The Mahdi had found Steve when he was at rock bottom. Picked him up from the floor and shown him the way. Shown him His way. Steve didn’t meet Adam until he arrived at the farmhouse. He hadn’t even seen him in prison, though he knew he had also done time.

They weren’t supposed to talk about the past – only the future and the glory that awaited them – but they sometimes did. The Mahdi had also rescued Adam. He’d told Steve all about it one night after a few beers. Like Steve, Adam had been a nobody in prison. A nobody who got regularly pounded on by the somebodies. He had tried to hang himself in his cell with his sheets. Adam was still going to kill himself, but it was different now. Once he didn’t want to live, now he hoped to die. That’s what he said. And that the Mahdi had given him purpose.

Steve and Adam had flown into Italy separately, four months earlier. Using fake Irish passports rather than the genuine Australian ones they also carried, they had arrived a week apart, flying from Sydney to Heathrow and then Heathrow to Milan. Adam had arrived first and moved into the apartment, which he had found and rented through the internet, without ever meeting the agent.

It was a real shit-hole. Didn’t even have carpet. All they had for furniture was a couple of plastic chairs and a table. No air-con, not even a fan to counter the July heat. They slept on the floor without blankets, but Steve didn’t mind. The more he suffered in this life, the more he would be rewarded in the next. Maybe that’s why he put up with Adam.

Adam thought he was smarter than Steve because he had learned to speak a bit of Italian. While Steve was teaching himself how to solder and cook chemicals, Adam had sat on the lounge listening to teach-yourself Italian tapes while looking at blueprints and maps. Steve thought learning Italian was a waste of time. Lots of people spoke English in Milan anyway.

Adam had acted like he was the boss since they’d arrived. He was the one who controlled all the cash, their big stack of euros in an empty takeaway Chinese container; he was the one who went out and bought all the supplies; and he was the one who wore the key to the oven – now a safe – around his neck. But what pissed Steve off the most was the way Adam had acted like such a big shot after his meeting with the mafia guy about buying a gun.

Steve wanted to tell Adam that he was really the one in charge. He was the one who had built the bomb – cooked up all the fertiliser, burned down the diesel – and he was the one who would press the trigger.

He would deliver them to His side.