The Wuhan Mission

She looked in her bag and noted that her ‘Hello Kitty’ purse was still inside. Nothing was missing. She turned to thank the guy but he was gone.

The two guys met up again three blocks to the east.

“Where did you put the tracker?”

“On her keys.”

“Did you clone the phone?”

“Right here!” He said holding a small device in his hand.

“Good job. Better call Marcus and give him the good news.”

Marcus Roet was typing numbers into a ledger when his cell phone rang.

“Roet!” Marcus answered, seeing that it was a team member calling.

“It’s done. The phone’s cloned, and the tracker is on her keys.

“Where on her keys?” asked Marcus accusingly.

“It’s cool, she won’t find it. It’s inside her stupid fluffy Asian keyring toy.

“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.