Chapter 1

Above and Beyond

With imperceptible speed the green and blue orb silently rotated within its precarious layer of critical insulation. Suspended twenty miles above its surface, the stratosphere surrounds ninety five percent of atmospheric mass and all the earth’s six billion inhabitants. Here, gravitational pull is dramatically reduced, oxygen is negligible, the temperature over seventy below and the air-pressure wafer thin. An unprotected human might die three deaths in one - horribly drawn out wheezing suffocation; blinding, blood-solidifying fast-freeze, or explosive haemorrhaging of the ear-canals and arteries within the skull. Each mercifully fast, all unimaginably painful. From here the world is coldly remote and oddly vulnerable, the eye able to capture both heaven and earth in one awe-inspiring arc, undiminished by celluloid over-exposure. The earth sweeps away in a spectacular panorama, weather systems marching across continents with the ease of early morning mist drifting down a winding river valley. Countries are reduced to boulders, seas to idling pools. And beyond the white curving margin of hazy atmosphere the inky blue veneer of space provides the perfect velvet cushion upon which to amplify this brilliant rock.

Looking out across four continents James Bond paused for breath, thoughts in some other, more personal, place before returning to his meticulous preparations. It was not a sight he’d seen first hand before and it had the effect of temporarily disorientating him before regaining his mental composure and turning his attention to the array of equipment surrounding him and the job at hand.

The suit which enveloped him fitted snugly, Jessop having done their job with the body casting down in Oxford some months earlier, and the rubber moulding was near faultless. Only those essential reinforced ridges running head to knee down the rear restricted movement and dug into his flesh when flexed. He looked across at the two men with whom he shared the rather cramped, darkened cabin – both attendant to their set tasks with requisite diligence: Cray studying a laptop plugged into a portal on the inner-hull – no chances taken on wireless up here – while Foreman continued to peer through the small observation window, eyes fixed on land masses and cloud formations many miles below. Despite it being early morning illumination was severely restricted, and with only two small observation windows a perpetual gloom pervaded the interior. A small array of coloured LEDs and a blue back-light on the telecoms panel lent a submarine-glow to proceedings, setting Cray’s hard features into harsh relief and the rest of the space into shades of pitch.

“R minus four minutes” The pilot’s voice broke into Bond’s thoughts through the earpiece. He had to hurry – he needed to focus. Getting himself ready for this test had been three months of sheer hell, and he couldn’t help wondering if he really had done sufficient training. The old discipline had returned, the physical toughness and with it the familiar ‘high’ of stretching to achieve more each time. But mentally – that could only be tested on rarer occasions, when things were ‘real’. Occasions like this morning. And he couldn’t help but wonder as he ran through the format of the procedure at hand in his mind if he really had done enough. Trouble was, if the answer was no he’d not be around to tell the story.

“OK Commander – get ready” Foreman’s voice cut across the headphones in a dull monotone. You couldn’t accuse him of over enthusiasm – they must drill it out of you these days Bond thought, grimly. He looked down and checked the carbon fibre fastenings across his chest: three arrow-shaped bolts fashioned in the dark-grey, lightweight material located snugly in three equally robust sockets. He’d tested them under extreme conditions on the ground and had no doubt they’d do their job in the next fifteen crucial minutes. It was the contraption on his back which worried him – that was the unknown which would determine his fate.

“R minus 120” It was down to seconds: Cray looked up from the laptop and gave him the thumbs up. Bond became aware of his breathing, focussed his mind on controlling it: deep, full inhalations, slow measured exhalation. Now he heard his heart-beat inside his ears, drumming slowly. Maintaining that steady rhythm he knew to be crucial.

