The Quest: A Novel

by Nelson DeMille

  He thought, too, about Colonel Gann. He’d taken a liking to the man and had acquired a respect for him after seeing that battlefield. Purcell hoped the colonel could find a village of friendly natives and eventually make his way out of Ethiopia. But the chances for that were not good, and Purcell thought about writing a posthumous story, titled “Knight Errant.” Also a trip to England to find Edmund Gann’s family.

  The sun was going down and deep purple shadows filled the gullies and gorges that ran through the camp, and which held the human excrement of thousands of soldiers. A few military vehicles were parked haphazardly, but the main form of transportation seemed to be the mules and horses that were tethered to tent poles.

  Purcell had seen a hundred army field camps in the course of his career, and every one of them—whether they were filthy like this place or spotless like the American camps—had the same feeling of life on hold, and death on the way.

  Purcell felt he had seen enough of Getachu’s camp, and he decided that he would go see General Getachu himself, without informing his photographer, who would insist that they wait for the missing Mercado. In any case, he felt that he should at least register their presence, which was the protocol.

  As he made his way toward the headquarters tent, Purcell recalled what he’d read about General Getachu in the English-language newspaper in Addis. According to this government-censored and self-censored puff piece, the general was quite a remarkable man—loyal to the revolution, a competent military commander, and a man of the people, born into a poor peasant family. His parents had put themselves on starvation rations to have enough money to send their young son to the British missionary school in Gondar. Mikael Getachu had proven himself a brilliant student, of course, and he had learned English before he was seven. Also, he’d rejected most of his bourgeois teaching and secretly embraced Marxism at an early age. He never attended university, but had returned to his village and organized the oppressed peasants in their struggle against the local rasses, whom Purcell thought must have included Ras Joshua.

  The flattering article went on to say that Mikael Getachu joined the Royal Army to infiltrate its ranks, and was stationed in Addis Ababa. And when the military seized power and overthrew the emperor, young Captain Getachu was in the right place at the right time, and he was now a general, and the commander of the army in his former province. Local boy makes good and comes home to bring peace and justice to his people.

  According to the word in the bars and embassies in Addis, however, Getachu was a psychopath, and was rumored to have strangled a dozen members of the royal family in their palaces, including women and children. Even the revolutionary council—the Derg—feared him, and they’d made him commander of the Northern Army to keep him out of the capital.

  As Purcell walked up the hill toward the large headquarters pavilion, he noticed something on the far side that he hadn’t seen before. He couldn’t quite make it out in the fading light, but as he got closer he realized that what he was seeing was a pole suspended between two upright poles—and hanging from the horizontal pole were about a dozen men. As he got closer he saw they were dressed in the uniforms of the Royal Army.

  He stopped about ten feet from the scene and could see that the men had been hanged by their necks with what looked like commo wire, to ensure a slow, painful strangulation. Their hands were not tied so that they could grip the wire around their necks and try to ease the stranglehold, but in the end they’d become exhausted and lost the battle with gravity and with death.

  Purcell took a deep breath and stood there, staring at the contorted faces, the bloody fingers and bloody necks. He counted thirteen men hanging motionless in the still air. He wondered how many more Royalists had been shot where they were captured. Taking prisoners was not a well-understood concept in this country and in this war.

  Purcell noticed that a few of the sentries posted near the headquarters tent were watching him, and he rethought his visit to General Getachu.

  He turned and made his way back toward the medical tent. Vivian was not there, and the sole orderly in the tent was not helpful in answering his pantomimed questions.

  The standard procedure in situations like this was to stay put in a known location and wait for the missing colleague. If he went looking for her, they’d probably miss and keep coming back to the tent to see if the other was there, sort of like a Marx Brothers routine. He looked to see if she’d left him a note. She hadn’t, but he saw that her camera, passport, and press credentials were gone, which meant she’d taken them. But then he noticed that his passport was also gone, and so was his wallet, his press credentials, and the safe-conduct pass. “Shit.”

