of food and drink.
“I’m taking this guy with me when I graduate,” says Kina, grasping at one of the figures of Calais.
They take pictures of her and the statues in various poses.
Finally, Asobi quietly asks, “How’s Bog? Where is he?”
Her question is greeted with empty silence. No one knows.
“He was in Prague last anybody heard of him,” says Rashida.
“He disappeared?” asks Kina, tilting her head questioningly.
“No. He sent a message to Kim and Zak through me,” Rashida tells them. “It was about the flash drive, but that was all.”
“They got him, didn’t they?” Sophie asks.
“Who got him?” Rashida asks in return.
“Whoever these people are, that’s who. I don’t know who they are, but I wish I knew who they were,” Sophie replies.
Rashida frowns.
Thin cirrus clouds high in the jet stream intrude on the perfectly blue sky above. Rodin’s figures caste their shadow on the stone pavement.
Chapter 90
It’s been hours.
Bog sits on his bed, unrestrained, in his hospital gown, feeling the medication drain from his system.
The TV is out.
More significantly, there hasn’t been a sound anywhere, not in the hallway outside his door, in the rooms on either side, or on the floor above. It’s as if the staff had suddenly just up and left the building.
Bog has seen snippets of news flying around the channels on his TV, when it was working. Not good. Did this have something to do with the hospital being empty he wondered?
He’s spent a lot of time looking out the window. It is a nice day, cool, but nice. It’s sunny. There are but a few puffy clouds. Nothing stirs. There is no one on the well-kept lawn and there hasn’t been all morning.
As Bog’s stupor falls away he hears something. At first it is just a distant hum. He continues to listen and it becomes the sound of a prop plane. The plane comes low and the sound gets louder. He is sure it is aiming directly for the building, the only one for miles and miles.
As the plane’s roar passes over Bog sees a cloud of papers falling from the sky, twisting and catching the sunlight as they descend. Some get stuck in the trees, but many flutter all the way to the ground.
“What?”
Bog pushes the bed table aside and jumps down. He grabs the intravenous drip pole near the head of his bed. They should never have left it here he reasons as he swings the weighted bottom hard at the window, which shatters with a colossal bang.
Glass flies all over the little desk and stereo sitting beneath the window. In the same instant, he hears the building’s alarm system blare. He uses his arm to sweep the glass to the floor and jumps onto the desk. Kicking glass from the window, he places his right flip flop on the bottom of the frame and launches himself into the cold crystalline air. He flies for a second, landing in a crouch in the flower bed but staying on his feet.
Bog stands up and watches th
e twin prop fly away over the bare Romanian fields. He has spent days and days in a fog thinking about Kim, wondering where she is and what is happening to her. His heart lifts as the sound of the airplane drifts and its outline slowly recedes into the distance. Why does he feel that she left him here? She had no idea where he was. He wishes she was here and that he was holding her.
The unnerving alarm cuts out without warning. They’re gone for sure, he concludes.
There is nothing left to fear. Not even the walls of this horrible place can hold him now. He steps into the grass, to where one of the leaflets has fallen, turning it over without really looking at it.
Across the hospital grounds are the fields and the long dirt rows. A macadam road runs a straight line through them. It will be enough to start his way home.
1 Its 'Live Fire! Live Fire!' in Muxidi Battle, June 05, 1989, John Pomfret, Associated Press.
2 Age of Ambition, Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, Evan Osnos, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2014, p. 252
3The Last Refuge, Yemen, Al-Qaeda, and America’s War in Arabia, Gregory D. Johnson, WW Norton & Company, 2013, p. 252