Since then, he had never been back, and the city had never been in his portfolio during his time in the NSB, leaving a glaring gap in his knowledge of the area. He was acutely aware of his inexperience, making his surveillance that much harder because he couldn’t make any educated predictions on Fly Boy’s movements. Complicating his efforts was the fact that he was a lone man. Had he wanted to surveil Fly Boy while still an active agent, he would have demanded a team of at least twenty.
Paul saw the brake lights of the target cab flash, then the target exit the vehicle on the outskirts of an open sports field. Paul had his driver do the same, getting out about fifty meters behind Fly Boy. He tracked the man down a pedestrian road clogged with people, eventually seeing him pass through a gate in a high brick wall, a large two-story whitewashed building behind it.
Paul approached the gate and saw a placard describing the original merchant house for Tait and Company, apparently the first international corporation allowed to operate in Taiwan. Just inside was a ticket booth with a small line of people, including Fly Boy.
Paul entered behind him. Fly Boy bought his ticket and left, following the signs for a self-guided tour. Paul fidgeted behind a family of four, wanting them to hurry the hell up. When they were finished, he hastily approached the counter and said, “One adult, please.”
He glanced over his shoulder, seeing Fly Boy climb the steps to the second level. The counter clerk said, “The merchant house museum alone, or the museum and the Anping Tree House?”
Paul turned back, saying, “What’s the tree house?”
Amazed, the ticket seller said, “Seriously? You haven’t heard about the tree house?”
Not wanting to be remembered as someone who had traveled to the site without even knowing what it was, and unclear what Fly Boy was planning, he said, “Sorry, I misheard you. A ticket for both.”
He paid and raced to the stairwell in the front of the building, taking the steps two at a time and passing the family in front of him. He entered a foyer detailing the history of the land around Anping. He ignored the displays, looking for Fly Boy. Following the arrows, he weaved through room after room, until eventually he’d descended to the first level and cleared the entire building. He found himself outside on a brick walkway, debating what to do.
Fly Boy hadn’t been inside, at least not in the public areas. Paul considered retracing his steps more slowly, possibly entering the roped-off rooms and exploring the building more fully. Instead, he followed the signs for the tree house, walking to the rear of the building. He saw the limbs of an enormous banyan tree behind a ten-foot brick wall. He went through a gate, expecting to find some type of house high up in the branches. What he found instead was the opposite: an old brick warehouse that the tree had completely taken over, the banyan roots and limbs clinging to the brick like the hand of God had dripped wax all over the building.
The roof was gone, replaced by steel walkways that threaded through the branches to allow viewing of the rooms below, leaving him the choice of going up to the walkways or staying at ground level.
He entered the first room and caught a glimpse of Fly Boy through the broken brick in an adjacent chamber, ostensibly taking pictures of the tree’s hostile takeover with his phone. Paul glanced up, seeing the walkway circle above Fly Boy’s room, and rapidly exited, retracing his path to the steel stairway.
He reached the top of the stairwell, passing two men with buzz-cut hair, long on the top but shaved on the sides. Fixated on finding the overlook above Fly Boy, he failed to notice the interest they had in him.
He crossed over the open roof, the crumbling walls of the separate rooms seemingly being devoured by the tree. He reached a split at the corner of the building, the walkway heading left and right, the steel railing threading through the branches in a circle above the entire structure. He went right, finding a vantage point that allowed him to see down inside the room he’d marked earlier.
Fly Boy wasn’t there.
He felt a tendril of panic, then saw the flash of Fly Boy’s shirt through the branches, one room over. He let a couple pass, then crept along the walkway. He reached another vantage point and leaned over the rail, pretending as if he cared about the view. To the left and higher up in the scaffolding he saw one of the crew-cut men doing the same thing. Paul noticed the man was alone—something that stood out in a tourist attraction full of families. And he realized he stood out as well.
Something for him to keep in mind as a singleton on surveillance. He failed to realize the very point his subconscious was telling him, instead focusing on his own heat state.
He found Fly Boy and saw him walk to a darkened corner of the room, roots intertwined with brick. Fly Boy glanced left and right, then stepped over a rope line meant to prevent patrons from going deeper into the tree structure. He knelt down, reached his hand behind one of the giant banyan roots, and withdrew a package.
And Paul knew why he was here. It’s a dead drop.
Fly Boy quickly crossed over the rope back to the path, then opened what looked like a large envelope. Paul watched him pull out an old-school flip phone and some sort of badge on a lanyard. Fly Boy shoved the items into the envelope and left the room, heading toward the entrance. Paul began following above him on the walkway, wanting to wait until he had exited the building before he descended the stairs. He caught someone out of the corner of his eye and looked up, seeing one of the buzz-cut men to his front, his eyes hard. He reversed and saw the other one behind him.
The first one said, “What is your interest here?”
Paul said, “Just sightseeing.”
The man behind him closed the distance and said, “I think not.”
The man to the front said, “Who do you work for?”
There was no way to get by them. With one to the front and one behind, he couldn’t even keep his eyes on both of them at the same time. He did the only thing he could: He jumped over the railing into the branches of the banyan tree.
He snatched a limb with his hand and felt his shoulder wrench. He screamed, let go, and slammed into another limb on his rib cage, flipping upside down. He hammered the ground on his side, the wind knocked out of him.
He lay there for a moment in pain, gasping for air. He vaguely heard tourists shouting, then footsteps. A man knelt over him, saying, “Hey, are you all right?” He put a hand on Paul’s shoulder, turned and shouted, “Someone get a doctor!”
Paul looked above him and saw the two buzz-cut men racing down the walkway toward the stairs.
He rolled over, groaned, and the tourist helping him said, “Don’t move. Stay still.”
Paul ignored him, standing up and shaking his head to clear it. He saw the buzz cuts skipping down the stairs, almost at ground level, and he began jogging toward the back of the building, the Good Samaritan shouting at him.
He exited onto an expanse of grass and ran up a bridge spanning a large canal leading to a viewing deck on a dyke. He darted across it, a hand on his injured ribs, seeing the two men break out of the building. He reached the far side, jumped over the railing, and rolled into the grass. He sprang upright and took off down the dyke on the opposite side of the canal, holding his side and wheezing in pain with every breath.
He glanced behind him and saw the two men looking over the railing, but making no attempt to follow him.