“Rendezvous ready” Cray intoned. Again the automaton, no humanity. Was he, Bond, this detached, or was he just noticing it on coming back, he thought idly? So much had changed while he was away - the politics, the people. The food – God, the food. And even in the Service he noticed it – it seemed so cold, so clinical, so…dull. Inside the imposing exterior of that marble building on the Thames he could have been inside an insurance brokers - open plan, performance appraisals. Scorecards, for God’s sake. And now, out in the field where he thought he would be at home again, humourless automatons. Damned professional still of course – standards had, he was thankful to say, been maintained in his absence – but surely there had always been an element of grim enjoyment, the gallows humour that went with the territory and made it just about tolerable? Maybe it was his imagination – he’d had his mind play tricks a few times over the past three months. Again he became aware that his mind had wandered – this worried him in fact - mental toughness was as vital as physical.

Cray now gave a two-handed thumbs up and it was time. Again Bond found himself unprepared – he ran his hands quickly over the clasps and joints in the familiar seven-point routine he’d practiced over and again in the large, corrugated hangar at Otterburn, with the rain pounding an endless barrage outside. Checks one through seven – all clear. Now he locked down the visor and felt the helmet pressurise. He stretched up and grabbed the hand-rails to either side of the cabin and peered through the starboard observation hatch: through it and the moulded visor which now covered his face he saw the curve of the earth fall away dramatically to each side once again – this time immune to its charms. His mind registered the immense height, the speed, the distance, but now he felt a satisfying mental ‘click’ as though some piece of dysfunctional machinery had suddenly righted itself and regained its purpose. Finally, finally he felt the rush of the dopamine being dumped within his brain, and his muscles tensed. Foreman reached across and simultaneously pressed the two, twin release switches and the hatch opened into the aft airlock. Bond stepped into the airlock compartment and turned to see Foreman press and hold the closure switch. The hatch sealed with an inaudible hiss.

“Good luck Commander Bond” still no hint of warmth or sincerity. Bond drew another slow, deep breath – then switched the master circuit on, then the oxygen and pressurisation, and watched as the warning light panel at the base of his right eye-piece came online giving him five greens - all systems go. He gave the thumbs up to Foreman. Finally, just as he watched Foreman twist the rear payload door lock, he thought he saw a glimmer of a smile pass across the young lieutenant’s face – but strangely when it did, it seemed to him not to be friendly after all. Imagination again, no doubt.

It had been a long time, but Bond was right back where he wanted to be, looking death squarely in the face. He stepped out into the clear, thin air and fell to earth.

Arrowing his body into a dart-shape, arms and legs firmly tucked into his sides, his body plunged into the aircraft’s wake, turbulence ripping the plane’s dark shadow from his peripheral vision with incredible violence. Then – stillness, a heart-stopping stillness. All sense of movement gone from vision - earth, sky, space, clouds thousands of feet beneath - all still and unmoving. But for the savage buffeting of the air he could be suspended weightless, but even this was dulled by the insulation provided by the helmet and instead his ears registered his own rhythmic breathing, heart-rate increased but steady. The pale blue in-visor display informed him his rate of descent had already exceeded two hundred miles an hour, the thin atmosphere provided limited friction, terminal velocity far higher than in normal freefall. Three hundred…three fifty. Arms and legs remained wedged – spreading them now would mean losing a limb. The altimeter showed ninety thousand – he’d fallen eleven thousand feet inside half a minute – and still he plunged earth-ward, towards a hazy green and grey carpet fleetingly glimpsed beneath the dusty, shifting blanket of cloud far below. Five-hundred miles an hour. His mind registered the absence of a parachute as a mild concern, offset against the focus on the drill, the preparations, the calculations he had to make. Five-twenty, acceleration dropping. Precision and discipline were the keys – one slip would be fatal and he would get no second chance. He focussed his mind, checked the instruments, the gyroscope informing his position as he made minute course adjustments.

Seventy thousand and rate of descent steadied, then began to fall as the density of air started to build, slowing his body like a space capsule attempting re-entry. Immediately he relaxed his frame slightly to offer the air a greater target – he had to be down to three hundred by fifty thousand to begin the test of the equipment. At fifty-five he was below four hundred but the deceleration was too slow – making a fast decision he steadily began spreading his arms and legs, knowing he was travelling too fast.

