He tried to reach his surveillance position outside of the Mainland Affairs Council, where his target was located, but realized it was a waste of time. His target wouldn’t show in this mess of chaos.
And then he did.
Paul saw Colonel Rae “Ryan” Won exit the building in civilian clothes, darting among the crowd, wanting to remain invisible. He flashed his credentials at the police barricade and slipped through, sticking close to the wall and moving away from the protestors.
Paul followed on the far side of the street, opposite the screaming demonstrators.
Ryan walked two blocks past the presidential palace to the main Taipei train station. He crossed the street and entered, Paul following close behind.
The interior was congested with people, the tension thick, most of the travelers wanting to just get home, but the protests making them fear their ability to do so. The government had threatened to shut down the rail system to prevent outsiders from traveling to Taipei for mischief, and Paul could feel the anxiety in the air, people rushing to their trains before such a thing happened.
Ryan walked away from the long-distance train platforms, going down a tunnel toward the city metro, and Paul stayed behind him. He stopped at a rack of lockers, pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket, read the numbers, then punched in a code on a keypad. A locker on the top row opened.
Ryan went to it, withdrew a small satchel, then continued on.
Paul was intrigued.
His target stopped at a kiosk outside the metro terminal and bought a fare on the red line. Paul let him leave, then did the same. Because the metro worked on an RFID token system, where each fare was embedded with the cost for the length of the transit, Paul was forced to pay for the entire line, having no idea where Ryan would stop.
The kiosk spit out his token, and he went down the stairs, seeing Ryan at the front of the platform. Paul stood in the back of the crowd, watching Ryan’s crew-cut head.
The train arrived and disgorged more protestors, all of them shouting and chanting about betrayal. The crowd let them pass and they boarded, Ryan taking a seat and Paul remaining near the door, holding a handrail.
Twenty minutes later, Paul saw Ryan stand up, the Taipei World Trade Center station approaching. Paul faded to the back of the crowd, allowing the doors to open, disgorging the passengers. Ryan exited, and Paul followed.
This section, the financial heart of Taipei, held no protestors. As with every other spontaneous uprising, the locality was a self-generating phenomenon, and apparently they’d decided to focus their attention on the government areas and the presidential palace.
Ryan broke out onto the street, Paul right behind him, the sun setting in the sky, the twilight allowing the lights of the buildings to begin to dominate.
Paul followed Ryan two blocks, until he reached a structure towering above everything around it, its architecture like that of a modern-day temple, with metal outcroppings every tenth floor or so, but stabbing into the sky higher than any temple had ever dreamed, almost as if it were trying to reach the stars above it.
Known as Taipei 101, it was, for a short time—until the Burj Khalifa opened in Dubai—the tallest building in the world.
What is he doing here?
Ryan entered the lobby and took an escalator to the second floor, weaving through an opulent mall full of storefronts that only the rich would dare step inside, Paul staying far enough behind to keep from being burned. He switched escalators, heading ever higher, the patrons in the mall not reflecting the chaos just down the road, all shopping for diamonds and outrageously expensive handbags as if the world wasn’t coming apart next door.
Ryan reached a bank of elevators on the fourth floor and ignored them, moving down a hallway to a private one. He scanned a directory on the wall, running his finger down it, then tapped.
Standing near the bank of public elevators, Paul memorized the tap as best he could. Ryan reached into the satchel he’d taken from the train station and withdrew a badge, placing it on the controls for the elevator. The door opened, and he disappeared inside.
Paul waited a bit, then approached, tracing his own finger down the directory until he reached the business Ryan had tapped.
Ju-Long Import/Export Limited.
It was on the seventy-seventh floor, the space only accessed by this elevator. As such, the destination was out of reach of Paul’s limited abilities, but it gave him something to work with.
Paul went back to the elevator banks overlooking the mall area—the ones used for the observation decks and other public spaces—bought a cup of coffee from a kiosk, and took a seat on a bench, waiting for Ryan to appear again. If Ryan had gone up that elevator, he might return the same way.
Paul failed to notice that he wasn’t the only one doing the watching.
Chapter 73
Jennifer leaned over the edge of the observation platform and said, “Okay, this is crazy—even for you.”
Kneeling next to a backpack at my feet, I looked up, seeing the stars starting to blink in the night sky, the expanse of the Taipei cityscape spreading out into the distance. We were so far up in the air that any feelings of acrophobia were absent, like I was looking out the window of an airplane.
I said, “You got a better idea? We don’t have time to mess around here, and you’re good at this shit.”
Miffed, she knelt next to me, opening the backpack and pulling out a harness. She stood, slipping her feet through the loops, then adjusted the webbing on her shoulders. She held her arms out like she was allowing a police search and said, “Why’s it always me that has to climb?”
I stood and began checking her harness like a jumpmaster on a parachutist, trying to find a point of failure. I traced the webbing underneath her legs and said, “Because none of us knuckle-draggers are monkeys like you. And you’re the only one who’s used the Hollywood Rig and not died. No way am I going to give it a go.”
She snapped her head to me and said, “Someone’s died using this thing?”
What we called the Hollywood Rig was invented by a stuntman named Dar Robinson in—of course—Hollywood so he could leap off a building with the camera above him, not worrying about an airbag appearing in the scene below. It was basically a type of bungee jump, but instead of a thick rope, it used a very thin cable attached to a harness that wouldn’t be seen by the camera, the clamps on the descender slowing the fall at a pace where it didn’t break bones. We stole the idea because we also needed something that wouldn’t be seen by a camera. The system didn’t use a bulky rope or huge setup, having only a thin steel cable and a descender that could be clamped anywhere—all of it small enough to fit in a backpack the size of a book bag for a university student.
Jennifer had used it once on an operation in Singapore. At the time, I hadn’t had the heart to tell her that—outside of testing—nobody on the teams had enough balls to deploy it operationally.
I said, “No, no. Nobody’s died.”
“Then why did you say that?”
I held up my hands. “Truth?”
Her eyes flashed and she said, “Yeah, damn it. What’s the truth?”
“You’re the only one who’s used it on an operation. Everyone else is too chickenshit. It worked in Singapore, and it’ll work here.”
She couldn’t believe the words that had come out of my mouth. She said, “You threw me off the roof of the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore knowing that nobody else had the guts to trust it?”