“No need to be racist” said Marcus, laughing, not really giving a shit.
“You want me to come in with the clone?” he asked
“Please. Soon as you can. Let’s get her up and running.”
Marcus smiled his smug ferret toothed grin. Now he could strong-arm the father, Dr. Wu and work him like a puppet.
*
Chapter 8
Sam Chilvers
Langley, Virginia
Sam Chilvers arrived for work at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He had been transferred there a few years ago to work at the ‘Center for Special Activities’. They were in charge of covert operations that gave the Government deniability if operatives were compromised in the field. Sam was ex-Delta Force. Despite being highly skilled and experienced, he was creeping up in age, and he couldn’t run with the twenty-somethings anymore. He was divorced with no kids, still athletic despite a bothersome shoulder wound where he had taken shrapnel during one of his tours. The injury had ended up being worse than it should have been because Sam had refused the MedEvac helicopter, preferring to stay with his men. This was typical of Sam’s behavior on the job. He had been a trusted and well liked member of the squadron. His old tradecraft instructor had begun keeping tabs on him after his first tour. The CIA were always looking for this type of operative: highly intelligent and calm under extreme pressure. It also helped that he was single and had no kids. Sam’s suitability to covert operations had made him a strong candidate for CIA recruitment.
In a suit, Sam could easily pass for a civilian. He didn’t have the military swagger and had never obsessively lifted weights, so he was fit looking without being bulky. Sam could shine his winning, dimpled smile on anyone he met but if you looked at his face long enough you could catch a subtle element of pain behind the blue eyes.
Sam was currently focusing on training a young Chinese-American female recruit for placement in China. The CIA had begun stalking her after a University Professor alerted them to her brilliance. Being perfectly bilingual, her Chinese language skills were highly useful. At Camp Peary, also known as: ‘The Farm,’ she had gone on to graduate ahead of her male classmates, proving also to be an extremely fine marksman and was generally quite violent in training, causing several injuries to other recruits. She was a loner, and considered by most to be very hard to read. Her parents had also been operatives stationed in China for a few years in the 90’s posing as barbecue manufacturers. In 2003, when she was only thirteen years old they had been suddenly expelled from China with no explanation, which was a great loss for the agency, as it was difficult to embed CIA operatives in China.
Her code name on paper at Langley was “Snow Forest” which was a simple translation of her cover name Xue Lin, a new name that she had been given when she began training, partly to separate her from her lineage at the agency. Nobody knew about her adoptive parents except the higher-ups.
Sam knocked on Roet’s office door.
“Come!” yelled out Roet who was already pouring himself a scotch.
“Morning Marcus” said Sam, greeting Roet politely.
“Yeah, I know, I’m starting early…but I’m celebrating. My asset Jimmy has been transferred to Wuhan. He had good clearance before, as he used to guard the Secretary of the Party. Now his boss in the Chairman!”
“That’s good news” remarked Sam.
“The Chairman put him there to watch a scientist who I plan to turn into an asset in the very near future, but I’m going to have Jimmy watch him and see what he does. I already have an angle with him, a weak point, some leverage.”
“Great, maybe I’ll join you in that drink then” said Sam, smiling wryly.
Sam watched with dismay as Roet filled a lowball glass almost to the brim with Scotch.
Sam said: “I assume you’ve heard that I’m training a young Chinese-American recruit? She shows promise. A great deal of talent and very, very smart. When the time comes we could send her over to take care of business if we want one of our own in Wuhan.”
Roet passed the drink to Sam, smiling. “See? Celebration time!”
Sam accepted the embarrassingly large drink and clinked glasses with Roet.
Sam forced himself to stay and finish his drink, eventually leaving Roet to continue his drinking binge which went until eleven in the morning at which point he was too drunk even to drive home. His secretary, frowning, called him a cab and sent him home for the rest of the day as he had become abusive. Roet had been screwing up just a little bit in all areas of his job which was not going unnoticed by the staff and some of the folk up on the seventh floor.
Chapter 9
A Surprise Guest
The Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Xi Jinping, was smoking a cigar on the large couch in Dr. Wu’s living room when Wu arrived home from work that evening.
“Please accept my apology for letting myself in to your beautiful house. I trust that you are enjoying living here?
“Yes sir. It’s a wonderful house.”
“Good. Well, now it is time to have our second conversation. Do you remember that I mentioned that we would discuss ‘a special vaccination’?” the Chairman said, leaning into the word ‘special’.
“Yes sir, I do recall you saying that.”
“I understand that your work on the virus and the antidote is going well. Is that accurate Doctor?”
“Yes sir, the project has been very challenging, but I am very close to having it for you.”
“Tell me about your work” the Chairman gestured in the air with the hand holding his cigar.
“Well sir, as you know, the virus is a SARS virus, but I inserted the gene sequences that my predecessors had found exist in both HIV and in the bat virus they were working on at the Nanjing Military Institute. So if we are accused of synthesizing the virus, we have plausible deniability. As you wished, science can argue that the virus is from the people eating bats.”
Dr. Wu paused, looking at the Chairman for a response.
