The Cuban security guard walks with a measured tread along the line of passengers waiting to have their passports and visas checked. He has a heavy beard, a peaked cap emblazoned with a single red star, and a Kalashnikov slung over one meaty shoulder. His black eyes challenge each new arrival.

As he approaches, she feels the queue press against her. An excited chatter filled the Havana air as her fellow travellers scampered across Jose Marti Airport 's scorched concrete apron. Now, they are silent as if an unseen hand has turned a collective volume control fully anticlockwise.

The guard stops next to her, almost touching. He smells of sacking mingled with cordite.

Her heart stutters. Rivulets of sweat trickle down her ribcage.

She is already wound up as tight as a watch spring.

The Air France flight from Paris touched down just as the shimmering Caribbean sun melted into the horizon. After a delayed takeoff, the plane landed fifty-eight minutes late. For the hundredth time she runs the calculation through her mind. She has twenty-one days to carry out her mission: thirty thousand two hundred and forty minutes. On the face of it, there is plenty of time. However, given all the unknowns, the loss of fifty-eight of those minutes could make the difference between success and failure.

Time is not what worries her most. The callousness of Peru 's plan fills her with doubt. When ETA recruited her she swore an unbreakable oath to liberate her people. She spoke with conviction, her commitment unquestionable. However, hers is the commitment of a theorist, not an executioner. Liberation warps into an altogether different dimension when she watches colour footage of innocent people rendered blind, bloody and limbless as a direct result of the organisation's handiwork. The prank at the football stadium was a rude awakening as to the utter havoc they could wreak if they put their minds to it. Minutes before the match kicked off in the Estadio San Mames, they phoned the police . . . more