The Quest

Chapter 1

The elderly Italian priest crouched in the corner of his cell and covered himself with his straw pallet. Outside, screaming artillery shells exploded into the soft African earth, and shrapnel splattered off the stone walls of his prison. Now and then, a shell air-burst overhead and hot metal shards pierced the corrugated metal roof.

The old priest curled into a tighter ball and drew the pitifully thin pallet closer. The shelling stopped abruptly. The old man relaxed. He called out to his jailers, in Italian, “Why are they bombing us? Who is doing this thing?”

But he received no answer. The older Ethiopians, the ones who spoke Italian, had gradually disappeared over the years, and he heard less and less of his native tongue through the stone walls. In fact, he realized he hadn’t heard a word of it in almost five years. He shouted in snatches of Amharic, then Tigregna. “What is it? What is happening?” But there was no answer. They never answered him. To them, he was more dead than the ripening bodies that lay in the courtyard. When you ask questions for forty years and no one answers, it can only mean that you are dead. But he knew they dared not answer. One had answered, once, when he first entered his cell. Was it forty years now? Perhaps it was less. The years were hard to follow. He could not even remember the man who had answered, except for the skull. His jailers had given him the skull of the one who had answered him. The skull was his cup. He remembered the man and his kindness each time he drank. And the jailers remembered when they filled his cup; they remembered not to speak to him. But he asked anyway. He called out again. “Why is there war? Will you release me?”

He stared at the iron door on the far wall. It had closed on a young man in 1936, when Ethiopia was an Italian colony, and the door had not opened since. Only the small pass-through at the bottom of the iron door was ever used. His sustenance came in and his waste went out once a day through that small portal. A window, no larger than a big book — really just a missing stone — above eye level, let in light, sounds, and air.

His only possessions in the cell, aside from his tattered shamma, were a washbasin, a pair of dull scissors that he used to cut his hair and nails, and a Holy Bible, written in Italian, which they had let him keep when he was first imprisoned. If it weren’t for his Bible, he knew, he would have gone mad many years ago. He had read the holy book perhaps a hundred, two hundred times, and though his eyesight was growing weaker, he knew every word by heart. The Old and New Testaments brought him comfort and escape, and kept his mind from dying, and kept his soul nourished.

The old man thought of the young man who walked through the iron door in 1936. He knew every detail of the young man’s face and every movement of his body. At night, he spoke to the young man and asked him many things about their native Sicily. And he knew the young man so well that he even knew what went on inside his mind and how he felt and where he went to school and the village he came from and how old his father was. The young man never got older, of course, and his stories were always the same. But his was the only face the old man knew well enough to remember. He had seen that young face in the mirror for the last time close to forty years ago and not again since, except in his mind’s eye. He wept.

The old priest dried his tears on his dirty native shamma and lay back against his cell wall and breathed deeply. His mind eventually came back to the present.

Wars had ebbed and flowed around his small prison and he imagined that the world had changed considerably in his absence from it. Jailers got old and died. Young soldiers grew old as they paraded through the years in the courtyard of the small fortress outside. When he was younger, he was able to hang from the sill of the window much longer. But now he could no longer gather the energy to pull himself up for more than a few minutes a day.

The shelling had jarred loose many things in his mind. He knew that his imprisonment was at its end; if the explosions did not kill him, then the guards would, because he knew they had standing orders to kill him if they could no longer continue to guarantee his incarceration in this place. And now he could hear the sounds of fleeing garrison soldiers. And the jailers would soon open that never-opened door and do their duty. But he held nothing against them. Those were their orders and he forgave them. But it did not matter if they or the explosions killed him. His own body was failing him anyway. He was dying. There was famine in the land and the food had been poor for over a year. His lungs made a liquid sound when he coughed. Death was here. Inside his cell and outside his cell.

The old man’s biggest regret, he thought, was that he would die in ignorance — that as a consequence of the two score years of being held in darkness, he knew less than the simplest peasant did about his world. He did not regret the dying — that held no special terror for him — but the thought of dying without knowing what the world had come to in his absence was a peculiarly sad thing. But then again, his calling was not of this world, but of the next, and it should have made no difference what the world had come to. Still, it would have been nice to know just a little something of the affairs of men. He could not help wondering about his friends, about his family, about the world leaders of his day.

He wrapped the shamma around himself more tightly. The sun was fading from his window and a chill wind blew down from the highlands. A small lizard, its tail partly severed by a piece of shrapnel, climbed awkwardly up the wall near his head. Outside in the stillness, he could hear the soldiers speaking in Amharic about who would have to kill him if it became necessary.

Like so many other imprisoned and condemned men and women, like the martyred saints, the thing that had sustained him through his ordeal was the very thing that had condemned him in the first place. And what had condemned him was his knowledge of a secret thing. And the knowledge of that secret thing comforted him and nourished him and he would gladly have traded forty more years of his life, if he had them to trade, for one more look at the thing that he had seen. Such was his faith. The years in prison saddened him because they meant that the world had not yet learned of this thing. For if the world knew, then there would be no more reason for his solitary confinement.

He often wished they had killed him then, and spared him this living death for forty years. But he was a priest, and those who had captured him, the monks, and those who had imprisoned him, the soldiers of the emperor, were Coptic Christians, and so they had spared his life. But the monks had warned the soldiers never to speak to the priest, for any reason, or death would come to them. The monks had also told the soldiers that they had leave to kill the priest if his imprisonment and silence could not be guaranteed. And now, he thought, that day had surely come. And he welcomed it. He would soon be with his heavenly father.

Suddenly the artillery began again. He could hear its thump and crash as it walked around the walls of the small fortress. Eventually the artillery spotter made his corrections, and the rounds began to land more accurately within the walls of the compound. The sounds of secondary explosions — stockpiled petrol and ammunition — drowned out the sounds of the incoming artillery. Outside his window, the old priest could hear men screaming in pain. A nearby explosion shook the tiny cell and the lizard lost its grip and fell beside him. The deafening explosions numbed his brain and blotted out every awareness except that of the lizard. The reptile was trying to coordinate its partially severed halves, thrashing around on the reverberating mud floor, and he felt sorry for the creature. And it occurred to him that the soldiers might abandon the garrison and leave him here to die of thirst and hunger.

A shock wave lifted a section of corrugated metal off the roof and sent it sailing into the purple twilight. A piece of spent shrapnel found him and slapped him hotly across his cheek, causing him to yell out in pain. The old man could hear the sounds of excited shouts outside his iron door. The door moved almost imperceptibly. The old man stared at it. It moved again. He could hear its rusty stubbornness over the roar of the fiery hell outside. But forty years was a long time and it would not yield. There were more shouts and then quiet. Slowly, the pass-through at the base of the unyielding cell door slid open. They were coming for him. He clutched his Bible to his chest.

A long, gaunt Ethiopian slithered through the pass-through onto the mud floor and the old man was reminded of the lizard. The Ethiopian rose to his feet, looked at him, then drew a curved sword from his belt. In the half-light, the old priest could see his fine features. He was undoubtedly an Amhara from Hamitic stock. His hooked nose and high cheekbones made him look almost Semitic, but the tight, black hair and dusky skin revealed him as a descendant of Ham. With his scimitar in his hand and his shamma, he looked very biblical, and the old priest thought that this was as it should be, although he could not say why.

The old priest rose, carrying his Bible, and his knees shook so badly he could barely stand. His mouth, he noticed, was quite dry now. He surprised the Ethiopian by deliberately walking across the small cell toward him. It was better to die quickly and to die well. A chase around the cell with upraised arms to ward off the blows of the scimitar would have been grotesque.

The Ethiopian hesitated, not wanting to do his duty in the final analysis and wondering now if perhaps he could circumvent it. But having drawn the short straw, he had become the executioner. What to do? The old priest knelt and crossed himself. The Ethiopian, a Christian of the ancient Coptic Church, began to shake. He spoke in bad Italian. “Father. Forgive me.”

“Yes,” said the old priest, and he prayed for both of them in snatches of long-forgotten Latin. Tears welled in his eyes as he kissed his Bible.

