GWOT VII - Chilly Reception
Nov. 14th, 2020 07:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT VII - Chilly Reception
The negotiations to allow us to come to Beijing had taken six weeks. The codicil covering the aircraft had taken an entire week of that negotiation.
The aircraft itself was a perfectly plebian Boeing 747-300.
The contents, not so much.
In addition to carrying the entire diplomatic staff of our embassy, we also had to carry all the Other Stuff that an embassy requires. In outlines I can tell you all about it. The details are extremely secret.
The number one requirement of an embassy is secure communications. The diplomatic staff have to be able to talk to the Motherland, you see, and there's no point to pretending that anything over say, the Internet, is secure.
That means powerful, powerful radios. Antennas. Ciphers and codes. And the clerks to operate same.
We had demolition charges on the equipment. And the clerks wore pistols and carried suicide pills. Neither were an affectation.
The aircraft itself had a similar set of communications facilities. Same issues.
Then we have the awkward problem of setting up in a building that we did not build and oversee the building of from its first days of construction.
The problem with that was the guarantee -- not the possibility, not the hypothetical, the 100% real as steel certainty - that it was thoroughly bugged.
That meant we had to bring our own debuggers, our Technical Services personnel. No need of pistols or suicide pills, as they were looking for bugs. Five seconds to pull the explosive destruction tab on their computers, and they could put their hands on their heads and look innocent until repatriation. If ever.
Then we had Marines. Republic of California Marines. Cross trained ruthlessly by the survivors of the Battle of Pendleton, then service with the California Naval Militia at Monterey, then small teams working with the British, the French, the Canadians and the Koreans - the four countries who not only would talk to us, but were willing to be our allies in a dangerous, dangerous universe.
We didn't have many of them. Only eight.
But they were the _best_ eight the Republic could offer. And it was no accident that four of the eight had distinctive Chinese features. Or was that twelve? Or maybe sixteen?
Embedded in our other personnel - translators, administrative staff, logistics crew, servants, even a stage tech - were Collections staff. California intelligence.
My head hurt from all the Mandarin the language folks at Monterey had tried to stuff in. But our intel geeks all spoke at least two Chinese languages, some more. Not all would reveal this capability.
One of the lesser secrets of this Embassy deployment - although one worth killing over, if necessary - was the mix of Collections staff to ordinary diplomatic personnel.
Normally one in three or so. Perhaps one in two, if you were properly Russian-paranoid and insisted on having rival intelligence agencies duking it out with each other, the KGB (political) and GRU (military)
Our ratio was exactly one hundred percent. From cooks to clerks, gun toting jocks to folding socks, everyone on this operation was a trained Collections specialist.
Except the ambassador, and myself.
The ambassador, because it was her job to lie abroad for her nation.
Myself, because the Governor wanted another set of eyes and ears on this hot mess. And because it was my job not merely to kill for the Republic, but to die for her. And maybe indulge in my other core skill. Genocide.
###
Obviously we couldn't bring our own vehicles. But we could bring our own mechanics. And the original plan, of the Chinese giving us our rental vehicles and us driving them willy-nilly to our new home, was simply not on.
My own title was "Assistant Military Attache." But my function was closer to that of a safety officer. The head of the diplomatic protection detail had his role, the counterintelligence specialist shepherding the cipher clerks had his, and I had no role at all. Except to ask annoying questions, from time to time.
"Has that water line been tested?" I snapped at our tech as he started to hook up the water line to the fill on the plane's tanks.
I knew we'd brought a water testing kit. I'd insisted on it. Now was the time for me to insist that we get it out and test the water. Before we contaminated the plane's water tanks.
We might be sitting on the tarmac for a while, after all, and would get a little thirsty bye and bye if there had been an 'accident' with the water line.
Next on my radar, so to speak, was where we had been ordered to park the plane.
I consulted my electronic copy of the pre-War schematics of the airport. Every airport has a holding area for suspect aircraft. Guess where they had parked us?
Begin annoying.negotiations.h to move plane.
I was a professional paranoid. But I was up against an entire government.