The Chairman was nodding earnestly but gestured for him to keep going.
“I am now testing it on primates. Currently the virus is quickly killing every host, so I have some work to do still, but I can assure you that I will have it soon. It’s about pathogenic spike proteins…”
“Yes, yes. Good!” The Chairman cut in, not wishing to feel ignorant.
Taking a few puffs on the wet tip of his thick cigar, the Chairman looked at Dr. Wu.
“Now, let’s discuss the vaccine.”
Dr. Wu started to sweat. He had a strong feeling that something sinister was about to be revealed to him.
Wu’s mind raced over what had happened to him a day earlier in the lab’s underground carpark. A man had been hiding in wait for him in the back seat of his Mercedes with a pistol. The man had handed him a folder with photos of his daughter in her apartment. The man said that he would be contacted by an American called Marcus. He was handed a mobile phone and was informed that his daughter would be safe if he did what he was told.
“Go for a drive now. Pick up the phone when it rings. After you talk to Marcus, hang up and leave the phone in your car. That’s where he will contact you. Your house is probably bugged, but your car is not. I’ll be sweeping it regularly to make sure you are safe.”
Wu’s mind returned to the cigar smoke filled room with the Chairman and his body guards.
“Have you ever had a pet dog Dr. Wu?”
“No sir, I do not really care for dogs, not as pets anyway.”
The Chairman settled back into the comfortable couch.
“In America where the people have dogs as pets, and houses with front yards, sometimes the owners decide that they do not like the look of a fence around their front lawn.”
Dr. Wu had no idea where the Chairman was going with this.
“But without a fence, how can one keep the dog where it is meant to be, in the front yard?” The Chairman paused, looking at Wu, seemingly waiting for an answer.
“With a long leash?” offered Dr. Wu nervously.
“A long leash looks bad. It seems cruel. People tend to judge. Do-gooders like to interfere.” The Chairman leaned forward and butted out his cigar in the ashtray.
“Technology allows the master of the dog to create an invisible boundary around the yard, and simply by placing a special collar on the dog, the animal is confined to its limited space. If it ventures past the boundary dictated by the master, the collar shocks the dog with an electrical charge, the voltage of which is decided upon in advance by the master.”
He paused for effect, staring at Wu, smiling excitedly.
“This ‘dog collar’ is precisely what your vaccine will be, Dr. Wu.”
Wu looked perplexed. “Sir, how would this work?”
The Chairman laughed loudly. “It’s simpler than you think. Your vaccine will do two things:
1/ It will save the lives of many but not the sick and feeble.
2/ It will contain certain elements that our other scientists will instruct you about. These elements, certain metals in small amounts, will react to certain frequencies, specifically from 75 - 100 GHz. Your vaccine will deposit these elements in each person, and they will travel to certain parts of their body where they will remain for the rest of their life.”
Dr. Wu understood now. Those frequencies he referred to had been in the news lately. The 5G bandwidth spectrum was the newest mobile phone technology that China had been installing in recent months. There had been cell towers going up all over Wuhan. The phones had been on sale for a few weeks and the network had been officially switched on in Wuhan. Indeed, he himself had a 5G phone as did most of his workers and the phone was much faster than his old one. The frequencies probably resonate with certain metals that would could cause health and mental issues. There was no literature available on this specific subject, not in China at least. If there had been, Dr. Wu was sure that the Chairman would wipe it from the record and have the authors locked up.
“Very impressive sir!” Wu was truly impressed. Also shocked.
Wu’s mind wandered and thoughts of mobile phone technology took him back to the conversation he had had on that mobile phone in his car the day before. The American called Marcus had called him as he drove around the block. He had explained that they were watching his daughter and that no harm would come to her if he followed their instructions. He had said:
“The man that you met in your car tells us that you are working on a special virus designed to kill the weak. We would like you to make that virus effective only on people of Asian descent. It’ll be just like the SARS virus back in 2003. You see, our President doesn’t want a Chinese virus attacking our people, but he doesn’t mind if it only affects yours. Do you see what I am saying? We’ll be calling that the Yellow Virus. Get it?”
Wu had replied: “I understand that you are a racist son-of-a-bitch”
Marcus had continued: “When you present that virus to the Chairman, it will be the Yellow Virus. Asians only. You understand? Your daughter’s life depends on it. Remember, we have people inside your Government, so we’ll know.”
Wu’s mind came back to his living room where he still sat awkwardly with the Chairman.
“Sir, when will you start vaccinating people?”
“The vaccination will, of course, be mandatory. We will start injecting our citizens beginning with the major manufacturing cities after the virus breaks out in Wuhan.”
“You see Doctor Wu, we will release the virus in November. When December arrives, people will be afraid and they will not complain about the mandatory vaccine. They will see that China looks after it’s people.”
“I see sir. The vaccine will be quite easy for me to make since I am the one engineering the virus. It will be ready soon.”
The Chairman replied: “My Beijing scientists will take care of the mass production. You just give them the formula. They will use a network of factories already set up. We have been planning this for a long time.”
The Chairman continued: “I just wish we could have the virus and vaccine a bit sooner to use in Hong Kong. The natives have been getting restless there.” He looked darkly at Wu.
