The Geneva Summit Goldfish Mystery

Written by William Shepard

The library lecturer, Matthew O’Leary, was enjoying himself. He was a good, informal speaker, full of funny anecdotes about famous people, and his audience, from the Ronald Reagan Junior High School, hung on every word. His topic was Presidential Summit Meetings, and since Mr. O’Leary had personally been on a number of these trips, he could tell what really went on behind the scenes. And he did.

“My favorite summit was the one in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1985,” O’Leary said. “You should be interested in that one, because President Ronald Reagan, for whom your school is named, took part. He was meeting the Soviet leader, Gorbachev, and they were talking about nuclear arms. It was a tense time, until the goldfish incident. Then it got even more tense! We realized after all that we’d come to Geneva thinking our toughest job would be to handle the Russians. We soon found out it wasn’t, not by a long shot.

His audience leaned forward, anxious to hear all the details. “You see,” O’Leary went on, “the President was staying at a fine residence outside Geneva. It belonged to Prince Karim Aga Khan. The Prince, his wife and their three children, Zahra and her brothers Rahim and Hussein, had moved out so that the President and his staff, including me, could use the house. It was very nice of them. Apparently Prince Karim had been educated in the United States and had warm feelings still for our country.

“It turned out that the only condition for the stay was in a note to President Reagan from Prince Hussein, the youngest, who was ten years old. He wanted to be sure that his goldfish were fed every day. That’s why he wrote his letter to the President, to be sure. They were in a special goldfish tank in Hussein’s bedroom on the second floor. Nobody used the bedroom, but we remembered to feed the goldfish.

“If we forgot, it was because we were all so very busy. I worked for the Office of Security, and my job was to make sure that the President was safe. Nothing else mattered or was allowed to distract me.

“There was plenty to do. As a matter of routine, we checked out any threats against the President and made sure that nobody unauthorized went in or out of rooms, including the living areas at the residence the President was using. There were motor convoys back and forth to the Embassy and to the reception hall provided by the Swiss Government for the negotiations themselves. Of course, there were also receptions at the Russian Embassy and at ours, which involved a lot of checking back and forth, to make sure that only authorized people were there, in each meeting and for each event.

“We did our job well, I think. But our job was just the background. The really serious stuff was what the President and Mikhail Gorbachev were talking about, nuclear weapons and our security. The press, of course, never gave anybody a moment’s rest, but Ronald Reagan had a winning way about him and usually got very good press.

“Of course, people who write the briefing papers and delivered the diplomatic cables were kept busy, and that’s putting it mildly! George Adams from the Embassy, who was assigned to the delegation to make sure that everything was done that could be done to insure a successful summit, said when we left, that he hadn’t seen his family in waking hours for a week! But, of course, the President was busiest of all.

“What happened at the Geneva Summit? The leaders got to know each other, Reagan and Gorbachev. They could build on that in later meetings, I think. There wasn’t any agreement on nuclear matters reached at Geneva, but I don’t really think that an agreement was expected then. It was just too soon. Besides, I like to take a long view. There was an agreement reached between the United States and the Russians a few years later, and I think the earlier meetings we had in Geneva in 1985 helped make that possible.

“That’s when I found out about the goldfish drama. “The morning we left, our host’s wife, the Princess Salima, who was actually English by origin, returned with her three children. They had just come in, and were taking off their coats, while Princess Salima gave instructions for the staff to take their bags upstairs. I happened to be passing through the downstairs reception room when the housekeeper, Ermina Glandon, came up to Princess Salima. She was really pretty upset.” He paused for a drink of water.

“So, what happened?” An impatient boy in the front row wanted to know. “Where was I? Oh, yes. Ermina Glandon told the Princess that she had started early, as soon as the rooms were vacated by the American guests, because she wasn’t sure what condition the residence would be in. She had been cleaning the rooms one by one, and had just discovered something wrong in Hussein’s bedroom. It was the goldfish tank. There were too many goldfish! There had been six when the family had left, and now there were seven. That was just the sort of trick that Rahim liked to play on his younger brother. Also, two of the goldfish didn’t look anything like the other five, and the six fish that were all supposed to be there had been so much alike that nobody could tell them apart. Hussein would have a fit when he saw the goldfish, she said.”

“Sounds like something a mean big brother would do,” said a girl in the second row.

“Well maybe,” O’Leary conceded. “I will tell you this much. George Adams from our Embassy here saw there was a storm brewing, and he went up to Princess Salima, introduced himself, and handed her a letter with a Presidential seal. Adams lived in Geneva, and knew everything about the city. He was a real help, and he lived and died for just a successful Summit meeting, he told me, so that he could then take off on a long delayed skiing vacation in the Alps. I never saw anything interfere with the way he handled paperwork - he seemed unaware of anything else. But you never know.”

“Aren’t you going to tell us what happened?” Several members of his audience said at once that they wanted to know the answer to this riddle. “How many goldfish were there? And if some were replaced, who did it?”

“You people can decide that,” O’Leary said. And when you’ve done that, I’ll tell you how the Geneva Goldfish Summit Mystery was actually solved!”