Roet did not feel good about trusting important jobs to Jimmy, but he had no choice. He’d had very little luck getting any CIA personnel into China since the 2003 SARS debacle with the Barbecue Couple, and having no-one on the ground in China meant that he had to trust local assets that were greedy enough to betray their own Government.
That same afternoon, Jimmy double parked his black Mercedes in front of the Virology Institute building. Standing on the steps outside, he flashed his Government ID at the two pretty young lab assistants as they left the virology building where they worked for Dr. Wu. Jimmy escorted them to his car. Opening the back door, one of the girls paused and asked: “Are we in trouble?”
“Nooohhh” Jimmy reassured them, shaking his head reassuringly.
Jimmy closed the door behind them as they sat in the back seat looking at each other, worried.
Jimmy jogged around to the driver side and pivoted in behind the wheel.
He started the engine and smoothly and professionally moved the Mercedes away from the curb into a tight U-turn and headed in the direction of the edge of town.
There was silence in the car for a few minutes. The young lab assistants’ fear grew. One of them was quietly starting to cry. The other held her hand tightly.
Jimmy broke the silence: “You have both been working for Dr. Wu for enough time now that you know that he likes the young ladies, right?”
The young assistants turned to look at each other, and nodded uncertainly without saying anything. They were both thinking about the constant harassment they underwent from Dr. Wu every time he made his rounds to check on their work. Leaning over them, grazing different parts of their bodies with stray arm movements. Making suggestive comments whenever he could think of them.
Jimmy continued: “He has asked me to arrange a special date with you both tonight. I think you both understand what that means. Am I right?”
“Ahhh Umm no… What does that mean?” asked one of the girls, wide eyed.
“Either you both do whatever he wants in the bedroom with him, or you don’t come back to work tomorrow. You go look for new jobs.”
“We will be fired?” asked the other girl incredulously.
“No,” answered Jimmy, “you just call tomorrow and quit. Much simpler for him, simpler for you. Simpler for me too. Or you both go do bad things with him tonight, and probably a lot of other nights after that too. If I were you I would just quit. He’s a very bad man. You don’t want to go to his house. Trust me.”
Jimmy took them to a restaurant on the edge of town and ate an intimidating meal with the terrified girls before dropping them both home and then reporting back to Roet.
After clearing immigration in Seoul, Xue Lin took the local bus from the airport to the Port of Incheon. The bus was empty of passengers so she took the opportunity to put everything she needed into the dry bag. The suitcase she would discard at the dock.
The bus pulled in a few blocks from the docklands. Xue Lin had memorized the walking route to where the boat captain had said his boat would be waiting.
Xue Lin enjoyed stretching her legs after the long flight, and after a walk in the sun along the dock she found the fishing boat without much trouble.
The boat captain was Chinese, in his seventies, with only seven or eight teeth still in place. He wore an old faded blue jersey, repaired many times, and a wide brimmed straw hat with a string under his chin. His skin was leathery with deep crevices. When Xue Lin appeared on the dock where the stern was tied up, he hardly moved. Just the eyes shifted to look at her. Xue Lin gestured with her eyebrows, and he motioned her to use the gangplank to come aboard his very old, rusty trawler.
The boat wasn’t due to set out until after dark, so the crew was still ashore. Xue Lin accepted the offer of a couple of drinks, just to be polite. She was a bit of a light weight and had to watch herself around alcohol, especially this Chinese rice wine stuff that seemed to go straight for one’s motor skills. Have seven or eight of those at dinner and you don’t realize you are drunk until you get up. The captain’s bottle was an old plastic coke bottle, so this stuff was from a home distillery.
The captain had coerced seven into her by the time his crew of five had all shown up. Most of them merely gave her a curious glance, but the captain introduced the First Mate to her. He was a short and very rough looking muscular fellow, almost black from sun exposure. She learned that most of the crew were Korean and she guessed that these guys were doing more smuggling than fishing. The First Mate spoke to her in Chinese with a very heavy accent, which she guessed was from some coastal village in Southern China. He held his hand out for the cash, and she handed him a wad of US fifties.
“You will need to swim one kilometer from where we drop you. It will be dark so you just swim towards the lights.”
