Firespill by Ian Slater Page B

President.”
    Sutherland switched over to a direct, noninterference line to his standby interpreter. “What’s the trouble?”
    “Apparently there’s some confusion over who you meant by their ‘people, ’ Mr. President.”
    Sutherland looked puzzled. “I mean their sailors.”
    The green light showed that the Russian interpreter was back on the line. “Mr. President, Premier Krestinsky thanks you very much for your concern but wonders if you have been fully apprised of the situation?”
    Sutherland looked around questioningly at his aides. “I don’t understand.”
    The Russian was talking more slowly now. “Mr. President, some hours ago the Sakhalin sent a final message. A fire wave was advancing upon her.” The Premier paused. “We presume she is gone.”
    There was a silence on the line. Then Sutherland spoke. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Last report we had—well, we didn’t know. We would have sent in aircraft —helicopters—but as you probably know, the fog made that impossible.”
    “Of course. The Premier wishes to thank you nevertheless.” There was a slight pause before the interpreter added quickly, “The Premier also suggests that at some later date we might investigate what has gone amiss. He is sure that we would all be interested in improving safety measures to prevent additional environmental accidents.”
    The President readily agreed, arid there the conversation ended—clearly badly. Sutherland had detected a hint of accusation in the Russians’ closing suggestion, as if somehow the Americans were being held accountable for the collision. Both leaders knew worldwide repercussions would come out of this. But the President decided that this was not the time to make these Soviet innuendos an issue. After all, the disaster had struck both sides. Blame would have to wait. Besides, he thought, he was probably overreacting to the Russians because the spill had started in North American waters, and more particularly because the U.S. destroyer might very well have set fire to the whole mess. In any event, he didn’t expect the Russians to help with either fighting the fire or trying to clean up. Right now, that was strictly a North American problem—the U.S.’s job, with what little help the Canadians could offer. If they offered.
    One thing was certain: no country in the world, including the U.S., was even halfway prepared for what had to be faced now. The only really world-shattering problems that had struck him as remotely possible during his term of office were related almost exclusively to threats to world peace. God, the possibility of something like this hadn’t even entered his mind. He walked over to the map and stood dwarfed by the Pacific Ocean. He looked closely at the Alexander Archipelago, which stretched down beside the Alaskan Panhandle. “Well, Jean, what do the Joint Chiefs say we can do about this fuck up?”
    Jean gathered a sheaf of notes by her briefcase. “Not very much, Mr. President. It seems that any kind of extinguishing operation is out of the question. We could send fireboats, but even if they could go close enough, there’s not much they could do. The trouble is that there’s a lot of high octane, aircraft fuel, naphtha—all kinds of volatile stuff in among the oil. At one time tankers carried only one type of oil on each run; now they carry different types in different tanks. That’s the problem. Normally the crude would be hard to set alight—it would just sludge around—but most refined oils vaporize quickly, and once they’re on fire they evaporate any inhibiting water content in the crude. There’s so much gasoline and high octane in this spill that after burning awhile it could raise the crude to its flash point and start it burning. If that happens, we’re in real trouble. It’s all but impossible to extinguish. We’d need a second flood.”
    The President sipped his coffee and stared up at the map, recalling what Cronkite had said about