The Jessop DGT II Wing-suit is a military derivative of the so-called ‘flying-squirrel’ free-fall wing-suit favoured by extreme-sports parachutists and BASE-jumping exponents. Invented in the 1930s its early practitioners had an understandably poor fatality rate and only with the adoption of modern materials in the 1990s had it made it onto the commercial market where it was still considered one of the toughest challenges. The standard suit consists of a one-piece parachutist’s coverall with a three-section canvas webbing between the legs and under each arm enabling the wearer to glide while freefalling, slowing descent and offering the possibility of extended horizontal travel. With practice the pilot can perform a number of impressive acrobatics – turning, banking, even looping – and in the process can thus cover an enormous amount of lateral ground in the duration of even modest jumps, with terminal speeds dropping from around one hundred and fifty to mere tens of miles per hour. Military applications have taken the concept several stages further, a combination of lightweight jet engines and racing-car derived aerodynamics have produced some spectacular results. The DGT II was the latest, as yet untried variant with a number of useful applications. Firstly, it contained no metal parts, its ‘scramjet’ engine relying on the massive forward pressure of air forced through a compression funnel being directed via controllable jets to the rear. As a result, it is usefully invisible to even the most sensitive detection equipment, leaving no heat signature behind. Secondly, the single back-mounted ram-jet directs its thrust, derived in the main by the downward motion of the falling body, through four vectors attached to the four limbs in a similar format to the old Harrier ‘jump-jet’. The overall set-up enables the flier to control power with millimetric precision and, with enough practice, to perform an incredible range of manoeuvres. It also means that speeds can exceed five-hundred miles per hour in lateral flight. The potential for clandestine flights into restricted airspace is enormous, though the risk to the flier equally so. Aerodynamics precluded the use of a traditional parachute, a lightweight alternative often not deploying reliably. The results of tests so far at lower altitudes had been euphemistically reported in internal Service memoranda as ‘mixed’.

Bond knew there was something wrong as soon as he opened his arms. Spreading his ‘wings’ to a quarter of their full breadth the earth immediately began to spin wildly. Instead of slowing and beginning to level off he found himself in a barrel roll, no longer head down, and his vision became a disorientated kaleidoscope of darkened sky and a blinding blur of sun reflecting off cloud as his eyes could not adjust to the varying light intensities. Glancing at his port-side ‘wing’ he saw a short, jagged tear in the carbon-fibre, maybe three inches in length. The air was rushing through the tear at what must still be over three-hundred miles per hour and a small flap billowed furiously in the air-stream. Spinning, his mind raced, remembering the mission briefing: there was no ‘plan B’ – in a real-life simulation, where weight and aerodynamics were key, there was no parachute. He had one objective – make the rendezvous - failure was truly not on the list of options.

The simulation was meant to replicate a mission behind enemy lines with Bond being dropped from a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft and having to make a fixed – or even moving - rendezvous a significant distance away. Calculations had been precise – deploy the suit and open the inlet valves, effectively ‘starting-up’ the engines, at fifty-thousand feet, then descend at as shallow an angle as possible – the target being less than twenty degrees - to extend the duration and lateral distance covered during the flight. Simulating real conditions he had no radio contact, and to add incentive at his own insistence the reserve chute was back at base. All he had were the suit, his instruments, a target grid reference – helpfully showing as an indicator arrow on his visor – and his skill. Total duration for the flight was supposed to be around twelve minutes; altitude lost: seventy thousand feet; ground distance covered, approximately fifty eight miles. Give or take. While the suit was undetectable he was wearing a homer for this test and his flight path would be tracked for later detailed analysis by equipment at the Rendezvous. His chances of scoring a perfect six for technical merit seemed to have gone: he could only hope his artistic impression would not be judged by the pattern he made on the ground.

