The Miracle (41 page)

Leaving the taxi and entering her borrowed apartment near the domain, she had relived the buildup.

Having finished guiding her Irish pilgrims around Lourdes, Gisele had routinely checked into the travel bureau office to turn in the money received and to learn if she was on call for a nighttime tour, which was rarely the case. But this time there was a nighttime tour on tap, a pilgrimage of two dozen Japanese Catholics, and the group was assigned to Gisele. This tour was to begin sharply at eight o'clock and finish at ten.

At first, Grisele had tried to talk her way out of the assignment, since it got in the way of her own plans. But her talking got her nowhere. Not another guide was available for those hours, and the Japanese pilgrims could not be disappointed. Moreover, they were paying the agency at the special evening rate, a sum too profitable for Gisele's employer to consider rejecting.

The one important thing for Gisele to know before she collected her Japanese tour, was how late the press office would be open after eight o'clock. She had been promised the fateful pictures from Paris-Match at eight o'clock, and she would be unable to pick them up until

after ten. She had telephoned Michelle Demaillot at the press office, and prayed it would be open late. Michelle herself had answered, and told her not to worry, the press office was staying open until eleven throughout this busy week. And yes, Michelle added, she had spoken to her friend at Paris-Match and he had promised to bring some Tikhanov pictures to Lourdes. He would drop them off at the press office when he came in from the airport. "So they should be here, Gisele, don't worry. I won't be here—I'm going to Madame Moore's Miracle Restaurant for drinks and a bite -- but my assistant will have the pictures for you."

Relieved, less resentful of her overtime assignment, Gisele had rushed out to get something into her stomach before going to work. It was too late for a real dinner, but there was time for a heated brioche and coffee in a cafe to carry her over until she could cook something for herself at Dominique's apartment after her job was done.

Now, at nearly ten-thirty in the evening, the climactic moment was nearing. She set down the precious manila envelope that she had picked up at the press office—she had not examined its contents until she could be in the privacy of Dominique's dining room—and sought the key to the apartment in the navy leather purse dangling from her shoulder.

She found the key, and retrieving the manila envelope, she let herself into the seclusion of the apartment.

Hungry as she was, Gisele put off any thought of food until she could satisfy a more urgent craving. To know if Samuel Talley and Sergei Tikhanov were one and the same.

Dropping the manila envelope and her purse on the dining room table, Gisele hastened into the bedroom where she kept the packet of pictures she had taken at the grotto. She had carefully placed them in her friend Dominique's drawerful of lingerie. Emptying the packet, Gisele found the snapshot of Talley without his fake mustache, and she brought it back to the dining room.

She settled into a chair and, with a clutch in her stomach, she unfastened the large manila envelope from Paris-Match. She pulled out the two pictures inside. They were enlarged black-and-white glossies, both head close-ups of the world renowned Soviet foreign minister. They were extremely sharp, and almost the same. But Sergei Tikhanov almost always looked the same in all photographs. The look could best be described as stony. Here he was in each—stony, etched from granite —the lined low brow, piercing eyes, bulbous nose, thin lips, upper lip with its brown wart, clean square jaw. The only difference between the photographs was that they had been taken a year apart, one last year outside the Elysees Palace in Paris, the other the year before inside a hall of the Albertina in Brussels. Since Tikhanov's face filled each pho-

tograph, the backgrounds were actually unidentifiable, except for the typed captions that explained the settings on the rear of each shot.

Gisele felt sure, but she had to make sure.

Lovingly, she laid the two enlarged photographs of Tikhanov a few inches apart on the table top, and then she reached for her snapshot of Talley near the grotto and carefully set it down between the two larger ones. She inspected the Paris photograph of Tikhanov and her own Lourdes snapshot of Talley. She examined the Brussels portrait of Tikhanov and her own Lourdes snapshot of Talley.

Her pulse raced.

All three, one and the same. Hair, forehead, eyes, nose, lip and wart, mouth, chin, all features alike and the same.

Professor Samuel Talley of New York and Minister Sergei Tikhanov of Moscow were one man.

