The Quest: A Novel (8 page)

“Well… yes…” replied Vivian. “But he also described the Lance of Longinus dripping a never-ending supply of blood into the Grail.”

“Well, you got me there, Vivian.”

She continued, “And apparently the Vatican believes in this—if you believe that part of Father Armano’s story. And I do.”

Purcell pointed out, “The Vatican does not necessarily believe that the Holy Grail even exists, or that it somehow wound up in Ethiopia. But they decided to take advantage of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and send a bunch of priests here with the army to check out something they heard or read—and while they were at it, grab anything they could find.”

Mercado agreed and said, “The Italian army looted a great number of religious artifacts from Ethiopia.” He further informed them, “The steles sitting in front of the Italian Foreign Ministry in Rome were taken from the ancient Ethiopian capital of Axum.” He added, “The Ethiopians want them back.”

“The spoils of war,” Purcell said, “go to the victors.”

Mercado agreed. “Europe, the Vatican, the British Museum are filled with objects looted from the rest of the world. But those days are over, so even if we decide to look for this relic, and we find it, we have no right to try to… take it.”

Purcell said, “You’re getting ahead of yourself, Henry. We’re not sure we’re going to look for it. And if we do look for it and we find it, what we’re going to do is take a few photos and write about it—not steal it.”

Mercado clarified, “We don’t believe it is the actual cup used by Christ at the Last Supper, and we could not prove that in any case. And we most definitely do not believe it has any mystical powers, contrary to legend. But the priest’s story—the Vatican, the cardinal, the pope, the monastery, the monks, the Grail, and the lance—are the stuff of a great news story.” He added, “A human interest story. The dying priest who has been imprisoned since the Italian invasion—”

“Correct, but we couldn’t write only about what the dying priest told us and then not report that we followed up by looking for the black monastery.” Purcell added, “We’d look like all those journalists sitting in the Hilton bar in Addis, rewriting government press releases.”

Mercado replied, “We are certainly not that.” He added, “We’re
here
.”

Purcell asked rhetorically, “So have we talked ourselves into this? Are we willing to risk our lives to look for the Holy Grail that probably says ‘Made in Japan’ when you turn it over?”

Mercado forced a smile, then said, “I think the story is good enough to pursue to the end.”

Purcell reminded him, “So did Father Armano.”

No one spoke for a while, each lost in thought. Finally, Vivian said, “If we don’t do this, we’ll regret it all our lives.”

“Which might be very short if we do,” Purcell pointed out.

Mercado said, “Or even shorter if we can’t get out of here.” He reminded his companions, “Our immediate problem is that we are in dangerous territory. I don’t suggest we try to drive back to Addis. I have a safe-conduct pass from the Provisional government, so we
need to join up with the Ethiopian army, which is less than an hour from here. Or if that’s not possible, we’ll join up with the Royalist forces. What we don’t want to do is run into the Gallas.”

“That’s not a good story,” Purcell agreed. He suggested, “We’ll spend a few days with the army, reporting on their victory, then we will offer them our Jeep in return for a helicopter ride back to Addis. Then when we come to our senses, we can decide over a drink if we want to come back here and look for the black monastery.”

Vivian said, “I’ve already decided.”

“Don’t be impulsive,” Purcell advised.

Mercado said, “We can’t be sure this monastery still exists after forty years—or if it ever existed. We’ll need to do some research at the Italian Library in Addis, and we’ll need terrain maps and all that, and some better equipment—”

“Right,” Purcell interrupted, “but let’s first get away from this spa before the Gallas arrive for a bath.”

Mercado and Vivian stood, and they made their way across the courtyard, then walked through the colonnade, back toward their Jeep.

Vivian asked, “How do we find the army headquarters?”

Mercado replied, “Probably by accident. We just need to drive into the hills and with luck we’ll come across an army unit or an outpost.” He suggested, “Practice waving your press credentials.”

They got back to the lobby of the spa hotel and jumped into the Jeep. Purcell started it up and they drove across the lobby, out to the portico, then down the steps they’d ascended the night before. Purcell continued across the grass field and onto the narrow jungle road, then turned toward the hills and accelerated.

