White Water td-106

by Warren Murphy

  "Reconsider it how?" the President asked in a guarded tone.

  "Roll it back. Unilaterally. If you make this gesture, other nations may follow your lead. Then the international waters will be truly free again."

  "That means anyone can loot them."

  "Not at all. I foresee a time when UN patrol boats, neutral and unallied, will ply the blue seas, monitoring shipping traffic and fishing both. It will usher in a new era of international cooperation and make the UN the truly global organization its wise founders wished it to be."

  "I don't see it that way," the President said stiffly.

  The Secretary-General didn't skip a beat. "Possibly you desire to think on it," he said. "While you are doing this, I wish to call your attention to the frightful arrearage of the United States in the matter of its UN dues. It is a question of some-ah, here is the file-1.3 billions of dollars. When may I expect a check, Mr. President?"

  "When the United Nations earns its subsidies," the President said bitterly, hanging up.

  An hour later he was staring out a window in the White House top floor wondering whom to turn to when his chief of staff came in waving a report.

  "The Canadian fisheries minister has given a speech, Mr. President."

  So.

  "Remember the last fisheries minister? The one who launched the Turbot War? Well, this one looks like he's bent on a salmon war."

  "Salmon?"

  The chief of staff lifted a sheet of paper. "I quote-'The plundering piratical policies of the pharisees to the south show they are bent upon a course of Malthusian overfishing that will ruin us all.'"

  "Pharisees?"

  "He means us, sir."

  "But pharisees?"

  "The Spaniards were philistines last time." The chief of staff went on. "'I pledge for as long as I am minister of fisheries and oceans that I will protect the tiny little salmon so they can go to sea. God help any nation or navy who gets between our smolts and the Pacific.'"

  "What are smolts?"

  "I have no idea. But it sounds like smelts."

  "Must be a typo."

  "The fisheries minister has imposed a transit tax on U.S. salmon trawlers from Seattle to Cape Suckling, Alaska."

  "They can't do that! We own Alaska."

  "Here's the problem, Mr. President. We own Washington State and Alaska, but there's a slice of coastline standing between them called the Alaska Panhandle. That's ours, too. But we don't own the entire coastline. There is a kind of buffer zone called British Columbia. Running parallel to that is an ocean current called the Alaskan Gyre. The salmon ride this current to their spawning streams, mostly rivers in British Columbia."

  "Is that in our waters or theirs?"

  "The gyre flows within our two-hundred-mile limit until it hits British Columbia, then resumes in U.S. waters."

  The presidential brow furrowed in confusion.

  "Do you have a map? I think I need to look at a map."

  "I'm sure there's one somewhere."

  They found a map in the situation room. A big wall map. The President and his chief of staff put their heads together just below Alaska.

  "I see what you mean," the President said unhappily.

  "In order to reach the Gulf of Alaska, our fishermen travel along the coast of B.C. until they reach Alaskan waters. But with the transit tax, they are subject to seizure or must go outside the twohundred-mile limit we have in common with Canada. That's a big jump, and can hurt them economically. And there's this-the Alaska fishery is our last healthy fishing ground. We need it more than ever."

  "You know, maybe the UN Secretary-General had a good idea."

  "Since when?" the chief of staff asked skeptically.

  "Excuse me."

  The President went to the Lincoln Bedroom, where he took up the red telephone that connected to Harold W. Smith at an office that, for all the President knew, was across the street in the Treasury Building.

  "Smith, have you heard the Canadian fisheries minister's speech?"

  "I am reading a wire-service transcript," answered Smith.

  "What do you make of it?"

  "It may be tit for tat. A bargaining chip to ransom the Canadian patrol craft captured today."

  "I hear an 'or' in your voice."

  "Or it may be the next phase in a plan that is still unfolding."

  "These Canadian fishing ministers like to throw their weight around, don't they?"

  "The last one parlayed his portfolio into the premiership of Newfoundland. This one may have similar ambitions."

  "Maybe he'll take my call."

