In the fall of 2018, a pangolin coronavirus is discovered in China by an aspiring graduate student, JADE HUANG. A unique gene that is found in the virus by her parents, DRS. MING AND KANESHA HUANG, enables the virus to infect humans as well. DR. FEN YUNG, the "Bat Lady" at the Virology Institute in Wuhan, informs Alex of the discovery in her monthly report.
Alex suggests that Roger should use the pangolin virus gene. A year later, deadly infections emerge in a Wuhan wet market. According to plan, the Russians had released the virus in the market to make it appear that the infections were caused by infected animals or by a lab leak from the Institute.
The pangolin virus gene is discovered in the pandemic virus and Beijing mandates the extermination of pangolins in southeastern China. Jade is infuriated. She is certain that the virus was created in a lab. With the help of her parents, hundreds of patient samples are analyzed. The results indicate that U.S. athletes attending the Military World Games in Wuhan were exposed to the virus during a wet market tour that was arranged by Elizabeth Slater.
Jade drafts a manuscript that summarizes the evidence she has collected along with a conspiracy theory she pieced together from anonymous text messages she received from Deep Throat who, unbeknownst to her, is a Chinese intelligence agent.
Rublyov's belt-and-suspenders approach to covert activities will be their undoing. After approving Volkov's plan, Rublyov put a backup plan in motion. He recruited ARINA ZEVONARENKA, a Russian law student and militant climate activist. He told Arina to convince her close friend, MARIE DUBOIS, to steal the virus she was creating under Schwartz's direction.
Marie is an exchange student from Lyon. She is the daughter of Dr. Francois Dubois, a former Schwartz postdoc and colleague of Dr. Yung. To avoid being caught, Marie had to steal a variant of the virus. Upon her return to Lyon, she gave the stolen virus to Arina. Arina reminds Francois of a past wrongdoing. She coerces him to take the stolen virus to a Russian operative in Wuhan. Within two weeks, deadly infections were reported.
Ironically, six months later, Dr. Yung asked Francois to help review Jade's manuscript. By then, he had figured out that the two wildly successful mRNA vaccines had been developed from Marie's original virus. He suspected that Sputnik-57, the Russian vaccine, had been developed from the variant she had stolen. Fearing that something bad might happen to him, Francois sends the vaccines to an independent laboratory for analysis. When the testing is complete, the results are sent directly to Fen and Jade. Uri sensed that Francois, Marie and Arina knew too much and ordered their murders.
A congressional committee investigates the origin of the pandemic and interrogates Alex, Roger, and Elizabeth. They claim that what they had done was above board and consistent with the mission of Alex's PPA.
Two weeks before the 2020 election, Jade presents the vaccine test results to the congressional committee. The evidence is clear that the Russians had caused the outbreak. In the meantime, the FBI had obtained a burner phone belonging to Tanner Baldwin. Unsurprisingly, Tanner had blundered, and Elizabeth's kickback scheme is exposed.
The committee mistakenly concludes that Elizabeth had used Nedvedev's obsession to subvert Decker's reelection to manipulate the Russians into causing the pandemic. They believe that her single-minded goal from the start was to illegally profit from the sale of the vaccines.
The committee's findings rock the country. Tanner's role in the kickback scheme and a recovered message on his burner phone that indirectly implicated his father created a firestorm among the voters. On election day, Decker wins in a landslide.
As Decker's critics quietly retreat, Nedvedev's troops are withdrawn from Ukraine in the dead of night and adversaries around the world cower in the face