(1982) The Almighty (34 page)

‘So have you or I, almost every time.’

‘But he’s been there first. He gets it to the Record first. It doesn’t make sense. How does he know that secret terrorist acts are going on before anyone else?’

‘Intuition, I guess,’ said Ramsey.

‘It has to be more than intuition,’ said Victoria. ‘I’m suggesting that Mark Bradshaw has some connection with the gang of terrorists pulling off these acts. He may know someone in the gang. Again, he may actually be part of the gang.’

‘Aren’t you being fanciful, Vicky? The guy’s just a reporter working for Armstead, the way we are.’

Victoria fixed her gaze on Ramsey. ‘Prove it,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘That Mark Bradshaw is a reporter on the New York Record.’

Ramsey frowned. ‘What’s to prove? I’m not naive, but like one famous American, I believe what I read. And I read Mark Bradshaw’s by-line in the paper. That’s for real.’

“That’s a slug of type, Nick. That’s not a person.’

‘I’ve never known a by-line that did not represent a person or persons.’

Victoria would not let go. ‘If Mark Bradshaw is a person, where is he? Who is he? Have you met anyone who has met him, seen him? Everyone on every paper is asking questions about Mark Bradshaw. So far, no answers. Well, I say he’s the key to what’s going on, to who is pulling off all these terrorist acts. I say find Mark Bradshaw, and you find out the truth about what’s going on that’s so suspicious.’

‘Vicky, maybe there’s nothing going on that’s so suspicious.’

‘I choose to think there is. I thought you might agree with me. Anyway, you’re leaving, and I’m staying here. I’m to do the Lourdes background job, and I’ll do it. But I’m also going after Mark Bradshaw. I’m determined to find out who he is. I hope you agree with me.’

Ramsey fell silent. He stared reflectively once more out of the car window. At the turnoff to Charles de Gaulle Airport he lit a cigarette and let down the car window a few inches.

Not until the Mercedes drew up to the curb under the airport overhang, and the chauffeur left his seat to remove the bag and typewriter from the trunk, did Ramsey speak. He covered Victoria’s hand briefly. T agree,’ he said. ‘You do what you can to track down Bradshaw. If you find yourself getting nowhere, I suggest you try the personnel director at the Record - Katherine Crowe. You met Mrs. Crowe the day you came to work. Anyway, she’s an old friend of mine. You can talk to her on a confidential basis. If you need further research on Bradshaw, use someone on the outside - it’s always better to work with someone outside the office, especially on a matter like this -get hold of Howie Dittman on

the New York Telegraph. He moonlights as a researcher. He’ll do anything for me and he’s a whiz.’

‘One second,’ said Victoria. She had her notepad on her knee. ‘Howie Dittman,’ she repeated, writing. ‘New York Telegraph.” She looked up. ‘You’re sure you won’t regret getting involved, Nick?’

‘Never mind. Do as I say.’ He reached for the handle of the car door. ‘You know, there was something I meant to tell you last night - but well, it can wait. We’ll be together again one day soon.’

‘Oh, I hope so, Nick.’ Impulsively she leaned over and kissed him.

‘You go on,’ he said. Stepping out of the car, he turned back. ‘Just watch where you’re going, and always look behind you. Remember that.’

‘I’ll remember.’

‘If you need me, you know where I am.’

‘Yes, Nick.’

He picked up his suitcase and his typewriter and headed into the airport terminal.

At the Plaza Athenee once more, Victoria occupied herself by checking out of the suite and transferring her effects to a single room on the same floor. Once settled, she ordered salad and quiche from room service. Having finished lunch, she was tempted to undertake the hunt for Mark Bradshaw, wherever it might lead her, but she knew that she dared not divert herself with that yet,

Armstead had given her a definite assignment, and her immediate job was to deliver it. The Pope was leaving the Vatican to visit the miracle site of Lourdes - His Holiness would be there in four days - and Victoria was expected to research and write a feature story on what the Pope would see. She had been ordered to file it with McAllister late the following afternoon.

She tried to figure out where to start her research, and finally decided to start in the obvious place. She would go to the Paris bureau of the Record and search through its reference files for clippings on Lourdes. This would give her sufficient background to know what she was doing, and

perhaps provide a lead or two to sources that might offer some firsthand copy.

