The Red Spade

In 2018 Jens Skogen befriends a Chinese student while attending the University of Oslo. The Chinese student, Li Zheng, is in Norway at the university to study and learn the Norwegian language. He will be there for a year. He spends his free time watching Jens and his teammates practice rowing, getting ready for the summer Olympics in Japan in 2020. In the spring and summer of 2019 Jens and the Norwegian rowing team spend five months in the U.S., rowing against various U.S. university rowing teams, honing their rowing skills.
When Jens returns to Oslo he turns on his computer and finds messages from his friend, Li Zheng, who is now back in China. The messages have world-wide implications. Jens shows the messages to his father who, in turn, shows them to his friend, the head of Norwegian Intelligence Service.
Li Zheng keeps Jens updated on the latest happenings in China. To say the world changes, based on this information, would be the understatement of the century.
The U.N., WHO declares it a world-wide Pandemic.