By Bill Forry
Managing Editor

It's 5:35 p.m. on Tuesday. The delegates, the disaffected, and the dignitaries are starting to stream in to the FleetCenter and Bob Dunford's settling into a new, impromptu "command post" inside a Causeway Street storefront.

After two years of intense planning, weeks of nearly-round-the-clock preparations and high-tech surveillance, it's come down to this for the Dorchester man charged with masterminding the security plans for the FleetCenter and its environs: Along with four trusted lieutenants close at hand and a headset strapped to his ear, Dunford cracks open the lid of a steamin' hot cup of tea and rests his superintendent's lid on the counter.

For Dunford, this is as close to a convention week gala as he's gonna get.

He's staked out a lonely corner of the coffeeshop where a floor-to-ceiling pane glass window affords him "a view," where he and his crew can get a caffeine fix and catch a 10-minute break - if you want to call it that - one eye constantly trained on the human flow streaming past beneath the doomed elevated train tracks.

Nearly 72 hours into "the event," Dunford's guys and gals have logged just one arrest: some moron who decided to torch a trash can as a symbol of his displeasure with things. And while protesters in a controversial "pen" - a term that makes Dunford cringe - have been frequently noisy and foul-mouthed, they've otherwise been just another sideshow along the stroll into the big-top.

Not that Dunford would know much about who or what's afoot inside the big show. Supremely disinterested in hearing anyone's speech - although his family made the trip Monday to hear Mayor Menino's opening salvo - he's spending almost all of his time on the outside, watching for trouble and, like many a fellow Bostonian, counting the hours until the whole thing's over.

So far, so good.

"Everything is going well and we're comfortable where we are. But it's only Tuesday. And we just don't know if we'll have more protests or if someone will try some violence."

If they do, Dunford's likely to be the first to know. Although he was the architect of the security plans for the Boston Police, another cop, Superintendent James Claiborne, has the title of "Unified Commander" for the convention. Dunford describes his role as that of a "safety officer."

"I put it together, so I'm here making sure everyone's where they're supposed to be doing. We've been doing a lot of checking to make sure that all the officers have been fed and that they're getting relief."

With thousands of uniformed men and women in the hard and soft zones outside the Fleet, that's no easy task. The city's hotels, Dunford says, have "been great," opening their doors to cops to stretch out for a few hours of nap-time or to get a hot meal.

The apparent cooperation of the people of Greater Boston, Dunford says, has made everyone's life easier.

"Traffic was a little heavier today than we saw (on Monday) but significantly decreased from the normal traffic," Dunford observes. "I think a lot of people paid attention to the message and found alternative means of transportation or found ways to do satellite work, maybe go on vacation or whatever. So that's helped greatly in the movement of things. But if you walk around the city, you see that the city is vibrant. People are going into restaurants, they're moving around and seem to be enjoying themselves."

Dunford, however, displays only guarded optimism about the rest of the week. The ever-present expectation of sabotage or some other form of violence is never far from his mind. Even more likely is the possibility of confrontations with protesters, some of whom have balked at the fenced in protest zone that Dunford designed and that a federal judge okayed in the days just before the convention launch.

"We hope that it's just protests with dissent, whatever their opposing points of view are ...The whole city is an area where you can protest. We have said from day one to the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Lawyers Guild that we are not making any special rules for anyone demonstrating in the city. If you want to march on a city street, you put in a permit in and we'll look at it and we'll grant it based on the impact to city traffic...

"Last night there were people protesting on all the streets down here. There was no interference with them at all. The only difference with being on Canal Street or Friend Street or Portland Street and being in the designated area is that we provide you with a stage and a microphone and you have direct access to the delegates."

While Thursday night's nomination of Senator Kerry marks an official end to the convention, Dunford expects his post-event workload to continue into the fall.

"We've got about three months of work ahead of us after this. The first, easiest part is dismantling a lot of this. The second part is the financial accounting. And then, we'll be evaluating the performance."

It's impossible for Dunford to step back and critique anything just yet, he says. But he has been able to marvel at how "the whole thing came together."

"Down here Friday night after we began closing down and doing our security sweeps, we had maps and diagrams and engineering plans on how this was all supposed to go, but actually seeing it constructed was pretty neat. It was a good feeling to see it all come to life."

Good, but not good enough to start popping the bubbly just yet. He'll leave that to the delegates and the pseudo-celebs who are choking the sidewalk outside.

"This is the only thing we get," Dunford says as he takes a sip of his tea.