The Wuhan Mission

Sam forced himself to stay and finish his drink, eventually leaving Roet to continue his drinking binge which went until eleven in the morning at which point he was too drunk even to drive home. His secretary, frowning, called him a cab and sent him home for the rest of the day as he had become abusive. Roet had been screwing up just a little bit in all areas of his job which was not going unnoticed by the staff and some of the folk up on the seventh floor.

Chapter 9 A Surprise Guest

The Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Xi Jinping, was smoking a cigar on the large couch in Dr. Wu’s living room when Wu arrived home from work that evening.

“Please accept my apology for letting myself in to your beautiful house. I trust that you are enjoying living here?

“Yes sir. It’s a wonderful house.”

“Good. Well, now it is time to have our second conversation. Do you remember that I mentioned that we would discuss ‘a special vaccination’?” the Chairman said, leaning into the word ‘special’.

“Yes sir, I do recall you saying that.”

“I understand that your work on the virus and the antidote is going well. Is that accurate Doctor?”

“Yes sir, the project has been very challenging, but I am very close to having it for you.”

“Tell me about your work” the Chairman gestured in the air with the hand holding his cigar.

“Well sir, as you know, the virus is a SARS virus, but I inserted the gene sequences that my predecessors had found exist in both HIV and in the bat virus they were working on at the Nanjing Military Institute. So if we are accused of synthesizing the virus, we have plausible deniability. As you wished, science can argue that the virus is from the people eating bats.”

Dr. Wu paused, looking at the Chairman for a response.

The Chairman was nodding earnestly but gestured for him to keep going.

“I am now testing it on primates. Currently the virus is quickly killing every host, so I have some work to do still, but I can assure you that I will have it soon. It’s about pathogenic spike proteins…”

“Yes, yes. Good!” The Chairman cut in, not wishing to feel ignorant.

Taking a few puffs on the wet tip of his thick cigar, the Chairman looked at Dr. Wu.

“Now, let’s discuss the vaccine.”

Dr. Wu started to sweat. He had a strong feeling that something sinister was about to be revealed to him.

Wu’s mind raced over what had happened to him a day earlier in the lab’s underground carpark. A man had been hiding in wait for him in the back seat of his Mercedes with a pistol. The man had handed him a folder with photos of his daughter in her apartment. The man said that he would be contacted by an American called Marcus. He was handed a mobile phone and was informed that his daughter would be safe if he did what he was told.

“Go for a drive now. Pick up the phone when it rings. After you talk to Marcus, hang up and leave the phone in your car. That’s where he will contact you. Your house is probably bugged, but your car is not. I’ll be sweeping it regularly to make sure you are safe.”

Wu’s mind returned to the cigar smoke filled room with the Chairman and his body guards.

“Have you ever had a pet dog Dr. Wu?”

“No sir, I do not really care for dogs, not as pets anyway.”

The Chairman settled back into the comfortable couch.

“In America where the people have dogs as pets, and houses with front yards, sometimes the owners decide that they do not like the look of a fence around their front lawn.”

Dr. Wu had no idea where the Chairman was going with this.

“But without a fence, how can one keep the dog where it is meant to be, in the front yard?” The Chairman paused, looking at Wu, seemingly waiting for an answer.

“With a long leash?” offered Dr. Wu nervously.

“A long leash looks bad. It seems cruel. People tend to judge. Do-gooders like to interfere.” The Chairman leaned forward and butted out his cigar in the ashtray.

“Technology allows the master of the dog to create an invisible boundary around the yard, and simply by placing a special collar on the dog, the animal is confined to its limited space. If it ventures past the boundary dictated by the master, the collar shocks the dog with an electrical charge, the voltage of which is decided upon in advance by the master.”

He paused for effect, staring at Wu, smiling excitedly.

“This ‘dog collar’ is precisely what your vaccine will be, Dr. Wu.”

Wu looked perplexed. “Sir, how would this work?”

The Chairman laughed loudly. “It’s simpler than you think. Your vaccine will do two things:

1/ It will save the lives of many but not the sick and feeble.

2/ It will contain certain elements that our other scientists will instruct you about. These elements, certain metals in small amounts, will react to certain frequencies, specifically from 75–100 GHz. Your vaccine will deposit these elements in each person, and they will travel to certain parts of their body where they will remain for the rest of their life.”