On Fire

“I think it’s this way,” says Zak.

  Kim and Zak are losing the light and as dusk falls over the residential neighborhood of Palo Alto, it is getting more difficult to find Ethan’s. Several shades of orange light up the western half the sky as the other half slowly descends to darkness.

  “Yeah. Down here,” agrees Kim.

  At the end of the block is an international style house, all glass walls and deeply extended wood eaves. They walk the polished concrete path to the front of the house through well-tended landscaping and stop under a porch. Kim uses the brass knocker on a burnished wood door. Ethan Edwards opens it.

  “Mates! We’ve been looking for you. Where’s Guillermo and Sofia?”

  Kim gives Ethan a hug.

  “They’ll be along,” she says, admiring Ethan’s look. He is dressed in a crisp collared shirt and slacks, and she can’t help but notice his fresh scent. He is too well dressed to be a student.

  “Everyone is here except for Guillermo and Sofia,” Ethan informs them.

  The family that Ethan rents from is out of town. The house would be a pretty spectacular one for an ordinary college student, but Ethan is from a wealthy African-British family who used their connections to find him a place to stay while in attendance at Stanford. The floors are polished stone, the walls are mostly of glass, and the high ceilings are thick planks of dark oak. Interior walls are a mixture of river stone and plaster and there are only a few pieces of art hung on them. Ethan is among other things a painter, but none of his work is in the house proper. Instead, conveniently, the house has a studio in the back where he maintains some privileges.

  Ethan leads them into the main part of the house, a spread out living room filled with sixties inspired furniture, all of it sitting on chrome legs. Leather sofas and stuffed occasional chairs are centered round a glass coffee table next to a stone fireplace. The wood ceiling extends beyond the rear glass wall and becomes an awning over an outdoor patio. At the other end the room opens to a kitchen with drop lighting, stainless steel counters and a retro dining set. A tall, well decorated Christmas tree stands near the fireplace, brightly lit. Strings of multi-colored holiday lights are everywhere. Zak and Kim’s friends sit all around the room, contacted from the plane with an emphasis on the importance of coming together for this meeting.

  “Kemosabe!” shouts Bogdan from his seat on the brown sofa, his laptop open before him on the glass coffee table.

  Zak and Kim return his greeting.

  Asobi Shimada sits in a blocky yellow chair next to Bog. She gets up and gives Kim a welcoming hug.

  “Are you alright?” Kim asks. Something about Asobi makes Kim think there is something going on with her.

  “I’m fine,” Asobi says. “Something happened. Later.”

  “Gee. Ok.”

  On the purple sofa is Rashida Bakkal and Arjun Kamat. Kina Alana sits in another of the blocky sixties style occasional chairs near Rashida and Arjun. Zak grabs a couple high counter chairs and pulls them over while Kim greets everyone else with a hug and a hi. Arjun has to break away from a phone conversation just long enough for a squeeze.

  “Oh, Kim, you’re so warm!” remarks Rashida, letting go of Kim’s embrace.

  “We had to run to get here. And we had to leave Sophie’s car downtown. Sophie and Gilly should be here pretty soon.”

  Rashida is slightly confused.

  “They just came a different way,” Kim provides in way of an explanation.

  This doesn’t immediately dispel Rashida’s confusion. She takes her seat slowly.

  “And I have to tell you, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can hang very long. I have papers to grade,” says Kina despondently.

  Zak hikes himself onto a counter chair. He likes its height and decides to go for a spin.

  “It won’t take long,” he reassures her, coming full around and stopping.

  “Well, what won’t take long? Can somebody tell me what we’re all doing here?” Kina asks.

  Kim is trying to use the other counter chair, doesn’t like its height, gives up, and goes to sit next to Bog on the sofa where it’s much more comfortable and she can get a look at whatever it is Bog is cooking up on his PC.

  “Look. Just hang on a second.”

  Ethan, who has been standing, waiting near the front door, finally ushers in Gilly and Sophie. A waft of autumn air comes breezing in with them.

  Gilly approaches Zak first, before even taking off his jacket, lacerating Zak with a look.

  “What?” Zak asks sheepishly.

  “You used your phone!” Gilly accuses.

  Kim jumps in.

  “He did and he’s sorry.”

  “Our little friend upstairs isn’t sorry,” announces Bog from the sofa.

  Everyone looks his way. Kim especially. She looks at the screen of his laptop and wonders what she’s looking at.

  “We have company aloft, as they say.”

  Bogdan sends a signal to everyone’s phone so they can see a real time mapping image of a drone sitting three hundred feet above the house they happen to be sitting in. He picks up a tv remote, punches it, and a screen rolls down above the fireplace. In a flash it too is showing the image.

