Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy: A Memoir by Christopher R. Hill

Author:Christopher R. Hill [Hill, Christopher R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Nonfiction, Personal Memoir, Retail
ISBN: 9781451685916
Amazon: 1451685912
Barnesnoble: 1451685912
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2014-10-07T04:00:00+00:00

15

PLASTIC TULIPS

I slipped back down the elevator, then through the long corridors to a garage where I got into an embassy black Ford Crown Victoria and headed to the back entrance of the China World Hotel. On the way I learned that Secretary Rice had just arrived with her huge entourage and passed through a gauntlet of well-wishers and fans in the hotel lobby, and was waiting in her suite with her senior staff for me to arrive and give a briefing.

When a secretary of state travels he or she brings along the entire staff: administrative assistants, advisors, spokespeople to deal with the press, regional experts, numerous security personnel, and a support staff that would be busy into the night preparing morning press clips and other papers, as if the operation were back on the seventh floor of the State Department. This one-night stand in Beijing was no exception. I went to the seventeenth floor and was stopped by two marine security guards borrowed from Embassy Beijing, who demanded my ID. As I began to look for my State Department ID, which I had chosen not to wear around my neck for the meeting with the North Koreans, one of the secretary’s security agents walking down the corridor recognized me and waved me through. I walked down the hall, marveling at all the duct tape used to cover wires for the State Department telephone system that would join all the rooms where her staff was to stay. Two more agents stood in front of her suite.

Secretary Rice was in one of the sitting rooms, beyond where the elliptical machine, installed for her visit—and every one of her visits, wherever she went around the world—stood. She was sitting on a couch with a few members of her staff, enjoying a glass of wine after a long flight.

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” I announced. “I met with the North Koreans, went through our approach. They have agreed to come to the next round of Six Party Talks, which we tentatively agreed would take place later this month.”

“And the bad news?” she asked.

“The Chinese didn’t show. I thought about canceling the whole meeting but decided to go through with it, hoping the Chinese would appear. They never did.”

“I’ll have to take that up with [Foreign Minister] Li tomorrow,” she responded. “They knew they were supposed to be there. I talked to him. You talked to Wu. Sandy [Ambassador Randt, who was sitting with her] talked with his contacts. They should have been there. Take a seat and have a glass of wine. It has been a long day.” She had that right.

The next (long) day, I accompanied Rice to her meeting with Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing at the Foreign Ministry. Minister Li was a friendly sort of person, with a hobby of writing poetry whose quality and depth was not always apparent to those who heard it through an interpreter. The meeting was held in a large conference room on the ground floor.

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