GWOT VII - Field Trip
Mar. 7th, 2021 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT VII - Field Trip
Something had broken the log jam.
Could have been the Ambassador, doing the shuffle and dance moves with every local official in town.
Could have been me, and the memorable dinner arranged through George.
Could have been us promptly ejecting the US Navy SEAL, with newly broken teeth.
Might even have been something done elsewhere by the California Department of State. This was our only China embassy, but not our only point of contact in China.
We had been invited to dinner. The Australian Embassy was holding a diplomatic reception, and each of the embassies on the circuit had now been invited.
The Ambassador no longer bothered talking to me with the helmets. We had nothing at all secure to say to each other. But she did have to tell me one thing.
My name had been added to the invitation. Normally, it's 'Ambassador and guest' with implication that the guest might or might not be a spouse.
This one was the Ambassador and Me.
This posed some interesting problems.
One was that the invitation discreetly specified unarmed. Not how California rolls. But it was their Embassy and therefore their rules.
Another was that I could never, ever go unarmed. Not in the Aussie Embassy, not in the streets, not even in our own Embassy. Look, I took a revolver with me into the shower.
I decided to leave the Ambassador's problems between her and her security detail. But I would not be attending the event, and discreetly phoned in my regrets to the Australian Embassy's protocol secretary.
He sounded panicked, then wooden, as he took the message.
An hour later, two Australian Marines asked for me at the gate by name, followed by a much larger contingent of People's Armed Police.
I had Post One sign them in and met them in our unsecure conference room.
This was a bit of a misnomer. It was on the Embassy grounds, and therefore ours. We took reasonable precautions against casual eavesdropping - no exterior walls, white noise generators, etc. But it was where we chose to meet people we might not want to let further inside.
We shook hands, did the civil thing and chatted.
Australia hadn't actually recognized the sovereignty of California, even after the United Kingdom had. She didn't want to piss off America, and still had American military bases on her territory. But she was no friend of China either.
This lent some weight to the dinner invitation. But we'd declined it, causing some consternation.
Thus a low level to low level discussion, to try to cure the breach.
I chatted a bit more. I told a war story or two. About what had happened when American forces had tried to disarm my California contingent while going home from Iowa. About the reciprocity of privileges, when California had broken up the Five Powers Talks to arrest General Batesman.
They told a few stories too. About the arrest of an Australian criminal in the US consulate in Los Angeles, and how they'd had to feed him take out for two weeks in the office suite until the negotiations were completed to remove him back to Australian soil without a diplomatic vehicle. About US Navy port visits and misbehaving sailors, dating all the way back to World War II.
Fencing. They allowed that the Ambassador's security be armed. But my role was not all that clear. I'd been named in the invite. So why was I armed?
In other words, was I the low level security ("Colonels make the coffee.") I appeared to be, or something else? Someone worthy of being named in a diplomatic invite?
I pointed out that the Australians had issued the invite. They discreetly looked very pained.
Oh dear.
They'd been ordered to invite me, by parties as yet unspoken. It was the form of an invitation that could not be refused, too.
I invited them to take a tour of our Embassy. They had no way to refuse to accept.
I didn't show them the Ambassador's bedroom, the armory, the contents of the pharmacy locker, or anything inside the door to the suite we called the crypto room.
But I certainly gave them the grand tour.
Thereby establishing two points: that I was not a low-level functionary, and that there was an implied obligation to reciprocate.
We sat again in the conference room. A carefully blank-faced Republic Marine served us refreshments.
"Gentlemen, California has gone to great pains to assure that where our military representatives go, they have the right to go there armed. Despite the painful recent history, this is true in China as well. I carry beyond these walls. So do our medical personnel at the field hospitals. So do our pilots and drivers. I am guessing that your nation has not yet before asserted this right?"
Otherwise, their PAP escort would have been a _lot_ smaller.
"Have you ever seen a little dog tell a big dog to get the hell out of its yard?"
###
The one great thing about being a soldier invited to a formal function is that you already know what you're wearing. Uniform.
Dress uniform, of course, with a valet and a bodyworker (the female one) to help me dress funny.
The gun belt and handgun clashed horribly, as intended.
