The Quest

by Nelson DeMille

  Purcell asked, “Will you do a piece on Father Armano for your paper?”

  “Of course. But not until we get back, obviously. And you?”

  “I work here, Henry. Remember?”

  “That’s right.” He drained his glass. “We’ll do a series of stunning articles together—yours in English and mine in Italian, and they will be translated into every world language, and you will achieve the fame and respect that has always eluded you, and I will add to my global reputation.”

  Purcell smiled.

  “We’ll do the talk show circuit. Who carries the Grail?”

  “Vivian.”

  “Yes, the pretty girl. And we’ll do a slideshow with her photography.”

  Neither man spoke, and Purcell thought about what would actually happen if they did find the black monastery and somehow got possession of the Coptic monks’ Holy Grail. He said to Mercado, “Be careful what you wish for.”

  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.

  Chapter 17

  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 experie
nced, 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.”

  “I guess… I never thought much about it.”

  “Then you should be taking notes, Mr. Purcell. You have a story to write.”

  “More importantly, we have a Grail that needs to be found.”

  “We are finding it—first in our heads, then in our hearts.” He reminded Purcell, “This is a spiritual journey before it becomes a physical journey.”

  Purcell picked up his pen and said, “I will make a note of that.”

  Mercado continued, “The chalices used by priests and ministers are often very elaborate. Gold and precious stones. But the cup used by Christ was a simple kiddush cup—probably a bronze goblet used at the Passover. So the kiddush cup, like the story itself, has been embellished over the years, and now looks very different at the altar. It gleams. But that is not what we are looking for. We are looking for a two-thousand-year-old bronze cup—something that would have disappointed many of those who have searched for it, if they’d found it.”

  Purcell nodded, trying to recall what, if anything, Father Armano had said about the cup that he claimed he saw.

  Mercado went on, “But there is an essential truth to this story—Jesus saying, in effect, ‘I have turned this wine into my blood for the remission of your sins.’ ”

  “But that has more to do with Jesus than it has to do with the wine or the cup.”

  “You make a good point.”

  “Also,” Purcell pointed out, “there is a lot of allegory and symbolism in the Old and New Testaments.”

  “That is where some Christians, Jews, atheists, and agnostics disagree.”

  “Right.”

  “You either believe or you don’t believe. Evidence is in short supply. Miracles happen, but not often, and not without other explanations.”

  “We should have mentioned that to Father Armano.”

  “I completely understand your skepticism, Frank. I have some of my own.”

  That wasn’t what he’d said on previous occasions, but Purcell left it alone.

  Mercado had his Bible open again, and he said, “We move on from the Last Supper, and through the crucifixion, and we come to Joseph of Arimathea, who plays a central role in subsequent Grail legends.” He looked at the open Bible. “From Mark 15:42–47.” Mercado read, “And now when the even was come, because it was the preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, an honorable counselor, who also waited for the kingdom of God, came, and went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus. And Pilate marveled if he were already dead: and calling unto him the centurion, he asked him whether he had been any while dead. And when he knew it of the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph. And he bought fine linen, and took him down, and wrapped him in the linen, and laid him in a sepulcher which was hewn out of a rock, and rolled a stone unto the door of the sepulcher.”

  Mercado looked up from the Bible and said, “This is the last we hear of Joseph of Arimathea in the New Testament, but not the last we hear of him from other sources.”

  “Are these sources credible, Henry?”

  Mercado pulled a notebook toward him and said, “I’ve read several accounts of the journey of the Holy Grail. You can call them legends or myths, or quasi-historical accounts. I’ve had access here to some primary source material, written on parchment and papyrus”—he motioned toward the green felt folders—“and the earliest date I was able to determine is from a papyrus, written in classical Greek, about forty or fifty years after the death of Christ.” He informed Purcell, “I’ve written a summation of all these stories, based on the parts that seem to agree.”

  Purcell agreed with Mercado that it would be useful to get some backstory, but he was here mostly to… well, to humor Henry. To bond with him. Or maybe he was here in the musty Vatican Library, on what turned out to be a gloriously sunny morning, because he felt guilty that he’d taken Vivian from Henry. That was it. This was atonement. Punishment, actually. And he deserved it.

  Henry was looking at his notebook and said, “Here’s what I’ve written, combining most of what I’ve read. It begins as a continuation of the New Testament account of the crucifixion.” He began, “And Joseph of Arimathea, believing in Christ, wished to possess something belonging to him. He therefore carried off the chalice of the Last Supper—”

  “Was he there to clean up?”