A shot rang out above the dwindling sounds of artillery outside and he heard a cry. Another shot, then the sounds of automatic rifle fire.

The soldier said in Italian, “The Gallas are here.”

He sounded frightened, thought the old man, and well he should be. The priest remembered the Gallas, the tribal people who were as merciless as the ancient Huns. They mutilated their prisoners before they killed them.

The priest looked up at the soldier holding his scimitar and saw that he was shaking in fear. The old priest yelled at him, “Do it!”

But the soldier dropped his scimitar, then drew an ancient pistol from his belt and backed away toward the door, listening for sounds outside.

The soldier seemed indecisive, thought the priest, torn between staying in the relative safety of the cell or going out to be with his comrades, and to meet the Gallas, who were now within the fortress. The soldier was also torn between killing the old priest or letting him live, which could cost him his own life if his commander discovered what he had done — or failed to do.

The old priest decided that he preferred a quick and merciful death at the hands of this soldier; the Gallas would not be quick or merciful. He stood and said to the soldier in Amharic, “Do it. Quickly.” He pointed to his heart.

The soldier stood frozen, but then raised his pistol. His hand shook so badly that when he fired, the bullet went high and splattered off the stone behind the old man’s head.

The old priest had suffered enough, and the strange emotion of anger rose inside him. Here he was, after close to forty years in solitary imprisonment, and all he had wanted in his last moments was to die well and to die quickly, without losing his faith, like so many others did in those last seconds. But a well-meaning and inept executioner had prolonged his agony and he felt his faith slipping. He screamed, “Do it!”

He stared down the barrel of the gun and saw it spit another flame at him. And he thought of the thing that had condemned him. And the vision of that thing glowed like the fire from the gun, all golden and blinding — bright like the sun. Then everything went black.

He awoke to the miracle of being alive. The roof was mostly gone and he could see pinpoints of starlight against the sky. A bluish moon cast shadows across the floor, which was strewn with timbers and stone. Everything was unearthly still. Even the insects had abandoned the fortress.

He looked and felt around for his Bible, but could not find it in the rubble, and thought perhaps the soldier had taken it.

The old man crawled toward the door, then carefully out the pass-through. The soldier lay naked outside the door, and he saw that the man’s genitals had been hacked off. The stripping, the mutilation; this was the mark of the Galla tribesmen. They might still be near.

The old man rose unsteadily. In the courtyard, naked bodies lay in the blue moonlight. His insides burned, but he felt well otherwise. It was hard to feel anything but well, walking now under the sky and taking more than five paces in any one direction.

A cool breeze picked up swirls of rubble dust, and he could smell the burned earth and the death around him. The damaged concrete buildings gleamed white in the moonlight like broken teeth. He shivered and tucked his arms in his shamma. His body was cold and clammy. He became aware that his shamma was caked with dried blood, sticking to his skin, and he moved more slowly so as not to open the wound.

It had been forty years, but he remembered the way and walked to the main gates. They lay open. He walked through them, as he’d done in dreams five thousand times, and he was free.

Chapter 2

The Jeep bounced slowly over the rutted track, and its filtered headlights picked out the path between the tight jungle growth. In the distance, artillery boomed and illuminated the black sky, like flashes of distant lightning.

Frank Purcell gripped the wheel and peered hard into the distorted shadows of gnarled trees and twisting vines. He hit the brakes, then shut off the hard-idling engine and killed the headlights. Henry Mercado, in the passenger seat, asked, “What’s the matter?”

Purcell held up his hand for silence.

Mercado peered nervously into the encroaching jungle. Every shadow seemed to move. He cocked his silver-haired head and listened, then looked out of the corners of his eyes into the darkness, but he could see nothing.

From the back of the open-sided vehicle, on the floor among the supplies and photographic equipment, came a soft feminine voice. “Is everything all right?”

Mercado turned around in his seat. “Yes, fine.”

“Then why are we stopped?”

“Good question.” He whispered, “Why are we stopped, Frank?”

Purcell said nothing. He started the engine and threw the Jeep into gear. The four-wheel-drive dug into the track and they lurched forward. He moved the Jeep faster and the bouncing became rougher. Mercado held on to his seat. In the back, Vivian uncurled her slender body and sat up, grabbing on to whatever she could find in the dark.

They drove on for a few minutes. Suddenly, Purcell yanked the wheel to the right, and the Jeep crashed through a thicket of high brush and broke into a clearing.

Vivian said, “What the hell are you doing? Frank?”

In the middle of the clearing, gleaming white in the full-risen moon, were the ruins of an Italian mineral bath spa. A strange, anomalous legacy from the Italian occupation, the spa was built in ancient Roman style and sat crumbling like some Caesar’s bath in another time and place.

Purcell pointed the Jeep toward the largest of the buildings and accelerated. The stuccoed structure grew bigger as the vehicle bounced across the field of high grass.

The Jeep hit the broad front steps of the building, found traction, and climbed. It sailed between two fluted columns, across the smooth stone portico, and through the front opening, coming to rest in the center of the main lobby of what had been the hotel part of the spa. Purcell cut the engine and headlights. Night creatures became quiet, then started their senseless, cacophonous noises again.

The moon shone blue-white through the destroyed vaulted ceiling and lit the pseudo-Roman chamber with an ethereal glow. Huge crumbling frescoes of classical bath scenes adorned every wall. Purcell wiped his face with his sweating palm.

Mercado caught his breath. “What was that all about?”

Purcell shrugged.

Vivian regained her composure and laughed mockingly from the back of the Jeep. “I think the brave man just lost his nerve in the dark jungle.” Her accent was mostly British with a mixture of exotic pronunciations. Mercado had told him that her mother tongue was unknown and her ancestry was equally obscure, though she carried a Swiss passport with the surname of Smith. “A woman of mystery,” Mercado had said to Purcell, who’d replied, “They’re all a mystery.”

Mercado jumped from the Jeep and stretched. “We’re out of the jungle, but not out of the woods.” Mercado’s own voice had that curious mid-Atlantic accent, common to people who have traveled between the British Isles and North America all their lives. His mother was English and his father a Spaniard — thus the surname — though he’d spent most of his youth in boarding schools in Switzerland, and spoke French, German, and Italian like a native.

Frank Purcell cupped a cigarette in his hand and lit it. In the glow of the match he looked older than his thirty-odd years. Lines worked their way around his mouth and his brown-black eyes. Gray was sprinkled through his shaggy black hair and he looked tired. He slumped back in his seat and exhaled a long stream of smoke. “What is this place, exactly?”

Mercado was pacing around over the mosaic floor of the huge lobby. “Roman baths. What do they look like, old man?”

“Roman baths.”

“Well, there you are, then. Bloody Fascists built them as part of their civilizing mission back in ’36. I did a story on them, as I recall. You’ll find them in the most unlikely places. Come on, then. If the mineral springs are still flowing, we’ll have a nice bath.”

Purcell stepped stiffly out of the Jeep. “Keep your voice lower, Henry.”

“Can’t very well keep it low if I’m over here and you’re over there, can I, Frank? Come along. Let’s explore.”

Vivian joined Mercado at the entrance of a colonnade that led to an interior courtyard. Purcell walked slowly over the rubble-strewn floor. Five years in Indochina as a war correspondent had expunged any fascination he might have once had for ruins. The last ruins he had gone out of his way to see were the ancient city of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and that side trip had cost him a year in a Khmer Rouge prison camp. That year would remain a very big part of his life. He’d lost there, among other things, any illusions he might have had about his fellow man.

He joined Mercado and Vivian as they walked slowly down the moonlit colonnade. A statue of Neptune with upraised trident stood in the middle of the walkway and they had to go around him. The colonnade made a ninety-degree turn, and as they rounded the corner they could hear the gentle lapping of water.

“We’re in luck,” said Mercado. “I can smell the sulphur. The baths should be up ahead.”

Vivian stepped onto a low marble bench and peered across the courtyard. “Yes, I see the steam. There, behind those trees.”