Gathering himself mentally if not physically, Bond took stock. Stabilisation was the immediate goal, he must balance the lift from the wings - if he switched on the engine with the imbalance remaining he would spin off to an untidy oblivion, and that was not how he intended the story to end. But he had no means of repairing the rent in-flight, not to mention no time.

He reached down towards the chest pocket built into the suit – the updraft and his visor preventing him looking fully at his actions. He wrenched at the flap, catching it at the second attempt, and drew out the short Sykes-Fairbairn combat knife contained within the small moulded compartment. He held out his right arm, carbon-fibre webbing taut. And instantly he span like a top. He struggled to keep his mind focussed, kept his now aching right arm rigid, and with his left he now reached across and with great effort managed to cut a similar, three inch tear in the starboard wing, body roll quickening like a skater as he pulled in mass towards his torso. The rubbery structure was tough, almost impossible, but he managed to cut just enough - he could extend it later if needed. Ensuring he kept the knife clasped firmly in his hand he gently stretched his port wing. His body stabilised instantly if not completely – he was still gently rotating, but with some adjustments he found he could control it. Arching one arm out wider than the other compensated, and after a few seconds he found his mind had built this into his pre-programmed self-balancing system. Problem one dealt with. Now for the second.

The blue digits on the inside of his visor told him his total flight duration had already been two minutes – a minute behind and below schedule. Cursing with the realisation that he was way behind his intended flight path – maybe as much as five miles short and one underneath – he started making fast mental calculations. He had to fire the engines and run them at a far higher power than planned, which again they’d not counted on nor indeed tested. Reaching across his chest he hit the firing toggle switch beneath its protective rubber cover which opening up the inlet valves over each shoulder, and the sudden thrust of the jets took him by surprise. Building up rapidly to fifty percent power automatically, he formed his body into the carefully practiced full-delta position and turned the hand grip up to full power, the jolt of acceleration nearly throwing him off course. The wind through the twin holes in his wings held him partly back and pulled ferociously at his arms, threatening to dislocate them. It also meant he was falling far faster than planned. The violence of the turbulence far exceeded anything he’d previously experienced, the air felt like clamps ripping angrily at his sinews, tearing into his shoulders, forcing his limbs to bend upwards despite the strongly reinforced ribs which ran their length, still bearing the brunt of the up-rush. He glanced at the air-speed indicator: it read two-hundred but his rate of descent had dropped dramatically to below one-hundred. The suit felt strained - the test data said it would hold up to a theoretical maximum of six-hundred, but experience told him theory wasn’t a reliable safety net. He put this thought squarely from his mind, and after a few seconds also mentally adjusted to the pain shooting up from his limbs, filing it, compartmentalised it, reducing it to a piece of sensory input data as he had been trained. Task two complete – now onto three, time dwindling fast. Having fallen through clear air thus far he was fast approaching cloud level. He could only hope he got to the Rendezvous before hitting it.

Flight path settling slightly, he turned his attention to the digital compass and altimeter which appeared in the bottom of the right eye-piece, the left containing a similar screen showing engine data – fuel, power level, etcetera. Five degrees off course. Doing some more quick calculations he shifted starboard and decreased his angle of descent. While there was excellent responsiveness in his ability to control lateral movement there was limited control over the vertical, he found, but it would help. Another ten seconds past, then twenty. He had been told to expect to see the trailing lights of the Rendezvous at five miles, giving him approximately sixty seconds to react and adjust his flight path accordingly. At his increased rate of descent and steeper angle of interception, however, he would be lucky to get thirty - and if he came in too low, there would be no getting it back – that would be it, game over. No lights – he should be able to see them by now. Had he over-shot? No anxiety, just cold observation. No panic, just clinical analysis. His profile box at HQ may be labelled ‘unbalanced’, but here he was in his element, albeit that element could shortly be the death of him.

