Flat Earth: A tale of bombers ...

"Nobody's crazy enough to think of escape," says the lawyer for the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh. "They just small-talk." His client is one of the boys of "Bomber Wing" who get to see each other for about an hour twice a week in the maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado, known as Supermax.

The prisoners are allowed into an exercise space to roam within the confines of individual wire enclosures, three yards from each other, and can be neighbourly. But what is judged as neighbourly is hard to imagine: the other "boys" are the "Unabomber", Ted Kaczynski, and Ramzi Yousef, bomber of the World Trade Centre.

In those circumstances, the repartee is unlikely to be sparkling. But the proximity of flesh-and-blood company, even theirs, appears to be in demand. The lawyer for Luis Felipe, the boss of the notorious New York street gang, the Latin Kings, has successfully requested to have his client placed among the bombers.

His lawyer, Lawrence Feitell, doubts they will become chums. But, he argues: "In their universe they are the last four people on earth." Some might say they deserve each other.