They walked across the courtyard toward a line of eucalyptus trees. The large expanse, once paved in white stone, was overgrown with lichens and grass. A two-faced Janus rose up out of a thicket of hedges and projected a monstrous moonshadow through which they passed quickly. The courtyard was surrounded by the colonnade, and vines had grown over most of the columns. Broken statuary of Roman gods and goddesses dotted the yard. The impression was of one of those fantasy paintings of Rome as it may have looked in the Dark Ages, with shepherds and flocks passing through great columned imperial buildings overgrown with vegetation.

They walked by a dry fountain in a melancholy garden and passed between two eucalyptus trees. In front of them was a stone balustrade that led to a curved staircase, and they descended the crumbling steps. At the bottom was a pool about forty meters square. Sulphurous fumes made the air almost unbreathable.

They approached the pool. It looked black, but the moon touched its gently moving ripples with highlights. A huge stone fish spit a never-ending supply of mineral water into the ever-demanding pool. The sound of the falling water echoed off the bathhouse on the far side of the pool.

“It stinks,” announced Purcell.

“Oh,” said Mercado. “You Yanks. Everything must smell like underarm deodorant to you. These baths are an ancient European tradition. These and the roads are the only good things Mussolini did for this country.”

“The roads stink, too,” said Purcell, stretching his muscular frame.

Vivian had peeled off her khakis. She stood naked at the edge of the pool, her milk-white skin shining in the moonlight, like fine, rubbed alabaster.

Purcell regarded her for a few seconds. In the three-day cross-country jaunt out of Addis Ababa, he had seen her naked at every bath stop. At first he was taken aback by her lack of modesty, but she had insisted on being treated with no special considerations.

Mercado sat on a mossy marble bench and began to pull off his boots. Purcell sat next to him, his eyes darting toward Vivian from time to time. He reckoned her age at no more than twenty-five, so she had been only about sixteen when he was stepping off the plane into the maelstrom that was Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut Airport in 1965. He felt old in her presence. Who was she? he wondered. Her features were mostly Caucasian and her skin was like milk, but her eyes were definitely almonds and her jet black hair was long, straight, and thick like an East Asian, or maybe a Native American. But those almond eyes — they were dark green. Purcell wondered if such a combination was genetically possible.

Vivian held up her arms and inhaled the fumes. “It does stink, though, Henry.”

“It’s refreshing and salubrious. Breathe it in.”

She breathed. “Graviora quaedam sunt remedia periculis.”

Purcell stared at Vivian. There was no mistaking that that was Latin. This was a new language in Vivian’s repertoire. He asked Mercado, “What did she say?”

Mercado looked up from tugging at his boot. “Huh? Oh. ‘The cure is worse than the disease,’ ” he answered as he pulled off his boot.

Purcell didn’t respond.

Mercado said, “Don’t go feeling all inadequate, old man. She doesn’t know the language. Just a phrase or two. She’s just showing off.”

“For whom?”

“For me, of course.”

Purcell pulled off his boots and looked at Vivian, who was sitting on her haunches and testing the water with her fingers.

She called out, “It’s warm.”

Mercado slipped off his shorts and padded toward the edge of the pool. His body, Purcell noticed, was showing the signs of age. How old could he be? He was here in Ethiopia during the Italian invasion in 1935, so he had to be at least sixty. Purcell looked at Vivian, then back at Mercado, wondering what their relationship was, if any. He slipped off his shorts and stood near Mercado.

Vivian, a few feet away, rose to her feet, stood on her toes, and stretched her arms in the air. She shouted to the sky, “There’s hell, there’s darkness, there is the sulphurous pit; burning, scalding, stench, consumption!” She fell forward and the black, warm mineral waters closed quietly around her.

Mercado hunched down and touched the water. “That was Shakespeare, Frank. King Lear’s description of a vagina, actually.”

“I hope that wasn’t his pickup line.”

Mercado laughed.

Purcell dove in and swam. The warm water smelled like rotten eggs, but it was not unpleasant after a time. He could feel the fatigue run out of his body, but the heat made his mind groggy.

Mercado lowered his big bulk into the water, then began to swim.

Purcell floated on his back and drifted. He felt good for the first time in days. Maybe weeks. He let the pool currents take him, and the rising steam lulled him. In the distance, he could hear Vivian cavorting, and her shrieks of animal joy echoed off the surrounding structures. Purcell wanted to tell her to be more quiet, but it didn’t matter somehow. He noticed that his member was stiff. He rolled over and swam toward a stone platform in the middle of the pool. The platform was awash in a few inches of water, and he climbed onto it and lay on his back, then closed his eyes.

Mercado bobbed up beside him. “Are you alive, Frank?”

Purcell opened his eyes. He could see Mercado’s face through the steam. “Tell her to pipe down,” he said groggily. “She’ll have every Galla in the province here.”

“What? Oh. She’s sleeping by the poolside, Frank. I told her before. Were you dreaming?”

He looked at his watch. A full hour had slipped by.

“Let’s get back to the Jeep, old man. I’m worried about the gear.”

“Right.” Purcell turned and swam with steady even strokes toward the side of the sulphur pool and climbed out. He noticed Vivian sleeping, curled like a fetus by the edge of the pool. She was still naked.

Mercado looked around. “I’m sure there’s a freshwater spring around somewhere. Probably in the bathhouse over there.”

“I’d rather get out of here, Henry. We’ve taken enough chances.”

“You’re right, of course, but we smell.”

Purcell sat on the lichen-covered marble bench and wiped himself with his bush jacket. Mercado sat next to him. The older man’s close nakedness made Purcell uneasy.

Mercado pressed some water out of his thick gray hair, then nodded toward the naked, sleeping Vivian and asked, “Does she make you… uncomfortable?”

Purcell shrugged. Mercado had not offered to define his relationship with the young lady, and Purcell didn’t know if he cared. But he was curious. He had the habitual and professional curiosity of a newsman, not the personal curiosity of a meddler. Back in Addis, he had agreed to drive Henry Mercado and Vivian Smith to the northwest where the civil war was the hottest, and he hadn’t asked for much in return. But now he figured Mercado owed him. “Who is she?”

It was Mercado’s turn to shrug. “Don’t know, really.”

“I thought she was your photographer.”

“She is. But I met her only a few months ago. At the Hilton in Addis. Don’t know if she can photograph or not. We’ve taken scads of pictures, but nothing’s been developed yet. Don’t even know if she uses film, to be honest with you.” He laughed.

Purcell smiled. The moon was below the main building now and a pleasant darkness enveloped the spa. A soft evening breeze carried the scent of tropical flowers, and a feeling very near inner peace filled him. He wondered if he was getting Indochina out of his system. Apropos of that, he asked Mercado, “You were in jail, weren’t you?”

“Not jail, old man. We political prisoners don’t call it jail. If you’re going to talk about it, use the correct term, for Christ’s sake. The camps. Sounds better. More dignified.”

“Still sounds like shit.”

Mercado continued, “That it should have happened to me was more ironic, since I was a little pink in those days myself.”

“What days?”

“After the war. The Russians grabbed me in East Berlin. January of 1946. All I was doing was photographing a damned food line. Never understood it. There were food lines all over Europe in the winter of 1946. But I guess there weren’t supposed to be any in the workers’ paradise. And the damned Russkies had been in charge there for only — what? About nine months? Hard to erect a Socialist paradise in only nine months. That’s what I told them. Don’t take it personally, chaps, I said. You beat the Huns fair and square. So what if they have to stand on bread lines? Good for the little Nazis. You see? But they didn’t quite get my point.”

Purcell nodded absently.

Mercado continued, “I had Reuters send all the press clippings I had written since the Spanish Civil War in 1936. All my best anti-Fascist stuff. I even had a lot of nice things to say about the brave Red Army in some of those pieces. I don’t know if the bloody beggars even saw my articles. All I know is that I was bundled off to Siberia. Didn’t get out until 1950 because of some prisoner exchange. And not so much as an apology, mind you. One day I was 168AM382. Next day I was Henry Mercado again, Reuters correspondent, back in London, with a nice bit of back pay coming. Four years, Frank. And was it cold. Oh my, was it cold. Four years for snapping a picture. And me a nice pink Cambridge boy. Fabian Society and all that. Workers of the world, unite.”

