Irving Waters - The Wuhan Mission

They were manufacturing barbecues until their factory was shut down in 2003 by the Chinese Government during the SARS outbreak. They took Xue Lin along with them to Washington D.C. and she finished growing up in America, keeping up her Chinese language and cultural studies on the weekends. Her Mandarin was flawless, without accent.

The couple were now semi-retired, living a more comfortable life in La Jolla, California.

Xue Lin packed a small suitcase, making sure to stick to the packing list that a normal tourist would have. Any equipment she would need on the job in Wuhan would have to be procured from a local source in China. The only weapon she had was the pair of metal chopsticks which she put in the front pocket of her suitcase.

She had a new American passport under a fake name, with stamps from Hawaii, Rome, London and Paris. The CIA also provided her with a driver’s license, two credit cards, two thousand dollars in US dollars, and an employee card from Amazon where she ‘worked as a logistics coordinator.’ When she got to China she would meet a long-time Chinese asset in Shanghai who would provide identity papers under her Chinese Resident Identity: “Xue Lin.”

She kept a blue surgical mask in her carry on which was standard attire in Asia if you had a cold, but also useful for anonymity with facial recognition software. She also had three different pairs of sunglasses, and hair extensions of varying length. Her compact waist length coats were both reversible with different colours on each side. All these items she packed into her hand luggage which was a high tech dry bag in backpack form, covered with old material on the outside to fit a poorer Chinese local.

Her reservation was to Seoul, Korea, returning to New York City after a two week vacation. She would not use the return portion of course, but would call and cancel the flight after a week. It was safer for her if she slipped into China unnoticed.

During the last week of her extra training Sam had used a couple of evenings to send her out on two live assignments. As a rule, the CIA was not supposed to operate on US soil, but Roet agreed with Sam that this was a vital part of her training, and the two assignments needed doing anyway, so kill two birds with one stone .

On the first assignment she was ordered to break into a Taiwanese banker’s office, bypassing all of his building’s security to install software on his computer and bug his office. She went in as a cleaner doing it the easy way by bribing another young Chinese cleaner to go home “just for tonight” and pulled her pistol out and cocked it, just to make her point. The assignment went almost flawlessly except that she’d spent too long at computer and she’d had to hide in the liquor cabinet when a guard came by on his rounds.

Her second assignment required her to roofie a small-time Russian arms dealer at his house after picking him up at a fashionable club. Sam had given her this assignment to ensure that she could take someone out cleanly, which she did with two to the chest and one to the head from her Ruger LC9S, a neat little pistol that was easily concealed. She had also demonstrated that she could use her sexuality to take advantage of a mark.

The next morning she was on the flight to Seoul. Once she cleared immigration there, she was to make her way to the docks and find a specific fishing boat that would get her to China.

Sam sat on the park bench next to Marcus Roet looking out over the river. The wind was blowing strongly but it was good to get out of the office, and a much safer place to talk without being overheard. The two of them weren’t friends but Roet liked Sam more than most of his colleagues. Sam, on the other hand, had a gut feeling that Roet was not to be trusted.

Sam looked at Roet for a moment who seemed lost in thought:

“Marcus, I need to get Snow Forest a job at Dr. Wu’s lab. Do you think your guy Jimmy could organize a couple of vacancies for a lab assistant? Wu has to choose her without knowing that she’s one of ours.”

“Jimmy certainly could ‘organize’ the vacancy part,” Marcus said grimly tipping his head to one side.

“Once there’s an opening, she’ll have to apply for the job along with everyone else and probably without any genuine references either. She’s definitely a looker, which will help her chances.”

“Just be sure to tell Jimmy we need two vacancies, you know, just to help her chances,” Sam replied. But in the back of his mind he was certain that Xue Lin could wiggle her way into almost any job she wanted.

“Right you are. I’ll get in touch with Jimmy,” said Roet.

The job vacancies were a priority, as Xue Lin had already been deployed. Jimmy answered his phone after one ring.

“What’s up boss?” Jimmy’s voice crackled a bit over the secure connection from Roet’s phone all the way to Wuhan.

“I need you to convince a couple of female lab assistants at Dr. Wu’s lab to quit their jobs suddenly. There’s three grand in it for you. If you want, you can just shoot them, but the bodies have to disappear. Low level assistants.” Roet said without emotion.

“OK boss, two ladies. Sexual harassment, me2 movement, I got you.”

“Nothing complicated Jimmy. Just get it done. I’ll text you the details of the lab.”

“OK boss. How’s the weather there?”

Roet hung up without answering, and typed the details of Dr. Wu’s lab into his phone. “Schmuck!” Roet said out loud as he pressed ‘send’ and the message shot off to Jimmy.

Roet did not feel good about trusting important jobs to Jimmy, but he had no choice. He’d had very little luck getting any CIA personnel into China since the 2003 SARS debacle with the Barbecue Couple, and having no-one on the ground in China meant that he had to trust local assets that were greedy enough to betray their own Government.

That same afternoon, Jimmy double parked his black Mercedes in front of the Virology Institute building. Standing on the steps outside, he flashed his Government ID at the two pretty young lab assistants as they left the virology building where they worked for Dr. Wu. Jimmy escorted them to his car. Opening the back door, one of the girls paused and asked: “Are we in trouble?”

“Nooohhh,” Jimmy reassured them, shaking his head reassuringly.

Jimmy closed the door behind them as they sat in the back seat looking at each other, worried.

Jimmy jogged around to the driver side and pivoted in behind the wheel.

He started the engine and smoothly and professionally moved the Mercedes away from the curb into a tight U-turn and headed in the direction of the edge of town.

There was silence in the car for a few minutes. The young lab assistants’ fear grew. One of them was quietly starting to cry. The other held her hand tightly.

Jimmy broke the silence: “You have both been working for Dr. Wu for enough time now that you know that he likes the young ladies, right?”

The young assistants turned to look at each other, and nodded uncertainly without saying anything. They were both thinking about the constant harassment they underwent from Dr. Wu every time he made his rounds to check on their work. Leaning over them, grazing different parts of their bodies with stray arm movements. Making suggestive comments whenever he could think of them.