If sartorial elegance had been the point, I would have had a white belt, white gloves and a white holster with a silver polished handgun in it.
No gloves. Even though I'd prefer just one, on my ruined left hand.
High retention tac squad holster, in what looked like plastic but wasn't. Suitable for crowd control work, or handling prisoners.
Brown Sam Browne type belt, nice and fat, with a buckle that said CA inside a drawing in brass of the state's outline.
Subtle, it wasn't.
###
No problems leaving our Embassy. No problems moving through the streets. No problems at the entrance to the Australian Embassy - their Marines were briefed.
Big problem at the entrance to the ballroom.
Fixed stare.
"You will be pleased to remove THAT from the Embassy," announced one of their diplomatic officers.
I nodded, turned and started to leave.
Our close in protection specialist, who was more discreetly armed, took the Ambassador by her elbow and turned her around.
We all started walking out in unison.
As we moved through the outer grounds to the gate, the Australian Marines were bored and attentive. There was no threat here, this was stupid diplomatic politics.
Their diplomatic staff, however, was having a group meltdown. This was not a good look for them.
One of the Marines covered his ear and spoke briefly into his collar.
I recognized the gesture. "Say again?"
He then gestured to me.
"Sir, my Ambassador asks that you do him the great favor of loitering a moment so you can chat with him."
I paused. The rest of the delegation kept going past me.
That too was a new California tradition. Scout soldiers are first in and last out. And I'd been and done many other things, but by God I didn't believe in, the patch on my right shoulder said I was a scout-soldier. And the blood I'd spilled proved it.
He came running.
"Sir, may I ask who you are?" the impeccably dressed elder statesman type gasped, as he caught his breath.
"Colonel [Echo 18], Assistant Military Attache, Army of the Republic of California."
Then he saw my ruined hand.
Then, he did what few do. Looked from there, to my eyes.
And had the courage to meet them, and look within.
"Colonel, pray do me the favor of being my invited guest. Our Embassy is yours. You and yours are welcome, with or without arms, at any time, for so long as I am Ambassador here."
I touched my lapel, spoke a few words, and walked with him slowly back to the reception.
The entire California contingent followed.
I introduced him to our Ambassador. The form of our introduction made it clear that I was introducing equal to equal and then bowing out.
Not by accident, I now accompanied our close-protection specialist.
"Sir, they freaked out," he said quietly as soon as privacy allowed. "Their Ambassador looked like he was going to have a cardiac right there. So I watched the Minister. He was smilling."
In this context, he could only mean the Minister For External Affairs, our hosts. A more honest translation would be Speaker To Barbarians.
Mystery partially solved. The Chinese wanted to test something.
But also they had revealed something they may not have meant to.
They had some sort of hold on Australia. Something drastic.
I knew what an over-concession was. A desperate ploy to keep the peace, as when Canada had surrendered to America instead of merely complying with the no-fly zone.
The Australians had been convinced that if we'd kept walking, Something Awful would have happened.
That didn't stop us from taking advantage of it.
I made my appearance on the floor, made my introductions, then hung out with their protocol secretary. By the time I was done calming him down, he thought I was a nice enough chap with a gun fetish, but not at all an American.
And he had let something else slip.
Aussies don't panic easily. But they'd panicked.
It was a clear and unequivocal order. They didn't care if the Ambassador showed up. But if I didn't show up, they could all pack and swim home.
###
The Minister for External Affairs didn't want to talk to me. That was OK.
But he introduced me to his boss.
And it was my turn to panic easily.
Sixth rank jade mandarins don't talk to gwalui.
Nor did he. He appraised me, as one does an object in the road which might be an empty ration can, or a land mine.
I felt it would be rude to evaluate him in turn, but by a slight turn of his wrist, he invited it - so I did.
America had made a major, major mistake by attacking China, with casualties in the millions.
He wasn't a burned out has-been, a gaunt eyed survivor of internal wars past and present.
But he had genocide in his eyes.
Three hundred million dead.
At a mere one for one ratio, that would be one America, and no change, if you please.
He saw me, if at all, as a minor representative of a break away province, of an arch enemy.
