"Convoy - what do you mean? Convoy defending against what?" Qati asked.

"Not a real convoy," Russell explained. "More like a, uh, a motorcade. The fans from Minnesota have a big deal laid on Tell you what, let's get a motel room for us. One close to the airport. When's our flight?" He paused, "Jesus, I really haven't been thinking very clear, have I?"

"What do you mean?" Ghosn asked again.

"Weather," Russell replied. "This is Colorado, and it is January. What if we get another snowstorm?" He scanned the page. Uh-oh

"For driving, you mean?"

That's right. Look, what we ought to do is get rooms reserved, one of the motels right by the airport, say. We can go down the night before or I'll get the rooms for two - no, three nights, so there won't be any suspicion. Christ, I hope there's vacancies." Russell walked to the phone and flipped open the Yellow Pages right next to it. It took him four tries to find a room with twin doubles in a little independent place a mile from the airport. This he had to guarantee with a credit card that he'd managed not to use until now. He didn't like having to do that. One more bit of paper for his trail.

"Good morning, Liz." Ryan walked into the office and sat down. "How are you today?"

The National Security Advisor didn't like being baited any more than the next person. She'd had a little battle with this bastard's wife - in front of reporters! - and taken her lumps publicly. Whether Ryan had had anything to do with it or not, he must have had a good laugh about it last night. Worse than that, what that skinny little bitch had said also went after Bob Fowler, didn't it? The President had thought so on being told last night.

"You ready for the brief?"

"Sure am."

"Come on." She'd let Bob handle this.

Helen D'Agustino watched the two officials enter the Oval Office. She'd heard the story, of course. A Secret Service agent had heard the whole thing, and the vicious put-down administered to Dr Elliot had already been the subject of a few discreet chuckles.

"Good morning, Mr President," she heard Ryan say, as the door closed.

"Morning, Ryan. Okay, let's hear it."

"Sir, what we plan to do is actually fairly simple. Two CIA officers will be in Mexico, at the airport, covered as airline maintenance personnel. They'll do the normal stuff, emptying ashtrays, cleaning the Johns. Before they leave they will place fresh flower arrangements in the upstairs lounge. Concealed in the arrangements will be microphones like this one." Ryan pulled the plastic spike from his pocket and handed it over. These will transmit what they pick up to a second transmitter, concealed in a bottle. That device will broadcast a multi-channel EHF - that's extremely high frequency - signal out of the aircraft. A series of three other aircraft will fly parallel courses with the 747 to receive that signal. An additional receiver with a tape recorder attached will be concealed on the 747, both as a backup to the air-to-air links and as a cover for the operation. If it's located, the bugs will seem to be something done by the news people accompanying the Prime Minister. We don't expect that, of course. We'll have people at Dulles to recover our gadgets. In either case, the electronic transmission will be processed and the transcripts presented to you a few hours after the aircraft lands."