Islamabad: At London's Heathrow Airport, supporters, like party guests, wore green rosettes and T-shirts printed with the face of exiled Pakistan politician Nawaz Sharif. The noisy group took photographs of each other and gave the thumbs up as they headed through the departures lounge.
Hours later, they stood dejected on the blistering tarmac of Islamabad airport, wondering where the host of their abandoned celebrations had been taken.
With minutes to go before his scheduled departure, it was not clear whether Sharif was actually on the plane after a last-minute swap from Gulf Air to a Pakistani International Airlines flight aimed at confusing Pakistan authorities.
Sharif eventually arrived, escorted by armed, uniformed British police. The media surrounded his business class seat, ringing him in a circle of television camera lights. In the frenzy, one of Sharif's supporters was taken ill with chest pains.
Upbeat supporters, officials and even Sharif's legal counsel also gave a steady stream of interviews during the flight. But as the flight neared its destination, the atmosphere grew tense.
On landing, Sharif and his advisers took a seat in the middle of Economy class. This, murmured his close officials, was to prevent Musharraf's troops from sealing off the front of the plane and removing him out of sight of the media.
Sharif's team — including a member of Britain's Upper House of parliament from the ruling Labour party — negotiated with security officers and police who spoke in almost apologetic tones of 'legal complications'.
Ninety minutes after his plane touched down, a swarm of commando police in black yielded enough space for Sharif, his party officials and the media to board a bus to the terminal.
In the VIP lounge, tea was served and the atmosphere relaxed. Several senior party members even broke into smiles at having made it so far.
But the relative calm was short-lived. A wall of grim-faced police officers grabbed Sharif, shoving him first towards the airport exit and then back out to the landing strip, as his friends and supporters bellowed their shock and outrage.
And then Musharraf's would-be challenger had disappeared, driven at top speed in a grey bus towards a waiting aircraft out and an uncertain fate out of the country.
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