The Quest: A Novel Part 52

Mercado stared at the corner where they had laid the priest and covered him with a blanket-the now desecrated spot where he and Vivian felt a miracle of sorts had taken place.

Mercado said, as if to himself, "The blood of the martyrs gives nourishment to the church."

Purcell could not completely understand how people like Henry Mercado, and to some extent Vivian, persisted in their belief in a benevolent power. But he'd come to see that there was a special language used to explain the simultaneous existence of G.o.d and human depravity. You would need the right words, Purcell thought, evolved over thousands of years, to keep your faith from slipping.

Vivian had unexpectedly returned to the scene, and she had her camera out now. She took a deep breath and shot a few pictures of the grisly carnage. She moved closer to the corner where the priest had lain and died, to shoot photographic evidence of both sainthood and ma.s.s murder.

Mercado stood close to her, to give her moral support and silent encouragement. It occurred to Purcell that Vivian and Henry might well be better suited to one another than Vivian and Frank could ever be. It bothered him to think that, but that may have been the truth. Henry and Vivian were, in a way, kindred spirits, eternally joined at their souls, whereas he and Vivian were connected only once a night. Well... but there was more there between them.

Gann had joined them and inquired, "I don't suppose any of these bones are that of the priest?"

Vivian replied, "No. We buried him."

"That's right. Well, lead on."

They exited the lobby through the rear and walked quickly across the paved courtyard, with Vivian and Mercado in the lead and Purcell and Gann on the flanks with their weapons at the ready.

Gann pointed out horse droppings, obvious evidence of Gallas, but he a.s.sured them that the droppings looked to be months old. Maybe weeks.

Purcell thought back to when they'd first walked through this spa complex without too much concern about Gallas, soldiers, partisans, or armed and desperate outlaws who roamed the countryside. G.o.d, indeed, watched over idiots.

Gann was being both security man and tourist, and remarked, "Incredible engineering." He added, "Rather a waste, though."

They found the garden where they'd buried Father Armano. Getachu's soldiers had exhumed the body, and jackals had scattered the bones in the garden and on the paths. The grave itself had caved in and a colony of red ants had taken residence.

Gann seemed pleased for Vivian at all the bones, and Purcell thought Gann was going to pick one up for her and say, "Here we go. Nice one. Let's move on." But in fact he stood patiently and reverently, staring at the grave. Vivian took photographs of the grave and of the scattered bones, while Mercado again stood beside her.

The time had come to pick a bone as a relic of the saint-to-be, and Mercado informed everyone, "The skull is considered the most important mortal relic."

But there was no skull in sight, so that set off a search through the overgrown gardens. Gann let everyone know, "The jackals will often take a bit of their find to their lairs."

Indeed, Purcell had noticed that there were not enough bones to make a complete skeleton. But there were some good-sized bones, including a femur and a pelvis, and he would have pointed this out to Henry and Vivian, but he wasn't sure of the protocol.

Vivian was about to settle for the femur, but then Henry exclaimed, "Here it is!" and retrieved a skull from the underbrush. He held it up, sans jawbone.

Purcell was standing closest to Henry, so he could see that, thankfully, the skull had been picked clean by jackals and red ants, and that the rains and the sun had contributed to the job, though the white bone was stained with red earth.

Vivian hesitated to take a photograph of Henry holding the skull, which might be considered macabre back at the Vatican, so Henry set the skull on the stone bench, then thought better of that, and set it beside the grave. Vivian took six pictures from different angles and elevations. Gann glanced at his watch.

So now, Purcell knew, they needed to take the skull with them, for eventual delivery to Vatican City. Purcell also knew that if he ever made it back to Rome, he would not be with Henry or Vivian when they presented their relic to the proper church authorities. And when they got to Berini, they'd bring photographs.

Vivian had taken a plastic laundry bag from the Hilton, which was in her backpack, and which she could use to hold Father Armano's skull in a safe and sanitary manner. She opened the bag, and Mercado took a last look at the skull, as though hoping it had something to tell him. He deposited the skull in the bag and they crammed it in her backpack.