They were aware that they were in a battle zone and that anything was possible, especially bad things. The Provisional Army forces were supposed to honor their safe-conduct pass, issued by the Provisional government. The Royalist forces, who’d probably been beaten last night, might not be in a good mood. But their imprisoned emperor, Haile Selassie, had an affinity for the West, and Purcell thought that the Royalists, all Christians, would treat them well if they ran into them first. But as with all armies, you never knew for sure. What
Purcell did know for sure was that the Gallas would butcher them without a thought about their status as accredited journalists.

Purcell tried to focus on the bad road and on the problem of avoiding the Gallas. But his thoughts kept returning to the priest and his story. Father Armano had found the black monastery that the Vatican knew existed. Purcell was sure of that part of the story. After that… well, as Henry Mercado said, it was all medieval myth. The search for the Holy Grail had been going on for about a thousand years, and the reason it was never found was because it never existed. Or it did exist for a brief hour or two at the Last Supper—but it had been cleared with the dishes and it was lost forever. More importantly, it had no special powers; that was a tale spun by storytellers, not historians or theologians. That fact, however, had never stopped anyone from looking for it.

Purcell wondered how many people had spent their lives or lost their lives in a quest to find this thing that didn’t exist. He didn’t know, but he did know that there might soon be three more idiots to add to that list.

P
urcell saw that the narrow mountain road hadn’t been repaired since the rainy season ended. As they climbed, the jungle thinned, and behind them, through the dust, they could see the ruins of the white spa in the valley. Ahead, red rock formations jutted out from the red earth. There were no signs of the night’s battle, noted Purcell, but he caught the faint odor of cordite and ripe flesh drifting down the hills with the mountain winds.

Vivian asked, “Why are we not seeing anyone?”

Purcell glanced at her in the rearview mirror. They had taken the canvas top off the Jeep so they could be identified more easily as Westerners. The wind had sifted dust through Vivian’s raven black hair and deposited a fine red powder on her high cheeks. She wore a floppy bush hat to keep the sun off her stark white skin. He said to her, “They will see our dust before we see them.”

Mercado stared absently at the winding road. His mind was elsewhere. Since his release from the Russian Gulag, he had made a career of seeking out religious experiences. In his travels as a journalist, he had spoken with Pope John XXIII, the Dalai Lama, Hindu mystics, Buddhist monks, and people who claimed they were God, or good friends of God. His life and his writing, up to the time of his arrest, had been anti-Fascist and pro-Socialist. But with the collapse of the former system and his imprisonment by a government of the latter, his life and his writings had also collapsed. Both became stale. Empty.

People had urged him to write about his years in the Soviet Gulag, but he had no words to describe his experience. Or, he admitted, he could not find the courage to find the words.

It was his search for God that had revived his flair for the written word and his ability to tell a good story.

He had written a
New York Times
piece on the Dalai Lama fleeing
the Red Chinese and living in exile in India, which gained him new postwar fame as a journalist. In 1962, he had gone boldly back to Russia and done articles on religious persecution. He narrowly escaped re-imprisonment and was expelled. There had been some good pieces since, but lately the writing had become stale again.

Mercado was as worried about his career as he was about his flagging religious fervor. The two were related. He needed something burning in his gut—like the priest’s mortal wound—to make him write well. His current assignment for UPI was to do a series of articles on how the ancient Coptic Church was faring in the civil war. He also had contacts with the Vatican newspaper,
L’Osservatore Romano
, and they bought much of his output. But there was no fire in his words anymore and his editors knew it. He had almost given up. Until now. Now his brain burned secretly with the experience of the previous night. He felt that he had been chosen by God to tell the priest’s story. There was no other explanation for the string of coincidences that had made him privy to this secret. He remained calm on the outside, but his soul was on fire with the anticipation of the quest for the Grail. But that was
his
secret.

Purcell glanced at him in the passenger seat. “Are you all right?”