A glimmer – off to port. Two green lights, then two more. And now a line. Two parallel lines of fairy lights – one green, one red, spread out magically below him, leading him in, punctuating the thin vaporous cloud formations. He adjusted his course minutely, or so he planned, instead the wind caught his starboard wing and he pitched dramatically. Steeling himself he swung his arms out wider, catching the draft fully beneath them and causing a renewed and intense pain to shoot up his arms. His shoulder-blades screamed in agony. He needed to use his legs more – that’s what they had kept telling him during the training runs, don’t let your arms take all the strain. He kicked, kicked again, the action swinging him across and placing him on a direct trajectory for the landing lights, now squarely below and in front. Thank God for that. He steadied, drew breath and checked the instruments once more. Airspeed was steady at two-fifty but rate of descent was still too high – a trajectory above thirty degrees and he would redecorate the inside of the Hercules a delicate shade of gut and sinew. This was not looking good – the aircraft was coming up too fast.

He switched down the jets to lose altitude quickly but now he risked cutting airspeed to far. Switching them back up almost immediately increased speed back above two-fifty and he was slowly gaining once more. His heartbeat drummed quickly in his ears. Eyes fixed on the rapidly approaching, fattened rear-end of the dull-olive coloured Hercules transport aircraft, he spread his wings as wide as he could, finding the turbulence and strain on his arms resisting forcefully. Airspeed now rising: two sixty, eighty…. That couldn’t be right? His mind took a second to realise what had happened: the buffeting had forced his wrist up against the hand throttle and caused a ‘blip’. Not much, but enough to make his target speed and angle unattainable – he had to find an alternative approach plan and fast.

Below him he could see the trailing lights – twenty halogen bulbs burning brightly down each side, probably run on standard industrial-strength triple core flex maybe fifty yards in length. He remembered a stunt he’d seen at a Christmas party at school: it would be enough, he decided. It had to be enough.

Bond kicked up his legs and bowed his head, his body following in a renewed, determined swan dive, or should that have been squirrel-dive. He abandoned the digital display and relied on his own manual guidance systems – he had to get down behind the plane before he overshot. Again he became aware of the heart-beat, his own, pounding in his ears, the drumming now pulsing louder and faster, his breathing still controlled but his body straining. His sub-conscious registered passive enjoyment at the transient sense of being alive.

Now it was his altitude which dropped with what under normal circumstances would have been suicidal eagerness: falling three hundred feet in a few seconds he first felt the buffeting in the Hercules’ wake before seeing the open payload doors, his original destination. He saw a bluish glow: low, so as not to dazzle his approach, the group of specialist aircrew standing in the monolith’s innards reduced to silhouettes. He had seconds: tilting his trajectory to port he flattened to a thirty degree angle, arms screaming colourful obscenities at him. He braced and dropped the final fifty feet, grabbing out at the trailing line, feeling the line slam into his chest. At the same time in a careful mentally rehearsed routine he hit the ‘kill’ switch on the engines, drew in his legs and swung his arms around the flex. The line was hard as concrete, with minimal ‘give’ against his falling carcase. Bond winced, the pain slicing through his already aching limbs like a sword, but his arms and legs now closed obediently around the line. He felt it pull, first one then two lights slashing quickly through his forearms, sending lightening bolts of pain shooting through each shoulder – he thought vividly of the impending fall that awaited him as he watched them go by - before the third locked into the crook of his left arm, piercing the suit and his skin savagely. But his momentum carried the line and him with it forward and he found himself arching out wide of the plane, overtaking the tail, now swinging out underneath the stubby starboard wing. Ahead the grey blur of the twin Rolls-Royce Allison turbo-props grew menacingly in his visor and he felt their collective thrust, doubting if it would be enough to repel him. But he was damned if he was going to fail now. With his last strength he swung his feet upwards as he approached the wing and managed to clip a fuel tank with one of his boots, enough to check his progress and reverse the swing, the light-string now billowing back out to the rear of the aircraft like a streamer in its turbulent wake. He caught breath and hung on. The suit made it near impossible to climb even had he had the strength - he had no option but to cling desperately on and await rescue.