  He walked out of the tent, looking for any sign of her in the darkening dusk. Maybe she’d gone to find a latrine, which didn’t exist here, so that could take some time. He decided to give it ten minutes, then he’d go straight to the headquarters tent and demand to see Getachu. Or Getachu would send for him. In fact, he thought, that’s what might have happened to Vivian.

  He waited, but he wasn’t the waiting type. After about five minutes, he headed toward Getachu’s headquarters.

  He saw a figure running toward him in the darkness. It was Vivian and she spotted him and called out, “Frank! They’ve got Henry!”

  “Good.”

  She stopped a few feet from him, breathless, and said, “They’ve got Colonel Gann, too.”

  Not good.

  She explained quickly, “Colonel Gann had passed out on the mountain. Henry, too. The soldiers found them both—”

  “Hold on. Who told you this?”

  “Doctor Mato. They’re in the hospital tent. Under arrest. Doctor Mato says they’ll be all right, but—”

  “Okay, let’s go see them.”

  “They won’t let me in the tent.”

  Which, he thought, was just as well. “Okay, let’s see the general.”

  “I tried, but—”

  “Let’s go.”

  They moved quickly up the hill to where the headquarters tent sat. A few of the side flaps were open and they could see light inside.

  He’d noticed she didn’t have her camera, and there was no place in her shamma where she could have put their papers, but she may have hidden everything, so he asked, “Do you know where our passports and papers are?”

  “No… when Doctor Mato came to get me, I ran out—”

  “Well, everything is gone, including your camera.”

  “Damn it…”

  “That’s all right. Getachu has it all.”

  “That bastard. That’s my camera, with thirty pictures—”

  “Vivian, that is the least of our problems.”

  He could see that she was distraught over Mercado’s arrest, and now was becoming indignant over the confiscation of her property. This was all understandable and would have been appropriate in Addis, but not here at the front.

  She needed a reality check before they saw Getachu, so Purcell steered her around to the far side of the headquarters tent and said, “That is what General Getachu does to Royalists. We don’t know what he does to Western reporters who annoy him.”

  She stared at the hanging men. “Oh… my God…”

  “Ready?”

  She turned away and nodded.

  They approached the guarded entrance of the headquarters tent. Two soldiers carrying AK-47s became alert and eyed them curiously. They’d already sent the woman away, and they wondered why she’d returned. One of the men made a threatening gesture with his rifle, and the other motioned for them to go away.

  Purcell said to them in the Amharic word that all reporters in Ethiopia knew, “Gazetanna.” He added, “General Getachu.” He tapped his left wrist where his missing watch should be, hoping they thought he had an appointment.

  The two soldiers conversed for a second, then one of them disappeared inside the tent. The remaining soldier eyed Vivian’s ointment-splotched face, then her legs beneath the shamma.

  Vivian said s
oftly, “I’m frightened. Are you?”

  “Check with me later.”

  The soldier returned and motioned for them to follow.

  They entered the pavilion, which Purcell noticed was much larger than Prince Joshua’s. He noticed, too, that there were no ceremonial spears or shields in this sparse tent—only field equipment, including two radios on a camp table. Coleman-type lamps barely lit the large space.

  The tent was divided by a curtain, and the soldier motioned for them to pass through a slit. It was darker in this half of the tent, and it took them a few seconds to make out a man sitting behind a field desk. The man did not stand, but he motioned toward two canvas chairs in front of his desk and said in English, “Sit.”

  They sat.

  General Getachu lit a cigarette and stared at them through his smoke. A propane lamp hung above the desk illuminating his hands, but not his face.

  As Purcell’s eyes adjusted to the dim light he could see that Getachu wore a scruffy beard, and his head was bald or shaven. A tan line ran across his forehead where his hat had sat, and his skin was naturally dark, but further darkened by the sun.

