The president of the world's most powerful state was pulled out of Ankara in a food delivery truck. This is not a scene from a film - it is the official version of an event at July's NATO summit, whose details stayed under lock for more than a month.

According to the American press, US intelligence services gathered information on a specific Iranian threat that the aircraft carrying Donald Trump out of Turkey would be hit by a surface-to-air missile. The threat, as two American officials familiar with the intelligence said, did not concern one specific flight - but any aircraft on which Trump might leave the country.

The most unpleasant detail is not the missile. A person with a portable missile system was spotted near the summit venue, and intelligence established that the Iranian side knew exactly where the American president was staying - including which floor of the hotel. Knowledge that precise about the movements of a head of state is not gathered overnight.

The extraction

On 8 July, the last day of the summit, the American side activated the emergency procedure. Trump boarded the presidential Boeing in front of the cameras, then quietly stepped off and transferred into a food delivery vehicle. That vehicle took him to a smaller military aircraft, a C-32A, on which he flew to Britain. The presidential Boeing took off separately - with secretary of state Marco Rubio, treasury secretary Scott Bessent, the staff and the reporters, not one of whom knew that the man they were flying for was not on the plane.

The C-32A landed at the British base RAF Mildenhall a few minutes before the big Boeing. Trump discreetly boarded the larger aircraft, then stepped off again - this time in front of the cameras. The picture for the public was assembled: the president travelled with his delegation, as always.

The question that remains is not whether the operation succeeded - clearly it did. The question is why, for an entire month, nobody thought citizens ought to know that at a NATO summit, in allied Turkey, security services were working with a scenario in which the American president falls out of the sky. Releasing information by the calendar is an old craft, and it was not invented in Washington.

The Balkans knows this scene

For a region that has spent decades watching the security arrangements of the great powers negotiated over its head, the story has a familiar taste. The summit was held in Ankara - less than two hours' flight from Skopje. The threat, if it is accurate as presented, moved through the same airspace we move through.

Trump himself recently confirmed he changed aircraft on the recommendation of the Secret Service, in a sentence that says everything and nothing: they wanted me on a different flight, in a different plane. The rest was kept quiet - and continues to emerge in instalments, through officials who speak on condition of not being named.