It was a short walk to the building on the Rue la Boe’tie, a block from the Champs-Elysees. She took the rickety elevator up to the second floor, entered the Record bureau, greeted the two French girls at work in the main office, and put her head in on Sid Lukas, the myopic bureau chief, who was editing some dispatch at his desk in his tiny cubicle of an office.

‘Hi, Sid,’ Victoria called out. ‘Mind if I rummage through your reference files? Doing a backgrounder on Lourdes.’

‘Make yourself at home. Doubt if you’ll find much of use.’

‘We’ll see.’

She backtracked to the main office and the long row of green metal reference files, and when she found the manila folder bearing the word lourdes she pulled the folder and took it to an empty table. It was, as Lukas had warned her, an unpromising file as to bulk. Seated, she removed the two dozen clippings and carbons of filed stories, spread them out, sorted them into categories, and dipped into her purse for notepad and pen.

She began to read the clippings and carbons with care, occasionally making notes. First the historical basis for the fame of Lourdes. The fame of the small town had its birth on February 11, 1858. A simple fourteen-year-old native of the town, Bernadette Soubirous, a onetime shepherdess, a mediocre student at a parochial school, a girl who had long suffered from asthma, had gone to the outskirts of the town with her sister and a friend to gather firewood. Trailing behind the other two, about to cross the mill canal, near a grotto, Bernadette heard a distant murmur which she thought was a gust of wind. Later, she would recall the moment. ‘I lost all power of speech and thought when, turning my head to the grotto, I saw at one of the openings of the rock a rosebush, one only, moving as if it were very windy. Almost at the same time there came out of the interior of the grotto a golden-colored cloud, and soon after a lady, young and beautiful, exceedingly beautiful, the like of whom I had never seen, came and placed herself at the entrance of the opening above the rosebush.’

The beautiful, barefoot young lady, draped in a white robe, and blue sash, white veil, yellow rose on each foot, was

carrying a rosary with white beads on a gold chain. When Bernadette tried to make the sign of the cross, she found that her arm was paralyzed. Instead, the vaporous Lady made the sign of the cross and instantly Bernadette’s stricken arm was well and mobile. Bernadette, who had been saying her rosary, was still on her knees when her sister and friend came back. Bernadette told them of her vision. They mocked her and called her an imbecile. Bernadette’s sister reported the adventure to their mother, who forbade Bernadette to return to the Grotto of Massabielle.

But no restriction could keep the fourteen-year-old girl from the grotto. She was drawn there time and again in the next five months. Nor could any imposition of secrecy keep word of the vision from the townfolk. Soon they began to follow Bernadette to the grotto. In that period, the Lady in white appeared before Bernadette eighteen times, but did not speak to her until the third visit. In subsequent visits, the Lady ordered Bernadette to drink from a fountain and to bathe in it. Guided by the apparition, Bernadette dug a hole in the ground and finally water appeared. Then she later discovered a spring that gushed from the back of the grotto. On Bernadette’s fifteenth visit to the grotto 20,000 persons gathered to watch, held in order by uniformed soldiers. Three weeks later the Lady revealed her identity: ‘I am the Immaculate Conception.’ Shortly afterward seven seriously ill persons, praying at the grotto, enjoyed miracle cures.

Bernadette isolated herself from public view, spending the last twelve years of her life as a nun and a recluse. In her final three years she was gravely ill, suffering from tuberculosis of the lungs, until her death in 1879. She gained immortality in 1933 when canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

Her birthplace, Lourdes, scene of these religious wonders, became a worldwide legend, the foremost miracle site on earth. Because the Lady had requested a chapel, the Upper Basilica and the Rosary Basilica were built near the Grotto of Massabielle. In the years and decades that followed, sixty-four miracles were recognized by the Church out of the five thousand cures attributed to the holy water flowing from this grotto.

Peeling through the clippings, Victoria found more of the

same, and yet more. Lovely, colorful stuff, Victoria thought, and it would be a useful underpinning to her story. But largely unanswered was the question Armstead had emphatically posed: What was there in Lourdes that the Pope himself would see when he arrived for his visit in a few days?

There were indeed some present-day descriptions of Lourdes, mostly the Michelin guidebook sort of thing, but they were spare and colorless.

Putting the clippings away in the manila file folder, Victoria knew that it was not enough for her purpose, and she needed more by late tomorrow afternoon.