  Purcell had seen a photograph of General Getachu in an Ethiopian newspaper, and he’d noted that Getachu had the broader features of the Hamitic people and not the Semitic features of the aristocracy or the Arabic population. In fact, that was partly what this war was about—ancestry and racial differences so subtle that the average Westerner couldn’t see them, but which the Ethiopians equated with ruler and ruled. Indeed, he thought, the Getachus of this country were getting their revenge after three thousand years. He couldn’t blame them, but he thought they could go about it in a less brutal way.

  He had dealt with the newly empowered revolutionaries in many countries, and what they all had in common was xenophobic paranoia, extravagant anger, and dangerously irrational thinking. And now he was about to find out how psychotic this guy was.

  Getachu seemed content to let them sit there in his office while he perused the papers on his desk. Also on Getachu’s desk was Vivian’s camera, his wallet and watch, their passports, and their press credentials, but he couldn’t see what would have been their safe-conduct pass, issued by the Provisional Revolutionary government. It occurred to Purcell that Getachu had chosen to deal with that inconvenient document by destroying it.

  Getachu lit another cigarette and took a drink from a canteen cup. He looked at them and asked with a slight British accent, “Why are you here?”

  Purcell replied, “To report on the war.”

  “To spy for the Royalists.”

  “To report on the war.”

  “Spies are shot. If they are lucky.”

  “We are reporters, certified by the Provisional Revolutionary government, and we have a safe-conduct pass issued by the Derg and signed by General—”

  “You have no such thing.”

  Vivian said, “We do.” She asked, “Why have you arrested our colleague?”

  He looked at her and said, “Shut up.”

  Again, Getachu let the silence go on, then he said, “You two and your colleague were in the Royalist camp.”

  Purcell replied, “We got lost. On our way here.”

  “You met your colleague Colonel Gann.”

  “He is not our colleague.”

  “You fled with him to escape the Revolutionary Army that you say you were trying to find.”

  “We fled to escape the Gallas.” Purcell also pointed out, “We climbed this mountain to find you.”

  Getachu did not reply.

  Purcell didn’t think he should bother to explain the actual circumstances of what had happened. General Getachu had drawn his own conclusions, and though he probably knew they were not completely accurate conclusions, they suited his paranoia.

  Purcell said, “We are here to report on the war. We take no sides—”

  “You have a romantic notion of the emperor and his family, and of the rasses and the ruling class.”

  Purcell thought that might be true of Mercado and maybe Vivian, and certainly of Colonel Gann, but not of him. He said, “I’m an American. We don’t like royalty.”

  “So do you like Marxists?”

  “No.”

  Getachu stared at him, then nodded. He said, “Colonel Gann has caused the death of many of my men. He has been condemned to death.”

  Purcell already guessed that, but he said, “If you spare his life and expel him, I and my colleagues promise we will write—”

  “You will write nothing. You are all guilty by association. And you are spies for the Royalists. And you will be court-martialed in the morning.”

  Purcell saw that coming, and apparently so did Vivian, because she said in a firm, even voice, “My colleague, Mr. Mercado, is an internationally known journalist who has met frequently with members of the Derg and who has interviewed General Andom who is your superior. It was General Andom who signed the safe-conduct pass—”

  “General Andom did not give Mercado—or you—permission to spy for the counterrevolutionaries.”

  Purcell tried another tack. “Look, General, you won the battle, and you’ve probably won the war. The Provisional government has invited journalists to—”

  “I have not invited you.”

  “Then we’ll leave.”

  Getachu did not reply, and Purcell had the feeling that he might be wavering. Getachu had to weigh his desire and his instinct to kill anyone he wanted to kill against the possibility that the new government did not want him to kill the three Western reporters. In any case, Colonel Gann was as good as dead.