Enemy? Right now, definitely. Someday, maybe not. That's why we were here. But we would
gain nothing from a position of weakness.
###
Then there was the chicken and egg problem.
We couldn't take any of the Real Secret Squirrel S... Shinola off the plane, until we had a safe place to put it.
Making a safe place to put it might take a really damn long time.
But we needed the plane to go home. For reasons.
So I had to go with the advance team to check the building the Chinese had given us.
Under long standing international law - the Vienna Convention of 1815 to be exact - the grounds of a embassy are the diplomatic soil of the guest nation, not the host. This of course means that the building is alienated from its former owners. Most embassies are leased, as a legal matter, but diplomatic convention trumps this civil nicety.
(I wonder what ever happened to that guy? Didn't hear about him after the Firecracker.)
The embassy of course is dependent on the host nation's power, water, sewage service, phone lines and Internet connections. We would procure locally the needed generators, water purification and storage tanks, septic and trash pumps, etc. But we had brought our own computer hardware, satellite dishes and antennas, see above.
We would provide our own police protection. See Marines.
But we would not allow the host nation's fire services to enter the property, nor would we permit their medics or ambulances, however good natured, to assist if any Embassy personnel became injured or sick.
That meant our own firefighting equipment and plans, and our own doctors, infirmary, medical supplies and medications.
Then there was logistics, that cargo I spoke of. We needed vehicles to carry it from the plane to the embassy site.
Another diplomatic convention - i.e. 'rule that is not supposed to be broken, but sometimes is' - is that diplomatic cargo, whether it be an envelope or a Diesel engine, is the sacred and inviolate property of the nation - and meddling with it is an assault on that nation, which may be resisted with force up to and including deadly force.
That's why our Logistics crew all carried submachine guns. Not pistols.
For with which to defend our sacred cargo.
And every single member of them, despite their humble title, was a member not of the Republic Marines but of the infinitely deadlier Strategic Defense Force.
Another reason the SDF was involved here on the ground... that would be one of the greater secrets, and I would have to kill you before I told you.
###
There were a LOT of Chinese military and police, all around us, as the convoy crossed from the secure airport perimeter to the nominally public street. Which had been closed.
Technicals - light wheeled vehicles with machine guns - held the intersections. The directions we were not using were blocked with barriers. Not police barricades, not mesh, not even barbed wire. Concrete K rails topped with concertina wire. Like the walls of a prison. And carefully at some distance, behind caution tape, crowds were watching us.
They gathered silently. No signs, no banners. They just stood in the street. Watching.
"That's interesting and dangerous," one of the 'diplomatic servants' remarked.
"How so?"
"The city is under a 24 hour curfew. Just standing in the street is breaking it. The Chinese government has a disconcerting habit of breaking up unauthorized demonstrations with deadly force. But I've been counting. This is thousands of people. And either it's authorized - which I doubt, because there's no hint of it in the local media - or it's as close to a revolt as you get without machine guns being involved."
That was interesting. And the police and troops were nervous.
I can't read crowds worth shit. But I can read troops like fine print.
Kept rubbing their hands, although the day was not that cold. Engines kept running. Leaders talking into their radios a lot. And that shaky mouse at a cat convention feeling in the air.
The crowds were watching us.
Crowd control was the host nation's business. They could mow them down and all we would do is watch.
But they were watching _us_. The California delegation, with our flags flying from our aerials on our borrowed vehicles.
Watching. Not bitterly, not angrily. But not smiling and not with hope either.
Risking their lives, and if I knew modern day China the lives of their families near and far. To watch.
California had had a taste of nuclear attack. Two weapons, one city.
China had feasted. Gorged on a banquet of ordinance. Hundreds of cities, at least fourteen _hundred_ weapons.
Were they looking at their saviors? Or their doom?
They didn't know, I realized with a chill that had nothing to do with the cool morning air.
That was exactly why they were watching.
###
The building that had been picked for us had been a primary school. Three stories, looking inward, two wood frame upper floors over a concrete and brick foundation.
Now I would pervert it into, what had I said to General Batesman when I'd arrested him?