Mercado came out of his reverie. “I’m fine.”

Purcell thought of Henry Mercado as his danger barometer. Henry had seen it all, and if Henry was apprehensive, then a shitstorm was coming.

Purcell, too, was no stranger to war, and both of them had probably seen more combat and death than the average infantry soldier. But Mercado was a seasoned pro, and Purcell had been impressed with the older man’s instinct for survival during the three-day ride through the chaos and violence of this war-torn country. Henry Mercado knew when to bluff and bluster, when to bribe, when to be polite and respectful, and when to run like hell.

Purcell thought that despite their imprisonments, both he and Mercado had been mostly lucky as war correspondents, or at least smart enough to stay alive. But Mercado had stayed alive far longer than Frank Purcell. So when Henry Mercado and Vivian had approached him in the Hilton bar, armed with a safe-conduct pass
from the Provisional government, and asked him if he’d like to accompany them to the current hot spot, he’d agreed without too much hesitation.

But now… well, what sounded good in Addis did not look good three days out. Purcell had been in worse places and much tighter situations, but after a year in a Khmer Rouge prison, facing death every day from starvation and disease, and seeing men and women executed for no apparent reason, he felt that he’d used up his quota of luck. Unfortunately, he hadn’t come to that realization until he was a day out of Addis Ababa. And now they had reached that point of no return.
Avanti.

Purcell lit a cigarette as he kept the wheel steady with one hand. He said, “I’m hoping we hook up with the army. I’m sure they beat the hell out of Prince Joshua last night, and I’d rather travel with the winner. The Gallas travel with the losers.”

Mercado scanned the high terrain with his field glasses as he replied, “Yes, but I think the better story is with Prince Joshua.” He added, “Lost causes and crumbling empires are always a good story.”

Vivian said, “Can we stop speaking about the Gallas?”

Mercado lowered his field glasses and told her, “Better to speak
of
them than
to
them.”

They continued on, and Mercado sat back in his seat. He said, “The dangerous thing about a civil war is that the battle lines change like spaghetti bouncing in a colander.”

Purcell inquired, “Can I quote you on that?”

Mercado ignored him and continued. “I covered the Spanish Civil War. As long as you travel with one side or the other, you are part of their baggage train. But if you get caught in between or out on the fringes and try to get back in, you become arrestable. You know, Frank, if you had been traveling with the Khmer Rouge, you probably wouldn’t have been arrested. I suppose it all has something to do with spy-phobia. They don’t like people who run between armies. The trick is to get inside the battle lines without getting shot. If you’re challenged by a sentry, you must be bold and wave around your press cards and cameras, as if you had been specially invited to the war.
Once you get inside, you’ll usually find the top dogs are courteous. But you must never appear to be arrestable. The business of armies, besides fighting, is arrest and execution. They can’t help it. They are programmed for it. You must not look arrestable or executable.” He asked Purcell, “Do you understand?”

“Why don’t
you
drive, Henry, and I’ll pontificate?”

Mercado laughed. “Did I hit a sore spot, Frank? Don’t fret. I’m speaking from personal experience.”

Purcell thought he was speaking to impress Vivian.

Mercado continued, “There was one moment there in East Berlin when I could have blustered my way out of arrest. But I started to act frightened. And then they became more sure of themselves. From there on, it was all just mechanics. From a street corner in East Berlin, less than a thousand yards from Checkpoint Charlie, to a work camp in the Urals, a thousand frozen miles away. But there was that one moment when I could have brazened my way out of the situation. That’s what happens when you deal with societies where the rule is by men and not by law. I had a friend shot by the Franco forces in Spain because he was wearing the red-and-black bandanna of the Anarchists. Only he didn’t know it was an Anarchist bandanna. He was just wearing something for the sweat. A handkerchief he had brought from England, actually. They stood him against a wall and shot him by the lights of a truck. Poor beggar didn’t even speak Spanish. Never knew why he was being executed. Had he made the appropriate gestures when he realized that it was the bandanna that was offending them, had he whipped it off and spat on it or something, he’d be alive today.”