“This strain of plague does everything quickly.”

“Reminds me of another strain.” Claudio reaches for the bedside stand and lifts up a book. The cover is filled with a medieval depiction of a hooded grim reaper, scythe held menacingly overhead. In blood-red dripping letters the title reads: La Grande Mortalità d’Italia.

Alana takes a stab at translation. “The Great Death of Italy?”

“Close, yes. It tells how the Black Death leveled Italy, including Genoa. For some twisted reason, your friend Nico thought it would make for light reading during my recuperation.”

Alana laughs. “Most thoughtful of him.”

“Actually, it’s fascinating. Terrifying, too. The descriptions of the spread . . . how quickly the plague jumped from town to town and country to country. In a time with so little travel.” He lowers the book.

“What about you, Claudio? You are getting better?”

“Almost fully recovered,” he says, but his pallor belies the remark. “The antibiotics have worked on me, thank God. I would have been released home already if they did not still consider me to be a modern-day Typhoid Mary.”

“You’ve been lucky.”

“This kind of luck I can do without.”

“Nine people have already died. Six more are on life support and may not make it.”

“And that was before the antibiotic resistance emerged.”

“You don’t have to remind me.”

“Alana, if this reaches critical mass. A tipping point . . .” He raises the book again. “Like what happened during the Middle Ages.”

“That was a primitive time. Long before modern medicine.”

“Maybe so, but . . . one-third to a half of all of Europe was wiped out in only three years. The worst natural disaster in all of recorded history. It took five hundred years just to repopulate the Continent back to the same level as before the plague. Can you imagine?”

“We won’t let that happen,” she says, though she realizes how hollow the words sound.

Claudio nods noncommittally. “Nico says there have been other cases across Genoa that have no possible connection to our original case here.”

“It’s true. Vittoria wasn’t the index case.”

“Then who?”

“We don’t know for sure.”

“You have someone in mind, though?”

She innately trusts Claudio. Moreover, she knows Yasin Ahmed’s name will soon become public, but until then the information is still classified. She backs a step away from the bed. “I should let you rest.”

“Ah, sometimes I forget that you are a regular Jane Bond.”

“Not quite.”

“Tell me, how does an infectious disease specialist end up running NATO?”

“Running? Hardly. I’m just a peon.” She snorts. “I ended up working at NATO by chance. Like most of my other life decisions.”

Claudio stares at her expectantly. Behind his levity, there’s an intensity that Alana finds compelling. “I was on my way to becoming a trauma surgeon with the army, like my mom and dad, but my shoulder was torn apart in Afghanistan. My surgical career was over before it even started. Not to mention my tennis game.” She’s surprised to find herself opening up to him in a way that she rarely does, even to close friends.