So I bowed, and spoke.
"Of course the Americans would have traded Los Angeles for Taipei. Both are worthless to them, being east of the Mississippi River. As worthless as San Francisco. You only got America's attention when you nuked Chicago."
His experts would have to parse that out. Just as our experts had composed what I had said, against the fragile hope that I would meet someone high ranking enough to say it to.
To my amazement, and that of the Minster, he actually said something to me.
"What is California?"
I had a fraction of a second to sort several possible answers.
Change. Hope. Audacity.
Any answer longer than a word or two, he would not listen to.
A moment longer, and he would not be here to hear it.
The question he was really asking, in long form, would be something like, "Why does California deserve to exist? Why should California be an exception to the general vengeance America has earned? What redeeming quality does she have, that our murdered millions and our glassed cities did not?"
"Opportunity," I finally decided, and found that I had spoken.
Base level: China's opportunity for revenge.
Second level: hope, but of a specific kind. Hope not just for profit, but for a future. Many people - including Chinese - had come to California to find something better than they had left. And still did, to this day.
Third level: the courage to answer him, on the fly. In the tides of the affairs of men, to take them at the flood.
And Fortune is bald behind.
His smile was not perfunctory, but it was sad.
My answer had not been good enough.
Such a smile one might see, on the face of a man cutting a firebreak through homes.
Something I had seen myself on Firecracker Night.
The thing was done, I told myself.
No.
No, it wasn't.
I allowed my body language to signal a move of my unruined right hand.
Just a twitch.
Opportunity can be read different ways.
And the opportunity I had just passed up was the opportunity to shoot a Minister, and far more importantly a mandarin, dead.
The Minister's eyes flared, and I saw dying cities reflected in them.
That was why he was a Minister and not a mandarin.
The mandarin had not missed the gesture, but he did not choose to call attention to it either.
Issue still in doubt, then.
I thought about the non zero chance that I would have a fatal accident on the way back to the Embassy, for disrespecting an official.
Duty: heavier than mountains.
Death: lighter than a feather.
And I would have ample opportunity to demonstrate personal courage.
When I made my complete and unredacted report.
Something had broken the log jam.
Could have been the Ambassador, doing the shuffle and dance moves with every local official in town.
Could have been me, and the memorable dinner arranged through George.
Could have been us promptly ejecting the US Navy SEAL, with newly broken teeth.
Might even have been something done elsewhere by the California Department of State. This was our only China embassy, but not our only point of contact in China.
We had been invited to dinner. The Australian Embassy was holding a diplomatic reception, and each of the embassies on the circuit had now been invited.
The Ambassador no longer bothered talking to me with the helmets. We had nothing at all secure to say to each other. But she did have to tell me one thing.
My name had been added to the invitation. Normally, it's 'Ambassador and guest' with implication that the guest might or might not be a spouse.
This one was the Ambassador and Me.
This posed some interesting problems.
One was that the invitation discreetly specified unarmed. Not how California rolls. But it was their Embassy and therefore their rules.
Another was that I could never, ever go unarmed. Not in the Aussie Embassy, not in the streets, not even in our own Embassy. Look, I took a revolver with me into the shower.
I decided to leave the Ambassador's problems between her and her security detail. But I would not be attending the event, and discreetly phoned in my regrets to the Australian Embassy's protocol secretary.
He sounded panicked, then wooden, as he took the message.
An hour later, two Australian Marines asked for me at the gate by name, followed by a much larger contingent of People's Armed Police.
I had Post One sign them in and met them in our unsecure conference room.
This was a bit of a misnomer. It was on the Embassy grounds, and therefore ours. We took reasonable precautions against casual eavesdropping - no exterior walls, white noise generators, etc. But it was where we chose to meet people we might not want to let further inside.
We shook hands, did the civil thing and chatted.
Australia hadn't actually recognized the sovereignty of California, even after the United Kingdom had. She didn't want to piss off America, and still had American military bases on her territory. But she was no friend of China either.
This lent some weight to the dinner invitation. But we'd declined it, causing some consternation.
Thus a low level to low level discussion, to try to cure the breach.
