The Quest

by Nelson DeMille

  Purcell looked at Mercado, who had stopped reading. It must have occurred to Mercado that this was a story known by all, but believed by virtually no one in the modern world. Except maybe Henry Mercado, Father Armano, maybe Vivian, and a few select others. But Purcell understood that even if the legends were untrue, that didn’t mean that the Grail did not exist. The paving stone with Christ’s footprint existed in the physical world, as did the Shroud of Turin and a thousand other religious relics. The Grail, however, was always associated with the power to heal. So if they found the black monastery and the Grail, then they would know if it was real. Especially if there was a lance hanging above it in thin air, dripping blood. He’d believe that if he saw it.

  Mercado continued, “Sir Perceval was told by the old Grail Keeper of their kinship, and when the Grail Keeper died, Sir Perceval and Sir Gauvain, perceiving that the times had grown evil, knew that the Grail must again be hidden from sinful men. The Lord came to them and told them of a ship anchored nearby the castle, and bid them take the Grail and the Lance back to the Holy Land. The two knights set off in a fog and were never seen or heard from again.”

  Mercado closed his notebook.

  After a few seconds, Purcell inquired, “Is that it?”

  Mercado replied, “No. The Grail, and sometimes the Lance, appear again in other references throughout the Dark Ages, Middle Ages, and into modern times.”

  Right, Purcell thought. Like a few months ago.

  Mercado asked, “Did you find any of that interesting or useful?”

  “Interesting, but not useful.”

  “Do you believe any of it?”

  “You lost me after Mark.”

  “Why even believe in the New Testament?”

  “You’re asking questions I can’t answer, Henry.”

  “That’s why we’re here. To find answers.”

  “The answers are not here. Half of the archives in the great Vatican Library are myths and legends. The answer is in Ethiopia.”

  “The answer is in our hearts.”

  “Let’s start with Ethiopia.” Purcell reminded him, “And we have less than a fifty-fifty chance of being allowed back there.”

  “We are going to Ethiopia.”

  “You have our visas?”

  “No. But I will.” He looked at Purcell. “You don’t understand, Frank. We—you, me, Vivian, and also Colonel Gann—have been chosen to go back to Ethiopia to find the Holy Grail.”

  Purcell didn’t bother to ask who had chosen them.

  Mercado agreed it was time for a coffee break, and they walked out into the sunshine.

  Purcell easily understood how early humans believed in the sun as God; it acted in mysterious ways, it rose and set in the heavens, and it gave life and light. The religion of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims, however, was more complex. They asked people to believe in things that could not be seen or felt like the sun on his face. They asked for faith. They asked that you believe it because it was impossible.

  And on this basis, he was going back to Ethiopia.

  Chapter 18

  They walked the short distance to the commissary, where they got coffee and biscotti that they took outside to a bench. The barracks of the Swiss Guard was across the lane, and Purcell watched them forming up for some occasion. The Vatican post office, too, was run by the Swiss, and he said to Henry, “Swiss efficiency and Italian biscotti. Truly a blessed place.”

  Mercado responded, “The Italians are the only people on earth who have monumental egos and an inferiority complex.” He added, “I find it charming.”

  “So you’re staying here?”

  “I will die here or in Ethiopia.”

  “Can I ask… do you have a lady here?”

  He hesitated before replying, “I… have a lady of my own age whom I see whenever I’m in Rome.”

  Purcell didn’t pursue that. He lit a cigarette and watched the people.

  There were no tourists in this part of Vatican City, and everyone on the streets here was employed by the Vatican in one way or another or they were official visitors like himself. There were, he knew, about a thousand actual residents of this sovereign city-state, mostly clergy, including the pope’s staff or retinue, or whatever they were called. The art and the architecture here were without parallel in the world, and he understood, sitting there, why the popes and the cardinals and the hierarchy believed that this was the one true church of Jesus Christ. This was where the bones of Peter, the first pope, were buried somewhere beneath the basilica that bore his name, and Peter had taken the cup from Jesus’s hand and drunk his Lord’s blood. And so, the argument would go, this was where that same Holy Grail, if it existed, belonged. Case closed.