Again, Purcell did not respond.

Mercado asked, “How many years did you do, Frank? A year in Cambo? Well, we can’t compare it in years alone, can we? Hell is hell, and when you’re there, it’s an eternity, isn’t it? Especially with an open-ended sentence. You can’t even count off the days you have left.”

Purcell nodded.

Mercado asked rhetorically, “What are you to them? Nothing. Do they let you know that your wife has died? Certainly not. They don’t even know themselves, probably, that you have a wife. They don’t know anything about you, except that you are 168AM382, and that you must work. So what if your wife is dying of pneumonia and penicillin is like gold and a woman by herself can’t—”

Mercado stopped abruptly, and a look of weariness came into his watery blue eyes. He said in a low, hoarse voice, “Bloody Reds. Bloody Nazis. Bloody politicians. Don’t believe in any of them, Frank. That’s good advice from an older man. They all want your body and your soul. The body’s not important, but the soul is. And that belongs to God when He calls for it.”

“Henry, no religion, please.”

“Sorry. I’m a believer, you know. Those priests in the camps. The Russian Orthodox priests. Had a few Baptist ministers, too. Some Catholic priests, some rabbis. I was in a camp with a lot of religious people. Some of them had been there since the 1920s. They kept me alive, Frank. They had something.”

“Lizards and centipedes kept me alive in Cambodia.” Purcell pulled on his pants and stood. “Let’s get moving.” He walked away from Henry Mercado.

Vivian had been awakened by their conversation, and she moved past Purcell in the darkness. He could hear the soft sounds of whispering as she spoke to Mercado. The words were lost, but the tone was soothing. Poor Henry, Purcell thought, the grizzled old newsman having a teary moment in front of a woman half his age.

They dressed and headed back toward the hotel lobby in the darkness. Mercado, who seemed to be feeling better, said, “I’ll give this place three stars.”

Suddenly the northern sky was illuminated so brightly that all three stopped in their tracks and crouched.

They looked up and could see star shells bursting in the night sky. An infantry attack had begun somewhere in the hills to the north and one side or the other had sent up these artificial suns to light the way. Automatic weapons fire could be heard now and green and red tracer rounds crisscrossed the hills. The deep, throaty sounds of muffled artillery rolled down into the spa complex, and explosions lit up the low mountain range like a thousand campfires.

Purcell stared at the close-by hills. He could see illumination flares pop and float to earth on their parachutes. Even after all the years in Indochina, the sights and sounds of battle awed him. He stood mesmerized as the hills lit up and sent a crescendo of sound through the night air. It was as though it were a light and sound show, a mixed-media symphony played only for him.

Mercado asked, “Who is killing whom tonight?”

“Does it matter?”

“No, I suppose not. As long as it isn’t us.” Mercado suggested, “We should stay here tonight.”

Vivian agreed, and Purcell said, “All right. We’ve found the armies. In the morning we’ll go see who won the battle.”

They continued on and entered the main building. The Jeep stood in the middle of the lobby looking very exposed. Purcell glanced around for a place to move the vehicle and spend the night. He noticed that one corner of the roofless lobby remained dark when the illumination flares burst. Between the Jeep and the dark corner was some rubble from the ceiling, but it was not an impossible task to get the Jeep through it. He stepped up to the vehicle and began pushing, not wanting to start the engine and create noise. Vivian jumped behind the wheel and Mercado helped Purcell push.

As their Jeep approached the patch of blackness in the far corner, an illumination flare lit up the lobby, and they saw standing in front of them a man holding a skull.

Chapter 3

They laid him on a sleeping bag between the Jeep and the dark corner, and Vivian fed him cold soup out of a can. Purcell threw the skull out a window.

The man’s shamma was in tatters, so they covered his shaking body with their only blanket. In the dark corner, they did not see the dried blood on the shamma.

They could not make out what or who he was. So many Ethiopians were light-skinned, with straight noses and Semitic-Hamitic features, and many wore beards like this man.

Mercado leaned over and asked in Amharic, “Who are you?”

He responded in Amharic, “Weha.” Water.

Mercado gave him water from a canteen, then took a flashlight from the Jeep and shined it in the man’s face. “He’s not an Ethiopian. Not an Amhara, anyway. Maybe an Arab from Eritrea. I know a little—”

“Italiano,” said the old man.

There was a long silence.

Mercado crouched next to him and spoke slowly in Italian. “Who are you? Where do you come from? Are you ill?”

The old man closed his eyes and did not respond.

Purcell took the flashlight from Mercado, knelt beside the old man, and stared down at him. The man’s beard was unkempt and his skin hadn’t seen sunlight in years. Purcell took the old man’s hand from under the blanket. The hand was filthy, but the skin was soft. “I think he’s been locked away for a while.”

Mercado nodded in the darkness.

The old man opened his eyes again, and Vivian spooned more soup into his toothless mouth. “He’s in terrible shape, poor old man.”

The old man was trying to speak, but his lips trembled and only small sounds came out. Finally, he spoke in slow Italian. Vivian sat close to Purcell and whispered the translation into his ear as she continued to spoon-feed him. “He says he is wounded in the stomach.”

Purcell took the can and spoon from Vivian and laid them down. The old man protested. “Tell him he can’t eat until we’ve seen the wound.”

Mercado pulled down the blanket and tore aside the shamma. He turned on the flashlight again. A large mass of coagulated gore covered the man’s stomach. He spoke to the old man. “How did this happen? What made this wound?”

The man made a small shrug. “A bullet, perhaps. Maybe the artillery.”

Mercado said to Vivian and Purcell, “We’ll have a look at it in the morning. There’s nothing we can do now. Let him sleep.”

Purcell thought a moment. “He may be dead in the morning, Henry. Then we’ll never know. Talk to him.”

“I can see why you were put up for a Pulitzer, Frank. Let the old duffer rest.”

“There’s all eternity for him to rest.”

“Don’t write him off like that,” said Vivian.

The old man moved his head from side to side as if trying to follow the conversation.

Mercado looked at him. “He seems alert enough, doesn’t he? Let’s get his name and all that — just in case.”

“Proceed,” said Purcell.

Vivian moved next to Purcell again and put her head beside his.

Mercado began in Italian, “We cannot give you more to eat because of the stomach wound. Now you must rest and sleep. But first, tell us your name.”

The old man nodded. A thin smile played across his lips. “You are good people.” He asked, “Who are you?”

Mercado replied, “Journalists.”

“Yes? You are here for the war?”

“Yes,” Mercado replied, “for the war.”

The old man asked, “Americano? Inglese?”

Mercado replied, “Both.”

The old man smiled and said, “Good people.”

Mercado laid his hand on the old man’s arm and asked, “What is your name, please?”

“I am — I am Giuseppe Armano. I am a priest.”

A long silence hung in the darkness. Outside, the sounds of battle died slowly, indicating that everyone was satisfied with the night’s carnage. Occasionally a flare burst overhead and gently floated to earth, and as it fell, the crisscrossed steel reinforcing rods of the collapsed concrete ceiling cast their peculiar grid shadows over the floor, and the room was bathed in blue-white luminescence. But the small corner of the big chamber remained in shadow.

Mercado took the old priest’s hand and squeezed it. “Father. What has happened to you?”

The old priest winced in pain and did not respond.

Mercado gripped the priest’s hand tighter. “Father. Can you talk?”

“Yes… yes, I can. I must talk. I think I am dying.”

“No. No. You’re fine. You’ll be—”

“Be still and let me speak.” The old priestly authority came through his weak voice. “Put my head up.” Mercado slid a piece of stone under the sleeping bag. “There. Good.” The old priest knew when he was in the presence of a believer and again became the leader of the flock — a flock of one. Vivian moistened his lips with a wet handkerchief.

He drew a deep breath and began, “My name is Father Giuseppe Armano and I am a priest of the order of Saint Francis. My parish is in the village of Berini in Sicily. I have spent the last… I think, forty years, since 1936… what year is this?”

“It is 1974, Father.”

“Yes. Since 1936, almost forty years. I have been in a prison. To the east of here.”