I chatted a bit more. I told a war story or two. About what had happened when American forces had tried to disarm my California contingent while going home from Iowa. About the reciprocity of privileges, when California had broken up the Five Powers Talks to arrest General Batesman.
They told a few stories too. About the arrest of an Australian criminal in the US consulate in Los Angeles, and how they'd had to feed him take out for two weeks in the office suite until the negotiations were completed to remove him back to Australian soil without a diplomatic vehicle. About US Navy port visits and misbehaving sailors, dating all the way back to World War II.
Fencing. They allowed that the Ambassador's security be armed. But my role was not all that clear. I'd been named in the invite. So why was I armed?
In other words, was I the low level security ("Colonels make the coffee.") I appeared to be, or something else? Someone worthy of being named in a diplomatic invite?
I pointed out that the Australians had issued the invite. They discreetly looked very pained.
Oh dear.
They'd been ordered to invite me, by parties as yet unspoken. It was the form of an invitation that could not be refused, too.
I invited them to take a tour of our Embassy. They had no way to refuse to accept.
I didn't show them the Ambassador's bedroom, the armory, the contents of the pharmacy locker, or anything inside the door to the suite we called the crypto room.
But I certainly gave them the grand tour.
Thereby establishing two points: that I was not a low-level functionary, and that there was an implied obligation to reciprocate.
We sat again in the conference room. A carefully blank-faced Republic Marine served us refreshments.
"Gentlemen, California has gone to great pains to assure that where our military representatives go, they have the right to go there armed. Despite the painful recent history, this is true in China as well. I carry beyond these walls. So do our medical personnel at the field hospitals. So do our pilots and drivers. I am guessing that your nation has not yet before asserted this right?"
Otherwise, their PAP escort would have been a _lot_ smaller.
"Have you ever seen a little dog tell a big dog to get the hell out of its yard?"
###
The one great thing about being a soldier invited to a formal function is that you already know what you're wearing. Uniform.
Dress uniform, of course, with a valet and a bodyworker (the female one) to help me dress funny.
The gun belt and handgun clashed horribly, as intended.
If sartorial elegance had been the point, I would have had a white belt, white gloves and a white holster with a silver polished handgun in it.
No gloves. Even though I'd prefer just one, on my ruined left hand.
High retention tac squad holster, in what looked like plastic but wasn't. Suitable for crowd control work, or handling prisoners.
Brown Sam Browne type belt, nice and fat, with a buckle that said CA inside a drawing in brass of the state's outline.
Subtle, it wasn't.
###
No problems leaving our Embassy. No problems moving through the streets. No problems at the entrance to the Australian Embassy - their Marines were briefed.
Big problem at the entrance to the ballroom.
Fixed stare.
"You will be pleased to remove THAT from the Embassy," announced one of their diplomatic officers.
I nodded, turned and started to leave.
Our close in protection specialist, who was more discreetly armed, took the Ambassador by her elbow and turned her around.
We all started walking out in unison.
As we moved through the outer grounds to the gate, the Australian Marines were bored and attentive. There was no threat here, this was stupid diplomatic politics.
Their diplomatic staff, however, was having a group meltdown. This was not a good look for them.
One of the Marines covered his ear and spoke briefly into his collar.
I recognized the gesture. "Say again?"
He then gestured to me.
"Sir, my Ambassador asks that you do him the great favor of loitering a moment so you can chat with him."
I paused. The rest of the delegation kept going past me.
That too was a new California tradition. Scout soldiers are first in and last out. And I'd been and done many other things, but by God I didn't believe in, the patch on my right shoulder said I was a scout-soldier. And the blood I'd spilled proved it.
He came running.
"Sir, may I ask who you are?" the impeccably dressed elder statesman type gasped, as he caught his breath.
"Colonel [Echo 18], Assistant Military Attache, Army of the Republic of California."
Then he saw my ruined hand.
Then, he did what few do. Looked from there, to my eyes.
And had the courage to meet them, and look within.
"Colonel, pray do me the favor of being my invited guest. Our Embassy is yours. You and yours are welcome, with or without arms, at any time, for so long as I am Ambassador here."
I touched my lapel, spoke a few words, and walked with him slowly back to the reception.
