Irving Waters - The Wuhan Mission

“You will all be given the antidote, so not a single one of us will be touched by the virus. This is an honor which you have all earned.”

The Chairman waved the guard at the nearest door to bring in the nurses. The door was opened and twenty nurses in uniform carrying stainless steel trays with syringes and alcohol swabs. The nurses stood around the table just behind the committee members.

“Please accept this gift from the People’s Party as we sing ‘ The East Is Red.’”

A small brass band entered the room and began to play an introduction as the nurses began swabbing the men’s arms in preparation for their injections of the green liquid.

They began to sing, even as they were being injected:

As rush hour began in the streets below, Jimmy was having a big breakfast of rice and pigs’ feet in his own kitchen. He’d been out to dinner the night before as Doctor Wu had gone to bed very early. Jimmy’s computer flashed a banner which meant a recording had come through from the audio bug in Wu’s car. Jimmy took a large bite from a pig’s foot and walked to his laptop and pressed play.

As Jimmy listened to the call from Roet, which Dr. Wu had put on speaker, he stopped chewing for a moment. It was now clear that Marcus Roet was blackmailing Dr. Wu by threatening to harm his daughter. Something about forcing him to create an ‘Asians-only version of the virus’.

Jimmy rewound the recording and listened to it a couple more times before dialing the Chairman’s direct line.

“Hello Mister Chairman, this is Jimmy.”

“Yes, Jimmy, what do you have for me?”

“Doctor Wu has a daughter studying in New York. The CIA are surveilling her and sending videos of her to Dr. Wu threatening him to alter the virus so it only infects Asians. From what the Doctor says to himself when he gets off the phone, it would seem that he is only pretending to go along with the CIA, but not actually doing it sir.”

“That’s interesting news Jimmy. Thank you. Good work.”

“Thank you sir. I will send you the audio file and the text file on the daughter which has her contact details in New York.”

The Chairman’s assistant arose from her seat behind her desk outside the Chairman’s office. She formally greeted the Head of Foreign Covert Operations and showed him into the office where the Chairman sat behind his desk.

“Welcome Colonel.”

The Colonel nodded, looking impressive in full Uniform.

“Superior men are always held in fear and in awe,” the Chairman said.

The Colonel nodded, knowingly. His men feared him, and he used this to his advantage whenever possible.

“There is something that has come to our attention but it is rather sensitive and anything we do needs to be completely below the radar. There is a Chinese girl in New York who the CIA are watching. She is the daughter of a man who is doing important work for me. I cannot afford for him to be compromised by these foreign dogs. I need you to bring her back to China. It needs to be clean. None of your team is to be captured.”

“I understand sir.”

“Here is her name and home address in Manhattan”.

As the General handed the file over, he said: “Good luck. Take care of it quickly.”

“Thank you sir.”

The Colonel saluted and turned efficiently and left the office.

Doctor Wu had, until now, been holding off on making any forays into the work that Roet was demanding from him, however, he’d recently felt watched and had become afraid that Roet may find out that he had ignored his request.

Dr. Wu reopened the file on his computer that contained the genetic targeting data. He had based his new virus on a previous ‘crown shaped’ version that was called SARS-CoV. SARS, which stood for ‘Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome’ had been released in China back in 2003. He had been given some older classified documents about the engineering of the SARS virus and he had noticed that SARS was designed to be harmless to white people, in fact it was harmless to anyone who was not Asian!

“Must have been CIA then too!” he said out loud, shaking his head disapprovingly, alone in his lab. He could, if forced to, still go back and alter his new virus to target Asians only.

Dr. Wu’s discovery that one version of his virus was able to mutate and was, in a sense, smarter than the SARS-CoV-2 was very concerning. If the virus was able to change itself, it could roll across the world’s population, attacking younger and fitter patients. Even babies, eventually. If this version of the virus was released, it could lay waste to whole economies. It could destroy humanity, worst case scenario…. That was not what he wanted. He wasn’t a sociopath. He was a pragmatist. However he was being strong-armed by two of the most powerful organizations on the planet. He was however incensed that the Americans were threatening to harm his daughter, and the mutating version of the virus lurked amongst his darker thoughts.

He continued working diligently to create the virus that the Chairman had ordered. No possibility of mutation, and with a small target death rate aimed at just the weak and the elderly. His work was nearly complete. He was glad that there was very high security protecting the lab because his workflow dictated that he keep all versions of the virus created along the way. This meant that in his lab there was a series of several Corona viruses ranging from ‘non-contagious’ all the way up to the most dangerous one that could mutate. He intended to incinerate all other versions the moment his work was complete. In the meantime, the viruses were color coded, and locked up in the bio-hazard safe. The final Yellow Virus would be labelled: “SARS-CoV-2”

Dr. Wu set to work, a cup of strong coffee on his desk. The final steps would take him the rest of the day and probably some of the night too.

Dr. Wu’s email program pinged. He had a message from the Chairman’s office. He clicked on the message and saw there was an attached video. He opened it. An iPhone video of his daughter! He clicked the play button.

“Daddy, I am safe. The Chinese Government men grabbed me off the street! They showed me pictures of all the little cameras that the CIA had put in my apartment. Can you believe that? I feel so violated. Apparently there was even one in my bathroom! But I’m OK. I want to come home Daddy. They are going to get me home. I don’t want to live in this country anymore. I will be seeing you very soon. Well, that’s it. I love you!”

Dr. Wu couldn’t believe it. How did the Government know about the CIA watching her?

He thought to himself about how he was no longer obligated to work on the CIA virus, and closed his laptop and put away his notes. He closed the safe and took his white coat off. He was going home to celebrate. As he walked through the lab to security the lab assistants all said goodbye respectfully, but he didn’t really hear them. His thoughts had already returned to the mutating Red Virus and the devastation it could do to America.