  “Are you hacking a police channel?” Gilly asks, knowing very well that he must be.

  Bog grins.

  “Never Seadog.”

  “You better not be leaving any little footprints behind,” Gilly cautions.

  Sophie doesn’t care. She got cold on the walk over and chooses to sit on the fireplace hearth, near a gas fire. Gilly strips off his jacket, winds it on the back of the other tall counter chair, and perches himself high on it, next to Zak.

  Bog directs himself to Gilly.

  “You are Shakespearean, man. You know: much ado about nothing?”

  Gilly crosses his arms and says nothing, but by his demeanor he clearly is not onboard with Bogdan.

  “Boys!” Rashida complains.

  “Yeah, I don’t have all night,” Kina joins in.

  Artie gets to the heart of the matter.

  “What’s with the drone? How did we get to be so interesting?” he asks as he points skyward.

  “Yeah what’s going on?” joins in Ethan, who is standing behind Bogdan and Kim, leaning with his back against the ten foot tall glass outer wall.

  Zak surveys a room full of his friends. He feels safer than at any time in the last few days. Zak reaches deep into his pocket for the flash drive, holding it up for everyone to look at. Zak fixes Bog with a glance and tosses the drive to him, sailing it over the heads of the group. Bog pulls it out of the air with a catlike move.

  “Take a look at that. See what we’ve got. And for god’s sake stay off the internet while you’re doing it,” Zak tells him.

  “And what can we do about it?” asks Kim.

  “And why they would chase us all the way from the airport to here,” Sophie wonders aloud.

  “They’ve been chasing Kim and me for days. Ever since we got the thing,” Zak tells them.

  “Does this have something to do with why you two were swimming in Hong Kong harbor?” asks Artie.

  Rashida gives Artie a jab in the ribs.

  “Is that what happened?” Rashida asks, giving Artie a sharp look. “We knew something was going on.”

  “Who spilled the beans to Artie?” asks Gilly.

  “Hey, guys. It doesn’t matter,” returns Zak. “We’re all in this together, whether we like it or not. These people, whoever they are, want this flash drive. Some journalist in China was killed for it. We’re not exactly sure what’s on it but we know that much of it is encrypted. We had a Chinese professor, an expert, look at it. He thinks the contents are important.”

  “By the way, can the drone hear us in any way?” Zak asks Bog, who has to look up from what’s now before him on his PC.

  “No. Whoever’s running it would have to bring it down to line of sight. They would have to be able t
o discern sound waves emitted by glass walls. We’d be able to see it. Probably hear it.”

  Zak nods.

  “The Professor works with the government. He told us to get out of China. So we did.”

  “But you were attacked?” asks Rashida.

  “We were shot at on the street in Beijing,” responds Kim. “And the same man attacked us on the Ferry in Hong Kong.”

  “Splish Splash,” Bog jokes. Kim ruffles his hair.

  “Because we’re friends,” Kim points out, “because we’re in frequent communication with each other, they’re going to think that any one of us could have access to the drive. They’ll therefore be monitoring all of us.”

  Asobi, who has been taking it all in so far without saying anything, breaks her silence.

  “This is what is bothering me. A few nights ago there was someone following me after I left the lab. I’m sure of it.”

  Zak nods. “It’s possible. Everyone should be prepared to take precautions.”

  “What about this room?” asks Artie.

  Bog pulls out his phone.

  “Checked. The latest bug app. I’ll show you.”

  “You will all come under surveillance and can expect to be contacted and interviewed as to whether you were given anything, told anything, or know where Zak is,” warns Kim.

  “I don’t like this,” says Rashida with consternation. “If they can isolate us like this, they can pick us off one by one.”

  “Bog can help us out,” says Zak.

  “I can give everybody a safe way to encrypt emails. You’re always better off not calling each other but I can give you something pretty safe for chatting,” Bog says while looking intently at the contents of Zak’s flash drive on his computer.

  “What are you getting there, Bog?” Zak asks.

  “Chinese. Lots of Chinese.”

  There is some laughter in the group.

  “You said there was military grade encryption? Like no kidding there is. Even worse, it’s military style encryption in Chinese. Are you good with crosswords in other languages?” Bog asks with a groan.

  “It gets worse. Whoever the recipient is will have to have access to the same one time pad that was used originally to make the encryption. This is encryption limited to just two parties, the sender and the recipient, in a sense by prior arrangement, that prior arrangement being the coding pad they share. It’s like being locked out, but I was able to open some graphics.”

  “You mean like pictures and charts?” Kina asks. Any idea that she was going to get away from this meeting quickly is about to be abandoned.

  “More like engineering drawings.” Bog sits back on the brown leather sofa and scrutinizes each of their faces. He pushes his glasses onto the top of his head so they get stuck in his tousled blonde hair.