Oh, yeah, that's right
"A charnel house of death."
The negotiations to allow us to come to Beijing had taken six weeks. The codicil covering the aircraft had taken an entire week of that negotiation.
The aircraft itself was a perfectly plebian Boeing 747-300.
The contents, not so much.
In addition to carrying the entire diplomatic staff of our embassy, we also had to carry all the Other Stuff that an embassy requires. In outlines I can tell you all about it. The details are extremely secret.
The number one requirement of an embassy is secure communications. The diplomatic staff have to be able to talk to the Motherland, you see, and there's no point to pretending that anything over say, the Internet, is secure.
That means powerful, powerful radios. Antennas. Ciphers and codes. And the clerks to operate same.
We had demolition charges on the equipment. And the clerks wore pistols and carried suicide pills. Neither were an affectation.
The aircraft itself had a similar set of communications facilities. Same issues.
Then we have the awkward problem of setting up in a building that we did not build and oversee the building of from its first days of construction.
The problem with that was the guarantee -- not the possibility, not the hypothetical, the 100% real as steel certainty - that it was thoroughly bugged.
That meant we had to bring our own debuggers, our Technical Services personnel. No need of pistols or suicide pills, as they were looking for bugs. Five seconds to pull the explosive destruction tab on their computers, and they could put their hands on their heads and look innocent until repatriation. If ever.
Then we had Marines. Republic of California Marines. Cross trained ruthlessly by the survivors of the Battle of Pendleton, then service with the California Naval Militia at Monterey, then small teams working with the British, the French, the Canadians and the Koreans - the four countries who not only would talk to us, but were willing to be our allies in a dangerous, dangerous universe.
We didn't have many of them. Only eight.
But they were the _best_ eight the Republic could offer. And it was no accident that four of the eight had distinctive Chinese features. Or was that twelve? Or maybe sixteen?
Embedded in our other personnel - translators, administrative staff, logistics crew, servants, even a stage tech - were Collections staff. California intelligence.
My head hurt from all the Mandarin the language folks at Monterey had tried to stuff in. But our intel geeks all spoke at least two Chinese languages, some more. Not all would reveal this capability.
One of the lesser secrets of this Embassy deployment - although one worth killing over, if necessary - was the mix of Collections staff to ordinary diplomatic personnel.
Normally one in three or so. Perhaps one in two, if you were properly Russian-paranoid and insisted on having rival intelligence agencies duking it out with each other, the KGB (political) and GRU (military)
Our ratio was exactly one hundred percent. From cooks to clerks, gun toting jocks to folding socks, everyone on this operation was a trained Collections specialist.
Except the ambassador, and myself.
The ambassador, because it was her job to lie abroad for her nation.
Myself, because the Governor wanted another set of eyes and ears on this hot mess. And because it was my job not merely to kill for the Republic, but to die for her. And maybe indulge in my other core skill. Genocide.
###
Obviously we couldn't bring our own vehicles. But we could bring our own mechanics. And the original plan, of the Chinese giving us our rental vehicles and us driving them willy-nilly to our new home, was simply not on.
My own title was "Assistant Military Attache." But my function was closer to that of a safety officer. The head of the diplomatic protection detail had his role, the counterintelligence specialist shepherding the cipher clerks had his, and I had no role at all. Except to ask annoying questions, from time to time.
"Has that water line been tested?" I snapped at our tech as he started to hook up the water line to the fill on the plane's tanks.
I knew we'd brought a water testing kit. I'd insisted on it. Now was the time for me to insist that we get it out and test the water. Before we contaminated the plane's water tanks.
We might be sitting on the tarmac for a while, after all, and would get a little thirsty bye and bye if there had been an 'accident' with the water line.
Next on my radar, so to speak, was where we had been ordered to park the plane.
I consulted my electronic copy of the pre-War schematics of the airport. Every airport has a holding area for suspect aircraft. Guess where they had parked us?
Begin annoying.negotiations.h to move plane.
I was a professional paranoid. But I was up against an entire government.
Enemy? Right now, definitely. Someday, maybe not. That's why we were here. But we would
gain nothing from a position of weakness.