Next, the priest's bones needed to be reinterred, and Purcell helped Mercado hand-dig the loose earth from the grave, evicting the red ants and other things from the pit. Gann contributed his machete, which they used to loosen the soil. They went down only about two feet because there were just bones to bury now, and not many of them.

They gathered up the bones and carefully placed them in the shallow grave, in no particular order. The three men refilled the grave and Vivian took photographs. Purcell supposed that as with photos taken on an exhausting holiday, say to the Mojave Desert, these scenes would be more appreciated when viewed at home.

The time had come for a prayer and Mercado volunteered. He said, "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life." He added, "Rest in peace," and made the sign of the cross, and everyone did the same.

Purcell sat on the stone bench, wiped his sweating face, and recalled that Father Armano's death had compelled him into thoughts of his own mortality. But for some reason, seeing and reburying the priest's bones had filled him with a far deeper sense of mortality. The difference between then and now, he understood, was what he'd seen in Getachu's camp, and what he'd just witnessed in the lobby of this haunting ruin. He had already seen firsthand in Southeast Asia that life was cheap, and death was plentiful. But here... here he was looking for something beyond the grave. And he wanted to find it before the grave. In sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life.

Vivian put her hand on his shoulder and asked, "Would you like a bath?"

He stood and smiled. They found the sulphur pool, but Colonel Gann, in the interest of security, and perhaps modesty, forbade any skinny dipping and suggested, "Mr. Purcell and I will stand watch, and Mr. Mercado and Miss Smith will bathe fully clothed. Five minutes, then we will switch."

So they did that, and it felt good to be submerged in the warm water, which was cooler than the hot, humid air. Purcell made eye contact with Vivian, who was sitting on a stone bench next to Mercado, and she winked at him.

After Purcell got out of the pool, Gann gave him the revolver with a box of ammunition, which Purcell stuck in his cargo pocket, and Gann took the Uzi submachine gun, which was a far more deadly weapon.

They made their way to the back end of the spa where a wide, overgrown field stretched a hundred yards out and ended at a wall of jungle growth. They began crossing the field, and as they walked, Vivian said, "This is where Father Armano walked when he came out of the jungle."

She turned and looked back at the white spa. "I wonder what he thought when he saw that? Or did he know it was there?"

Gann reminded everyone, "It was not built when he was imprisoned." He also told them, "The road was also not yet improved, as we saw on the map in the Ethiopian College."

Purcell a.s.sured him, "It is not improved now."

"Well, it has deteriorated over the years. But in '36 or '37, the Italian Army widened it, put in drainage ditches, and paved it with gravel and tar, all the way to Gondar. Then they built the mineral spa for their army and administrators in Gondar. That's what I saw when the British Expeditionary Force came through here in '41 on the way to taking Gondar from the Italians."

Mercado said, "So we know that Father Armano was not looking for this spa-or perhaps not even the road."

Purcell said, "For sure not the spa. But he may have remembered the Ethiopian dirt highway from his travels with his battalion, or from the patrol he was on." He added, "He may have been thinking of following the dirt track to Gondar."

Gann again reminded them, "Gondar was still in Ethiopian hands at the time of Father Armano's imprisonment, and his knowledge of the world was frozen at that moment, and remained so until his escape forty years later."

Purcell said, "Right. So where was he going?"

Mercado suggested, "He had no idea where he was going. He was just running. And if he did know of that dirt road he may have intended to go north to Lake Tana where his battalion had made camp forty years ago. Or he could have taken the road south, toward Addis, where the main units of the Italian Army were pushing north to Tana and Gondar." Mercado added, "As Colonel Gann said, his knowledge was frozen in time, and he was acting on what he knew, or thought he knew."

Everyone seemed to agree with that theory, except Vivian, who said, "He was coming to find us."

Purcell knew better than to argue with that, but he couldn't help pointing out again, "The spa was not here in 1936."

Vivian a.s.sured him, "That does not matter. We were here."

They continued on and reached the towering tree line, then separated to look for a trailhead. Gann, who seemed to have a knack for finding openings in the jungle, found it.

They gathered at what seemed at first a solid wall of brush, but Gann parted the vegetation and showed them the narrow path that led into the dark interior of the rain forest. He said, "Game trail. But suitable for human use."

