The military power of each of the attacked nations was noted: America (third-largest army in the world), Russian Federation (fifth), Mexico (seventeenth), France (twenty-second) and Italy (twenty-eighth). The only one of the targeted countries without the ability to inflict catastrophic damage on another nation was Bulgaria, with an army of just 33,000. It was an anomaly, but not enough to nullify the theory. Russia, the United States, Italy and France had cordial relations, but would act independently, without consensus or approval, and possibly in haste, each determined to take their own revenge, show their own strength. The terrorists’ endgame, the theory predicted, was a global caliphate, with Saudi Arabia, Iran and Malaysia spearheading an Islamic alliance that would in turn declare war on the Christian world.

A third file contained an analysis of every known terror group in the world: ideologies, methodologies, histories, resources, reach, and all known links to Australia and Australians. At the last minute, the team of in-house statisticians had even managed to assign each group a probability rating based on a specially formulated equation to indicate how likely it was that they were responsible for the attacks.

The final file, marked ‘Suspects’, was thick and contained a comprehensive list of Australians who could have been the other nine suicide bombers, based on scouring the database for criminals released on parole who matched three or more of the identifiers the three known bombers shared. It was, of course, possible that the other bombers were not Australian and that they were dealing with an international terror cell – perhaps the Aussies had only been involved in the Mexico City attack and Timothy Jenkins turning up in pieces in a suitcase was completely unrelated, but Clarke didn’t think so. Another list in this last file consisted of the names of potential masterminds – whoever the hell was running the show.

SAMI was embarrassed by his own files: plain manila folders covered in scribbles – phone numbers, doodles, random notes – that were also dog-eared, dirty and, more concerningly, thin.

Following the introductions, the Australian agent with the obsessively ordered and enviably thick files – Agent Clarke, he said – took the floor with an equally annoying swagger. ‘I’m not going to pretend we know anything you don’t,’ the Aussie said as his PowerPoint presentation started. ‘I am sure there isn’t much a small nation like Australia can tell the CIA. So, let me save you some time by skipping through the obvious.’

The Aussie pointed his remote at the screen and hit fast forward. Sami gasped as he saw headings, facts and figures flash across the screen. He saw enough to realise he needed to see more. Here were things he didn’t know, things he needed to know. He had to refrain from standing up and asking the Aussie to stop and explain, the embarrassment it would have caused the CIA keeping him reluctantly connected to his seat.