The Miracle

by Irving Wallace

  Kleinberg was on his feet, throwing down his napkin, and heading in the direction of the affable Reggie Moore. Kleinberg slowed, waiting until Moore had left one table and was starting for another, and then he intercepted the Enghshman.

  "Mr. Moore?" Kleinberg said. "I'm Paul Kleinberg, your wife's consulting physician—"

  "I know. She pointed you out. Pleased to meet you. Would you like to come over to our table, say hello?"

  "No, not right now."

  "I know Edith's eager to hear the good news from you."

  "I'll be speaking to her," said Kleinberg. "You're the one I want to speak to now."

  "Oh, sure, whatever you—"

  "Not here," said Kleinberg. "I'd prefer privacy. Do you mind if we take a little stroll outside?"

  For the first time, Reggie's features showed puzzlement. "I can't imagine what we need to discuss in private, but—"

  Kleinberg already had Reggie by the arm, and was propelling him to the door. "I'll explain," Kleinberg said, and he followed the Englishman out to the sidewalk.

  They started walking. "I hope this is about Edith," Moore said.

  "It is." Kleinberg saw a sidewalk cafe directly ahead. The Cafl§ Jeanne d'Arc. Most of the yellow wicker chairs at the curb were empty. "Do you mind sitting down for a few minutes?"

  "Whatever," said Moore.

  They were no sooner seated, than a waiter was upon them. Kleinberg ordered a pot of tea, which he didn't want, and Reggie Moore ordered a Perrier.

  Reggie continued to wear a perplexed expression. "If it's about Edith, I hope it's the news we've all been waiting for."

  Kleinberg girded himself. How many times, in his particular specialty, he had been the bearer of bad tidings, not exactly like this one but with the same miserable results to be announced. "Mr. Moore, I'm afraid it is not good news I have to report."

  Reggie's expression of puzzlement was immediately replaced by an expression of fear. His watery eyes seemed to have frozen. "Not good news. What does that mean?"

  "She has the sarcoma again. Either it's come back—or it never completely went away."

  "That's insane." Reggie's cheeks began to quiver. "I don't believe it. How can you be sure?"

  "Mr. Moore, my practice deals with sarcoma. It's my specialty. Her tumor is evident, at an early state, in the X rays."

  Reggie had become aggressive, defensive. "She was cured, and you know it. The cure was a miraculous one. It has been attested to by sixteen doctors, leading doctors from everywhere on earth."

  For Kleinberg, this was painful. He didn't want to argue with the poor bastard. But he had no choice. "Mr. Moore, they could have been wrong, overlooked something."

  "You're a doctor, and you can be as wrong as you say they are."

  Kleinberg tried to ignore the attack. "Or it could have been something else. Assuming she was cured, and her case history seems to support that, still each diagnosis was made previously, at another time. My diagnosis has been made today. I saw her. I saw sarcoma once more. She's ill and—"

  "She's perfectly well, totally cured," Reggie interrupted, raising his voice. "You can see, she gets around perfectly. No more pain, no more trouble. She's one hundred percent okay."

  "I'm sorry, but she won't be. Her condition will deteriorate. I have no choice but to tell you it will happen. I thought it would be easier all around, if I told you and you found a means of telling her, to soften the blow. As her husband you would know how to handle her."

  Reggie glared at Kleinberg several seconds. "Doctor, I don't in-

  tend to tell her and upset her, especially since I don't believe you. I refuse to believe you know better than the best in the medical profession."

  Kleinberg held his temper in check, tried to remain low-key. "I'm not here to debate my diagnosis. I'm here to inform you that your wife is going to be very ill -- and to add that there is something you can do about it. What you can do is take your wife straight to Paris—or London, if you prefer -- and avail yourself of the latest surgical advances. There is a colleague of mine in Paris, Dr. Maurice Duval, also a specialist in this field, who has had some remarkable success with an entirely new kind of surgery encompassing genetic engineering. I don't know if he's prepared to use the technique on human beings, but if he is, Mrs. Moore would be in the best of hands and have a real chance to survive. I even put in a call to Dr. Duval before dinner to learn if he was able to get involved. But I was told that he was out of Paris, and that he'd return tomorrow early and call me back. With surgery, Mrs. Moore could have a chance."

  "Have a chance?" Reggie was outraged. With effort he tried to control the pitch of his voice. "A chance for what? Don't you know my wife was totally cured here in Lourdes by a miracle and she's remained cured? She is applauded everywhere as the new miracle woman. Give her surgery, and she's like everyone else, she's nobody. Repudiate the miracle and she's ruined, I'm ruined, we'll lose everything, lose our business, every pence we have!"

  Kleinberg eyed the Englishman coldly. "Mr. Moore," he said measuring his words, "the subject at issue here is not your having a nonmiracle wife -- but your having any wife at all."

  Reggie leaped to his feet, furious. "Never mind that! I have a wife. I'll keep on having one. Because every expert knows she's cured. Everyone except you. The high-ups will get someone to replace you and certify Edith. They won't trust you anyway -- they can't -- they know of your—your background—"

  "My religious persuasion," Kleinberg helped him.

  "They won't trust you because you're a nonbeliever."

  "Mr. Moore, apparently I have failed to penetrate your thick skull. If I had, you would understand that this is not a matter of religion. It is a matter of science."

  "It is a matter of religion," Reggie snapped. "My wife was saved by an absolute miracle, and one incompetent doctor isn't going to make things different. Good-night to you. Dr. Kleinberg, and thanks for nothing."

  He swung his barrel of a body around, stepped down into the street, and stormed off.

  Kleinberg sat very still, thinking. He was sorry for the poor lady from London. If her husband didn't give a damn about her welfare, then it was his own duty, as a doctor, as her doctor, to do something about her fatal illness. He would do something tomorrow, take the whole affair into his own hands.

  He reached for the lukewarm cup of tea. He needed a drink very much. But this wasn't it. He needed something much stronger. He picked up the check, put it down with some francs atop it, rose to his feet and started for the hotel and the hotel bar.

  It had been an unexpectedly long evening for Gisele Dupree, yet despite the agonizing suspense, she had not minded the drawn-out prelude to what could be a high point of her life. She had likened the delay to one of those evenings in New York when she had gone to bed with Charles Sarrat and they had made love. She had wanted the pleasure of release immediately, yet had savored the extended buildup knowing that the climax would come and it would be all the more welcome and pleasurable for the waiting.

  It was this kind of buildup that she had enjoyed through the long evening. Only she had not been positive that it would end in the desired climax.

  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 rej
ecting.

  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?"