“Forty years?” Mercado exchanged a look with Purcell. “Forty years? Why? Why have you been in prison forty years?”

“They kept me from the world. To protect the secret. But they would not kill me because I, too, am a priest. But they are the old believers. The Copts. They have the sacred blood and the…” His voice trailed off and he lay still, staring up at the sky.

Mercado said to the priest, “Go on. Slowly. Go slowly.”

“Yes… you must go to Berini and tell them what has happened to me. Giuseppe Armano. They will remember. I have a family there. A brother. Two sisters. Could they be alive?” Tears welled up in the old priest’s eyes, but he insisted on continuing. He spoke more quickly now. “I left my village in 1935. August. It was a hot day. A man came and said I was in the army. Il Duce needed priests for his army. So we went… some other priests, too… and many young boys. We walked in the sun and reached Alcamo. There was a train for us in Alcamo and then a boat from Palermo. I had never been on a train or boat and I was frightened of the train, but not so much of the boat. And the boys, peasants like myself, some were frightened, but most were excited. And we sailed in the boat to Reggio. And there was a train in Reggio and we went north to Rome…” He lay back and licked his dry lips. Vivian moistened them again as she translated for Purcell.

The old man smiled and nodded at the kindness. He again refused Mercado’s offer to sleep. “I am very sick. You must let me finish. I feel the burning in my belly.”

“It’s just the food, Father. It has made the acid. You understand?”

“I understand that I am dying. Be silent. What is your name?”

“Henry Mercado.”

“Henry… good. So we went to Rome, Henry. All my life, I wished to go to Rome. Now I was in Rome. What a city… have you seen it? Everyone should go to Rome before he dies… You are a Catholic, Henry?”

“Well, yes, sort of. Yes.”

“Good.” The priest stayed silent awhile, then continued. “We were taken to the Vatican… all the priests from Sicily… there were twelve of us, I remember… to the Vatican, some place in the Vatican. A small building near the Sistine Chapel. There was a cardinal there dressed all in white. He did not give his name and I remembered thinking that this was ill-mannered, but what was I going to say to a cardinal of the Sacred College? We sat in chairs of fine fabric and we listened. The cardinal told us we would go with Mussolini’s army. Go to war in Ethiopia. We listened sadly, but no one spoke. The cardinal showed us an envelope, a beautiful envelope of hard paper, colored like butter. On the envelope was the seal of His Holiness… the ring of the fisherman…” The old priest stopped, and Vivian finished her translation.

Purcell thought he had passed out, but then he opened his eyes and asked, “Who sits on the throne of Saint Peter, now? How many since Pius?”

“Three, since Pius, Father,” Mercado replied.

Purcell said to Mercado, “The guy is near dead and he wants to know who his boss is. Listen, Henry, he is going to ask you a thousand irrelevant questions. Get him back to the story, please.”

“He is telling the story in his own way, Frank. The man has suffered. You and I know how he has suffered. These questions are important to him.”

Vivian put her hand on Purcell’s arm and said softly, “Let Henry handle it.”

Purcell grunted. Mercado spoke again in Italian. “After Pius XI was Pius XII. Then John XXIII. You would have liked him, Father. A good man. He died eleven years ago. Now Paul VI sits on the throne of Saint Peter. A good man also,” he added.

The old priest made noises that sounded like quiet weeping. When he spoke again, his voice was husky. “Yes. All good men, I am sure. And Il Duce? Is he still alive?”

Mercado replied, “There was a war. In Europe. Mussolini was killed. Europe is at peace now.”

“Yes. A war. I could see it coming, even in Berini. We could see it.”

Mercado asked, “Father, did you see what was in the envelope? The one the cardinal showed you?”

“The envelope…?” He paused. “Yes. There was an envelope for each priest. The cardinal told us we must keep the envelope in our possession always. Never, never must it leave our person… we were never to mention the envelope to anyone. Not even to the officers. The cardinal explained that when a priest dies in the army, all his possessions are given to another priest. So the envelope would always be in the hands of those who were sworn… we had to take an oath… sworn never to open it… but we would know when to open it. This cardinal with no name said that as a further precaution, the message on the inside was written in Latin, so if someone else should open it, he would have difficulty with the words. My Latin was bad and I remembered being ashamed of that. Latin is not used so much by a country priest. Only in the Mass. You understand? But the letter was in Latin, so that if it was opened by error, it would no doubt be taken to a priest for translation. This cardinal said that if we ever came upon the letter in that way, we were to say we had to take the letter and study it. Then we were to make a false translation on paper and burn the letter.” The priest breathed heavily, then moaned.

Vivian finished translating for Purcell, then said, “This is getting interesting.” She suggested, “Henry, push him just a little.”

“In his own way,” Mercado answered flatly. “He will get it all out.”

The priest moaned again. Vivian put her hand on his sweaty forehead. “He has fever, Henry. Isn’t there anything we can do?”

“I’m afraid not. If he holds out till morning, we can make Gondar in a few hours. There’s an English missionary hospital there.”

Purcell reminded them, “Prince Joshua’s army and the Provisional government army are less than an hour away — in those hills. I wouldn’t try it now, but in the morning, maybe. They should have a surgeon.”

Mercado thought a moment, then replied, “I don’t know. He is obviously a fugitive of some sort. When we find out from whom, then we can decide where to bring him.”

“Right. But push him just a little, Henry,” he said, mimicking Vivian’s words.

Mercado turned his attention back to the priest and asked him, “Father? Can you continue?”

“Yes. What are you talking about? I cannot go to Gondar.”

Mercado told him, “We will take you to an English hospital in the morning. Continue, if you feel—”

“Yes. I must finish it. The envelope… he told us that we were on no account to open it, unless, when we got to Ethiopia, we should see in the jungles a black monastery. Black like coal, made of black stone, he said. Hidden… in the jungles. There was none like it in all of Ethiopia, he said. It was the monastery of the old believers… the Coptics. And in this black monastery was a reliquary and within that reliquary was the relic of a saint, he told us. An important saint. A saint of the time of Jesus, he told us… The relic of the saint was so important that His Holiness himself wanted very much to have the relic carried back to Rome where it belonged, in the true church of Jesus Christ. In the Church of Saint Peter.”

Vivian translated for Purcell, who commented, “Don’t they have enough stuff in the Vatican?”

Mercado leaned closer to the priest. “Which saint? What kind of relic? A lock of hair? A bone? A piece of a garment?”

The priest laughed. “It was not the relic of a saint at all. Can you imagine such a thing? A cardinal of the Sacred College lying to a flock of rustic priests… Yes, we were well chosen to follow and serve with the Italian infantry. We asked no such questions as you ask now, Henry. We were simple country priests. We had strong legs and strong hearts and strong backs for the infantry. And we asked no questions of the cardinal who spoke to us in the shadow of the Basilica of Saint Peter, a man who had no name himself, but who spoke in the name of His Holiness. One priest, though, a young man… he asked why we should take a relic from a Christian country, even though it was not a Catholic country. It was a good question, was it not? But the cardinal said the relic belonged in Rome. That priest did not go to Ethiopia with us.” The old priest laughed softly, then let out a long groan and lay back.

Purcell listened to Vivian’s translation and said, “It sounds to me like Father Armano actually saw this relic — or whatever it was.”

Mercado nodded.

Purcell continued, “And probably tried to grab it for the pope, as per orders. And that’s what got him in the slammer for forty years.”

Again, Mercado nodded and said, “That’s a possible explanation of what he’s saying.”

“There may be a good story here, Henry.”

Mercado looked at the priest, who was now sleeping, or unconscious, and said, “This may be the end of the story.”

“Wake him,” suggested Purcell.

“No,” said Vivian. “Let him sleep.”

Purcell and Mercado exchanged glances, knowing that the priest might never wake up.

But Mercado said, “If it’s meant to be that we should hear the rest of this man’s story, then it will be.”

“I envy you your faith, Henry,” said Purcell.

Vivian looked at the priest and said, “He’s traveled a long road to meet us and he’ll finish his story when he awakens.”

