Nelson Demille - The Quest

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I… there doesn’t seem to be any urgency. I’ll get around to it.”

“Your offices are in Vatican City, Henry.”

“I’ll get around to it.”

“Good. Maybe we should go to Berini and look up his family.”

“Why?”

“He asked us to do that. He also asked us to tell his story to someone in the Vatican. Or you can tell your people at L’Osservatore Romano.”

“All right. I’ll do that.”

“I’m not quite understanding, Henry, why you’re sitting on this.”

“Why have you sat on it?”

“I told you. I wanted to speak to you first.” He reminded Mercado, “We made sort of a pact.”

Mercado asked, “What does Vivian think?”

“She wants to go back and find the Holy Grail. That’s what she thinks.”

“Insane.”

“I’m sorry you’ve lost your enthusiasm for this, Henry.”

“I’m sorry you’ve found it.”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Try not to do that.”

“It’s a great story, Henry.”

“It seemed so at the time.”

Purcell looked at him and asked, “Have you been snooping around the Vatican archives? Like, on your lunch hour?”

“Yes… to satisfy my curiosity about a few things.”

“Find anything?”

“I’ll get you a pass and you can do your own research.”

“May be a language problem.”

“You can hire translators there.”

“I need to get back to Cairo in a few days.”

“Forgive my curiosity, Frank, but I don’t understand why you’re not going to Geneva.”

Purcell ordered another round, and Mercado did not object.

Neither man spoke for a while, then Purcell said, “I received one letter from Geneva telling me… well, telling me that she felt awful about leaving you in Addis, and that she was feeling guilty because of what happened and how it happened.”

“And well she should.”

“Right. Me too.”

Mercado stared into his drink, then said, “I’ve gotten over this, Frank. Except for the anger. You both behaved badly.”

“We know that.”

“And I did too… that moment in Getachu’s tent… when he asked me-”

“You are forgiven.”

Mercado looked at him. “Thank you for that.”

“Vivian never once mentioned it.”

“I’m sure she thought about it.”

“We all need to move on.” He smiled and said, “Avanti.”

“I need to go.”

“Some news, too, about Prince Joshua. They executed him in Addis.”

“That was a mercy.”

“It was.” He asked Mercado, “Did you read about the mass executions at the end of November?”

“I’m not really following Ethiopia.”

“You should.”

Mercado asked, “What happened?”

“Well, they shot another bunch of guys from the old regime. The former premier, Makonnen, a general named Aman who was former chief of staff or something, another former premier named Wolde, and Rear Admiral Alexander Desta, a grandson of the emperor.”

Mercado nodded and observed, “The revolution lives on blood.”

“Right. And they shot fifty-six other guys, including Prince Joshua.”

“Let me know when they shoot Getachu and Andom.”

“I’ll keep an eye on the wire.”

Mercado stood and walked unsteadily to the bagno .

Purcell lit another cigarette and watched the Romans. It was almost dark now, and the cafés along the Via Veneto would be getting full.

Inside Harry’s, the bar and the tables were filling up with what looked like mostly American tourists who needed to have a drink with the ghost of Ernest Hemingway, or to experience a little of la dolce vita .

Purcell had not expected to find Henry Mercado in a place like Harry’s, but the bartender at the Excelsior said he might be here, and here he was, drinking with the tourists. But, Purcell thought, Henry was a pre-war character and he’d probably started coming here when it was the thing to do, and when it was a hangout for journalists and expat writers. Henry didn’t seem to notice that the world was changing, and Purcell pictured himself at Henry’s age-if he lived that long-staying at the wrong hotels, eating in the wrong restaurants, and getting drunk in the wrong bars with the wrong people.

He half understood Vivian’s attraction to Henry Mercado in Ethiopia, but he didn’t understand why she remained emotionally attached to him in absentia. Or why she hadn’t tried to find him. It occurred to him, though, that she wanted Frank Purcell to find Henry Mercado. In fact, her letter hinted at that. She wanted the three of them to go back to Ethiopia to find the black monastery and the Holy Grail. Well, that sounded like a trip to hell on several levels. And yet… it made him think about it. And maybe that’s why he had asked around about Henry Mercado.

Mercado returned but did not sit, and said, “I have to go. Let’s split the bill.”

Purcell stood. “You buy tomorrow night.”

“I think we’ve said what we had to say.”

“I’m staying at the Forum. Rooftop bar. Six P.M.” He put out his hand, and Mercado hesitated, then took it. Purcell said, “I’m sorry about what happened.”

“If you’re looking for forgiveness, there are nine hundred churches in Rome.”

“Let’s be happy we’re alive. We survived the camps and we survived Ethiopia. We’ll survive cocktails. See you tomorrow night.”

Mercado turned and walked out into the cold night.

Purcell watched him disappear into the crowd, then sat and finished his drink. He understood, as did Vivian, that they were not all through with each other yet. And Henry understood that, too.

Frank Purcell sat at the bar of the glass-enclosed Hotel Forum restaurant. The real Forum lay five stories below, its marble ruins bathed in floodlights. A crescent moon hung above the Colosseum, and three thousand years of history hung over the city.

He’d spent the morning writing in his room-a piece about Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, whom he’d characterized as a Jew-hater with a pro-Nazi past, and not the moderate peacemaker and reformer that the rest of the news media were making him out to be.

His editors in the States would cut that, of course, or kill the whole story, and the Cairo bureau chief would remind him that he wasn’t hired to write an opinion column. But he’d written it because he-and thus his writing-had been transformed.

In the afternoon, he’d taken a long walk, first to the Piazza Venezia where Mussolini used to stand on the balcony of the Palazzo, making a fool of himself Urbi et Orbi -to the city and the world. But the city and the world should have taken him more seriously, as Father Armano had at the blessing of the guns.

Next, he walked through the baths of Caracalla, the mother of all Roman spas, then over to the Fascist-built Foreign Ministry where the looted stone steles from Axum sat out front, a monument to European imperialism and good taste in stolen art. Rome, in fact, was filled with looted treasures going back over two thousand years, and, he admitted, they all looked good in their extrinsic settings. And in return for what they’d taken, the Romans had built roads and bridges all over their empire, amphitheaters and baths, temples and forums. So what Mussolini had done in Ethiopia was just a continuation of a long and venerable tradition of imperial stealing and giving. The Vatican, however, had planned a snatch of the Holy Grail without so much as an IOU.

The point of his walk, aside from physical exercise, was to get his head into the right mindset regarding the story-which was turning into a book-that he was writing about Father Armano, the black monastery, and the Holy Grail.