If so, Gisele told herself once more, the snapshot of the Soviet foreign minister near the Lourdes grotto could be a scandal of such proportions in his homeland, that Tikhanov would pay anything to erase the evidence.

But being sure was not enough, Gisele knew. When you dealt in a possibility as sensational as this, you had to be positive.

After all, Gisele reminded herself, the world was populated by a fair number of look alikes. Two men, separated by a geographical distance, could appear to be the same man but might very well be two utterly different men. Occasionally, nature made its Xerox copies. Talley and Tikhanov could be to the eye as one, as if identical twins, yet be in fact two different individual human beings. Two different men who looked exactly the same? Or one man, the same man, playing a second role?

There was only one way to be positive: Find out if Professor Samuel Talley, instructor in Russian in the language department of Colmn-bia University in New York City, really existed. Gisele knew beyond doubt that Sergei Tikhanov existed and was the foreign minister of the Soviet Union and a candidate for the premiership. But his look alike, Samuel Talley, an actual professor at Columbia University in New York, a professor and separate entity from the Soviet foreign minister?

If there was a Talley at Columbia, a real Talley who looked like this, then Gisele knew that it had all been an incredible coincidence, and that she had lost. The gate to freedom for her would remain closed.

On the other hand, if . . . she did not want to speculate further. She wanted the truth and she would find it soon enough.

She peered at the electric clock that rested on the polished bureau holding the table linens.

The hour was ten forty-six in the evening in Lourdes.

This translated to four forty-six in the afternoon in New York.

Too early. Her old United Nations friend, Roy Zimborg, would still be hard at work. He would not be back in his apartment until six. Tempted as she was to phone him at the UN, she repressed her desire. You don't take a person away from an important job to ask a favor. You would want them in a relaxed mood. Nice as Roy Zimborg was, she still had to be considerate.

Gisele decided to restrain herself, wait until it was midnight here and six in the evening in New York. That would be a sensible hour to ring Roy long-distance at home.

To hurry the time between now and midnight, she had to occupy herself, do something, distract herself. She did not want to dwell any further on the future. She would contain herself until the future became a reality. Dinner, that was something to do. She would busy herself with dinner although she was no longer hungry.

For an hour Gisele puttered about the kitchen, cooking, preparing dinner, carrying it into the dining room, trying to eat slowly, her attention always given to the three photographs spread on the table.

When she had finished eating, had washed the dishes and put them away, it was still fifteen minutes before midnight and she could not contain herself any longer. She would call Roy Zimborg in New York, and pray that he was already home from work.

Five minutes later, when she had his breathless voice on the line, she knew that he had arrived just as the phone began ringing.

"Roy," she repeated, "it's Gisele—Gisele Dupree—calling from France. Roy, I'm so glad I caught you in."

"Gisele, by God, no kidding? What time is it? Lemme see. Yeah, ten to six. Well, just walked through the door and heard the phone. I had to run for it." He exhaled. "Hey, Gisele, it's really you? That's great. Where are you?"

"Still in Lourdes, still the girl guide. What about you?"

Distantly, Zimborg exhaled noisily again, as if to regularize his breathing. "Me? At the UN, still with the U.S. delegation. No change. Who else would want a French into English translator?"

"I may be joining you one day soon at the UN, like old times."

"That would be great!"

"Well, it's not certain yet, Roy, but there's a good possibility of getting out of here. First, I'd have to go to the translator's school in Paris. Then I'll probably be able to get a job with the French delegation to the UN. But before that I've got to have enough money to go to the

translator's school. There's a chance I can get it all at once, without waiting forever. There might be an angel who'll sponsor me."

"Oh, yeah?"

"An American academic, seems prosperous, who is here in Lourdes right now. He's taken a special interest in me. I want to ask you a favor, Roy. It's about this man."

"Anything I can do, just name it," said Zimborg.

"It has to do with Columbia University. If I remember correctly, you graduated from Columbia, didn't you?"

"With honors, sweetie."