  Zak steps on the uncomfortable silence, “Ok. I’ll bite. What do you think these drawings are about?”

  Bog is quick to respond.

  “UAVs. The means to control remotely piloted drones being used by different governments. There are ways to interfere with their command and control, especially when in close proximity, and there are different kinds of devices able to do this. Typically the devices can be produced by 3D manufacturing programs, and a number of them are included.”

  “Like batteries included, huh?” asks Artie, trying to make a joke.

  “Yeah, like batteries included to some of the world’s most closely guarded and dangerous toys.”

  “Geez,” says Rashida.

  “Is any of this legal? Here? There?” Gilly is wondering.

  “Nowhere man. Nowhere,” Bog answers.

  “Oh great. So what you’re telling us is that this thing is filled with classified government secrets from around the world. I vote we destroy it as publicly as we can, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to sleep tonight,” says the no-nonsense Kina, her arms crossed beneath her substantial bosom in a gesture meant to convey that her mind is made up.

  “We could do that, Kina. Honestly, we could. But we really know very little about the true contents of the flash. Remember, virtually everything is encrypted,” responds Zak.

  “Why can’t you just give it to the New York Times? Let somebody else figure this out,” asks Kina, not ready to concede to Zak’s point of view.

  This raises a few hoots among those present.

  “Because, Kina, there is no reason to believe that they will know what to do. And anyway, what they do decide to make public will almost surely end up being vetted by all their highest level government contacts. That vetting will bury it just as easily as if it had been given to the government itself. It’s not that different nowadays. Not anymore.”

  Gilly’s focus falls on Sophie.

  “We should all get out of dodge, if you ask me,” Sophie says, looking back at Gilly. “It spooks me to think that there are actually people out there, people we don’t know, Chinese, American, we have no idea, who are going to be focused on everything we do and say. It’s totally creepy. Who was it that was chasing us all over town this afternoon?”

  Gilly and Sophie look over at Kim. Kim reacts by fixing her gaze on Zak. He throws up his hands.

  “You’re kidding right? Like I would know? But you may have noticed that at least they didn’t look Chinese.”

  “Well, I think you should get this crazy flash memory to whoever this dying man insisted you get it to. Isn’t that the honorable thing to do?” Rashida asks of no one in particular.

  “Can we be arrested?” asks Asobi, not quite sure where all this is going.

  “No,” says Gilly, “but it’s not like they can’t detain someone, at least for a short time. You could be held, questioned.”

  “Holy crap! If you’re right I’m not waiting around to find out. Hasta la vista, baby, that’s for sure,” says Artie with conviction.

  “Where’re you going to go?” Sophie challenges him.

  “Somewhere they can’t find you,” answers Ethan.

  A wave of agreement appears to sweep throughout the room.

  “This is going to turn into one major bug out,” announces Gilly.

  “But you’re not forgetting me?” asks Sophie.

  “Never,” he replies.

  Zak is stuck wondering how they are going to find or contact this UNK, or whatever it is. It may be a nice idea in principal but it is not a very practical one under the circumstances.

  “How does anyone get a line on UNK, just out of curiosity?” he asks the group but no one in particular.

  They all look at each other, but it’s Bog who answers.

  “On the net. Sites, chats, whatever. But you can’t transfer this online. It will be intercepted because everybody is being monitored. And you can’t trust anybody that you might contact that way.”

  Rashida gently clears her throat.

  “Miss Bakkal! Is there something you would like to share with the group?” Zak asks.

  The very chill young Egyptian is dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans, which do nothing to hide her innate beauty.

  “Maybe I do know somebody,” she offers. “She’s an actress, or at least she was when she was in LA. She worked with people. Unusual people. There was another person she met who might know about this UNK. But it was just a casual reference, something in passing. Might be worth checking out. Might be nothing. I really don’t know.”

  “Was she Bi, Rash?” asks Kim.

  Rashida is used to this line of inquiry from Kim.

  “Yes, Kimberly, she is. I can’t have Bi friends?”

  “Of course,” Kim replies teasingly, knowing Rashida.

  “Where is this person? Can we meet her?” asks Zak.

  “She lives around here. But she’s at Burning Man for a few days,” Rashida comes back.

  “There’s a Burning Man around here?” Kim asks.

  “Every year.”

  “Where is it this year?” Zak asks.

&
nbsp; “The Santa Cruz mountains.”

  Rashida tilts her head and closes her eyes, searching her memory.

  “What was it?” She pauses. “A creek? A bear?”

  “Bear Creek?” Kim asks.

  “Yeah, I think that was it!”

  Kim and Zak exchange a look. It’s not much to go on, but it’ll have to do.

  Chapter 33