KEY POINTS:
John Ashcroft's wife made the phone call that night, but nobody's going to notice if there's a Harrison Ford version.
Her husband, then United States Attorney-General, had been in intensive care for six days with all hospital visitors banned. But that night, the White House alerted her that
Bush's Chief-of-Staff, Andrew Card, and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales were on their way.
Instinctively she must have smelled sharks circling and picked up the phone.
Meet our unassuming hero, James Comey. As Ashcroft's deputy, he was now in charge. Comey was in his car heading home when he got a call. He knew immediately what was at stake.
The Bush White House had a big fat secret on its hands. The Administration had secretly granted itself the power to spy on its own citizens by recording phone conversations and monitoring emails as part of its War on Terror. But there was one hiccup - they were doing it without the warrant required by law.
This no-warrant domestic spying would operate for three years before the New York Times broke the story a year later.
All that week in March 2004, Comey and his boss had refused to sign a renewal of the still-secret wiretapping, considering it illegal.
But that night, someone high up in the White House wasn't taking no for an answer - even if they had to trample over the sickbed of their sedated Attorney-General.
Furious, Comey immediately turned his security detail around and raced to the hospital, sirens blaring. He sprinted up the stairs to get to his boss' bedside before the two White House staff.
When he arrived in the darkened room, Comey "tried to orient" Ashcroft, as he testified to a Senate committee this week, but it "wasn't clear I'd succeeded".
He phoned the head of the FBI, who also began racing to the hospital. Comey had to make sure he wouldn't be forced to leave the room. He sat down in the armchair by his boss's bed and waited. Within minutes Gonzales and Card arrived, carrying an envelope with - you guessed it - reauthorisation for the surveillance programme.
Ashcroft, although weak, raised his head from the pillow and in a strong clear voice refused to sign. "I am not the Attorney-General - that's the Attorney-General," he said, pointing to Comey, the unwitting star player.
Comey testified, in one of the biggest understatements of his career: "I had witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man."
No authorisation was signed that night. Gonzales and Card just turned and walked from the room. But that isn't how this thriller ends.
A very upset Card called Comey just after leaving, demanding a meeting at the White House. Comey agreed, but was so shaken by what had just happened that he demanded another witness in the room.
Here's where our story loses its heroic legs.
The two men did meet at 11pm that night at the White House, but Card refused to allow Comey to have a witness.
The next day, in what will one day be the haunting final coda of the Bush presidency, the White House acted illegally anyway.
They reauthorised the no-warrant spying programme, blatantly ignoring their own Department of Justice and the law.
This wasn't just a case of nasty infighting. The White House knew they needed the Department of Justice's okay. They knew it enough that they tried to steal a signature from an ill, barely lucid Attorney-General. They were more than willing to steamroll their own Justice Department, the very authority that is supposed to check their power.
Comey immediately prepared his letter of resignation, but this time he wasn't alone. The Washington Post said: "Only in the face of mass resignations, Mr Comey, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and most likely Mr. Ashcroft himself - did the president back down."
The next day, Comey and the FBI head each met Bush one-on-one to convince him to "do the right thing" Whatever compromise they agreed to is still classified.
When "the straight-as-an-arrow" Department of Justice deputy revealed this story to an astounded Senate committee last week, the Washington Post called it "so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source".
This isn't just another political shark tale. This story is every American's worst nightmare - when the balance of justice may have tipped because of one man's instinct to turn his car around that night to guard the signature of his ill boss.
This political screenplay now being shown before the American people for the first time is just the tip of the stories that Americans will not want to hear - the consequences of their second vote for George Bush and his Administration's unrelenting drive to concentrate power into the office of the President.
Don't look for a satisfying Hollywood ending just yet. One of the late-night hospital visitors was Gonzales, at present under fire by Congress. He now heads the very Department of Justice he tried to steamroll that night. That's a sequel frightening enough to make American voters keep their eyes wide open in this dark political night.