Purcell took out his map, and also the photograph that showed the destroyed fortress. He took a compa.s.s reading and a.s.sured himself and everyone that this trail led almost due east, toward the fortress, though there was no way of knowing if it turned at some point.

They made their way through the brush and onto the narrow overgrown trail, and began moving through the deep jungle.

Purcell had no doubt that this trail would lead them to the fortress that they'd seen from the air. And from there, there would be many jungle trails converging on the fortress. But Father Armano had picked this one, and Purcell now thought he knew why.

Chapter 48.

The game trail had not been traveled by humans in a very long time-except perhaps Father Armano five months ago-and at some point they thought they'd lost the trail. Gann still refused to use his machete, so there were times when they had to get on all fours and crawl through the tunnel of tropical growth.

The five or six kilometers that showed on the map should have taken about two hours to travel, but they'd been walking and crawling close to three hours because of the slow progress.

They'd drunk most of their water and were now into the fruit juice. Sweat covered their bodies and the insects were becoming annoying. Gann had a.s.sured them that the lions in this region were nearly extinct, but something big roared in the deep jungle, which made everyone stop and listen. Snakes, however, were plentiful, and Purcell spotted a few in the trees, but none on the ground, so far.

They stopped for a break and Mercado wondered out loud if the trail had gone off in another direction and if they'd missed the fortress.

Purcell a.s.sured him, "My compa.s.s says we've been heading generally due east."

Gann concurred and added, "It always seems longer on the ground than on the map."

Purcell looked at Vivian, whose white skin was now alarmingly red, and asked her, "How are you doing?"

She nodded her head.

He looked at Mercado, who also seemed flushed. The jungle, Purcell knew, sucked the life out of you. Theoretically, according to a Special Forces guy he'd interviewed in Vietnam, the jungle was not a killing environment, the way a frozen wasteland was. The jungle had water and food, and the climate, though unpleasant, would not kill you if you knew what you were doing. Snakes and animals could kill you, but you could also kill them. Only disease, according to this SF guy, could kill you, and if you got malaria or dengue fever, or some other f.u.c.ked-up tropical disease, then you were just an unlucky son of a b.i.t.c.h. End of story.

Gann stood and said, "Press on."

The trail seemed to be getting wider, and there was more headroom now, so they were able to walk upright. Within fifteen minutes Gann held up his hand, then he pointed up the trail. He got down and crawled the last ten yards, then raised Mercado's binoculars and scanned to his front.

Gann got up on one knee and motioned everyone forward. The head of the trail was wide enough for everyone to kneel shoulder to shoulder and they looked out across a clearing to Prince Theodore's fortress-a blasted ma.s.s of stone and concrete sitting under the noon sun.

Gann was looking through his binoculars again and said, "Don't see any movement." He handed the binoculars to Mercado, who agreed, and he gave the binoculars to Vivian, who said, "It looks so dead." Purcell took the binoculars and focused on a section of collapsed wall that allowed a peek into the fortress. If anyone was in there, they weren't moving around much.

Gann wanted to go in first, with Purcell covering, but Purcell said, "My turn."

Vivian grabbed his arm, but didn't say anything.

Purcell stood and began walking the fifty yards across the clearing to the fortress walls.

There were wooden watchtowers at intervals along the parapets, and he kept an eye on them as he was sure Gann was doing with his binoculars. As he got closer, he could see more clearly through the opening in the wall, and there didn't seem to be anything living within the fortress.

He reached the pile of rubble from the collapsed wall, pulled his revolver, and climbed to the top. Inside the fortress he could see stone and concrete buildings with corrugated steel roofs in various states of ruin. The whole compound seemed to cover about two acres, which was not large for a fortress, but it looked imposing here in the jungle.

He satisfied himself that the place was deserted, and signaled everyone to join him.

Gann, Mercado, and Vivian began crossing the clearing quickly, and Purcell came down from the rubble pile.

He said to them, "No one home. There's an open gate around the corner."

He led them along the wall and they rounded the corner, where large iron gates stood open in the center of a long stone wall.

