Irving Waters - The Wuhan Mission

“Please come in Sam. I’m Deputy Director Wood. It’s nice to finally meet you,” she said as she shook his hand.

“Please have a seat.”

Sam had a quick glance around the modestly sized office. It didn’t give away much about her.

“I understand you have been working with officer Roet on the China situation, is that correct?”

“Yes Ma’am. That is correct” said Sam wondering what was in the file she had opened and was perusing.

“It says here that you have been successfully running one of our young operatives in Wuhan, and Officer Roet has two assets there. It has come to my attention that there is a bio-weapon that has recently been released by the Chinese Communist Party on its own people, or… at least it has been released on those in the city of Wuhan. Very strange don’t you think?” She stared at Sam.

“Those guys play hardball Mrs Wood. Maybe they are being used as an example for some reason.”

“That’s what we think too. We believe that next they will be forcing a mandatory vaccination program, and we have several theories about what that’s about. But that’s not why you are here. We need to know what has been going on in the Institute of Virology. Roet’s asset at the lab, the high level virologist, may have been compromised. You probably heard about the mess Roet made in New York.”

“Yes Ma’am, I heard about it. Shot the daughter himself.”

“Roet has become somewhat of a liability. He’s always been a problem for us, but we’ve been able to overlook most of his mistakes. You understand that there’s potentially a lot riding on the outcome of this virus situation. Roet’s operatives fixed things back in 2003 so that the SARS virus couldn’t do damage to us, but Roet almost got them both killed in Beijing. They were lucky to get out.”

She paused and opened a bottle of water offering it to Sam.

“No thanks Ma’am.”

She continued: “The Chinese Communist Party have had people working on virology for years now. Of course you are up to speed with the situation we had recently, involving the capture of three Chinese scientists and their network that included some of our own academics and administrators.”

“Ah yes, I am mostly caught up but I would really like to talk to the scientists if possible?” Sam asked.

“They are currently… on vacation. Anyway, you have bigger fish to fry. I’ll get you the intel on them now so you have the whole picture.”

She turned her attention to her computer and sent through a folder containing transcripts of the scientists’ painful few days at a black site.

“Most concerning to us, Sam, was the loss of control of Roet’s asset: Doctor Wu.” she said reading the scientist’s name from the file.

“We need Doctor Wu brought to us, or if that is not possible, your operative is to take him out and bag any intel she can. Is she trained to transport biohazard material.”

“Yes, she is.”

“We need you to keep an eye on Roet. If you see him about to screw up, you have our permission to go around him and call your own shots. We can’t afford any screw ups. You do what you need to do, and don’t leave any mess in China, do you understand?”

Sam looked back at her, knowing what she meant.

“Yes Ma’am. Nobody left behind in enemy hands.”

“That’s all. Good luck Sam.”

Sam took the elevator back down to his office where he looked over the files that the Deputy Director had sent him. Most of the intel was not pertinent to Xue Lin’s situation, but the news about the green antidote and the sinister purpose of the vaccine could be of some relevance to Xue Lin, who was tasked with stealing and carrying hazardous materials during a potentially difficult escape. He looked over the routes of egress that they had researched during Xue Lin’s final three weeks of specifics training.

After sweeping the apartment for any video surveillance cameras, Xue Lin opened the fridge and pulled out a beer and checked the Hello Kitty cam for any new footage. None, as usual. She’d come to like the apartment over the last few months. Somehow, knowing that there were a couple of Communist Party ‘spy geeks’ listening in on her 24/7 helped her feel less lonely. She had a bit of fun with them sometimes when she was bored. She liked to DJ for them and find really boring science podcasts. She would just leave her phone next to one of the bugged lamps, and she’d go out and have dinner.

Her job in Wuhan seemed to be all about the lab. She did have a few favorite restaurants and street food stalls, but she had been advised by Sam not to carry on too much of a life outside the lab building. She occasionally visited her two friendly coworkers to talk about nothing. A daily run kept her fit. She also enjoyed occasional bike rides around town to keep developing her knowledge of Wuhan’s streets. Xue Lin had noticed a team of four PLA operatives who were taking it in turns, one by one, to tail her when she left the apartment outside work hours. Two of them she had ID’ed as the two who had bugged her apartment. The Kitty-cam had seen to that. Most often, she let them follow her easily so as to encourage each of them to get soft. That way, when she really needed to lose them, it was easy. It was clear that the Government had been onto her from the very first day she moved into the apartment. She still wasn’t sure how, as her entry to China had been perfectly clean. There was only the fishing boat crew, Jimmy and her own two people back at Langley: Sam and Marcus Roet. She stayed on her guard, while doing her best to appear unskilled and uninformed. At least if the Chinese decided to move on her they would seriously underestimate her.

One of the counter espionage methods she had been using to give herself a bit of a ‘looser collar’ was to take up a musical instrument. She had bought an ‘erhu’ in a music shop and she often practiced at night, sometimes for hours. She had a recording of a long practice session, so if she ever wanted to get out of the apartment unnoticed, she could leave the recording playing under one of the bugs, and sneak out over the back fence. The first time she had tried to play it the people listening must have thought she was strangling a cat.

As the deadline for stealing the package had approached, she laid a web of misinformation using the audio bugs. She’d given the appearance of not knowing what was going on in the lab, or behind the scenes. Luckily they didn’t know about Jimmy, who was feeding quality intel to Roet, by the sounds of it. It was pretty damning stuff. Government conspiracies to kill their own people with a new virus. The problem with double agents was always about what they were NOT telling you. Xue Lin often theorized about what Jimmy was holding back, but there was never anything solid to incriminate him.

Xue Lin put the radio together for what would be the last time. She set up under one of the audio bugs, and made her usual phone call out to a burner phone, just so they didn’t suspect use of a radio.

“Good evening this is Xue Lin,” she said, using the ‘disinformation code’ for Sam’s benefit.

“Things are going badly. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m completely in the dark still. I’m going to try and talk to Dr. Wu next Thursday. Maybe I’ll sleep with him and see if I can get him to tell me what he’s working on. I think I have been wasting my time. I really love it here. Maybe I’ll just stay. How is Hungary doing? Anyway, that’s it. I’ll call you on Friday at the same number and tell you how it goes.”