DRAUMRS - Dreamweavers - Book Two

14 - The Actors Come on Stage

Months before the arrival of any significant dignitaries at the Shenzhen G20 meeting, advance security teams had arrived to prepare the Mission Hills Resort to receive the vast apparatus needed to protect the heads of twenty governments clustered together within only a few thousand square meters. Prior G20's, moved on short notice, or located in volatile settings, had been a huge challenge to plan for and to manage.

Experience has shown that the best place for a security perimeter is far away from any potential target. Nearby street protest mobs and uncontrolled public access to adjacent buildings were a nightmare for the heads of the respective country security details. The Shenzhen location, in no-nonsense Peoples Republic of China, brought some comfort to the security teams. Nevertheless, the resort facility needed many additional security measures embedded behind the scenes simply to enable the appearance of casual security during the meeting.

Some countries had sent dozens of specialized security staff ahead of their delegation. Some smaller countries, or those who were less nervous, made do with only a few extra staff. Regardless, for a perpetrator to enter the facility and even come close to approaching a dignitary in the light of day would require some X-Men combination of invisibility and super-speed. It was lucky then, that the Red Clan attack now needed only darkness and sound sleepers to move forward.

Most of the delegations, except the local PRC representatives and the huge U.S. contingent were being housed on the resort. The Americans, numbering over 100, would have taken up too many rooms; besides, they were never comfortable in shared spaced. Deep in the files of the Secret Service team assigned to protect the delegation, diagrams showing blast radius risks and mass force attack concerns all supported a fully-independent site with multiple perimeters and multiple escape routes.

The resort was still packed to the edges with other large delegations, each appropriately positioned to give them some separation space from old enemies and current antagonists, of which there were many. For a 48-hour main event, final preparations took most of 48 days and many fine adjustments to ensure everyone, if not 100% happy, would at least be satisfied enough not to complain too loudly.

Most delegations consisted of various set-up teams and lesser officials who had done all the leg-work to get their leaders into the correct chair, with the correct words to say when the lights came up. Proximity, in this case, worked better, as side meetings and briefings could happen quickly with little fuss.

These conferring aides needed none of the glare and noise of the main conference to accomplish things. Nor would their work ever be publicized under their names or functions. Effective diplomacy was highly dependent on quiet spaces to float possibilities. It also relied on back offices crammed with communications staff who could turn out draft after draft of agreements plodding ponderously down the crooked road to consensus.

The leaders themselves were mostly following crooked paths towards the conference. The conference itself, like the neighborhood dog park, afforded many opportunities to piss on posts, but with little consequence. The route to the conference plotted through executive visits in regional allied countries offered a much more effective means of marking territory. It also let the G-everyone-else countries, not important enough for G20 status, feel that they were somehow represented through their proxy big brother ally, who 'most certainly' would carry their concerns to the conference.

As the conference kick-off date grew nearer, the world leaders were generally on the move, first into the region and then into PRC itself. All were greeted with appropriate formality and pomp. The same under-secretary of the Party greeted each plane as it landed and deplaned presidents, princes, chancellors and plain old prime ministers. Slightly off-key national anthems were played by the spruced-up military band. Most leaders were happy to be near the end of a multi-stop tour that had been partly about diplomacy and partly about time-zone conditioning.