Desmond tossed Garin’s phone onto the table and ran, covering his mouth with his arm, the handgun held straight down at his side in case they caught up to him. He moved quickly, turning off Unter Den Linden, putting distance between himself and the scene.

Behind him, he heard tires lock and slide against pavement. Cars collided. The roar of the motorcycles ceased.

A block over from Unter den Linden, on Mittelstraße, he slipped into the cab he had paid to wait for this very contingency. The Arabic man behind the wheel began driving, whisking him away to the destination Desmond had given him, glancing in the mirror suspiciously.

Desmond knew he had to get off the streets. If he could make it to the Tränenpalast and onto the boat docked along the River Spree, he might have a chance.

The taxi turned.

Desmond never saw the black parcel van that crashed into the driver side, slamming his head into the window.

His vision went black, and he fought to stay conscious. He pulled the handle on his door and stumbled out. His eyes wouldn’t focus. He reached in his pocket for the gun. He’d have to fight them.

Boots pounded the pavement: three figures in black body armor, carrying assault rifles. They rushed toward him. He raised the gun, but a hand caught his arm. Another reached around him and covered his mouth with a cloth.

Slowly, the blackness became complete.

Chapter 17

The World Health Organization and Health Canada operate an early warning system for pandemics. The system is called the Global Public Health Information Network, or GPHIN for short, and it has saved countless millions of lives.

In 2003, GPHIN identified SARS in Hong Kong long before local health agencies knew what was going on. SARS remained a largely regional epidemic instead of a global pandemic thanks to GPHIN and the prescient actions of several health workers, including a doctor who ordered the slaughter of 1.5 million chickens and birds who were likely infected with the virus.

In 2012, GPHIN again detected warning signs of an outbreak—this time of a respiratory illness in Jordan. The system was again correct, predicting the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus—MERS-CoV—before it went global.

In a sense, GPHIN is to global pandemics what the seismometer and Richter scale are to earthquakes. Every day, GPHIN collects data from local, state, regional, and national health departments. It also crawls social media and blogs, looking for signs of a new outbreak.

Hours after Peyton’s team arrived in Kenya, GPHIN identified what could be called a tremor. The data supporting the alert was broad-based, with signals from official and informal sources around the world. The pattern of symptoms was consistent. Around the world, people were getting sick with a mysterious respiratory illness.

Within minutes, an analyst at Health Canada reviewed the alert and wrote the following memo:

Respiratory alert Nov-22-A93 is a strong, broad-based signal consistent with an infectious disease being transmitted across continents in a short time span. Pathogen is unknown at this time but is most likely a flu strain, perhaps a new variant. Recommend further monitoring and investigation by local health departments.