They pa.s.sed cautiously through the gates and into the fortress. In front of them was an open area, a parade ground, where gra.s.s now grew. As they moved farther into the compound, they saw bleached white bones and skulls lying in the brown gra.s.s. The smell of the dead was barely noticeable after five months, but it still clung to the dusty earth.

Gann looked around and said, "This is what a half-hour artillery barrage will do." He looked at the collapsed section of wall where Purcell had stood atop the rubble, and said, "Gallas probably came through that breach." He added, "Nasty combination of Getachu's modern artillery and primitive, bloodthirsty savages waiting like jackals to get in."

Purcell could imagine the artillery rounds falling into this tight compound, blasting everything to rubble as the sun set. He could also imagine Prince Theodore's soldiers being blown to pieces by the explosion, or ripped apart by shrapnel. And when the barrage ended, there would be a minute or two of deadly silence before the Gallas came screaming over the walls.

Gann, too, was imagining it and said, "The Gallas who got in first on foot would have opened those gates, and the mounted Gallas would have come charging in." He added, "A Galla war cry is something you don't want to hear more than once in your life-in fact, if you hear it once, you will not hear it again."

Purcell saw Mercado looking over his shoulder at the open gates, as though expecting a horde of Gallas to come charging in. Also, Henry's face had gone from ruddy to pale. Henry was remembering Mount Aradam again.

Purcell shifted his attention to the field of bones. Indeed, it must have been terrifying, he thought, for the soldiers here who had survived the barrage to see Galla hors.e.m.e.n pouring through the open gates with their scimitars raised. Death on horseback.

Gann said, "I don't see any horse bones, so it wasn't much of a fight." He let them know, "Even if your walls are breached and your gates are open, you must maintain discipline and put up a good resistance. Better than being slaughtered like lambs in a pen."

Purcell didn't think that was information he could ever use, but he was glad to see that Colonel Gann was wearing his bra.s.s military b.a.l.l.s.

Purcell said, "The question is, how did Father Armano survive this slaughter?" He said quickly to Vivian, "Do not say it."

"Well, I will. G.o.d spared him."

Purcell was getting a bit impatient with her divine explanations for everything, and he pointed out, "G.o.d wasn't looking out for the Coptic Christian soldiers of Prince Theodore." He suggested, "Maybe G.o.d is Catholic."

Vivian seemed annoyed and didn't respond.

Mercado said, "It does seem a bit of a miracle that Father Armano escaped this."

Purcell speculated, "It might have something to do with his prison cell. Certainly the Gallas did not spare him." He suggested, "Let's look around."

They walked through the small fortress which held only about twenty buildings, consisting mostly of barracks and storage structures. A large water-collecting cistern had been shattered by an explosion and it was dry. An ammunition bunker had been hit, and the secondary explosions had flattened everything around it. The headquarters was identified by the Lion of Judah painted in fading yellow over an open doorway. They looked inside and saw that whatever had been there had been burned, and a fine layer of ash lay on the floor and on the skeletons of at least a dozen men.

Gann drew everyone's attention to the pubic bones of the men, and pointed out the hack marks, saying, "They use their scimitars to do their nasty business. Sometimes the poor b.u.g.g.e.rs aren't even dead."

Purcell said, "Thanks for that."

They continued on between the shattered structures and came to an almost undamaged building that measured about ten feet on each side. It was the only building whose door was intact and closed. The door was rusted steel and there was a hasp on it, but the lock was gone. At the bottom of the door was a steel pa.s.s-through with an open bolt.

Purcell said, "Looks like a prison to me."

Purcell stepped over several disjointed skeletons that lay near the door and pushed on it, but it would not give. Gann joined him and together they put their shoulders to the door, but it was stuck, probably rusted shut.

Vivian suggested using the pa.s.s-through at the bottom, and Purcell knelt and pushed on it until it squeaked open.

Vivian, too, knelt and said, "I'll go." No one objected, so she shucked her backpack but kept her camera, and squeezed her slim body into the opening. Her legs and feet disappeared and the door fell shut.

They all waited for her to call out, but there was only silence.

Finally, Purcell banged on the door. "Vivian!"

"Yes... come in."