  Mercado ignored the interruption and continued, “And having begged Pilate for the Lord’s body, Joseph used the chalice to collect the blood flowing from Jesus’s wounds. And it came to pass that Joseph of Arimathea was imprisoned for his good deed by Pilate, at the urging of the same angry crowd that had demanded Christ’s death. And Joseph lay forty years in a hidden dungeon, but he was sustained by the Holy Grail, which was still in his possession.”

  Mercado stopped reading and looked at Purcell.

  Purcell nodded. Indeed, this ancient tale had a little of Father Armano’s story in it. And Father Armano probably knew the story.

  Mercado continued, “And in the fortieth year of Joseph’s imprisonment, the Roman emperor, Vespasian, was cured of his leprosy by the veil of Saint Veronica, and believing now in Christ, the emperor took himself to Jerusalem to avenge the death of Christ, but all who had been responsible for his death were now themselves dead. But through a vision, Vespasian learned that Joseph, who was believed dead, was still imprisoned in the hidden dungeon. Vespasian had himself lowered into the dungeon and freed Joseph. The emperor Vespasian and Joseph of Arimathea were then baptized together by Saint Clement.”

  Mercado put his notebook aside and said, “There are a number of historical inaccuracies—or stretches—in that story. But the story has persisted for two thousand years, and is believed by millions of Catholics and others.”

  “And what does the Church of Rome think?”

  “The Church of Rome neither confirms nor denies. The Church of Rome likes these stories, but understands, intellectually, that they are a stretch. But stories like this are good press, and they circulate among the faithful and reinforce their beliefs.”

  “That’s what good propaganda does.”

  “So we’ve heard that Joseph took Christ’s cup after the Passover meal, and we’ve heard that Joseph had it with him in the dungeon, and that the Grail sustained him for forty years.”

  Purcell made a note to show he was listening.

  Mercado flipped a page in his notebook and read, “Joseph journeyed with a flock of new Christians through the Holy Land and in time came into Sarras in Egypt. In Sarras, Joseph was instructed by the Lord to set out a table in memory of Christ’s Last Supper, and the sacrament of Communion was performed with the Grail for the new converts. After a time, Joseph was instructed by the Lord to journey to Britain, and there the Grail was kept in the Grail Castle, which was located, some say, near Glastonbury. The Grail was kept there by a succession of Grail Keepers, who were all descendants of
Joseph of Arimathea, and after four hundred years, the last in the line of the Grail Keepers of the castle lay sick and dying.”

  Mercado stopped reading and said, “So now we have the Grail in Britain, which also seems a stretch, but Britain was a Roman province, part of Joseph’s Roman world, so this is possible.”

  “Henry, I don’t mean to be cynical, but this whole thing is a stretch.”

  “If you had read all that I have read here—”

  “You started with a belief, and you cherry-picked your facts and gave credence to unconfirmed sources. The worst kind of reporting.” He added, “You know better than that.” Or maybe, Purcell thought, Henry had been working at L’Osservatore Romano too long.

  “I’m not the first one to do this scholarship and come up with the same conclusions.”

  “There’s a guy now writing books based on his scholarship saying that extraterrestrials visited the earth and built the pyramids.”

  Mercado did not reply for a few seconds, then said, “We are all searching for answers to who we are, what our place is in this world and this universe. We hope there is more than we know and see. We hope there is a God.”

  “Me too, Henry, but… okay. The Holy Grail is in Glastonbury.”

  Mercado referred to his notes and continued, “This brings us to the time when the Roman legions withdrew from Britain. The Roman world is disintegrating and Britain has been invaded by various Germanic tribes. The legendary—or historical—Arthur is king of the Britons and we begin the well-known legend of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.”

  Purcell had seen the movie, but he let Henry continue.

  Mercado read from his notebook, “The magician Merlin told King Arthur of the presence of the Holy Grail in Britain and bid him form the Round Table of virtuous knights to seek out the Holy Grail. The table was formed, with an empty place to represent Judas, in the tradition of the Last Supper and the table of Joseph of Arimathea. After many adventures and dangers during their quest for the Grail, one of Arthur’s knights, Sir Perceval, who was unknowingly a descendant of Joseph of Arimathea, discovered the Grail Castle and there found the Holy Grail, and also the lance of the Roman soldier, Longinus, that had pierced the side of Christ on the Cross. The lance hung suspended in thin air and dripped blood into the Grail cup.”