  Purcell had found himself in similar situations, each with a happy ending, or he wouldn’t be here in this situation. He recalled Mercado’s advice not to look arrestable, but he was far beyond that tipping point. He wasn’t quite sure what to say or do next, so he asked, “May I have a cigarette?”

  Getachu seemed a bit taken aback, but then he slid his pack of Egyptian cigarettes toward Purcell along with a box of matches.

  Purcell lit up, then said, “If you allow me access to a typewriter, I will write an article for the International Herald Tribune and the English-language newspaper in Addis, describing your victory over Prince Joshua and the Royalist forces. You may, of course, read the article, and have it delivered to my press office in Addis Ababa along with a personal note from me saying that I am traveling with General Getachu’s army at the front.”

  Getachu looked at him for a long time, then looked at Vivian, then at her camera. He asked her, “And if I have this film developed in Addis, what will I see?”

  Vivian replied, “Mostly our journey from the capital to an old Italian spa… then a few photos of Prince Joshua’s camp.”

  “Those photographs will be good to show at your court-martial, Miss”—he glanced inside her Swiss passport—“Miss Smith.”

  Vivian replied, “I am a photojournalist. I photograph—”

  “Shut up.” He leaned forward and stared at her, then said, “On the far side of this camp is a tent. In this tent are ten, perhaps twelve women—those with Royalist sympathies, including a princess—and they are there for the entertainment of my soldiers.” He pushed Vivian’s camera across the desk. “Would you like to photograph what goes on inside that tent?”

  Purcell stood. “General, your conduct—”

  Getachu pulled his pistol and aimed it at Purcell. “Sit down.”

  Purcell sat.

  Getachu holstered his pistol and said, as if nothing had happened, “And you, Miss Smith, can also photograph the Royalists that you saw hanging. And also photograph Colonel Gann’s execution. And your friend Mr. Mercado’s execution as well. Would you like that?”

  Vivian did not reply.

  Getachu stared at her, then turned his attention to Purcell and said, “Or perhaps, as Mr. Purcell suggested, he can write very good articles about the people’s struggle against their historic oppressors. And then, perhaps, there will be no court-martial and no executions.�
��

  Neither Purcell nor Vivian replied.

  Getachu continued, “The enemies of the people must either be liquidated or made to serve the revolution.” He added, “You could be more useful alive.”

  Vivian asked, “And Mr. Mercado?”

  “He was once a friend of the oppressed people, but he has strayed. He needs to be reeducated.”

  Purcell asked, “And Colonel Gann?”

  “A difficult case. But I respect him as a soldier. And I have a certain fondness for the British.” He explained, “I attended a British missionary school.”

  And apparently missed the class on good sportsmanship and fair play, Purcell thought.

  Getachu added, “The headmaster was fond of the switch, but perhaps I deserved it.”

  No doubt.

  Getachu said, “Perhaps Colonel Gann can be persuaded to share his military knowledge with my colonels.”

  Purcell said, “I will speak to him.”

  Getachu ignored this and said, “Shooting a man—or a woman—is easy. I would rather see men broken.”

  Purcell had no doubt that Getachu was sincere.

  Getachu said, “You may go.”

  Vivian said, “We want to see Mr. Mercado. And Colonel Gann.”

  “You will find them in the hospital tent.”

  Purcell took Vivian’s arm and turned to leave, but Getachu said, “Before you go, something that may interest you.”

  They looked at him and saw he was retrieving something from the shadow beside his chair. Getachu held up a gold crown, encrusted with jewels. Purcell and Vivian recognized it as the crown of Prince Joshua.

  Getachu said, “I allowed the Gallas free rein to hunt down the Royalists. All I asked in return was that they bring me the prince, dead or alive, along with his crown. And here is his crown.”

  Again, Purcell and Vivian said nothing.

  Getachu examined the crown under the hanging lantern as though he were considering buying it. He set it down on his desk, then said, “Let me show you something else.” He moved to the far side of the tent, and a soldier in the shadows lit a Coleman lamp.