###
Then there was the chicken and egg problem.
We couldn't take any of the Real Secret Squirrel S... Shinola off the plane, until we had a safe place to put it.
Making a safe place to put it might take a really damn long time.
But we needed the plane to go home. For reasons.
So I had to go with the advance team to check the building the Chinese had given us.
Under long standing international law - the Vienna Convention of 1815 to be exact - the grounds of a embassy are the diplomatic soil of the guest nation, not the host. This of course means that the building is alienated from its former owners. Most embassies are leased, as a legal matter, but diplomatic convention trumps this civil nicety.
(I wonder what ever happened to that guy? Didn't hear about him after the Firecracker.)
The embassy of course is dependent on the host nation's power, water, sewage service, phone lines and Internet connections. We would procure locally the needed generators, water purification and storage tanks, septic and trash pumps, etc. But we had brought our own computer hardware, satellite dishes and antennas, see above.
We would provide our own police protection. See Marines.
But we would not allow the host nation's fire services to enter the property, nor would we permit their medics or ambulances, however good natured, to assist if any Embassy personnel became injured or sick.
That meant our own firefighting equipment and plans, and our own doctors, infirmary, medical supplies and medications.
Then there was logistics, that cargo I spoke of. We needed vehicles to carry it from the plane to the embassy site.
Another diplomatic convention - i.e. 'rule that is not supposed to be broken, but sometimes is' - is that diplomatic cargo, whether it be an envelope or a Diesel engine, is the sacred and inviolate property of the nation - and meddling with it is an assault on that nation, which may be resisted with force up to and including deadly force.
That's why our Logistics crew all carried submachine guns. Not pistols.
For with which to defend our sacred cargo.
And every single member of them, despite their humble title, was a member not of the Republic Marines but of the infinitely deadlier Strategic Defense Force.
Another reason the SDF was involved here on the ground... that would be one of the greater secrets, and I would have to kill you before I told you.
###
There were a LOT of Chinese military and police, all around us, as the convoy crossed from the secure airport perimeter to the nominally public street. Which had been closed.
Technicals - light wheeled vehicles with machine guns - held the intersections. The directions we were not using were blocked with barriers. Not police barricades, not mesh, not even barbed wire. Concrete K rails topped with concertina wire. Like the walls of a prison. And carefully at some distance, behind caution tape, crowds were watching us.
They gathered silently. No signs, no banners. They just stood in the street. Watching.
"That's interesting and dangerous," one of the 'diplomatic servants' remarked.
"How so?"
"The city is under a 24 hour curfew. Just standing in the street is breaking it. The Chinese government has a disconcerting habit of breaking up unauthorized demonstrations with deadly force. But I've been counting. This is thousands of people. And either it's authorized - which I doubt, because there's no hint of it in the local media - or it's as close to a revolt as you get without machine guns being involved."
That was interesting. And the police and troops were nervous.
I can't read crowds worth shit. But I can read troops like fine print.
Kept rubbing their hands, although the day was not that cold. Engines kept running. Leaders talking into their radios a lot. And that shaky mouse at a cat convention feeling in the air.
The crowds were watching us.
Crowd control was the host nation's business. They could mow them down and all we would do is watch.
But they were watching _us_. The California delegation, with our flags flying from our aerials on our borrowed vehicles.
Watching. Not bitterly, not angrily. But not smiling and not with hope either.
Risking their lives, and if I knew modern day China the lives of their families near and far. To watch.
California had had a taste of nuclear attack. Two weapons, one city.
China had feasted. Gorged on a banquet of ordinance. Hundreds of cities, at least fourteen _hundred_ weapons.
Were they looking at their saviors? Or their doom?
They didn't know, I realized with a chill that had nothing to do with the cool morning air.
That was exactly why they were watching.
###
The building that had been picked for us had been a primary school. Three stories, looking inward, two wood frame upper floors over a concrete and brick foundation.
Now I would pervert it into, what had I said to General Batesman when I'd arrested him?
Oh, yeah, that's right
"A charnel house of death."
