The Quest

by Nelson DeMille

  Vivian saw it and took a photo through the Plexiglas.

  Mercado said, “Somewhere along that lakeshore is where Father Armano’s battalion made camp, almost forty years ago.”

  The lake was ringed with rocky hills, which Purcell knew was very defensible terrain for Father Armano’s decimated battalion. The monastery of Tana Kirkos, he thought, was also defendable because of its position on a rocky peninsula. The black monastery, however, was safe because it was hidden. Even from up here.

  He made another slow banking turn and said, “We will see if we can find the spa.”

  Mercado peered through the canopy with his binoculars and Vivian had her nose pressed against the Plexiglas. “There! See it?”

  Purcell lowered his right wing and reduced his airspeed. Below, off his wingtip, he could clearly see the white stucco spa complex and the grassy fields around it. He saw the main building where they’d parked the Jeep and found Father Armano, and he spotted the narrow road that they’d driven on to get there. He wondered again why he’d turned off that bush-choked road at exactly that spot.

  Vivian said excitedly, “There’s the sulphur pool!”

  Purcell stared at the pool, then glanced at Vivian. A whole confluence of events had come together down there on that night, and from up here, in the full sunshine, it was no more understandable than it was in the dark.

  Vivian said, “It looks so beautiful from here.” She took several pictures and said, “We will go back there to find Father Armano’s remains.” She reminded them, “The Vatican needs a relic.”

  Purcell had no comment on that and said, “We will continue our walk down memory lane.”

  He turned the aircraft north and said, “The scene of the last battle.”

  Below were the hills where the last cohesive Royalist forces, led by Prince Joshua, had camped and fought, and died. Purcell dropped to two hundred feet. All the bright tents of the prince’s army were long gone, and all that remained were scattered bones and skulls in the rocky soil.

  Mercado said, “A civilization died there.”

  Purcell nodded.

  The hills still showed the cratered shell holes on the bare slopes, and those scars and the bones were all the evidence left of what had happened here while he, Vivian, and Henry were bathing at the Italian spa. If they had arrived a day earlier—or a day later—who knows?

  They flew farther north to Getachu’s hills. The army had decamped long ago, and only the scarred earth of trenches and firing positions remained to suggest that thousands of men had been there.

  Purcell could not determine where Getachu’s headquarters tent had been, but then he saw where Getachu had hanged the soldiers with commo wire, and he spotted the ravine where they had all been shackled, and the helipad where they had been lifted out of this hell.

  Purcell got lower and slower and they could see the natural amphitheater—the parade ground—and Purcell was certain that Vivian and Henry saw the ten poles that were still sticking out of the ground. But no one pointed this out. And neither did anyone point out the wooden platform where he and Vivian had clung to each other in what they both believed was their last night on earth.

  Unlike the spa, this scene, from this perspective, made the events of that night more understandable.

  Vivian did not take photographs and she turned away from the Plexiglas.

  Henry, of course, had nothing to say, but Purcell would have liked to know what he was thinking.

  Purcell circled around toward the plateau between the two camps. To their left he spotted the ridgeline that they’d all climbed to get away from the Gallas, and the peak where Henry and Colonel Gann had picked the wrong time to take a nap. He banked to the right, and the wide grassy plateau spread out before them between the hills.

  Vivian asked him, “Is that where we were?”

  “That’s it.”

  “It looks very nice from up here.”

  “Everything does.” He pointed. “That’s the ridge we climbed to go get help from General Getachu.”

  It sounded funny in retrospect and Vivian laughed. “What were we thinking?”

  “Not much.”

  He turned east and flew the length of the plateau between the hills where the armed camps had once been dug in.

  Something caught his eye in the high grass ahead: a dozen Gallas on horseback riding west toward them.

  Mercado saw them, too, and said, “Those bastards are still here.” He suggested to Purcell, “Fire your rockets at them.”

