Find that girl

You think getting paid to watch hours and hours of video sounds like a cool gig? Talk to agents attached to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. For days they'd been holed up watching what tended to be grainy black-and-white footage of perhaps the most boring, repetitive "action" in the world -- people waiting for and retrieving luggage from airport carousels and waiting outside with said bags for a ride.

It's spelled t-e-d-i-o-u-s. Yet they watched the video from surveillance cameras all around Honolulu International with all the discipline and devotion of Ebert and Roper on deadline, these representatives from each of Hawaii's law enforcement agencies, plus the CIA.

Like a four-star flick, this one saved the best for last.

Three international flights had landed that evening, five more from the mainland. The face of every passenger was given a look. And now they were down to the last tape, shot from a camera outside the immigration/customs area. As other passengers went their ways and the crowd on the sidewalk thinned, two beautiful young women began to stand out.

Both were obviously waiting for someone, and couldn't have looked more different. One appeared to be a local girl, Asian, probably Japanese, wearing a grass skirt and coconut shells over her breasts, a haku lei in her hair. She held a sign, showing it to passengers as they filed past. Zooming in, the JTTF saw that she was waiting to greet a "Dr. Villafuerte" with a ginger lei. The other wore a baggy black velour track suit, a gold stocking cap on her head.

Zooming in, on the cap they saw the San Miguel beer logo superimposed on an orange basketball. "Hoops fan," said the Army's representative, who'd done some time advising the Philippines army in the fight against the Muslim rebellion on Mindanao. "San Miguel is like the Lakers of the Philippine pro league."

But as time wore on, as other travelers departed in taxis, buses and private cars, they began to see her differently.

"Keeps looking at her watch," Charlie Garrison of the FBI observed. "Somebody's standing her up."

"You think it's ... "

"Pause the tape right there and grab a still of her. Let's show it to our pal Fon Du." The Chinese secret agent who was arrested just hours before he could pick up the niece of Osama bin Laden. Soon an electronic image was being e-mailed to the federal prison near the airport.

Now it was just the two beautiful young women. "Both of 'em got stood up," the Army lieutenant colonel said. At last the hula girl approached San Miguel girl, spoke to her, and they walked off together.

The prison e-mailed back: "Fon Du says those are the eyes." (The photo of her Osama sent showed her in a veil.)

"Start calling all the greeter companies," Charlie said, "Find that girl."