The Wuhan Mission

“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.

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.