He was also the one who had been given the secret order to kill Adam if he stepped out of line and endangered the plan. To chop him up, cover him in the DNA-killing bleach Adam had bought online, and throw him in the lake. Mahdi had told him that he was his favourite, the chosen one. But he wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. Especially Adam.

None of this would matter soon anyway. Everything was in place and they were just waiting for the call. Well, not a call; it would be a notification that would signal the final phase: the shaving, the filing, the cleaning, then the shooting and the final blast. The resurrection.

Adam’s encrypted laptop beeped and buzzed the following day.

‘They are here,’ Adam said. ‘It’s time.’

MILAN CATHEDRAL, the Duomo di Milano, was levelled nine hours later. It had taken six centuries to build it, but just the press of a button to reduce it to rubble. One hundred and twenty-three people were killed in the blast, mostly tourists.

A mafia thug was found dead the same day, shot twice: a bullet to the chest and one to the head.

CHAPTER 13

Surry Hills, Sydney, NSW, Australia

SURRY HILLS was no longer the arse-end of Sydney. Once all brothels and bums, razor-gangs and rummies, the formerly rough-and-tumble suburb had been transformed into a chic inner-city enclave. The pubs once known as duck-and-swings were now jazz bars. The iconic Aussie fish and chip shops – offering Chiko Rolls, two-dollar bags of chips and a Pacman coin-op in the corner – were now American burger bars and sushi trains. And the housos had been replaced by hipsters.

All the low-income families had been shunted down the road to Redfern, along with the druggies. Run-down terraces had been gutted and glorified. Usually only a facelift at the front – a coat of cream, the rusting wrought iron replaced and painted heritage green, the façade kept strictly Victorian. But the interiors were all millennium: steel and smoked glass.

Nikki had once dreamed of living alongside the day traders, DJs and computer engineers. Of buying a two-bedroom terrace with Riley, even a one-bedder if that was all they could afford. Of eventually getting married when he left the army and making a life there together. She’d once had lots of dreams.

Now she had none.

A gust of wind picked up a pile of leaves – the green summer canopy formed by the Moreton Bay figs and golden rain trees long gone – and sent them spiralling down the street.