The Miracle Read Free

been assigned to the prestigious Paris Bureau three years ago, her life had dramatically changed and had become thrilling and full of hope. She had, lately, even met a young business executive, Parisian and attractive, who found her interesting and even complimented her on her French. It was a relationship that might develop slowly, given a year or two. But a month? If she was fired, in a month, she would be forced to leave France and there would be no chance with Charles. And there would be no opportunity to develop her byline. She would be lucky to wind up doing routine work in Cedar Rapids or Cheyenne, and lucky to marry an insurance salesman, and have two cretins for children.
    The whole thing, then, came down to beating Marguerite out for the single feature-writer job that would exist at API in a month. And that's where it came down to a beauty contest, and Liz didn't like her

    prospects. Liz knew that she was a more gifted reporter and writer than Marguerite, but less attractive. Liz was the office workhorse, covering drab bread-and-butter assignments, everything from the French economy to the auto shows. Inevitably, Marguerite had been awarded the more glamorous assignments, the fashion shows, interviews with famous politicians, authors, movie stars.
    This morning's latest assignments had proved it.
    There had been a plum of a story waiting to be assigned, and Liz had prayed to get it and prove herself as the basic whiz reporter the bureau must keep, but instead Trask had offered the plum to Marguerite Lamarche. It was way over Marguerite's frivolous head.
    Bill Trask had got himself a lead—oh, he was good at those hot tips -- that the charismatic minister of the interior, Andre Viron, heading for the seat of prime minister, was teetering on the brink of disaster, a potential national scandal, having had some questionable dealings with a shady underground character named Weidman. Weidman, owner of a sleazy movie production company that fronted for his small-time cocaine ring, had managed to make a tie-in to float some fraudulent bonds for big money, and had obtained Minister of the Interior Viron's endorsement. The money poured in, but the value of the bonds was undependable. The question was whether Viron had trusted Weidman and had acted as an innocent or whether he was in secret association with Weidman to line his akeady-gold-lined pockets. To Bill Trask, this smelled like another Stavisky Affair, which had so enlivened and disrupted France in the 1930s.
    Really, it had been a perfect assignment for Liz Finch to sink her teeth into. But an hour ago, it had gone to Marguerite Lamarche. And Liz, instead, had been given this unpromising religion assignment, a press conference by Cardinal Brunet of Paris to be held in the Hotel Plaza Athenee. Some dopey nitpicking religious announcement to be covered. As if anyone who counted in the New York office would pay the slightest attention to it.
    Marguerite had got the plum because she might seduce Viron into confiding the truth. Liz had been thrown a bone because nature had prepared her to seduce no one.
    It was all reflected in her rearview mirror.
    She saw the mop of red hair, become orange in the last rinse-and-color job. She saw the predator's beak of a nose that couldn't even be called Roman. The lips were two thin tight lines, the jaw undershot. Despite the fair, unblemished complexion, she was dismayed. She knew that what could not be seen in the mirror was even worse. Her breasts were unfashionably large and they sagged. There was too much hip and

    she was slightly bowlegged. In sum, her five-foot-three frame added up to disaster. The best part of her—and this was the real cruelty of nature —could not be seen: her mind. She was brainy, inventive, tenacious.
    But this mind was also unsparing. Relentlessly, it conjured up Marguerite Lamarche floating through the city room. Marguerite, twenty-eight and four years her junior, had been made to be a model, and had