The Berlaymont building's thirteenth floor conference room wasn't officially designated for classified deliberations. But the EU's architectural bureaucracy had learned that some meetings benefited from spaces that weren't listed in public access schedules. Soundproofing that exceeded standard specifications. Electronic isolation that prevented surveillance through conventional means. The kind of practical security that institutions developed when operating between official transparency and operational necessity.
Commissioner Klaus Hoffman studied faces around the conference table—representatives from the European Commission's supernatural affairs directorate, senior diplomatic staff from member nations that had voted yes on yesterday's UN resolution, and several advisors whose actual titles remained deliberately vague. Twenty-three people who collectively would determine how Europe responded to international fracture that was less than thirty hours old.