She went back to call upon bureau chief Sid Lukas once more. He was still hunched over his battered desk, a burning cigarette between the stained fingers of one hand, a pencil stub between the fingers of the other. Despite the efficient black aerator on a corner of his desk, a pall of smoke hung over him like a cloud.

Victoria stepped inside his cubicle. ‘Thanks, Sid.’

‘You’re welcome,’ he said, without looking up.

‘You’re right. There wasn’t much.’

‘It’s not much of a story anymore. In these days of computer body scans, who gives a damn about Lourdes?’

‘The Pope does. He’s going to be there in a few days.’

‘That’s his business. Who else gives a damn?’

‘I do, Sid. Can you give a girl a hand?’ She advanced tentatively toward his desk. ‘I need your help.’

For the first time he straightened up from his work, and flattened his back against his swivel chair. ‘All right,’ he said, grinding out his cigarette. He peered at her through his thick lenses. ‘Name it. What can I do?’

‘In my story, Armstead wants me to paint a picture of Lourdes today, what the Pope will see.’

‘Have you looked at Michelin?’

‘There was an extract in the file. I need more, and more human interest, something an expert on Lourdes could tell me firsthand.’

‘There are plenty of theologians in Paris who must know Lourdes upside down.’

‘Somebody, maybe one of your reporters, scribbled a note on a piece of paper attached to one clipping. It said, “Try Dr. Rene Leclerc.”’

‘Leclerc, Leclerc, yup that’s your boy. I remember. Was about three or four years ago. We wanted to get material for a feature on Lourdes. A priest at Notre-Dame advised us to see Dr. Leclerc. He’s the super authority on Lourdes. We located him, but he was out of Paris at the time and we couldn’t wait. If he’s still here, and he probably is, he has an apartment in the Sorbonne section. You won’t have any trouble finding him. He’ll give you what you want.’

She blew a kiss at Lukas. ‘Y&u’re a dear, Sid.’

‘Never mind, get on with it,’ he said grouchily.

She was at his door, about to leave, when it occurred to her that this was a good time to ask him about the other priority matter on her mind. ‘Oh, Sid, one other matter - I hate to bother you, but there is one more thing.’

He sat back again, resigned. ‘What is it?’

‘Mark Bradshaw,’ she said.

‘Who? What? Ah, you mean Armstead’s hotshot new star.’

‘Remember, I dropped by here late yesterday afternoon for a little while. Actually, I was poking through your files to see some of the other by-lined stories Mark Bradshaw wrote. I couldn’t find one written before the king of Spain’s kidnapping. You were busy but I interrupted to ask you if you’d ever met Bradshaw.’

‘And I said no.’

‘Then I asked you to find out whether your staffers had ever met him or knew him. Did you?’

‘I always do what I promise to do,’ said Lukas, lighting a cigarette. ‘If someone had known him, I’d have buzzed you. No one has ever laid eyes on him.’

‘Well, I’d like to talk to Bradshaw,’ said Victoria.

‘Try the home office. They’ll tell you where he is.’

‘I did, they wouldn’t. I thought maybe you could do me a favor, query the other bureau chiefs from London to Baghdad. Learn where I can find Bradshaw.’

‘You want me to query all the bureau chiefs. Is it that important?’

‘To me. Yes.’

‘Okay. Will do. Phone me back day after tomorrow.’ He paused. ‘Don’t thank me. Just do me a favor.’

‘Anything.’

‘When you find Bradshaw, ask him for me how in the hell he does it. He’s incredible.’

She wanted to amend that to say, not incredible - he’s simply not credible. But she held her tongue. ‘I’ll ask him just that,’ she said, and left.

There had been little difficulty in locating Professor Rene Leclerc. He was one of the more eminent lecturers at the Sorbonne, indeed an expert on Lourdes, and he had readily taken Victoria’s call. Although protesting that he had a busy teaching schedule, and that it would be difficult to see Victoria so soon, he had seemed eager for the publicity and granted the interview.

In the morning Victoria drove over the Seine to the Left Bank, and was able to park a mere two blocks from the designated building of the Sorbonne University. Inside, an usher preceded her up ‘C staircase into a hall that led to a public waiting room. The room was stuffy, poorly lit, and Victoria was shut into it. For twenty minutes she waited, trying to occupy herself by reviewing her questions. Just as she had begun to worry that he would not keep his appointment, a frail, thin man, perhaps seventy years old, opened the door. T am Monsieur Leclerc,’ he said in English. ‘You are Miss Weston? Please come along.’