Julian Assange
(Image: AAP/Lloyd Jones)

This is an extract from the The Most Dangerous Man in the World: Updated Edition, by Andrew Fowler.

A sunny spring evening in Madrid. WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson and the organisation’s Spanish lawyer Aitor Martínez meet up at a café in the palatial Reina Victoria hotel in the city centre. Three men approach their table and introduce themselves.

One is a journalist, the other two are “computer experts”, but what they are doing on that April evening in 2019 involves neither journalism nor any particular expertise in computing. They’ve turned their hands to something far more dangerous and potentially rewarding.