The Wuhan Mission

by Irving Waters

  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.

  *

  Chapter 11

  China

  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.

  *

  Chapter 12

  Two Assistants

  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.

  Jimmy continued: “He has asked me to arrange a special date with you both tonight. I think you both understand what that means. Am I right?”

  “Ahhh Umm no.. What does that mean?” asked one of the girls, wide eyed.

  “Either you both do whatever he wants in the bedroom with him, or you don’t come back to work tomorrow. You go look for new jobs.”

  “We will be fired?” asked the other girl incredulously.

  “No,” answered Jimmy, “you just call tomorrow and quit. Much simpler for him, simpler for you. Simpler for me too. Or you both go do bad things with him tonight, and probably a lot of other nights after that too. If I were you I would just quit. He’s a very bad man. You don’t want to go to his house. Trust me.�
��

  Jimmy took them to a restaurant on the edge of town and ate an intimidating meal with the terrified girls before dropping them both home and then reporting back to Roet.

  *

  Chapter 13

  A Fishing Boat

  After clearing immigration in Seoul, Xue Lin took the local bus from the airport to the Port of Incheon. The bus was empty of passengers so she took the opportunity to put everything she needed into the dry bag. The suitcase she would discard at the dock.

  The bus pulled in a few blocks from the docklands. Xue Lin had memorized the walking route to where the boat captain had said his boat would be waiting.

  Xue Lin enjoyed stretching her legs after the long flight, and after a walk in the sun along the dock she found the fishing boat without much trouble.

  The boat captain was Chinese, in his seventies, with only seven or eight teeth still in place. He wore an old faded blue jersey, repaired many times, and a wide brimmed straw hat with a string under his chin. His skin was leathery with deep crevices. When Xue Lin appeared on the dock where the stern was tied up, he hardly moved. Just the eyes shifted to look at her. Xue Lin gestured with her eyebrows, and he motioned her to use the gangplank to come aboard his very old, rusty trawler.

  The boat wasn’t due to set out until after dark, so the crew was still ashore. Xue Lin accepted the offer of a couple of drinks, just to be polite. She was a bit of a light weight and had to watch herself around alcohol, especially this Chinese rice wine stuff that seemed to go straight for one’s motor skills. Have seven or eight of those at dinner and you don’t realize you are drunk until you get up. The captain’s bottle was an old plastic coke bottle, so this stuff was from a home distillery.

  The captain had coerced seven into her by the time his crew of five had all shown up. Most of them merely gave her a curious glance, but the captain introduced the First Mate to her. He was a short and very rough looking muscular fellow, almost black from sun exposure. She learned that most of the crew were Korean and she guessed that these guys were doing more smuggling than fishing. The First Mate spoke to her in Chinese with a very heavy accent, which she guessed was from some coastal village in Southern China. He held his hand out for the cash, and she handed him a wad of US fifties.

  “You will need to swim one kilometer from where we drop you. It will be dark so you just swim towards the lights.”

  “You got any flippers?” she joked, half serious.

  He gestured for her to follow her inside where he yanked out an old wetsuit and pair of cheap snorkeling fins.

  “That’ll work.” she said, bemused.

  Soon after dark, the boat headed out to sea. Xue Lin grabbed a bunk and drifted off to sleep, thanks to the effects of the rice wine that was still in her system.

  The First Mate woke her to give her some hot food. She’d need the calories for what was to come. As she slurped up her noodles, he sat with her and drew her a map.

  “We will drop you exactly here. We use GPS so don’t worry. Captain never misses. Current will be going to the West, so you can relax and enjoy the ride, but the last two hundred meters you will have to swim to land and there might be some waves. When you get to shore, leave the wetsuit and fins on the beach, get dry, get dressed, walk into town. The bus terminal is here, only 5km from the beach on the edge of town. You can get a night bus south to Shanghai tonight. Very easy.”

  “Any sharks here?” She asked, dubiously.

  “You too skinny. They won’t bother with you.” he replied, smiling.

  Xue Lin hated that answer.

  Very soon, dressed in the old wetsuit and with the fins on her feet, a couple of crew members lowered her over the side on a single rope swing to the water. Her dry bag against her chest, sealed shut.

  The boat’s lights were off so as not to be seen, and she could see the town’s lights on shore, some distance away. It looked close enough. Shouldn’t be a problem.

  “OK, go!” said the First Mate.

  She slid off the line and dropped a couple of feet into the water with a small splash. She pushed her backpack in front of her on the surface.

  “Good luck!” one of the crew yelled.

  The captain put the boat in gear and moved off leaving Xue Lin alone in the Sea.

  *

  Jimmy found the website where Dr. Wu’s lab posted its job vacancies, and sent the link to Roet immediately. Roet’s specialists were already working on Xue Lin’s job application.

