Xue Lin rolled her eyes.
“And security camera.” He tossed her a stuffed Hello Kitty toy which she caught and turned over in her hands looking for the recorder inside.
“It’s all in the eye. Very small” Jimmy explained.
Xue Lin yanked the eye out of its socket and examined it. “Not bad!” she nodded, genuinely impressed with the small size of it. “OK Jimmy, good work.” Xue Lin tossed the Kitty-cam back on the bed. “Where will my big interview be tomorrow?”
“Wuhan Institute of Virology. Show them your ID, they are expecting you at ten in the morning.”
“If you need me again, call your boss on the radio. That way I get paid.” Jimmy shut the door behind him.
Xue Lin picked up the pistol, rapidly dismantled and reassembled it, checking the mechanisms thoroughly and put it back on the bed, loaded. Protocol dictated that she must assume that her room would be searched and possibly bugged in the future, so she would have to hide most of this gear semi-permanently in the walls. She could dig it out later when the time came.
The bug detector and the other tools that she might soon need would have to be hidden outside the apartment. She would need to sweep the place every night when she came home.
*
Chapter 16
The Interview
Xue Lin walked from her apartment to the Institute. It was Friday morning and rush hour was still going strong. Here in China there were a hell of a lot more motorbikes and bicycles. She hadn’t yet become accustomed to the Chinese style breakfast, but the streets and alleys in her area had a steaming selection of hole-in-the-wall vendors and restaurants that were serving oily noodles in paper bowls, egg soup, and wontons. They called it ‘guo zao.’ It was a real Wuhan thing. She had read about it on the plane.
A few blocks away, at the institute, Dr. Wu was sitting in the conference room at the head of a large white table. In front of him were the ten folders containing the resumes of the applicants for the two lab assistant jobs. He had chosen the candidates personally from over forty applications. He had included one male, just for appearances, but he wanted girls. He just liked them better.
He spent ten minutes interviewing each of the candidates. Most of them had been quite typical: dull, bookish and meek. Dr. Wu was famous in his field, so despite being quite geeky himself, he was their equivalent of a celebrity. The candidates’ obvious admiration for him was a turnoff for Dr. Wu. He preferred a bit of push back. Some spine. Some character.
The last three candidates’ interviews were more interesting to him than the first seven and he put their files aside for a second round. These three were especially pretty. Dr. Wu called his secretary in and asked her to bring the three finalists into the room. A moment later the three girls entered the room in single file as the secretary closed the door behind them.
Dr. Wu gestured for them all to sit at the table opposite him as he opened the three files again and laid them side by side in front of him. He’d noted that one of them was from Beijing where he had often been invited to give guest lectures at the University of Science and Technology.
“You are from Beijing!” he said looking at Xue Lin. “Did you ever have Professor Yu Meifang? He is a good friend of mine.”
“No, I never had the honor of being in his class.” Xue Lin replied.
“Ah, pity.” Dr. Wu’s eyes glanced briefly down at the opening of her blouse which had not been buttoned up all the way.
Xue Lin batted her eyelashes: “Were you friends with Dr. Xiaofan?” she countered, smiling sweetly. The name was in the file Jimmy had given her. It was a safe name to drop as she was on staff in Beijing but had never worked with Dr. Wu.
“No, unfortunately we have never met.” Dr. Wu replied, turning back to the other two candidates.
Xue Lin’s mind ticked over as the other two answered a few questions, flirting with him just as she had.
‘Shit! This guy is going to take the other two!’ She thought to herself.
As one of the other girls purred her answers back at Wu, Xue Lin sat up straighter and arched her back, just a little, pushing her breasts out, cocking her head slightly to one side, pouting her lips almost imperceptibly.
“Are there any questions about what the work would entail?” Wu inquired, smiling at all three girls.
The two other girls shook their heads meekly. Xue Lin’s mouth opened momentarily, the tip of her tongue touching the inside of her front teeth. She looked intently at Dr. Wu before pursing her lips and shaking her head.
“Are you sure you don’t have a question miss?” he looked intensely at her.
“No questions Dr. Wu.”
“Good, well thank you for your time, I will email each of you with my decision by the end of business hours today. Two of you will start work on Monday morning.”
As the girls were leaving the building Xue Lin hugged each of them and wished them luck. She had casually dropped the activated GPS tracker in the handbag of the first girl, during the hug, hoping to God that Dr. Wu’s choice would not force Xue Lin to strangle the poor girl before the weekend was out. Sam had made it clear that getting this lab assistant job was of high priority.
On her way home, Xue Lin found a hardware store a few blocks from her apartment. She had some renovations to do today while waiting to hear from Dr. Wu about the job by the end of the day.
She found everything she needed and arrived home with a large bag full of plastering and painting tools and two cans of off-white paint which she’d hung on two ends of a piece of wood to carry them back to her apartment. On the walk home, she looked for a clever place to stash the bug detector. It had to be a cool dry place where nobody would think to interfere in any way.
A crumbling red brick wall around the corner from her building reminded her of tradecraft training. Loose bricks are great for concealing stuff. She’d come back tonight and look for a loose brick. Meanwhile she had an apartment to paint.