  But even Father Armano had second thoughts about that. And so did Frank Purcell.

  Mercado asked, “Are you thinking about what you’ve just learned?”

  “No. I’m thinking about Father Armano and the black monastery.”

  “We will get to the black monastery.”

  Purcell didn’t know if Henry meant get to it in the next library seminar or get to it in Ethiopia. Hopefully the latter. He said, “Good coffee.”

  “Made from holy water.”

  Purcell smiled.

  “And Ethiopian coffee beans.”

  “Really?”

  “The Italians still own and run some coffee plantations in Ethiopia. Though they’ve probably been seized by the bloody stupid Marxists.”

  “Right.”

  “There’s a chap lives in Addis. Signore Bocaccio. Owns coffee plantations around the country. Visits them with his airplane.”

  Purcell nodded.

  “They may have kicked him out, of course, or put him in jail, but if he’s still in Addis, we may want to look him up when we get there.”

  “What’s he fly?”

  “I don’t know. Never been up with him, but a few journalists have.”

  “Would he rent the plane without him in it?”

  “Ask.”

  Purcell nodded. His piloting skills were not great, but he thought he could fly nearly any single-engine aircraft if someone gave him an hour or so of dual flying instructions.

  Also, he realized that Henry had already thought some of this out. They couldn’t just head off into the jungle and expect to run into the black monastery. Few people had been so lucky, and those who had, like Father Armano and his army patrol, had discovered that their luck had run out at the monastery—or before then, when they met the Gallas. And now General Getachu was also interested in the monastery.

  So, yes, they should do aerial recon to see if they spotted anything that looked like a black monastery—or like something they didn’t want to run into on the ground.

  Mercado glanced at his watch and said, “We’ll go back to the library, then over to the Ethiopian College.”

  “Are you taking the day off?”

  “No. I’m working. And so are you.”

  “Right. I work here.” Purcell asked, “When do I get my creds?”

  “In a week or two. Or three.” He smiled. “This is not Switzerland.” He said, “After you left my office the other night, I sent a telex to the British Foreign Office, who have taken responsibility for the repatriation of Colonel Sir Edmund Gann. I asked them to have Gann call or telex me at my office.”

  “Good.”

  “Have you written to Vivian?”

  In fact, he had after he’d left Mercado’s office that night and returned to the Hotel Forum. The letter had said, simply, “I am in Rome, staying at the Forum. Henry is here, working for L’Osservatore Romano, and we have met and spoken. We would like you to join us in Rome, before Christmas if possible. We are discussing the possibility of returning to Ethiopia, and we would like to include you in those discussions if you are still interested. Please telex me at the Forum either way. Hope you are well. Frank.”

  He’d felt that the letter, like his last, was a bit distant, and he wanted her to respond, so he’d added a P.S.
: “I have been very lonely without you.”

  “Frank?”

  “Yes… I wrote to her. Posted it yesterday morning.”

  “Hopefully the Italian postal service is not on strike this week.” He joked, “Half of Paul’s letters to the Romans are still sitting in the Rome post office.”

  Purcell smiled. “I actually sent it from the Swiss post office here.”

  “Excellent thinking. It should be in Geneva today.” He stood. “Ready?”

  Purcell stood and they walked back to the library.

  Mercado informed Purcell, “There are over half a million printed volumes in this library, and over fifty thousand rare manuscripts, including many in the hand of Cicero, Virgil, and Tacitus.”

  “So no coffee allowed.”

  Mercado continued, “It would take a lifetime to read just the handwritten manuscripts, let alone the printed volumes.”

  “At least.”

  “In any case, after a month of research, I have no documentary evidence of how the Grail, which was bound for the Holy Land, wound up in Ethiopia. But I have a theory.” He said to Purcell, “If you know your history, you will know that the Council of Chalcedon was called in A.D. 451 to try to resolve some of the theological differences that existed in the early Christian Church.”