Purcell saw no way to argue with the illogic of Mercado’s faith and Vivian’s mysticism, so he nodded and said, “We’ll post a watch to listen for Gallas and to see if the old man wakes up, or dies.”

“You’re a very practical man,” observed Vivian. She added, “All brain and no heart.”

“Thank you,” said Purcell.

Mercado volunteered for the first watch, and Purcell and Vivian lay down on two sleeping bags.

The two armies in the hills seemed to have lost their enthusiasm for the battle, though now and then a burst of machine-gun fire split the night air.

Purcell stared up at the black sky, thinking about the priest’s story, and about Henry Mercado. Mercado, he thought, knew something or deduced something from what the priest had said.

Purcell also thought about Vivian, lying beside him, and he pictured her naked, standing beside the sulphur pool.

He thought back a few days to when he’d met her and Henry Mercado in the Hilton bar in Addis Ababa. It had seemed like a chance meeting, and maybe it was, just as meeting the priest in this godforsaken place was totally unexpected. And yet… well, Vivian would say it was fate and destiny, and Henry would say it was God’s will.

A parachute flare burst overhead and lit up the sky. He stared at it awhile, then closed his eyes to preserve his night vision, and drifted off into a restless sleep.

Chapter 4

They took turns sitting up with the sleeping priest, listening for signs of death and sounds of danger.

At about three in the morning, Purcell woke Vivian and informed her that the priest was awake and wanted to speak.

She wondered if Purcell had woken the priest, and she said to him, “Let him rest.”

“He wants to speak, Vivian.”

She looked at Father Armano, who was awake and did seem to want to speak. She shook Mercado’s shoulder and informed him, “Father Armano is awake.”

Mercado moved toward the priest and knelt beside him. “How are you feeling, Father?”

“There is a burning in my belly. I need water.”

“No. It is a wound of the stomach. You cannot have water.”

Vivian said, “Give him a little, Henry. He’ll die of dehydration otherwise, won’t he?”

Mercado turned to Purcell in the darkness. “Frank?”

“She’s right.”

Vivian gave him a half canteen cup of water. The old priest spit up most of it, and Purcell saw it was tinged with red.

Purcell said, “It’s going to be close. Talk to him, Henry.”

“Yes, all right. Father, do you want to—?”

“Yes, I will continue.” He took a deep breath and said, “In Rome… the cardinal… the relic…” He thought awhile, then spoke slowly. “So he told us to go with Il Duce’s army. Go to Ethiopia, he said. There will be war in Ethiopia soon. And then he warned us — the black monastery was guarded by monks of the old believers. They had a military order… like the Knights of Malta, or the Templars. The cardinal did not know all there was to know of this. But he knew they would guard this relic with their lives. That much he knew.”

Vivian translated for Purcell, who asked, “How can he remember this after forty years?”

Mercado replied, “He has thought of little else in that prison.”

Purcell nodded, but said, “Still… he may be hallucinating or his memory has played tricks on him.”

Vivian replied, “He sounds rational to me.”

Mercado said to the priest, “Please go on, Father.”

Father Armano nodded vigorously, as though he knew he was in a race with death, and he needed to unburden himself of this secret that burned in him like the fire in his stomach.

He said, “The cardinal told us to go carefully, to go only with soldiers, and if we should find this black monastery, go into it. Avoid bloodshed if you can, he told us. But you must move quickly, he said, because the monks would spirit the relic away through underground passages if they thought they were being overpowered. He spoke as if he knew something of this.” Father Armano needed more water, and Purcell took the canteen and poured it slowly around his lips as Vivian translated.

The priest asked to be propped up so they sat him against the wall in the corner. He began talking without prompting. “So, a bold priest asked, ‘How will we know what to look for and what to do when we enter the monastery?’ And the cardinal said, ‘The words of His Holiness are in the envelope, and if you should ever arrive at your destination, you will open the envelope and you will know all.’ ”

Father Armano paused, and a faraway look came into his eyes. At first Purcell thought he was dying, but the priest smiled and continued. “Then something happened which I will never forget. His Holiness himself came into the small room where we sat with the cardinal. He spoke with the cardinal and we could hear him address the cardinal by his Christian name. He called him Eugenio. So now the cardinal with no name had a name we could use in our heads when we thought of him. But we could not call him Eugenio, could we?” The priest asked for some time to rest.

Mercado seemed to be thinking, and Purcell asked him, “Do you know who this Cardinal Eugenio could be?”

“No…”

Purcell asked, “How many cardinals would there be living in Rome at that time? And how many do you think were named Eugenio?”

Mercado replied, “I wasn’t a believer in those days and cared not at all for cardinals… but there was one who was secretary of state for Pius XI… Eugenio Pacelli.”

“Sounds familiar for some reason.”

“He assumed another name in 1939. Pius XII.”

“That sounds more familiar.”

Vivian pondered this information. “But we don’t know for sure…”

“No,” said Mercado. “We’ll have to go to the Italian Library when we get back to Addis.”

The old priest was following some words. Mercado turned to him. “If I showed you a picture of this cardinal as he looked in 1935, would you—”

“Yes. Of course. I could not forget that face.”

Realizing that Father Armano might not live long enough to see a photograph, Mercado asked, “Was this cardinal tall, thin? Aquiline nose? Light-complexioned?” He added a few more details.

“That could be him. Yes.”

Mercado leaned closer to Father Armano and asked, “And did His Holiness say anything to you?”

“Yes. He came right up to us. We were standing, of course. He seemed a kind man. He even tried to speak in the Sicilian dialect. He spoke it with a bad accent, but no one laughed, of course. He spoke of humility and obedience… he spoke of duty and he spoke of the Church, the true Church. He said we should treat the priests of the Ethiopian church with respect, but also with firmness… He did not mention the envelopes. The cardinal still had them on his person. His Holiness seemed not to know of the mission sometimes, but other times he seemed to know. The words were general. You understand? He blessed us and left. The cardinal then gave everyone an envelope and also we took an oath of secrecy. I am still bound by that oath, but I must tell you all that happened, so I am breaking my oath. It is of no importance after such a long time… And we made the oath under false…” His voice trailed off.

Mercado touched his arm and said, “It’s all right, Father—”

“Yes. Yes. Let me finish. So, we were taken to the Piazza Venezia. There was a military procession there. Tanks, cannons, trucks. I had never seen such things. It seemed that all Italy was in uniform. And he was there, also. The new Caesar, Il Duce. He stood like Caesar on a balcony. I did not like that man. He was too much with guns and the talk of war. And the king was there too. Victor Emmanuel. A decent man. Is he…?”

“Dead. There are no more kings, Father. Go on.”

“Yes. Dead. Everyone is dead. Forty years is a long time. Yes… I must finish. In the piazza they had the ceremony of the blessing of the guns. They put us to work, the priests from Sicily. We helped with the blessing. Then His Holiness arrived. He blessed the guns also. I did not like this. His Holiness stood with the king and Mussolini. Then came the cardinal, Eugenio. I was close to them. They spoke very intently. All the parade was going by for them, and the soldiers marched, but they paid no attention. I did not like the looks in their eyes. I was that close. Perhaps I imagined all this later… in the prison. The looks in their eyes, I mean. Perhaps they were talking about something else. Who knows? But I felt then, or maybe later, that they were talking about the thing…” His voice cracked and he stopped speaking.

Purcell picked up the canteen, but Mercado grabbed his arm. “You’ll kill him, Frank.”

“If he doesn’t have a bad stomach wound, we’re killing him with dehydration. If it’s bad, then he’s dead anyway. We can’t get him to a doctor for hours.”

Mercado nodded.

Purcell emptied the canteen over the old priest’s mouth, saying to Mercado, “Keep him on track, Henry. The monastery.”

Mercado said, “I’m starting to feel guilty about pushing a dying priest to stick to the facts and give us a good story.”

Purcell replied, “The whole point of the Catholic religion is guilt.”

Mercado ignored him and asked Father Armano, “Would you like to rest?”