  Roet had said to them: “It’s a rush job, but Dr. Wu will be able to detect bullshit if you just make it up, so check your sources, make it as real as you can but do your best to avoid Wu’s likely old acquaintances. Write Xue Lin a brief to prepare her for the interview. Make it as thorough as you can, and…well…if worst come to worst she’ll just have to blow him.”

  The young team of Chinese-American specialists looked at Roet with a mixture of condescension and disgust.

  “Get to work!” he yelled at them and they all turned back to their screens and started typing.

  Roet paused in the doorway on his way out:

  “Oh, by the way, she has to be from Beijing. That’s her accent.”

  He closed the door behind him.

  “Maybe you can blow ME…” muttered one of the girls as she started typing a reference in formal Chinese on a Beijing laboratory’s letterhead.

  *

  The water was chilly and Xue Lin had a little adrenaline rush going after her exit from the trawler. The trawler seemed to disappear very quickly behind her. She was quite buoyant in the water as the old wetsuit was thick and her dry-bag worked well as a floatation device. She kicked steadily in the direction of the lights, making sure not to wear herself out. Being this far from shore in an unfamiliar sea, which on this moonless night seemed to be completely black, was quite disconcerting. She had no backup, no chance of rescue, and it could all end right here off the coast of China. She also assumed that there would be sharks, so she kicked gently so as not to create a commotion. Sharks liked to feed at night….

  As she grew closer to shore the strange thought occurred to her that she was glad that she had never eaten shark fin soup, as she felt her karma was good and they wouldn’t eat her in return. “Another ridiculous thing that Asians eat…” she thought to herself.

  “I wonder what Sam is doing now. Probably worried about me.” She smiled to herself as she began to kick more efficiently.

  After a while she started to hear the waves breaking ahead. There was a dim line of white water and it appeared that there was quite a large swell coming in off the East China Sea, enough to cause a bit of surf near shore. She stopped a moment and kicked downward to lift her head vertically out of the water so she could get her bearings. Waves rolling in towards the beach, looked like they were just under two meters high judging from the back. “Quite big” she said out loud.

  Back on her stomach she continued forward. She pulled her backpack under her stomach, placing her arms through the straps. ‘Can’t lose the bag under any circumstances. I can’t be walking into town in a wetsuit.’

  As the first wave picked her up and passed under her she realized that they were in fact quite powerful and her heart started to beat faster. She turned 180 degrees facing back out to sea to see if there was a lull or at least a smaller set of waves. She waited there for a few minutes watching the waves as they picked her up and passed under her and then soon crashed and rolled roughly towards the beach.

  After a large set passed, she swam into the zone where they were breaking and she committed to swimming in with the first, hopefully smallest of the next set. The wave rolled towards her, threateningly tall, she kicked her fins and the wave picked her up, threw her down it’s face and then crashed on top of her, pushing her and her bag underwater. After what seemed like a minute, the bag, which had a good amount of air in it, brought her back to the surface in time to be beaten down by the second wave. Somersaulting underwater, she clung to her bag as it brought her ba
ck to the surface again, now missing one fin. She had time to take a couple of deep breaths before the next one, this time a tower of bubbling whitewater mowed her down, tossing her head over heels and pushing her under for another twenty seconds. She felt like she was never going to make it to the beach. She was praying that underneath the crashing waves was a sandy bottom. More likely, she knew, there was a jagged reef under her feet, and as the water grew shallower nearer shore, she was more likely to hit her head on the bottom and her body would wash up the next day.

  One more monster of white water rushed over her, jetting her forward. Under water again, her lungs bursting to breathe fresh air. She relaxed and went with it, and soon as her bag brought her to the surface, she felt her remaining fin touch bottom. Relieved, but now scared of being thrown into rocks she kicked forward, the next wave pushing under again, but she was now much closer to the beach where the water was neck deep. She pulled the fin off and struggled the rest of the way into the beach, being knocked over by each white water wave as it hit her.

  She collapsed on the beach and lay there for a few minutes, waterlogged and exhausted. The roar of the breaking waves was deafening.

  “Might be some waves.” she said out loud, recalling the First Mate’s warning.

  She unzipped the old wetsuit and stripped naked, shivering on the beach. She opened the dry bag, still dry. Money well spent. Toweling herself off with a T-shirt, she shook her head to dislodge the salt water in her ears and nasal passages. She put on a pair of jeans, a dry T-shirt and a sweater, and dug out one of her small reversible jackets. She squeezed the water out of her hair as best she could and ran a brush through it before tying it up in a bun, shivering. She was starting to warm up, but best get walking into town.

  *

  The 3PLA

  The People’s Liberation Army maintained what it called the “Third Department” which was similar to America’s National Security Administration. It was known to insiders as the “3PLA.” Their directive was to watch the West, particularly America, focusing on military strategy, while monitoring world communications for ‘commercial opportunities’.