  “Right.”

  Mercado continued, “The pope, Leo I, and the Christian emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, Marcian, had a disagreement with the Egyptian and Ethiopian emissaries to this meeting because these emissaries refused to accept the complex doctrine of the Trinity and insisted that Christ was one and that he was wholly divine. These emissaries were expelled, and the dissenting churches came to be called Egyptic, and later Coptic, and this was the beginning of Ethiopia’s isolation from the larger Christian world, which persists to this day.”

  “I noticed.”

  “In any case, the missing piece of the journey of the Grail could be this—Perceval and Gauvain—”

  “Who we last saw sailing off in a fog.”

  “Reached the Holy Land, which was part of the Eastern Roman Empire, ruled by the emperor in Constantinople.” He continued, “Perceval and Gauvain would have given the Grail to the Christian bishop in Jerusalem, who was at that time a powerful figure in the church.” He informed Purcell, “There is some documentary evidence here in the archives that the Grail was circulated among the important Christian churches in Jerusalem over the next few centuries.”

  Mercado continued, “But in A.D. 636, Jerusalem was conquered by the armies of Islam, and many important Christian religious objects were lost or were spirited away to Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria, Egypt, which was still part of the Eastern Roman Empire.”

  “How’d it wind up in Ethiopia, Henry?”

  “I’m speculating that the Grail wound up in Alexandria, or someplace else in Egypt, and six years later, in 642, Christian Egypt fell to Islam. I’m further speculating that the Grail, now in the possession of Coptic priests or monks in Egypt, was taken by Nile riverboat to Ethiopia for safekeeping in Axum.” He explained, “That would make sense, historically, geographically, and in terms of theology—the Egyptians were Copts, and they came into possession of the Grail from Christian refugees from Jerusalem who were fleeing Islam. Six years later, they themselves were conquered by Islam, and they needed to safeguard the Grail, so they took it by a safe route on the Nile to their co-religionists in Ethiopia.”

  “That’s an exciting story.”

  “And based on known historical events. Also, after this time, there are historical references to the Holy Grail in Ethiopia—and no references to it being anywhere else.”

  Purcell did not respond.

  “I’m not asking you to suspend belief. I’m trying to fill in the blanks between when the Grail left Glastonbury and when it is mentioned in primary source documents as being in Ethiopia.”

  A far simpler explanation, Purcell thought, was that the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper had never left Jerusalem. But the Brits liked their story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and the Holy Grail, and people like Mercado worked it into the legend. In the end, it didn’t matter how it got to Ethiopia, assuming it did, and assuming it existed.

  Purcell said, “You understand, Henry, that we are not trying to locate the Holy Grail or even figure out how it got to Ethiopia. We have been told by a credible source—Father Armano—that it’s sitting in the black monastery. Now all we have to do is go find this place.”

  “And I’ve explained to you that our journey—spiritual and intellectual—begins here.”

  “I’m not arguing with you, Henry. I just want this part of the journey to end before lunch.”

  “If we do find the Grail, it would be important if we could establish its provenance, as you would do with any ancient object—to establish its authenticity.”

  “If we find the Grail, Henry, we will know it is authentic. Especially if it has a lance dripping blood into it. And even if it doesn’t, we will know it when we see it. We will feel it. That much I believe. And that’s what you should believe. So it doesn’t matter how it got there, and we don’t have to prove anything to anyone.” He said, “Res ipsa loquitur. The thing speaks for itself.”

  Mercado looked at him and said, “I didn’t know you spoke Latin.”

  “Neither did I.”

  Both men stayed silent. Then Mercado asked, “But did I make my case?”

  “You did an excellent job.” He asked Mercado, “Did you do all this on company time? Or are you doing it for the company?”

  Mercado did not reply.

  Purcell closed his notebook and said, “Well, I have enough to write the story. Now let’s find the black monastery so I can write the end.”