It took the aircrew a full minute to realise what had happened as he had shot across the tail so quickly then to winch him onto the broad, flat cargo-bay. As he slid across the floor, body exhausted, he felt hands freeing him of the suit, and the catches releasing the pressure across his chest, similarly the latches down each leg and arm. The rear-door hydraulics whined as his helmet was removed and for the first time he heard the deafening howl of the air torn up in the Hercules’ wake and felt icy fingers of fresh air on his face. He could see the series of webbed nets arranged across the inside of the aircraft which had been intended to catch-him upon entry – from here they looked distinctly insubstantial.

“Good to have you on board, Commander Bond. Nice flight, but you just cost me fifty-quid!” Bond could only stare blankly at the young airman who grinned down at him from beneath the green flight-helmet.

“I bet this lot you wouldn’t make it”.

# # #

The traffic lights were against him. Hands gripping the wheel tighter than ever, Rob Fletcher glanced once more in his mirrors which contained the police patrol car that had tailed him out of the town centre, holding station behind his tall, Iveco van for two miles, rarely dropping back more than two car lengths. Even when he had slowed as much as he dared to allow it to overtake the car had stayed obstinately put. His mind already saw blue flashing lights, his heart racing at every fleeting reflection ricocheting off cars which passed in the darkness. The copper’s face was hidden in shadow: in Rob’s mind he was already on his radio, reporting in. But he would be too late, the journey was nearly at an end, and if he judged it right he would be able to take the Volvo by surprise just as soon as these bloody lights changed. Sweat beaded his brow. His watch said eight-ten, quietly.

Across the right turning stood two constables, happily chatting in the amber glow of the street-lights about the day’s events, their plans for later that evening and for the hot new girl in the radio room. Between them stood a flimsy metal road sign which announced that the road would be ‘Closed!’ to all traffic on match-days. To his left on the corner stood the imposing red-brick facade of the Trafford public house, a 1920s watering hole of which he had bad memories: on the sole occasion that he, as an opposing fan had mistakenly visited some time in the eighties he had been singled out in his naivety for a ‘good seeing to’ – and indeed still walked with the resultant limp. But today the boot was most definitely on the other foot, folks: his good foot. He knew what he had been instructed to do this afternoon was, well…bad. Very bad. There was no way he thought he would have gone to such lengths if it hadn’t been for the agency’s incredibly persuasive methods. But they had made it clear that what he carried would cause limited damage, just a frightener - and they had devised a cunning get-away route for him to take through Salford Quays, and besides…..it’d put the wind up those smug, arrogant red bastards. Again his hands grasped at the wheel, knuckles whitening, urging gravity to force the electrons down to the green bulb faster.

“Come on!” he roared at a radio advert for furniture, veins bulging on his forehead. The quicker this was over the better.

Green: Rob stamped on the accelerator, arms swinging the heavy black wheel sharply round to the right as he pressed harder and the van lurched over to the left, ploughing through the sign and scattering the two chatty coppers. The van was off down the terrace-lined road before either could regain their footing. Through two more barriers with little more resistance, glancing a burger van as it went, the van made it to the edge of the forecourt at forty miles per hour. The great, looming shape of Old Trafford came into view over the houses, smoked glass façade rising coolly eight stories up to the blazing neon sign beneath a deep-blue night sky, arrogantly proclaiming this as the object of his, and apparently someone else’s, intense hatred.