  “They’re not my rockets. And they’re only smoke markers.”

  “Bastards!”

  Henry, Purcell thought, was recalling Mount Aradam, where the Gallas had almost gotten his balls.

  The Gallas saw the aircraft coming toward them, and Purcell was about to bank right to get out of rifle range, but he had a second thought and put the Navion into a dive.

  Vivian asked, “What are you doing? Frank?”

  Mercado called out, “For God’s sake man—”

  Purcell got as low and slow as he dared, and the Gallas sat placidly on their horses, staring at the rapidly closing airplane. They must have seen the rocket pod, Purcell thought, because they suddenly began to scatter. A few horses reared up at the sound of the howling engine, and a few riders were thrown off their mounts.

  Purcell got lower and gunned the engine as he buzzed over them. He banked sharply to the right to avoid giving them a retreating target, then flew over the Royalist camp and dropped lower toward the valley to put the hills between himself and the line of fire of the very angry Gallas.

  Mercado shouted above the noise of the engine, “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Looking for my Jeep.”

  “Are you insane?”

  “Sorry. I lost it.”

  Vivian took a deep breath. “Don’t do that again.”

  Purcell headed southeast along the jungle valley and said, “We will look for Prince Theodore’s fortress.”

  He reduced his airspeed and his altitude as he followed the valley, which widened into a vast expanse of green between the neighboring hills.

  Mercado leaned between the two seats with the map of the area and said, “Here is incognita.” Purcell glanced at the map, then looked through the surrounding Plexiglas to orient himself. He made a slight right turn and said, “Should be coming up in a few minutes at about one o’clock.”

  He pulled back on the throttle and the airspeed bled off, and the Navion sank lower above the triple-canopy jungle. He was starting to recognize the warning signs of a stall in this aircraft, but its flight characteristics were still unpredictable.

  He got down to two hundred feet and Vivian said, “It’s all going by too fast.”

  He explained, “If we go low, we can see things in better detail, but everything shoots by fast no matter how slow I go. If we go high, the ground looks like it’s going by slower, but we can’t see smaller objects.”

  “Thank you, Frank. I never realized that.”

  “I’m telling you this because you are in charge of photography. What do you want?”

  “I need altitude for the wide-angle lens. I’ll get the photos enlarged and we can go over them with a magnifier.”

  “Okay. Meanwhile, if you’ll look to your one o’clock position, I see something.”

  Henry learned forward and they all looked to where Purcell was pointing. He picked up the nose to slow the aircraft, and up ahead, to their slight right, they could see a break in the jungle canopy, and inside the clear area were broken walls and burned-out buildings. If they hadn’t known it was intact five months before, they’d have thought it was an old ruin—except that the jungle had not yet reclaimed the clearing.

  Purcell thought of the priest. He’d escaped death here, then walked out of his prison into the jungle. And something—God, memory, or a jungle path—led him west, to the Italian spa. But he wasn’t heading for the spa. It hadn’t been built when he’d been captured, according to Gann and to
the map, which did not show the spa. So what was it that took him west to that spa and to his rendezvous with three people who themselves did not know about the spa? Probably, Purcell thought, a jungle path, or a game trail. If he asked Vivian or Henry, the answer was simple: God led Father Armano to them. Purcell thought he’d go with the game trail theory.

  Vivian shot a few photos as they approached, then the ruined fortress shot by and she said, “Can we come around higher?”

  “We can.” He climbed as he began a wide, clockwise turn.

  In a few minutes, the fortress came into view again off their right side at about a thousand feet.

  As Vivian took photos, she asked, as if to herself, “Can you imagine being locked in a cell in the middle of the jungle for forty years?”

  Purcell wanted to tell her that if they found the black monastery, she might find out what that’s like.

  More importantly, he had confirmed another detail of Father Armano’s story. Also, they’d fixed a few points of this tale—the east shore of Lake Tana, the spa, and the fortress. Now all they had to do was find the black monastery which they believed was in this area.