The entire California contingent followed.
I introduced him to our Ambassador. The form of our introduction made it clear that I was introducing equal to equal and then bowing out.
Not by accident, I now accompanied our close-protection specialist.
"Sir, they freaked out," he said quietly as soon as privacy allowed. "Their Ambassador looked like he was going to have a cardiac right there. So I watched the Minister. He was smilling."
In this context, he could only mean the Minister For External Affairs, our hosts. A more honest translation would be Speaker To Barbarians.
Mystery partially solved. The Chinese wanted to test something.
But also they had revealed something they may not have meant to.
They had some sort of hold on Australia. Something drastic.
I knew what an over-concession was. A desperate ploy to keep the peace, as when Canada had surrendered to America instead of merely complying with the no-fly zone.
The Australians had been convinced that if we'd kept walking, Something Awful would have happened.
That didn't stop us from taking advantage of it.
I made my appearance on the floor, made my introductions, then hung out with their protocol secretary. By the time I was done calming him down, he thought I was a nice enough chap with a gun fetish, but not at all an American.
And he had let something else slip.
Aussies don't panic easily. But they'd panicked.
It was a clear and unequivocal order. They didn't care if the Ambassador showed up. But if I didn't show up, they could all pack and swim home.
###
The Minister for External Affairs didn't want to talk to me. That was OK.
But he introduced me to his boss.
And it was my turn to panic easily.
Sixth rank jade mandarins don't talk to gwalui.
Nor did he. He appraised me, as one does an object in the road which might be an empty ration can, or a land mine.
I felt it would be rude to evaluate him in turn, but by a slight turn of his wrist, he invited it - so I did.
America had made a major, major mistake by attacking China, with casualties in the millions.
He wasn't a burned out has-been, a gaunt eyed survivor of internal wars past and present.
But he had genocide in his eyes.
Three hundred million dead.
At a mere one for one ratio, that would be one America, and no change, if you please.
He saw me, if at all, as a minor representative of a break away province, of an arch enemy.
So I bowed, and spoke.
"Of course the Americans would have traded Los Angeles for Taipei. Both are worthless to them, being east of the Mississippi River. As worthless as San Francisco. You only got America's attention when you nuked Chicago."
His experts would have to parse that out. Just as our experts had composed what I had said, against the fragile hope that I would meet someone high ranking enough to say it to.
To my amazement, and that of the Minster, he actually said something to me.
"What is California?"
I had a fraction of a second to sort several possible answers.
Change. Hope. Audacity.
Any answer longer than a word or two, he would not listen to.
A moment longer, and he would not be here to hear it.
The question he was really asking, in long form, would be something like, "Why does California deserve to exist? Why should California be an exception to the general vengeance America has earned? What redeeming quality does she have, that our murdered millions and our glassed cities did not?"
"Opportunity," I finally decided, and found that I had spoken.
Base level: China's opportunity for revenge.
Second level: hope, but of a specific kind. Hope not just for profit, but for a future. Many people - including Chinese - had come to California to find something better than they had left. And still did, to this day.
Third level: the courage to answer him, on the fly. In the tides of the affairs of men, to take them at the flood.
And Fortune is bald behind.
His smile was not perfunctory, but it was sad.
My answer had not been good enough.
Such a smile one might see, on the face of a man cutting a firebreak through homes.
Something I had seen myself on Firecracker Night.
The thing was done, I told myself.
No.
No, it wasn't.
I allowed my body language to signal a move of my unruined right hand.
Just a twitch.
Opportunity can be read different ways.
And the opportunity I had just passed up was the opportunity to shoot a Minister, and far more importantly a mandarin, dead.
The Minister's eyes flared, and I saw dying cities reflected in them.
That was why he was a Minister and not a mandarin.
The mandarin had not missed the gesture, but he did not choose to call attention to it either.
Issue still in doubt, then.
I thought about the non zero chance that I would have a fatal accident on the way back to the Embassy, for disrespecting an official.
Duty: heavier than mountains.
Death: lighter than a feather.
And I would have ample opportunity to demonstrate personal courage.
When I made my complete and unredacted report.