There was a long moment of silence in Wu’s living room. One of the guards shifted his weight and a floorboard creaked.
“So, I shall hear about your work soon then” grunted the Chairman as he lifted his weight from the couch.
Dr. Wu also rose to his feet, the fatigue from the conversation showing on his face.
The Chairman followed his bodyguards out of the Wu’s house.
Wu walked to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a large whisky, his hands shaking as he looked at his 5G Hua Wei phone, still recording audio.
*
Marcus Roet had successfully turned Dr. Wu into a CIA asset. Filming and recording his daughter was a dirty trick and a risky way of maintaining control of a valuable, long term asset. If something happened to the daughter, all their leverage over Dr. Wu would go out the window.
Roet would make sure that Jimmy kept tabs on Dr. Wu. He also would continue to maintain a small team in New York City watching the daughter in New York City. The pinhole cameras in her apartment and the tracker on her keys should ensure that she was never far from being in his grasp. Roet would have no trouble inflicting a little pain on her for the camera if required, but it had not yet come to that. In the meantime he liked to watch her in the evenings on his laptop.
*
Chapter 10
Special Training
Sam Chilvers had noticed the young Chinese-American recruit, Xue Lin, back when he was observing the new intakes during their first week of training. She had been much quicker in close combat. She could get the heel of her foot to any combatant’s throat before they moved a muscle. She had clearly had previous martial arts training. Probably Kung Fu by the looks of it. In her specialist operative training she was able to spot a tail one hundred percent of the time and was almost always able to lose them.
Sam had ordered that her Chinese language skill be exhaustively ‘blind-tested’ in the field to make sure that she could pass for a native. She was from a different province than where he needed to place her, but that would work to her advantage.
The day she had finished her tradecraft training Sam stopped her on her way back to the locker room.
“Do you know who I am?” Sam asked her.
“Sure, you’re Bradley Cooper from that movie with those other idiots who drank too much.”
“You mean: “The Hangover?” smirked Sam.
“Yeah, can I have your autograph?”
“I’ll take that as a compliment Snow Forest.”
“Snow what now?” asked Xue Lin, confused.
“That will be your code name for your next operation. You’re going back to China. Wuhan, to be exact. You will be reporting to me.”
Xue Lin was silent.
“You have three weeks to prepare. We have a few specialty instructors lined up to educate you in some new areas. You will do exactly as they tell you. Your life might depend on it. I shit you not, you will be in harm’s way, and if things go pear-shaped, we have never heard of you.”
“OooOooOooh.” said Xue Lin sarcastically, smiling flirtatiously at Sam.
‘Snow Forest…’ she thought to herself, waiting for Chilvers to get control of his mouth that was hanging open, just a bit.
“So, enjoy your last night. Go out and have fun. Get drunk. Beat some frat boys up if you want. Tomorrow you start doing big girl stuff.” Sam turned and walked away, finishing with: “And I don’t need to tell you that this is classified” his voice echoing.
Xue Lin’s three weeks’ working with specialty instructors was intense but she secretly enjoyed all of it. Even the abusive lectures she was subjected to along the way from some of the instructors and occasionally from Sam. Her birth parents had always been vigilant about her behavior. She had been taught by them to keep her emotions inside and they admonish
ed her regularly for being too willful and reckless. She had never shown any fear as a child, and she would always look back at them with defiance, fists clenched, during any lecture she was subjected to by them.
During her three weeks of training she had a retired Chinese CIA operative working with her on her cover story: who she was, where she grew up, her previous jobs and studies. Sam had told her that her aloof personality was a good shield and that she should maintain that cold shoulder. It discouraged friendly interrogation from friends, colleagues, strangers.
Another guy had her digging out hidey-holes in different kinds of walls to hide weapons and papers, and she learned to use power tools, plaster and paint.
She spent two hours a day in a real biotech lab with real scientists shadowing a lab assistant, learning all the little jobs she might have to do. She had instruction on Bio-hazard protocols, containers and transporting of hazardous substances.
One of the CIA analysts who had been doing background on Dr. Wu tested Xue Lin on every detail about her future boss in China.
An extremely nervous, nerdy tech guy gave her a complex course in putting together tech tools in the field using basic electronics from readily available gadgets. She could make a long range listening device by hacking a cheap laser pointer into a mobile phone. She could put together a field radio and take it apart and hide it in plain sight. She learned tricks to beat metal detectors. Useful stuff.
Sam had noticed that she often tied her hair up with chopsticks, so he adapted the ‘two-bladed attack techniques’ he’d learned for silent ops and taught them to her to use with sharpened chopsticks.
Each night Xue Lin would go home and collapse into bed. Her dreams were often about being chased. Once or twice she dreamt of Sam.
*
Sam briefed Roet about Xue Lin’s progress. It all looked very promising. After Sam had left his office, Roet opened the confidential file on her that he’d requested from the Deputy Director. There was nothing new there that he didn’t already know. He knew about the American couple because he himself had been their case officer when he had stationed them in Beijing.
The Wuhan Mission Page 3