"Mr. President," purred Anwar Anwar-Sadat, "I am very distressed by the friction between your nation and the Canadians."
"I could use your help."
"It is a consequence I think of the extension of the two-hundred-mile limits and the fierce quest for diminishing fish. As the leader of the former free world, I must ask you to reconsider your two-hundred-mile limit."
"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."