*
Roet was pleased with his team’s work on the job application. It was solid work and with a bit of luck it would hold up under scrutiny and all would go smoothly for Xue Lin.
Back in 2003 he had sent a young couple to Beijing to establish a cover story while blackmailing a virologist who was working on the SARS virus. Unfortunately, however, he had neglected to pay one of his Chinese assets who was supposed to be helping the couple. He was never exactly sure what had happened over there but the couple had managed to avoid prison.
Chapter 17
Renovations
Xue Lin’s weapons and gadgets lay spread out on the bed. She needed to be able to access them with relatively short notice, but they needed to be totally unfindable if someone turned over her apartment while she was at work.
She picked up the multi-frequency bug detector and turned it on. It looked like a little walkie talkie with two aerials. She swept the room with it, and as expected, no broadcasting signals were detected. It was still too soon for that.
She propped the Hello Kitty Spy-cam on a shelf in the corner. It was motion activated.
The Ruger LC9S pistol needed to go into a hole in the wall along with the five spare mags, each with nine rounds. Also her escape papers including her Canadian passport and a big roll of local currency and US dollars. She hoped that she wouldn’t be needing the pistol or papers until the project was near completion.
After moving the bed out of the way, she put on the paper coveralls a dust mask and protective glasses and started to dig quietly into the wall behind where the bedhead would be.
Soon she had a thirty centimeter square, shallow hole in the wall.
“There goes the security deposit” she said out loud in Mandarin.
She shoved the roll of cash, the passport and papers, the pistol and mags into a ziplock and lodged them in the wall and with the help of a piece of drywall that would not sound hollow if knocked upon, she plastered over it using the method she’d been taught at Langley.
After admiring her han
diwork, she picked up the special radio that Jimmy had left her. It was a curious looking thing. He’d showed her how to disassemble it and hide it in the toaster, the alarm clock and the back of the coffee maker. The headphones were standard earbuds with a built in microphone. She picked up the instructions and quickly memorized them. It was vital that she knew when and how to get in touch with Sam. She set fire to the instructions and while watching them burn to ash, she thought: “I’ll put this thing together again later and radio Sam this evening.” Meanwhile she had some painting to do, now that the plaster was dry. She started with the paint roller on the wall behind the bed.
*
The young Chinese computer tech timidly put his hand up again to get the attention of his impatient superior who walked straight over to the tech’s cubicle.
“Yes?”
“Sir, she is in Wuhan. She has only been to a few places since she got to the city. Supermarket area near river, residential area, and…..Wuhan Institute of Virology. Sir.”
His superior paused, looking a little surprised. “Are you sure about that last place?”
“Yes sir, she was there for more than an hour sir.”
“Keep on her” he said walking back to his own office.
*
Xue Lin tossed the three handbags in the closet, and looked at the remaining gear on the bed. The bug detector, the lock picks, the data recovery tool and the wire.
The Garrote wire, a necessary but unpleasant and rather grizzly weapon, she made into a bracelet. “I hope I don’t have to use this before the day is out” she thought to herself, reminding herself that she needed to check the position of the locator she’d put on the girl.
“Email first!” she said, putting on the thick rimmed reading glasses that Jimmy had left for her. “Wow these really do make me look like a geek” she thought.
She opened the laptop and logged in to her Email account that she had established for her job application. It had just gone five o’clock.
*
Chapter 18
We Regret to Inform You
Dr. Wu looked carefully over each of the three applications on the large white table. There was something about the feisty one from Beijing that he didn’t entirely trust. The smart thing would be to hire the other two nicer girls, one of whom was a shoe-in. They would undoubtably tow the line, do as they were told and be sweet to him.
“Yes, I’ll hire the good girls. Less chance of problems.”
He turned to his desktop computer and cut and pasted together a job offer from an old file. He sent it off to the first girl, the ‘shoe-in.’ Next he started to type the ‘rejection email’ to Xue Lin.
“Thank you for your time. After reviewing the finalists I have decided to go with the other applicants. I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.”
*
Xue Lin signed in to her Email account.
“You have no mail” she read out loud. “Not good!” she said shaking her head, thinking about Dr. Wu’s promise to let them know by the end of the day. She closed her laptop and went to her phone to check on the location of the poor innocent girl who had no idea what was coming if Xue Lin didn’t get one of those jobs.
The little red ball on the map in her phone showed that she lived near the river, a couple of neighborhoods to the South. It was just starting to get dark. Xue Lin had noticed a bicycle rental shop in her neighborhood. She had one more look of satisfaction at the drying paint on the wall and walked out the door into the stairwell and wandered out into the early evening.
At the bike shop she offered to buy one of their older rental bikes. It was rusty but mechanically it was fine. It would get her to and from work and would be handy for little side jobs like the one she would have to do tonight.
She haggled relentlessly with the shop assistant so as not to arouse suspicion. Eventually they agreed on a very low price and she wheeled the bike out of the shop onto the street. Her plan was to take out the girl tonight.
As she paused to look at the map on her phone Xue Lin thought: ‘Maybe I’ll just have her choke on some fried rice. Something that would not call for any questions.’