  Purcell stood, and Mercado said to him, “For a writer, a journey of a thousand miles begins in a library and ends at the typewriter.”

  “We should be so lucky as to end this journey at a typewriter.”

  They left the room and Mercado said something in Italian to a monk, who walked toward the reading room with a large key in his hand.

  They walked out into the December sunshine, then headed into the Vatican gardens toward the Ethiopian College, where Purcell hoped they’d find a map with a notation saying, Black monastery—home of the Holy Grail.

  They should be that lucky. Or not.

  Chapter 19

  Priests and nuns strolled the garden paths, and Purcell thought that wherever they had come from, they had arrived here at the center of their world and their faith. Their spiritual journey would never end, until they were called home, but their physical journey had ended and they seemed at peace with themselves.

  He and Henry, on the other hand, had a ways to go to find whatever they were looking for. And Vivian, too, who had seemed happy just to be out of Ethiopia and to be with him, had not gotten Ethiopia, Henry, or Father Armano out of her head. But if everything went right, three troubled souls would come together in Rome and make their peace and begin their journey.

  Mercado spoke as they walked. “The next significant mention of the Grail in Ethiopia is dated 1527.”

  “Are we back in the library?”

  “Yes. I found a report, written in Latin by a Portuguese Jesuit named Alvarez, written for Pope Clement VII. Father Alvarez says to Pope Clement that he has just returned from Ethiopia and while there he met another Portuguese gentleman, an explorer named Juscelino Alancar, who had reached the Ethiopian emperor’s court at Axum with his expedition forty years earlier. Father Alvarez further states that Alancar had been treated well, but he and his men had been put under house arrest by the Coptic pope for the remainder of their lives.”

  “That seems to be a recurring theme in Ethiopia.”

  “I also learned that as a result of Alancar’s visit to Axum, a number of Ethiopians, most of them Coptic monks, made a pilgrimage to Rome to see the Holy City and were welcomed by Pope Sixtus IV, who granted them the use of the Church of Saint Stephen, near
Saint Peter’s Basilica, and this was the founding of the Ethiopian College that we are about to visit.”

  “Very generous of the pope. What did he want in return?”

  “Perhaps some information.” Mercado returned to the story of Father Alvarez. “Father Alvarez with some other Jesuit priests had been looking for Axum because its name appeared in many ancient writings that were being circulated during the Renaissance. Also, Father Alvarez believed that Axum was the legendary lost Christian kingdom of Prester John.”

  “Did he find that?”

  “No, what Father Alvarez actually found was the capital of Ethiopia and the seat of the Ethiopian Coptic Church. He also found the last surviving member of the Alancar expedition, who was Alancar himself.” Mercado added, “Father Alvarez says in this report to Pope Clement VII, that, quote, ‘Juscelino Alancar told me that he found and saw the cup—the gradale—that his Holiness Sixtus had sent him to find.’ ”

  “Which got Senhor Alancar life in Ethiopia.”

  “Apparently. And because Alancar told Father Alvarez what it was that he had found and seen, Father Alvarez was also kept in Axum under house arrest.”

  “But he got out and wrote to the pope.”

  “Yes, what happened was that Ethiopia was being attacked by the Turks, so the Ethiopian emperor, Claudius, let Father Alvarez go so he could tell King John III of Portugal about the lost Christian empire of Ethiopia, and to ask the Portuguese king for military aid. Alancar himself was dead by this time, so Father Alvarez and his fellow Jesuits left Axum and made their way back to Portugal. King John actually sent an expeditionary force to Ethiopia, and in 1527 a combined Ethiopian and Portuguese force defeated the Turks, and the Ethiopian emperor Claudius pledged everlasting thanks to King John III and to the Jesuits, who, Father Alvarez says in his report to the pope, are now welcomed back into Ethiopia by the emperor Claudius.”

  They continued through the acres of gardens, and Purcell could see a building ahead that Mercado identified as the Ethiopian College.