  He looked at the thick, unbroken carpet of jungle and rain forest below. He’d once ridden in an army spotter plane in Vietnam, and the pilot had told him, “There are enemy base camps under that triple canopy. And thousands of men. And we can’t see anything.”

  Right. Which was why the Americans defoliated and napalmed the jungle. But here, there were hundreds of thousands of acres of thick, pristine jungle and rain forest, and there could have been a city under that canopy and no one would ever see it. Also, they had only a vague idea where to look.

  Mercado was having similar thoughts and said, “This is a rather large area of jungle.”

  “You noticed?”

  “A clue might be that old map we saw in the Ethiopian College.”

  “Henry, please.”

  “And the stained glass window at the Hilton.”

  “You’re sounding oxygen-deprived.”

  “What they have in common is that they show palm trees. And if you look, you won’t see many clusters of palms down there.”

  Purcell glanced out the canopy. True, there weren’t many palm trees, but… that wasn’t a very solid clue. He said, “Okay, we’ll keep an eye out for palms. Meanwhile, we have about a half hour before we need to head for Gondar, so I’ll make ascending corkscrew turns and Vivian will begin shooting everything below as we climb.” He suggested to her, “Try to overlap a bit—”

  “I know.”

  “Good. Up we go.” He pushed in the throttle and the Navion began to climb. Purcell said to Mercado, “Use the field glasses, and if you see any abnormalities below, bring it to my and Vivian’s attention.” He told them, “I’m going to slide open the canopy so Vivian can get clear shots.” He unlatched the canopy and slid it open a few feet, and the roar of the engine filled the cabin.

  Vivian unfastened her seat belt, leaned forward, and pointed her camera through the opening.

  They circled the area east of Lake Tana—the forested land that matched up with Father Armano’s story, which began on the east shore of the lake and ended at his fortress prison. The lakeshore was known, though not the exact location of the priest’s starting point along the eighty-mile shoreline. And the fortress was no longer incognita. What was incognita, however, was everything under that jungle canopy, including the black monastery.

  Purcell looked down at the land below. There seemed to be no man-made break in the green carpet of jungle. But they knew that.

  Vivian, believing in Henry’s inspiration about the palm trees, took lots of photos of palm clusters. There were a few small ponds below, and she also focused on them because the priest had mentioned a pond within the walls of the monastery.

  As for the tree, the stream, and the rock, as Gann had pointed out, there were lots of trees, and a rock would not be visible unless it was huge, or sat in a clearing. Purcell and Mercado saw streams on the map, but they were not visible through the thick jungle.

  Purcell thought about the Italian Army cartographers who’d created dozens of terrain maps based on their aerial photography. They’d spotted the fortress, and a few other man-made objects on their photographs that they’d transferred to their maps. But they had not spotted the black monastery, or anything else they might have labeled “incognita.”

  Needle in a haystack. Monastery in a jungle.

  The key, he thought, might be the village of Shoan. He looked at his watch. It was almost 10 A.M. and they needed to head for Gondar, or they’d be unexplainably late on a flight from Addis.

  He let Vivian take a few more photos, then shouted, “That’s it!” He slid the canopy closed and latched it. The cockpit became quieter, but no one spoke. If they were disappointed in their aerial recon, they didn’t say so.

  Purcell picked up a northwesterly heading and began climbing to Gondar’s elevation.

  He had no idea what awaited them in Gondar, away from the relative safety of the capital. But if their last trip to Getachu territory was predictive, their search for the Holy Grail could be over in half an hour.

  He had enough fuel to turn around and go back to Addis, but then he’d have no explanation for this flight.

  He said, “We land in about twenty minutes.”

  No one replied, and he continued on.

  Chapter 38

  Lake Tana was coming up on their left, and beyond the lake were the mountains of Gondar.

  Purcell said, “We’ll catch Shoan on the way back.”