"While you were there, did you ever have or know or hear about a member of the faciJty named Professor Samuel Talley?"

"Spell it, the last name."

Gisele spelled it out.

"That's Talley, Samuel Talley," said Zimborg. "No, it doesn't ring a bell. Why do you want to know?"

"This man I met. Professor Samuel Talley, claims to be in the language department of Columbia University."

"Could be," said Zimborg. "There are a million professors and associates at Columbia. I just may not have heard of this particular one. Or he may have come on since my time. After all, I haven't been at Columbia for some years."

"Do you still have any connections at the school, Roy?"

"You mean contacts? Someone I know? I know a number of faculty members quite well, now that I'm a bigshot at the UN. I see them for lunch, dinner, well, at least a couple of times a year."

"Would it be imposing on you, Roy, to ask if you could get in touch with one of your contacts at Columbia tomorrow? It would be sort of complicated for me to call Columbia directly. But if you could—"

"No problem whatsoever. What do you want to know? You want to know about this Professor Talley?"

"Exactly. I want to know if Talley's there, as he says he is."

"Hold on a sec, Gisele. Lemme get a piece of paper and a pencil, so's to be sure I've got it right. Just hold on." She held on briefly, and then heard his voice again. "Hi, Grisele. Okay, give it to me slowly once more."

"I want to know if currently, or recently, there is or was a Professor Samuel Talley in the language department at Columbia University. He has an apartment in Manhattan, and a permanent residence in Vermont. I just want to verify that he is who he says he is, and is on the faculty at Columbia. Can you do that?"

"No sweat, honey. I can find out at lunchtime. I'll call you with the info. When should I call you?"

"Let's see, the time difference is six hours. When it is one in the afternoon in New York, it is—what?—it is seven in the evening in Lourdes tomorrow. Can you call me at one tomorrow your time? I'm at someone's apartment. I'll give you the number. It is right in Lx>urdes. The phone number is 62-34.53.53. Do you have it?"

"Got it," chirped Zimborg. "I'll be back to you with all the dope during my lunch break."

'That's a real favor, Roy. Now I owe you one. Anything I can do for you, Roy, let me know. Whatever you want."

"Do you still look like you used to look, sweetie?"

"Of course, the same. Maybe better."

"Then you know what I want."

She grinned at the mouthpiece of the phone. "Just help me get there," she said, "and you've got it."

Mikel Hurtado had patiently waited until it was nearly midnight before leaving the hotel to visit the grotto one last time. Hopefully, at this late hour, the last of the pilgrims would be gone and asleep, and the police would have lifted their intensive security and abandoned the area. He would have plenty of time in which to climb the hillside beside the grotto, assemble his equipment, wire it to the dynamite, plant the dynamite behind the statue of the Virgin Mary in the niche -- and then set the timer for the explosion and be off and far away before it blasted sky-high.

During his short walk to the ramp, his purpose was undimmed, tinged only with one regret.

Less than an hour ago he had finished sleeping with Natale, making passionate love to her, for the second time this day. The last coupling had been incredible, perfect, and when he left her sound asleep in bed, it pained him to see her there, in innocent repose, so giving and trusting—it pained him not only because he was going off to destroy an object of veneration that she held so holy, but because in departing the town in the night he might never see her again. It was a terrible thing to do to her, and to himself as well, but all the way to the ramp he did not falter. It had to be done.

At the top of the ramp to the domain, there was no one in sight except the goddam police. They were there again this night, not as many as before, but still there, three of them standing around talking and smoking.

But this time he was not daunted. He had nothing to hide or to be

afraid of. Just one more pilgrim, one with insomnia, who wanted to go below and offer up more fervent prayers.

Hurtado limped along, traversing the street, and nonchalantly approaching the lawmen. When he was almost abreast of the pohce, the tallest of them stepped to one side to size him up. Hurtado gave a quick smile and short wave, and continued down the ramp. The policeman neither bothered to stop him nor call out to him. Good sign.

Hurtado went on down the ramp to the Rosary Esplanade, then veered around the church toward the grotto.