Nelson Demille - The Quest

Mercado changed the subject. “It would be very good if Colonel Gann could come along.”

“The Ethiopian government would love to see him.”

“I mean, if he could be pardoned or cleared of all charges.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Perhaps he could offer his services as a military advisor.”

“That’s a long shot, Henry. And I’m sure he’s not interested.”

“We’ll find out at our reunion. I’ll get Gann’s contact information in the UK, and call or write him. I’ll suggest early January for our reunion.”

“I’ll be here.”

“And Vivian, too, I hope.”

“I’ll let you know.”

“And we’ll go to Sicily where it’s warmer, and visit Father Armano’s village and find his people.”

“That would be a good first step on our journey.”

“It is the right thing to do,” Mercado agreed. “Meanwhile, if you are not too busy, I will meet you day after tomorrow at eight A.M., at the Vatican archives, and show you what I’ve found.”

“It doesn’t really matter, Henry. We are going forward on faith.”

“Indeed, we are. But you might find this interesting, and even informative and useful. Good background for your story.”

“Our story.”

“Our story.” He asked Purcell, “Have you written anything not for immediate publication?”

“I have.”

“Good. Saves us some work. Leave out the illicit sex for L’Osservatore Romano.”

Purcell did not smile.

Mercado asked, “Will you be in Rome for Christmas?”

“I’m undecided.”

“Where is home?”

“A little town in upstate New York.”

“Friends? Family? Old girlfriends?”

“All of the above.”

“Then go home.”

“How about you?”

“Christmas in Rome.”

“Could do worse.”

“If you’re around, I’ll get us in the back door for Christmas Eve Mass at Saint Peter’s. You need a papal blessing.”

“I’ll let you know.”

Mercado stood. “I’ll see you day after tomorrow. Your name will be at the library door.”

Purcell stood and put on his trench coat. On their way out, he said, “It doesn’t matter if we never even get into Ethiopia, or if we do, it doesn’t matter what happens there. It matters that we try.”

“I’ve lived my life that way, Frank.” He reminded Purcell, “This will be my third trip to Ethiopia, and I nearly got killed the first two times.” He added, “As they say, boats are safe in the harbor, but that’s not what boats are made for.”

Purcell left the offices of L’Osservatore Romano and walked along the lane lined with bare trees. It was dark now, but the narrow streets were lit, and with no place to go, he walked farther into the papal enclave until he reached the open spaces of fields and gardens behind the basilica.

He found a bench by a fountain-the Fountain of the Eagle-and sat. He lit a cigarette and watched the tumbling water.

The troubling thought came to him that Henry Mercado might be right about Frank Purcell’s motives. That somewhere, deep in his mind or his soul, he believed what Henry and Vivian believed. And what Father Armano believed. And he believed it because it was impossible.

Frank Purcell and Henry Mercado sat at a long table in a private reading room within the large Vatican Library. The windowless room was nondescript except for a few obligatory religious portraits hanging on the yellowed plaster walls. Three ornate lamps hung from the high ceiling, and Jesus Christ hung from a wooden cross at the end of the room.

On the long mahogany table, neatly arranged documents were enfolded in green felt, and Mercado informed Purcell, “I assembled all of this over the last month or so. Some of these parchments and papyri are almost two thousand years old.”

“Can I smoke?”

“The library monks will execute you.”

Purcell took that as a no. Also, it was interesting that Henry had spent so much time here.

Mercado had a briefcase with him that he emptied onto the table, and Purcell could see pages of handwritten notes.

Mercado gave him a notebook to use, then motioned toward the documents and said, “I employed the services of the library translators-classical Greek and Latin, Church Latin, Hebrew-”

“I get it.”

“We will begin at the Last Supper.”

“Coffee?”

“After the Last Supper.” He explained to Purcell, “I’m not only trying to prove the existence of the Grail, but also to plot its long journey from Jerusalem to Ethiopia.”

“Why?”

“This will be useful information when we write our series of articles. And perhaps a book. Have you thought about a book?”

“I have.”

He also informed Purcell, “When we’re finished here, we will go to the Ethiopian College, which is here in Vatican City.”

“Why is it here?”

“Good question. The answer is, the Italians and the Vatican have had a long interest in Ethiopia, going back to the arrival in Rome of Ethiopian pilgrims in the fifteenth century. Interest was renewed when the Italians colonized Eritrea in 1869, then tried to conquer neighboring Ethiopia in 1896, then invaded again in 1935.”

“Did you also cover the 1896 war?”

Mercado ignored that and continued, “The Ethiopian College is also a seminary where the Vatican trains and ordains Catholic priests, and instructs lay people, mostly Ethiopian, to go to Ethiopia and spread the Catholic faith.”

“And maybe to look for the Holy Grail.”

Mercado did not respond to that but informed Purcell, “The Ethiopian College has a good library and a cartography room with some rare ancient maps of Ethiopia and some hard-to-find modern ones, made in the 1930s by the Italian Army. We can use those maps to narrow down the location of the black monastery, based on what we know from Father Armano.”

“Good idea. Let’s go.”

“We need to start at the beginning.” Mercado slid a large English-language Bible toward him and thumbed through the pages. “Here-Matthew, at the Last Supper.” He read, “And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament for the remission of sins.’ ”

Mercado looked at Purcell and said, “Mark and Luke make similar brief references to what has become the central sacrament of Christianity-the Holy Communion, the transubstantiation of the bread into the body of Christ, and the wine into his blood.” He added, “But John does not mention this at all.”

Purcell had had similar reporting lapses-missing or downplaying something that later turned out to be very important. “John may have been out of the room.”

Mercado responded, “The fact that the gospels differ actually give them credibility. These are men recording from memory what they saw and experienced, and the differences show they were not colluding to make up a story.”

“That’s what I tell my editors.”

Mercado continued, “Notice that the cup-the Grail-has no special significance in the telling of this story of the Last Supper. But later, in myth and legend, the cup grows large.”

“It gets magical.”

“Indeed it does. As does the lance of the Roman soldier Longinus, and the robe of Christ, and the thirty pieces of silver that Judas took to betray Christ, and everything else that has to do with the death of Jesus Christ.”

Purcell observed, “You’re making a good case for why Christ’s cup at the Last Supper is just a cup.”

“Perhaps… but of all the artifacts associated with the New Testament, the cup-the Grail-has persisted for two thousand years as a thing of special significance.” He continued, “And I think one of the reasons is that the chalice is used in the sacrament of Holy Communion. The priest literally-or figuratively-turns the wine into the blood of Christ, and that miracle-or mystery-has taken hold in every Christian who ever went to church on Sunday.”