  Mercado informed him, “You may not see anyone down there.” He explained, “There is a mass exodus of Falasha Jews under way.”

  “I heard that. But why?”

  “They feel threatened.”

  “I know the feeling.” He reminded Mercado, “Gann said the Falashas have a special place in Ethiopian society.”

  “Not anymore.”

  Vivian asked, “Where are they going?”

  “To Israel, of course. The Israelis have organized an airlift.” Mercado informed them, “Every Jew in the world has the right to emigrate to Israel under the Law of Return.”

  It seemed to Purcell that everyone who could leave was leaving. Soon the only people left would be the Marxist government, the Russian and Cuban advisors, the peasants, and idiot reporters. And for all he knew, the monks of the black monastery were gone, too, along with the Holy Grail.

  Mercado continued, “The Falashas are the only non-convert Jews in the world who were not part of the Diaspora. They are Ethiopians who have been Jewish since before the time of Sheba. Their ethnic origins are here, not Israel or Judea, so the Law of Return does not technically apply to them. But the Israeli government is welcoming them.”

  “That’s good. But I hope they’re still in Shoan, because we’re going to put that on our itinerary.”

  “I think you’re placing too much hope on Shoan for our mission.”

  “We’ll see when we get there.”

  At 10:20, Purcell spotted the fortress city of Gondar rising from the hills. It looked like some movie set from a fantasy flick that featured dragons and warlocks. The reality, however, was worse; it was General Getachu’s army headquarters.

  The civilian-military airfield was perched on a nearby plateau, and without radio contact, Purcell had to swoop down to see the windsock, and for the tower to see him, making him feel like an intruder into enemy airspace.

  The control tower turned on a steady green light for him, the international signal for “Cleared to land.”

  He lined up on the north-south runway and began his descent.

  Mercado said, “I don’t see a firing squad waiting for us.”

  “They’re behind the hangar, Henry.”

  Vivian suggested, “Can we stop with the gallows humor?”

  As the Navion crossed the threshold of the long runway, Purcell snapped the throttle back to idle, and the aircraft touched down. “Welcome to Gonda
r.”

  He let the Navion run out to the end of the runway as he looked around for any signs that they should turn around, take off, and fly to Sudan, or to French Somaliland, about two hundred fifty miles to the east.

  Henry, too, was looking toward the hangars, and at the military vehicles nearby.

  The Navion came to a halt, and Purcell taxied toward the hangars.

  Vivian lifted her camera, but Mercado said, “You cannot take photos here.”

  She put the camera in her bag.

  Purcell noticed a C-47 military transport parked near one of the hangars, and he wondered if it was the same one that had blocked him from using the longer runway at the Addis airstrip. The tail number seemed to be the same, but he couldn’t be sure.

  He taxied up to the hangar and killed the engine. The cockpit became quiet after four hours in the air, and it was easy now to speak, but no one had anything to say.

  Purcell unlatched the canopy and slid it back, letting the cool mountain air into the stuffy cockpit. He said, “Take everything. Leave the carafe.”

  He climbed onto the wing, then helped Vivian and Mercado out.

  Four men in olive drab uniforms, wearing holsters, were watching them.

  They knew the Navion, of course, and Purcell could see they had expected Signore Bocaccio to come out of the cockpit, or maybe Ethiopian pilots who had commandeered the Navion to shoot smoke rockets at the enemies of the state.

  Purcell said to his companions, “The good news is that they seem surprised to see us.”

  They all jumped down to the concrete apron and walked toward the four military men. One of the men, a captain, motioned them inside the hangar office. He took his seat behind a desk and looked at them.

  Purcell noted that the captain was wearing the red star insignia of the new Marxist state, but he had probably worn the Lion of Judah six months ago. Hopefully, this guy was not Getachu’s nephew, and hopefully he spoke the international language of flight, and also believed in the international brotherhood of men who took to the skies. Or he was an asshole.