“No. I must finish.” Father Armano continued, “The next day I was brought to an infantry battalion. The soldiers were all peasants from my province in Sicily. We went to a boat and the boat sailed for many days. And we sailed through Egypt and we could see Egypt on both sides of the canal. The boat went to Masawa, in Eritrea. You know the place? This was the new Caesar’s African empire. He called us his legions. ‘Go to Africa,’ he said, ‘and make Ethiopia Italian.’ In Masawa our engineers were building the harbor. Ships arrived with soldiers and tanks… there was going to be a war. A fool could see that. The army marched to Asmara. It rained every day. But then the dry season began… The governor of Eritrea assembled the army in front of his palace. He read us a telegram from Il Duce. ‘Avanti! I order you to begin the advance.’ Then a general — I cannot recall his name — he read a proclamation. He spoke of the new Fascist Italy and of sacrifice. The bishop of Asmara rang the church bells and everyone sang the Fascist anthem, ‘Youth.’ Everyone seemed happy on the outside. But on the inside, there was much sadness. I know this because the soldiers came to me and told me they were sad. We marched on Ethiopia. At first it was not so bad, except for the heat and the fatigue. In the early part of October we entered Adowa. There was little fighting. But then we marched out of Adowa and the army of the Ethiopians began to fight. So, this Ethiopian emperor was a brave man. Haile Selassie — they called him the King of Kings. The Conquering Lion of Judah. Descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, they said. A descendant of the House of David. A brave man. He led his army with his own person, while our new Caesar sat in Rome. I am sure this man is dead, no? He must have died in battle.”

“No,” said Mercado, “the emperor escaped to England, then returned to Ethiopia when the British drove out the Italians. He is still alive, but a very old man now.”

Purcell wondered if Father Armano could follow all this, but the priest said, “So, they are not all dead, then. Good. Someone lives from my time. This emperor was a brave man. His army was ill-equipped, but they fought like lions against our tanks and planes. But we won that war. That much I could see before my imprisonment.”

“Yes,” Mercado said, “you won that war. But you lost the big one afterwards. The one with the Americans and the English. Italy fought with Germany.”

“With Germany? Insanity. Which war is this one, then?”

Mercado was pulled in two directions. On one hand, he wanted to put the old priest’s mind to rest about all that had transpired in forty years. He actually enjoyed telling it to him. But on the other hand, there was the priest’s own story, which had to be finished.

He glanced at Purcell, who now seemed resigned to the priest’s recounting of all he remembered of the past and all his questions about the present. Mercado said to Father Armano, “It is a civil war, Father. Ethiopia now owns the old Italian colony of Eritrea. Some Eritreans, mostly the Muslims, want independence. They are fighting the Ethiopians. Inside Ethiopia itself, there are Christians and Muslims who no longer want the emperor. Mostly it is the army that no longer wants Haile Selassie as emperor, and they have arrested him, but he is well. He lives in his palace under house arrest. There are some Royalist forces who still fight the army. There are others who want neither the army nor the emperor. It is a very confused war and there is much unhappiness in this land. Also, there is famine. Famine for two years now.”

“Yes, I know of the famine.” He asked, “And the Gallas? I heard you mention them. They are not to be trusted. In the last war, they took advantage of the fighting and killed many on both sides. They love fighting. They love it when there is strife in the land.” There was actual anger in the old priest’s gentle voice. He said, “It was the Gallas who attacked the place where I was imprisoned… they killed everyone…”

Henry Mercado remembered the Gallas very well — fierce tribesmen with no loyalty beyond their clans. He said to the priest, “Yes. I remember from the last war. I was here then. I am from your time, too, Father.”

The old priest nodded and said, “You must not fall into their hands.” He looked at Vivian.

Mercado did not respond, but the priest’s warning awakened old and bad memories of that colonial war, and especially of the Gallas. Between 1936 and 1940, they fought the Ethiopian partisans who still carried on the fight against the Italians, and when the British took Ethiopia from the Italians in 1941, the Gallas harassed the retreating Italians as well as the advancing British and the reemerging Ethiopian partisan forces. Wherever there was a clash of arms, the Gallas heard it and rode to it on their horses. This was how they lived; on military plunder. And they didn’t know a white flag or a press card when they saw one. In quiet times, they stayed in the Danakil Desert, near Eritrea, or the Ogaden Desert, near Somalia. But when the dogs of war were let loose, as now, thought Mercado, they were all over the countryside, as though someone had shaken a beehive, and the famine had made them more fierce and more predatory than usual.

Mercado had suspected and the priest had confirmed that the Gallas were in the area, that the battle in the hills between Prince Joshua’s Royalist forces and the army forces of the Provisional government had drawn them like sharks to the smell of blood. They would sit in a place just like this spa and wait patiently for stragglers from one or the other army. Or if an army was badly beaten and retreating, they would attack the whole force. Yes, Mercado remembered them well. They butchered more than one beaten Ethiopian army and never spared the Western reporters who were with the army, and the Azebe Gallas, who populated this region, and who were neither Muslim nor Christian but pagan, were the worst of a bad lot. They hated the indigenous Amhara passionately, but they saved their most creative torture and death for Westerners.

The priest was sleeping again, and Mercado’s mind went back to the first weeks of the Italian invasion, which he had covered for the Times of London. He’d had the misfortune to be with the Amharic Prince Mulugeta in February 1936, at a place called Mount Aradam, a place historically and topographically like Masada, where the Israelites made their last stand against the Romans, and where the prince was making his last stand against the new Roman legions of Mussolini. Prince Mulugeta’s force of seventy thousand was being systematically destroyed by the Italians as the days dragged on. Mercado was with the prince at his headquarters, and with them was a British Army advisor with the evocative name of Burgoyne and a strange Cuban-American soldier of fortune named Captain Del Valle.

The prince, Mercado remembered, was weeping in his tent at the news that his son had been mutilated and killed by Azebe Gallas at the edge of the battle, and he decided to go down to the foot of Mount Aradam to find his son’s corpse. Mercado, Burgoyne, and Del Valle, young and foolhardy and playing the part of Kiplingesque Europeans, volunteered to go with him and his staff. When they got to the area where the scouts — supposedly Gallas loyal to the prince — had said the body was located, they themselves were surrounded by Gallas. The Gallas would have butchered them all, except that a flight of Italian Air Force planes swooped down on them and began machine-gunning the whole area, killing not only the Ethiopians but also the Gallas. Prince Mulugeta was killed and so was most of his staff. Del Valle and Burgoyne were killed also. The surviving Gallas stripped and castrated all the bodies, and Mercado escaped only by stripping himself and smearing blood over his body so that he looked to any passing Galla as though he had already been killed and mutilated.

Mercado suspected, thinking back on it, that the whole thing had been an elaborate trap, perhaps with Italian connivance. But that was another time. The place was the same, however. They were not too far from Mount Aradam, where Mercado had lain naked, trying very much to look dead.

He took a deep breath, then looked at Father Armano, who was awake, and asked him, “Were you at Mount Aradam?”

“Yes. I was there. It was a few weeks before I was captured. It was the biggest slaughter yet. Thousands. I was made very busy in those weeks.”

Mercado thought it was a stunning coincidence that he and this priest were at the same battle almost forty years ago. But maybe not. Priests, reporters, and vultures were attracted to death; they all had work to do.

Purcell lit another cigarette. A false dawn lit the eastern sky outside the gaping windows. He said to Mercado, “People die at dawn more frequently than other times. Ask him to finish.”

“Yes. All right. I was just remembering Aradam.”

“Remember it in your memoirs.”

“Don’t be insensitive, Frank,” said Vivian.

Mercado looked at Father Armano. “Would you like to continue, Father?”

“Yes. Let me make an end of it. So, you asked about Aradam. Yes. The mountain was drenched in blood and the Gallas came afterwards and slaughtered the fleeing army of Ethiopia. And General Badoglio tried to make common cause with the Gallas because there were many Italian units, like my own battalion, that were weak and exposed to the Gallas, and the Gallas were bought with food and clothes by the Italian generals. But the Gallas were treacherous; they massacred small Italian units that were weakened by the fighting. My battalion — perhaps four hundred men remained out of a thousand — was told to march to Lake Tana at the source of the Blue Nile. The Gallas harassed us as we moved, and the remnants of the Ethiopian army harassed us, and the Gallas also attacked the Ethiopians. Was there ever so much bloodshed in such a confused, senseless manner? Everyone was like the shark and the vulture. They attacked the weak and the sick at every opportunity. I buried boys who had been baptized in my church. But we arrived at Lake Tana and made a camp, with the lake at our backs, so we could go no further.”