*
Dr. Wu paused before clicking the send button on Xue Lin’s rejection letter.
‘It would be more interesting having her in the lab than a quiet girl. More fun for me. She had nicer boobs, and she doesn’t button all the way up. That had to be for me’ he thought to himself, pulling the long hairs that grew from a mole on his chin.
Wu clicked in the address bar and changed it and sent the rejection off to the other girl, who would likely be very disappointed as she was well qualified for the job and had done an excellent interview.
*
Xue Lin slowed to a stop on the side of the road outside the apartment building that was pinging on her GPS locator map. She parked the bike without locking it and approached the list of names and apartment numbers. She rang the buzzer next to the name she remembered from the girl’s file in front of Dr. Wu.
“Hello?” the voice crackled through the old speaker.
“Hi! It’s Xue Lin.… from today? The Interview?”
There was a long pause before the girl answered.
“Oh yes. Is everything alright?”
“I just wanted to talk. I don’t have any friends here.”
The door buzzed and Xue Lin pushed it open, walking into the old wooden lobby. Her heart had picked up it’s pace. Depending on what happened next, she might be minutes away from murdering an innocent girl because the American Government needed her to.
Xue Lin climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and soon found apartment 420. The girl had already opened the door and was waiting in the doorway.
“Hi! I’m so sorry for stalking you like this. I was feeling lonely and anxious about the interview today, and I wanted to talk to someone my age, and you seemed really nice.”
The girl blushed. “How did you find my apartment?” she asked, looking more than a little bit uneasy.
“The Institute gave it to me. I told them I had borrowed money from you and wanted to pay you back.” Xue Lin glanced at the girl’s petite neck thinking how she wouldn’t put up much of a fight.
“Would you like some tea?”
“Yes, you are so kind. Thank you” said Xue Lin, thinking she would use the garrote wire.
Xue Lin unravelled her bracelet behind her back. During training, her instructor had drilled her intensively in the use of the wire. Being petite, Xue Lin had been encouraged to bring larger victims to the ground with the wire and a well placed aikido style trip, using their weight to bring them down, where she could put her foot behind their neck for more powerful leverage. The trainees practiced on each other, making use of a specially designed ‘neck protector’ that enabled the assailant to go all the way with the strangulation without causing injury.
Xue Lin still had not asked if she’d heard back about the interview, but there was something about the demeanour of the girl, a bit of smugness perhaps, that suggested she’d been given one of the two jobs.
With her back to Xue Lin, the girl pushed the pump button on the top of the thermos and hot water spurted out of the spout into a tall porcelain white cup.
“Did you hear back from Dr. Wu?” Xue Lin asked.
“Yes, I did! I got the email an hour ago” she seemed happy.
“He gave me a job! I was so surprised. I thought my interview was not that good.”
She looked at Xue Lin who was now standing very close to her, to accept her tea. “And congratulations to you! You got the other one!” she sang, continuing: “My friend was very disappointed. She thought she would get the job for sure. She got a rejection letter same time as my email came.”
Xue Lin was already winding up the garrote behind her back to put in her pocket out of sight. She accepted the tea cup and sat down pulling her phone out to check her email. Still nothing.
The awkward silence lasted a good thirty seconds.
&n
bsp; Xue Lin was thinking: “Either the email has gotten lost, or Wu decided just to hire just one girl.”
Xue Lin sighed. It was already six o’clock. She should have received the email by now. What a shame for this poor girl and her family.
“Bing” her phone chimed. The Email banner glowed across the top of the screen of Xue Lin’s phone. “Oh there it is!” she said as she started to read.
Congratulations.
I would like to offer you one of the jobs at the lab… blah blah blah
Xue Lin looked at the girl and smiled a real smile, relieved.
They chatted superficially for a half hour while finishing their tea. On her way out, Xue Lin saw that the girl’s jacket hanging near the door was the one she’d put the GPS locator in.
The girls hugged in the doorway as Xue Lin rummaged in the pocket of the jacket, palming the locator without too much trouble.
“See you Monday!”.
“Bye!”
On the bike ride home, Xue Lin stopped by the brick wall in the deserted alley near her place and tried a few bricks for looseness. Eventually one came out with a bit of help. She pulled the chisel out of her bag and chipped away at the cement inside the hole, making some room. Then she pulled the bug sweeper, the lock picks and the data transfer device out of her backpack, already in ziplock and placed them in the wall, replacing the brick.
“That’ll work!” she said.
Things were going well today. She’d done her renovations, got a job, found a good hiding place and best of all, she hadn’t murdered anyone.
She grabbed some food from a street stall, asking carefully: “What meat is this?” She bought a few supplies for the morning, and walked her rusty bike back to her building.
Sam was expecting the call on the radio at 8:05pm. Those were his instructions. She was to check in with the non-distress signal: “Hello Blue Eyes, this is Snow Forest.” If she thought someone was listening she was to say: “Good evening, this is Xue Lin” in which case the two of them were to go to Plan B and flip the script to the one she had been taught at Langley.
The Wuhan Mission Page 6