  "It is worth a chance," said Smith. "The prime minister has issued a statement saying he had full confidence in his fisheries minister."

  "That sounds like he'll cut the guy off at the knees if things go bad for Canada."

  "I could send my people to pay him an unofficial call," Smith offered.

  "Wait a minute. I don't want him killed."

  "They are capable of applying pressure without terminating him."

  "I wish someone would do that to the Secretary-General of the UN. He tried to hold me up for back dues before he would stick his oar into the water."

  "I will instruct my people to fly to Ottawa."

  And the line went silent.

  The President picked his coat off the bedpost and drew it on. Of all the perils that had loomed on the international horizon-a fractured Russia and an increasingly belligerent China-this was the one he never saw coming.

  It was a good thing no one knew he had a hand in creating it.

  Chapter 29

  In his office on the thirty-eighth floor of the United Nations Building overlooking the East River, Secretary-General Anwar Anwar-Sadat was fielding telephone calls.

  Strange things were happening in the world. The call to roll back the two-hundred-mile limit seemed to be resonating in certain world capitals.

  From Argentina a thickly accented voice was telling him that his was the first sane voice heard on the subject in decades.

  From South Korea there were plaudits. Japan appeared interested. Of course, they would be. Their fleets plied the seven seas voraciously, often encountering resistance and sanctions.

  From other quarters, of course, came dark threats. Russia had been claiming dubious management rights over disputed waters, and Moscow was irate. Likewise Burma, or whatever the current name was, engaged in raffling off their coastal fishing rights, was being unpleasant.

  The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was particularly upset, if her telephonic screeches were any indicator.

  Anwar Anwar-Sadat excused himself in the middle of her unrelenting vitriol and stood up.

  It was the turning point, but it was very strange. All he had done was make a speech. It wasn't even a very good speech, although it was delivered with conviction. With force. Obviously that was why it had resonated so.

  His chief aide buzzed him very soon after the first wave of calls to inform him, "A Miss Calley to speak with you."

  Anwar Anwar-Sadat perked up. "Really?"

  "Yes. She is not on the list, but she sounded so sure of herself, I said I would see if you were in."

  "I will take the call," Anwar Anwar-Sadat said eagerly.

  Taking his chair, he cleared his throat twice very noisily because he seemed to have raised a bothersome frog, then took up the receiver. "This is Secretary-General Anwar Anwar-Sadat speaking," he said, his voice a quavering purr.

  "Good of you to take my call, my Anwar," a cool female voice said crisply.

  He all but gasped. "It is you?"

  "It is I."

  "I have longed for this moment."

  "And for another moment, nearing soon."

  "You are in New York?" he said joyously.

  "No. But you are coming here."

  "I look forward to our first meeting. I must say that I very much admire your voice."

  "And I yours."

  "It is-how shall I put it?-uplifting." He tittered.

>   "I will accept that as the compliment of a gentleman, and keep my innuendo to myself."

  She was charming. Her voice was a husky contralto. Sexy, yes, but not sluttish. It did not quite go with his mental image of a blond goddess, but in fact, it was an improvement. It was a very capable voice.

  "I am very excited about the reception to my speech," he said.

  "The world's ears are turned in your direction, my Anwar."

  "Although my duty calls for me to be here, I will come to your city wherever it may be."

  "Ottawa. Come tonight."

  "We will laugh, we will dance and we will dine on one another's charms," Anwar Anwar-Sadat tittered.

  "And we will confer with the Canadian minister of fisheries," said Mistress Kali.

  Anwar-Sadat's face quirked as if bee-stung.

  "That does not sound very ...romantic."

  "We will have our little romance, you and I. But your words have struck a chord. The minister of fisheries has struck a like chord in his own nation. I thought you two should meet."

  "Whatever for?"

  "To plot your dual strategy."

  "I do not have dual strategy."

  "No. You have a unified strategy. My strategy."

  "And after this meeting, what shall I look forward to?"

  "What would please you, my Anwar?"

