Nelson Demille: The Quest

Purcell listened to Vivian’s translation and said, “It sounds to me like Father Armano actually saw this relic-or whatever it was.”

Mercado nodded.

Purcell continued, “And probably tried to grab it for the pope, as per orders. And that’s what got him in the slammer for forty years.”

Again, Mercado nodded and said, “That’s a possible explanation of what he’s saying.”

“There may be a good story here, Henry.”

Mercado looked at the priest, who was now sleeping, or unconscious, and said, “This may be the end of the story.”

“Wake him,” suggested Purcell.

“No,” said Vivian. “Let him sleep.”

Purcell and Mercado exchanged glances, knowing that the priest might never wake up.

But Mercado said, “If it’s meant to be that we should hear the rest of this man’s story, then it will be.”

“I envy you your faith, Henry,” said Purcell.

Vivian looked at the priest and said, “He’s traveled a long road to meet us and he’ll finish his story when he awakens.”

Purcell saw no way to argue with the illogic of Mercado’s faith and Vivian’s mysticism, so he nodded and said, “We’ll post a watch to listen for Gallas and to see if the old man wakes up, or dies.”

“You’re a very practical man,” observed Vivian. She added, “All brain and no heart.”

“Thank you,” said Purcell.

Mercado volunteered for the first watch, and Purcell and Vivian lay down on two sleeping bags.

The two armies in the hills seemed to have lost their enthusiasm for the battle, though now and then a burst of machine-gun fire split the night air.

Purcell stared up at the black sky, thinking about the priest’s story, and about Henry Mercado. Mercado, he thought, knew something or deduced something from what the priest had said.

Purcell also thought about Vivian, lying beside him, and he pictured her naked, standing beside the sulphur pool.

He thought back a few days to when he’d met her and Henry Mercado in the Hilton bar in Addis Ababa. It had seemed like a chance meeting, and maybe it was, just as meeting the priest in this godforsaken place was totally unexpected. And yet… well, Vivian would say it was fate and destiny, and Henry would say it was God’s will.

A parachute flare burst overhead and lit up the sky. He stared at it awhile, then closed his eyes to preserve his night vision, and drifted off into a restless sleep.

They took turns sitting up with the sleeping priest, listening for signs of death and sounds of danger.

At about three in the morning, Purcell woke Vivian and informed her that the priest was awake and wanted to speak.

She wondered if Purcell had woken the priest, and she said to him, “Let him rest.”

“He wants to speak, Vivian.”

She looked at Father Armano, who was awake and did seem to want to speak. She shook Mercado’s shoulder and informed him, “Father Armano is awake.”

Mercado moved toward the priest and knelt beside him. “How are you feeling, Father?”

“There is a burning in my belly. I need water.”

“No. It is a wound of the stomach. You cannot have water.”

Vivian said, “Give him a little, Henry. He’ll die of dehydration otherwise, won’t he?”

Mercado turned to Purcell in the darkness. “Frank?”

“She’s right.”

Vivian gave him a half canteen cup of water. The old priest spit up most of it, and Purcell saw it was tinged with red.

Purcell said, “It’s going to be close. Talk to him, Henry.”

“Yes, all right. Father, do you want to-?”

“Yes, I will continue.” He took a deep breath and said, “In Rome… the cardinal… the relic…” He thought awhile, then spoke slowly. “So he told us to go with Il Duce’s army. Go to Ethiopia, he said. There will be war in Ethiopia soon. And then he warned us-the black monastery was guarded by monks of the old believers. They had a military order… like the Knights of Malta, or the Templars. The cardinal did not know all there was to know of this. But he knew they would guard this relic with their lives. That much he knew.”

Vivian translated for Purcell, who asked, “How can he remember this after forty years?”

Mercado replied, “He has thought of little else in that prison.”

Purcell nodded, but said, “Still… he may be hallucinating or his memory has played tricks on him.”

Vivian replied, “He sounds rational to me.”

Mercado said to the priest, “Please go on, Father.”

Father Armano nodded vigorously, as though he knew he was in a race with death, and he needed to unburden himself of this secret that burned in him like the fire in his stomach.

He said, “The cardinal told us to go carefully, to go only with soldiers, and if we should find this black monastery, go into it. Avoid bloodshed if you can, he told us. But you must move quickly, he said, because the monks would spirit the relic away through underground passages if they thought they were being overpowered. He spoke as if he knew something of this.” Father Armano needed more water, and Purcell took the canteen and poured it slowly around his lips as Vivian translated.

The priest asked to be propped up so they sat him against the wall in the corner. He began talking without prompting. “So, a bold priest asked, ‘How will we know what to look for and what to do when we enter the monastery?’ And the cardinal said, ‘The words of His Holiness are in the envelope, and if you should ever arrive at your destination, you will open the envelope and you will know all.’ ”

Father Armano paused, and a faraway look came into his eyes. At first Purcell thought he was dying, but the priest smiled and continued. “Then something happened which I will never forget. His Holiness himself came into the small room where we sat with the cardinal. He spoke with the cardinal and we could hear him address the cardinal by his Christian name. He called him Eugenio. So now the cardinal with no name had a name we could use in our heads when we thought of him. But we could not call him Eugenio, could we?” The priest asked for some time to rest.

Mercado seemed to be thinking, and Purcell asked him, “Do you know who this Cardinal Eugenio could be?”

“No…”

Purcell asked, “How many cardinals would there be living in Rome at that time? And how many do you think were named Eugenio?”

Mercado replied, “I wasn’t a believer in those days and cared not at all for cardinals… but there was one who was secretary of state for Pius XI… Eugenio Pacelli.”

“Sounds familiar for some reason.”

“He assumed another name in 1939. Pius XII.”

“That sounds more familiar.”

Vivian pondered this information. “But we don’t know for sure…”

“No,” said Mercado. “We’ll have to go to the Italian Library when we get back to Addis.”

The old priest was following some words. Mercado turned to him. “If I showed you a picture of this cardinal as he looked in 1935, would you-”

“Yes. Of course. I could not forget that face.”

Realizing that Father Armano might not live long enough to see a photograph, Mercado asked, “Was this cardinal tall, thin? Aquiline nose? Light-complexioned?” He added a few more details.

“That could be him. Yes.”

Mercado leaned closer to Father Armano and asked, “And did His Holiness say anything to you?”

“Yes. He came right up to us. We were standing, of course. He seemed a kind man. He even tried to speak in the Sicilian dialect. He spoke it with a bad accent, but no one laughed, of course. He spoke of humility and obedience… he spoke of duty and he spoke of the Church, the true Church. He said we should treat the priests of the Ethiopian church with respect, but also with firmness… He did not mention the envelopes. The cardinal still had them on his person. His Holiness seemed not to know of the mission sometimes, but other times he seemed to know. The words were general. You understand? He blessed us and left. The cardinal then gave everyone an envelope and also we took an oath of secrecy. I am still bound by that oath, but I must tell you all that happened, so I am breaking my oath. It is of no importance after such a long time… And we made the oath under false…” His voice trailed off.