Changing down as he sped past the reviled ‘Megastore’, glimpsing the late-comers hurrying across the forecourt grasping their nasty plastic carrier bags, he again swung the huge wheel, this time to the left. Near-side wheels glanced the kerb roughly and rocked the van – tyres squealing protest as he struggled to keep control - but it seemed to know its true course and headed down the service road beneath the stadium’s immense North Stand. Down into the vanilla-whiteness the van roared, screaming engine note magnified, echoing back off the plain red brickwork beneath twenty-five thousand people sitting neatly in well-behaved rows. He had to park diagonally across the middle, they’d said, take the police longer to reach him, and he’d be able to make an easy getaway between the stair columns to the right, out across the darkened car-park and the canal, then off into the Lowry Shopping Centre. Five minutes and he’d be just another anonymous late-night shopper. No need for him to set the device, that would be done via remote once they knew he was clear. It would make one hell of a mess of the tunnel, maybe bring the ceiling down, cause a lot of chaos – and yes, probably hurt one or two people they had told him, in all honesty. He thought he could handle that – he recalled a saying about omelettes and eggs. Like he recalled the six weeks in hospital.

Running down from the front of the ground having watched the white van career round beneath the tunnel a fluorescent-jacketed policeman led four more of his colleagues past the row of idle, venting hot-dog stands and merchandise sellers, sliding to a stand-still when he saw that the van had also come to a halt and the driver was alighting. A horrific thought exploded in his mind. Reaching for his radio he just had time to report his name and ID followed by “Oh holy shi….” before the first burst of flame erupted from the vehicle. He clearly saw the roof of the van rise upwards pushed by a solid column of blinding white flame which did not stop when it reached the tunnel roof some twenty feet above it. It kept going upward in a mini-volcano, right up into the stand itself. In tandem his mind noted with interest that all four sides of the van simultaneously jumped clear, and then a jet of flame shot from where the rear doors had just been and incinerated PC John Glover and his four colleagues almost instantaneously. Mrs. Joanne Glover identified her husband two days later by dental records.

The death toll was unknown for five days, during which time the headline figure steadily rose from seven hundred to fourteen, then nineteen and finally two thousand four hundred and ninety eight, including six hundred and seven children. Two-thousand pounds of high explosive had been cleverly arranged to fire vertically, blowing a hole fifty feet in diameter through three stories of concrete and steel, significantly weakening the structure and causing it to buckle catastrophically. Most of the people had been killed by the collapse itself, but hundreds died in the panic and stampede which followed. The scenes shown on television were criticised as being horrific and voyeuristic, yet the true horrors were kept off air. Structural engineers said it could not have been better planned: ‘expert, insider knowledge’ was cited. The country stopped and stared.

Alerts stopped football matches across the UK immediately, but not Europe, until two days later simultaneous attacks at Real Madrid’s Bernabau stadium – a bomb being carried on the underground line beneath it – and outside the Stadium Del Alpi of Juventus claimed a further fifteen hundred.

No claim was made on the attacks for seven days during which all kinds of theories were put forward, terror experts trotting out the obvious and not-so obvious candidates. No link could be found between the perpetrators - all indigenous citizens to the country bearing witness to their crimes, none with terrorist allegiances and no religious commonality. Three seemingly independent yet plainly linked attacks, especially when the bombs were found to be of similar composition.

The statement when it came chilled the bones of all who heard it:

“In the first joint venture between our respective organisations and pursuant of our individual aims and objectives three football stadia were targeted in a brave attack on greed, privilege and oppression. The impact these have had illustrates the renewed fervour with which we shall fight, and the increased power we can leverage in the first stage of our new-founded Co-operative, heralding the dawning of a new era in our global struggle. A warning: so perish the enemies of freedom and those who for too long have wielded power. Our struggles will not cease, our aims will be achieved. Glory to those who have fallen in battle.”

The statement, in eight languages, was co-signed by the Basque separatist organisation ‘ETA’, the IPFC an Iraqi freedom fighters group, and the right wing Italian organisation ITALIS.

Around the world, governments shuddered.

# # #