The Wuhan Mission

As Jimmy listened to the call from Roet, which Dr. Wu had put on speaker, he stopped chewing for a moment. It was now clear that Marcus Roet was blackmailing Dr. Wu by threatening to harm his daughter. Something about forcing him to create an ‘Asians-only version of the virus’.

Jimmy rewound the recording and listened to it a couple more times before dialing the Chairman’s direct line.

“Hello Mister Chairman, this is Jimmy”

“Yes, Jimmy, what do you have for me?”

“Doctor Wu has a daughter studying in New York. The CIA are surveilling her and sending videos of her to Dr. Wu threatening him to alter the virus so it only infects Asians. From what the Doctor says to himself when he gets off the phone, it would seem that he is only pretending to go along with the CIA, but not actually doing it sir.”

“That’s interesting news Jimmy. Thank you. Good work.”

“Thank you sir. I will send you the audio file and the text file on the daughter which has her contact details in New York.”

*

The Chairman’s assistant arose from her seat behind her desk outside the Chairman’s office. She formally greeted the Head of Foreign Covert Operations and showed him into the office where the Chairman sat behind his desk.

“Welcome Colonel.”

The Colonel nodded, looking impressive in full Uniform.

“Superior men are always held in fear and in awe” the Chairman said.

The Colonel nodded, knowingly. His men feared him, and he used this to his advantage whenever possible.

“There is something that has come to our attention but it is rather sensitive and anything we do needs to be completely below the radar. There is a Chinese girl in New York who the CIA are watching. She is the daughter of a man who is doing important work for me. I cannot afford for him to be compromised by these foreign dogs. I need you to bring her back to China. It needs to be clean. None of your team is to be captured.”

“I understand sir.”

“Here is her name and home address in Manhattan”.

As the General handed the file over, he said: “Good luck. Take care of it quickly.”

“Thank you sir.”

The Colonel saluted and turned efficiently and left the office.

Chapter 26 Asians Only

Doctor Wu had, until now, been holding off on making any forays into the work that Roet was demanding from him, however, he’d recently felt watched and had become afraid that Roet may find out that he had ignored his request.

Dr. Wu reopened the file on his computer that contained the genetic targeting data. He had based his new virus on a previous ‘crown shaped’ version that was called SARS-CoV. SARS, which stood for ‘Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome’ had been released in China back in 2003. He had been given some older classified documents about the engineering of the SARS virus and he had noticed that SARS was designed to be harmless to white people, in fact it was harmless to anyone who was not Asian!

“Must have been CIA then too!” he said out loud, shaking his head disapprovingly, alone in his lab. He could, if forced to, still go back and alter his new virus to target Asians only.

Dr. Wu’s discovery that one version of his virus was able to mutate and was, in a sense, smarter than the SARS-CoV-2 was very concerning. If the virus was able to change itself, it could roll across the world’s population, attacking younger and fitter patients. Even babies, eventually. If this version of the virus was released, it could lay waste to whole economies. It could destroy humanity, worst case scenario…. That was not what he wanted. He wasn’t a sociopath. He was a pragmatist. However he was being strong-armed by two of the most powerful organizations on the planet. He was however incensed that the Americans were threatening to harm his daughter, and the mutating version of the virus lurked amongst his darker thoughts.

He continued working diligently to create the virus that the Chairman had ordered. No possibility of mutation, and with a small target death rate aimed at just the weak and the elderly. His work was nearly complete. He was glad that there was very high security protecting the lab because his workflow dictated that he keep all versions of the virus created along the way. This meant that in his lab there was a series of several Corona viruses ranging from ‘non-contagious’ all the way up to the most dangerous one that could mutate. He intended to incinerate all other versions the moment his work was complete. In the meantime, the viruses were color coded, and locked up in the bio-hazard safe. The final Yellow Virus would be labelled: “SARS-CoV-2”

Dr. Wu set to work, a cup of strong coffee on his desk. The final steps would take him the rest of the day and probably some of the night too.

Dr. Wu’s email program pinged. He had a message from the Chairman’s office. He clicked on the message and saw there was an attached video. He opened it. An iPhone video of his daughter! He clicked the play button.