Several meetings planned.

The sun's rays illumined our white tablecloth while we continued to toy with our food, looking at passers-by through the restaurant window. James placed his laptop on the table, pushing aside remnants of croissants, butter and jam. He pressed keys and Aly's face appeared on screen. It was 11.00 in Holmes Chapel.

James said, "Aly I want you to contact our friends and find out who has leaked this story to the paper." I felt so proud that my son was more 'together' than I thought.

"And G'Day to you too," Aly said. "Morning ya'll."

"Oops, sos babe," James' ears grew bright red, "you know how I am with relationship thingies."

I leaned over to James' side of the table and said, "will it be possible to have an online advance copy of the paper before it's printed, Aly?"

"I'll check," she said. "We think the story will be finally edited and printed on Wednesday. Circulation to wholesale distribution centres on Thursday evening. It's a free-paper, so we can expect it dropping through letterboxes on Friday and Saturday. Don't worry, John. If all else fails we will plant a mail bomb." James rubbed his hands together.

Joseph's ears seemed to prick up at the word "bomb", and showed concern.

"It's not a detonation device, Joseph," James explained. "But we can swamp their media files with junk: Viagra, Nigerian millions, Bingo, Puzzles, Russian brides. Their heads will be spinning by the time we've finished."

I patted James on his back and passed him a croissant. He took a bite and continued on his keyboard.

"I want you to look at this," James clicked on a yellow envelope icon on his screen. Pulling our chairs closer we huddled around his screen. "This is Caleb's computer contents. Look at his latest diary and notes."

"But how? ..." Joseph caught his breath and we studied the pages.

"You can see Caleb has made entries last night." James said. "The good news is we've found no Trojans. Just a few small viruses, but no key - loggers."

Sean scratched his head, "key-loggers, huh? Err... is that good or bad?"

"It's good there's none, Gunny Highway," James said. "We don't think the bad guys have infiltrated his laptop. There's no sign of a hostile take-over or any malware."

"Thanks, James," I said, "that's a relief. So they're basing their information on his old desk diary and this informer, right?"

"And anything they've got from Simeon," Sean turned sympathetically to Joseph.

"My brother will not talk," Joseph said, "he's different to me: he's as stubborn as a mule."

"Even so," I said, "we need to make Caleb's laptop safe, and warn him."

We debated for a while what our strategy should be, particularly to locate and rescue Simeon. The waiter refilled our coffee cups several times. Using the back of the menu I penned our plan.

"OK. This is what has been in my head since I heard about Simeon," I said. "James will remain here, keeping in touch with home and also, crucially: guarding the box."

"Keep the door locked," Sean said. "Keep away from that friggin' spy-hole unless you hear me. Don't use room-service. Grab stuff from the downstairs shop on ya way up."

James saluted, "Yes, Sir!" Sean roughed James' hair and they play fought.

"OK, settle down, people are watching," I said. "Joseph and I'll visit Caleb to collect his laptop so that James can make it secure. "Sean has a meeting at 12.00 in the city centre with a Colonel at Mossad - courtesy of his Hereford visit. He can drop us at the airport for our flight to Cairo and meet us later at Simeon's house. OK everyone?"

James had chatted with people on the Lonely Planet Travel Forum and planned our route. We were flying from Ben Gurion airport to Sharm El Sheikh International Airport using El Al air. As he swung his laptop over his shoulder and walked towards the shop I realised that I had misjudged James. He had demonstrated to be a real asset, a valued member of our team. I believed I was the tactician, Sean the fearless warrior, and James the plodding Intel gatherer.

Flight EA 125 would arrive at Sharm; 1pm. local time: a sixty minute flight. Sharm was Egypt's second largest airport, second to Cairo: the favourite destination for tourists for some of the world's best scuba diving.

Our plan moved on. I hoped Simeon could hold on.