  "Something new. Something extraordinary."

  "I am adept in many arts. Both subtle and sensual. I will conjure up something appropriate for the occasion of our first meeting."

  "It is done."

  "A car will meet you at the Ottawa airport. Please hurry. Events are overtaking the globe. We must move to control them, if we are to profit by them."

  "Until tonight," purred Anwar Anwar-Sadat, who blew a kiss into the receiver and was rewarded with a breathy return peck.

  Hanging up reluctantly, he came to his feet and called out. "Christos! Book me on the earliest flight to Ottawa."

  Christos came into the room and noticed the unseemly bulge in Anwar Anwar-Sadat's well-tailored crotch and averted his eyes with red-faced embarrassment.

  "At once, my General," he said, saluting crisply.

  CANADIAN FISHERIES Minister Gilbert Houghton was giving a follow-up speech where the Fraser River emptied out into the Strait of Georgia among the coastal pines of British Columbia. Vancouver's sparkling towers formed an impressive backdrop.

  The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was there. As were foreign press, including a solitary representative from the U.S. ABC, of course. Their chief anchor was Canadian. A good man to have in New York when the Canadian view needed putting forth.

  The cold winds were out of the Pacific. They ran chilly fingers through Houghton's crisp hair. Opening his mouth, he inhaled a bracing charge of the purest air in Mother Nature.

  "I have come here to our fifth province to make a firm stand against piracy and environmental pillaging."

  From a packet he took up a dead fish. It lay limp in his hand.

  "This is a green sturgeon. A brave, mighty and tasty fish. Here in the Fraser, green sturgeon are all but extinct." He lifted up another fish, this one white. "If something is not done, his brother, white sturgeon, will go the way of all fish. My friends, we are expecting here in B.C. a die-off of fish unprecedented in modern history. Just as the dodo is extinct, just as the whale was hunted to near extinction, we are about to lose our sturgeon and salmon. It must not be allowed to come to pass.

  "It is no secret that one of the chief causes of this die-off is overfishing. In that, we Canadians must assume our rightful share of blame."

  From the crowd there were boos-fishermen, many of whom were restricted from fishing in their own waters. Among these men the name of Gilbert Houghton was something to expectorate from the mouth.

  "Some blame logging for injuring the habitats. Others say El Nino's warmer waters are responsible for diminishing salmon returns. While these events may have their individual impacts, there is a greater menace. Salmon return to the Fraser and other B.C. rivers to spawn. If they do not return, they cannot spawn. It is no secret that virtually all the salmon runs in this part of the world belong to British Columbia. Nor it is any secret that the salmon do not return to the Fraser and other coastal streams as they have because they are intercepted."

  He let the word hang in the cold air, bitter as castor oil.

  "U.S. fishermen operating in the shared waterways off B.C. are capturing salmon in record numbers. In doing so, they are confiscating the next generation of salmon before they can hatch. Confiscating our food, our livelihood and our very futures!"

  "The bloody bastards!" a man cried out.

  Gilbert Houghton looked out. It was a typical B.C. fisherman. But his face was painted white, and smack in the middle, resembling a blotch of fresh blood, was the red maple leaf of Canada.

  Houghton suppressed a smile. A plant. There were others. They were salted throughout the crowd for the benefit of the camera.

  "In the Atlantic my predecessor stepped in to arrest the Maritime cod crisis. He was a good man, but he acted too late. I have taken steps to halt the salmon crisis. For this I have been roundly and unfairly criticized."

  There were boos but a few cheers, too. These came from the white-faced maple-leafers.

  "What is the point of protecting the salmon spawning streams of British Columbia if the fish who seek them are captured, gutted and eaten on their way home? These fish are born in B.C. They return to B.C. These are not Pacific fish. They are B.C. fish. They are Canadian fish. And as Canadian fish, they deserve-no, they cry out for protection."

  This got a rousing cheer even from the disgruntled lot waving a placard that read United Fishermen's And Allied Workers' Union Against Federal Interventions.

  "From this day, I pledge the full might and protection of my office to the rescue of the beleaguered salmon. It may be too late to succor the sturgeon. But the salmon can and will be saved. My vow to all Canadians-victory will be ours! Victory by Victoria Day!"

  The crowd ignited. It roared. The boos, so loud before, were drowned out. And while there were still catcalls and hoots directed at him, the TV sound equipment would register only the roars of acclaim for Minister of Fisheries Gilbert Houghton, future prime minister of Canada.

  "Victory by Victoria Day! Victory by Victoria Day!"

  As he stepped down from the makeshift podium to the thunderous applause of his fellow countrymen, Gil Houghton was met by an aide clutching a cellular telephone.

  "It's for you, sir."

  "Not now," Houghton snapped. "I am rebounding in popularity."

  "She says you will take the call."

  "She? Not my wife, I hope?"

  "No. Definitely not your wife," said the aide.

  Pressing one ear shut with a cool palm, Gil Houghton returned to his waiting Bentley and, ensconced inside, took the call.

  "I must see you," said the crisp contralto voice that took the breath from his lungs.

  "This is awkward timing. I'm in B.C."

  "I know. I saw it all."

  "And you approve?"

  "I require your presence, you miserable piece of bait."

  "Yes, Mistress," said Gilbert Houghton, his face contorting between misery and pleasure-both equally enjoyable sensations.

  Oh, how that woman could make him squirm with delight and desire.

  "I will be there directly, Mistress," he said.

  When he hung up, he discovered he had his hands in his pants like a naughty little boy.

  Chapter 30

  The stewardesses on the Air Canada flight to Ottawa were not only indifferent, but they were openly hostile.

  "You must sit in the rear of the aircraft," one told Remo, ripping up his boarding pass for a window seat.

  "Why?"

  "Because you are a Yank."

  "I'm an American," Remo protested. "Proud of it, too."

  "You Yanks are so full of yourselves. Shook yourself free of the British Empire and have looke
d down your short noses at us ever since."

  "Hey, didn't we pull the British Empire's chestnuts out of two world wars?"

  "That is another thing," a second stewardess put in, "you act as if you won them single-handedly. You came in late, you did, and hogged all the credit."

  "That is true!" the first stewardess snapped.

  "Yankee come lately!" various passengers shouted as Remo made his way down the aisle. A few cursed American beer and television as inferior and insidious influences upon all good Canadians.

  Remo wasn't sure which was insidious and which inferior and he didn't care.

  When he came to the Master of Sinanju seated over the starboard wing, Remo mouthed, "I'm stuck sitting in back."

  "Yankee poodle dandy," hissed Chiun.

  "Not you, too."

  "War hog."

  "What happened to smiting the fishmongering Canadians?"

  "I intend to keep a still tongue until this ungainly bird is safely on the ground once more," Chiun undertoned, "and I suggest you do the same."

  "Fine," said Remo, taking his seat.

  After the plane was in the air, Remo buried himself in a magazine. It was something called Maclean's and it read as if edited by stuffy old goats with leather patches on their tweedy elbows.

  He wasn't offered a drink or a complimentary meal.

  When the stewardess in charge of his end of the plane rolled the serving cart back to the front without offering him anything, Remo called after her.

  "I read that Air Canada has the worst service record of any major carrier."

  "That may be true," his stewardess called without looking back, "but that is only when dealing with pharisees."

  "Pharisees?"

  "That is what Fisheries Minister Houghton calls your kind."

  Remo tried to think of a comeback, but decided it would be wasted on a stupid Canuck.

  To kill time he inserted his credit card into the sky-phone slot and called Harold Smith at Folcroft.

  "What's the latest?" he asked when Smith answered.

  "We have open war in the Pacific."

  "How did the Atlantic battle end?"

  "In a draw. Approximately forty boats have been sunk or burned to the waterline. The two sides have withdrawn to neutral waters. But this was only the first skirmish. Tensions are running very high."