Father Armano fell silent, and Mercado had no doubt the old man was not so much remembering as he was reliving that terrible battle and its aftermath.

After a full minute, Father Armano continued. “Now, the battalion commander was a young captain — all the senior officers were dead — and we had perhaps two hundred men left. And this young captain sent a patrol into the jungle to see what was there. Ten men he sent and only five came back. These five said they were ambushed in the jungle by Gallas. The Gallas captured two or three of the five missing men. The returning patrol said they could hear the screams of the men as they were being tortured… and the men of the patrol also told of seeing a high black wall in the jungle. Black like coal. It was like a fort, they said, but they could see a cross coming from a tower within the walls, so perhaps it was a monastery. I asked the captain if I could go back and find the bodies of the lost soldiers. He said no, but I said it was my duty as the priest of the battalion and he conceded to my wish. Also, I wished to see this black wall and the tower in the jungle… but I said nothing of this.”

Vivian translated for Purcell, who commented, “This guy had balls.”

“Actually,” said Mercado, “he had orders from the pope, and he had his faith.”

Vivian added, “And he knew he had found what he was looking for.”

Father Armano looked at his three benefactors as though he knew what they were saying, and he nodded, then continued. “So with the five soldiers who had survived the ambush, and who were not happy to go back, and five others, we returned to the place of the ambush. The soldiers we were looking for were dead, of course. The ones who had been captured alive — three of them — had been tied to trees by the Gallas and castrated. I gave the last rites and we buried them all.”

Father Armano stayed silent awhile, then said, “So now I had to make a decision… I had to know… so I opened the envelope that was with me since Rome, and I read the words… and I had to read the words in Latin again and again to be certain…”

Mercado asked, “What did the letter say?”

The priest shook his head, drew a long breath, and continued, “So now I imposed upon the leader of this patrol, a young sergeant, whose name I only remember as Giovanni, to show me the place of the black walls that he had seen. He asked my forgiveness and he refused. So then I told him and the men of the patrol of my mission to find the black monastery… I showed them the letter with the seal of the Holy Father and I told them that the Holy Father himself had asked me to do this… that within the monastery was a sacred object of the time of Jesus… I promised them that if we found this monastery and the sacred relic, I would petition the Holy Father to bring them home and they would receive great honors… Perhaps I promised too much, but they spoke among themselves and agreed, so we set off into the jungle.”

Father Armano stared into the darkness awhile. “It was a long distance and took many days and we were lost, too, I think. The sergeant was not sure. I felt that the Ethiopians or the Gallas were following… Please, some water.”

Vivian gave it to him as she translated for Purcell. The dark hour before the dawn had come and gone and now the sky began to lighten again.

“We can move in about a half hour,” announced Purcell.

Mercado said, “We can leave now. We need to get him to Gondar.”

Purcell replied, “He needs to finish his story, Henry. He’s left us hanging.”

Mercado was again torn, but there were no good choices.

Vivian said, “I agree with Henry.”

“Well,” said Purcell, “I don’t. And it’s my Jeep.” He added, to soften his words, “It’s not only about the monastery. Father Armano wants us to tell his people and the world what happened to him — if he dies.”

Mercado said, “It’s actually about the monastery and the relic. But you make a point, Frank.”

The priest had sat himself up higher in the corner. In the dawning light, his features began to materialize, and he was no longer the shadow of a voice. They stared at him as their eyes became accustomed to the gray light. The priest looked like death, but his eyes were much brighter than they should have been, and his face — what they could see through the dirt and the beard — was rosy. But the rosiness, Purcell knew, was the fever, and the brightness of the eyes was also the fever, and perhaps a little madness too.

Mercado wiped the priest’s forehead. “Father. We will be moving shortly.”

The priest nodded, then said, “But I must first finish.”

Purcell looked at him. He had become real all of a sudden. The voice had a body. Purcell became melancholy and felt a great sadness, not only for the priest but also for himself. He saw himself as he was in the prison camp. The priest’s bearded face brought it back, and he felt uncomfortable with that face. It was the face of all suffering. Indochina had settled into his brain again and he could not cope with it so early in the morning.

The priest breathed softly and continued. “So, we came upon it. In a deep jungle valley. In a million years you would not find it, but this sergeant was a good soldier, and having found it once by accident, he remembered how to find it again. A rock. A tree. A stream. You see? So we approached the black place. The jungle came up to the walls of the place, and hid it from view, but a tree had fallen and exposed some of the wall. We walked in a circle through the jungle and around the wall, which was of black stone, with a shine like glass, and it was constructed in the old style of the monasteries and had no gate or door.”

Father Armano asked for more water on his face, and Vivian washed him with a wet handkerchief. Purcell was briefly touched by her compassion; he could see why old Henry had taken a liking to her.

Father Armano said, “We came around to the place from which we started. There was now a basket there on a rope, as in the old style of the monasteries of the Dark Ages. The basket was not there before, so we took this as a sign of hospitality. We called up to the walls, but no one answered. The basket was large and so we climbed into it… all of us. It was made of reeds, but it was strong. And we all fit — eleven — and the basket began to rise.”

He stopped, took a long, deep breath, then went on. “The men were somewhat uneasy, but we could see crosses cut into the black stone so we knew it was a Christian place and we were not so much afraid, though I remembered the words of the cardinal about the monks. The basket came to rest at the top of the wall. There was no one there. The basket had been raised with a device of stones and gears and it was not necessary to stand by it once it was started. You understand? So we were alone on top of the wall… We climbed out of the basket, over the parapet, and stepped onto a walk.”

The priest’s face contorted and he grabbed his stomach with both hands.

Vivian knelt beside him and said in Italian, “You must lie down and rest.”

Mercado said, “He’s actually better off sitting up. That’s why he sat up in the first place.”

Vivian said, “We need to get him to the hospital. Now.”

Purcell suggested, “Ask him what he wants to do.”

Mercado asked Father Armano, and the priest replied, “I need to finish this… I am… near the end…”

Mercado nodded.

Father Armano took a deep breath and spit blood into his beard. He stayed silent for a time, then began. “Within the walls of the monastery lay beautiful buildings of the black stone and green gardens and blue ponds and fountains. The men were very happy at the sight and asked me many questions, which I could not answer. But I told the sergeant, Giovanni, about the monks and he ordered his men to keep their rifles at the ready. We called down into the monastery, but only the echoes of our own voices answered us. Now everyone was troubled again. But we found wooden steps to the ground. We walked with caution like a patrol because we were uneasy. We called out again, but only our own voices answered, and the echoes made us more uneasy, so we did not call out again, but walked quietly. We walked to the main building… a church. The doors of the church were covered with polished silver and they blinded us in the sunlight. On the doors were the signs of the early Christians… fish, lambs, palms. We entered the church. Inside, we observed that the roof was made of a substance like glass, but not glass. A stone, perhaps alabaster, and it let in the sunlight and the church was bathed in a glow that made my head swim and hurt my eyes. I had never seen such a thing and I am sure there is not such a thing, even in Rome.” He laid his head back in the corner and closed his eyes.

Purcell, Mercado, and Vivian watched him closely in the dim light. Mercado asked, “Are we doing the right thing? Or are we killing him?”

Purcell said, “I think he’s accepted death, so we need to accept it.”

Vivian concurred and added, “He wants the world to know his story… and his fate.”

Purcell agreed, “That’s what we do best. So I think we need to wake him.”

Mercado hesitated, then crouched and shook the priest gently.

The priest opened his eyes slowly. He said, “I can see you all now. This woman is very beautiful. She should not be traveling like this.”

Purcell informed him, “Women do whatever men do these days, Father.” But no one translated.

The priest took a deep breath. “So, now we make an end of it. And listen closely.” He pressed his eyes with his shaky hands. “So we walked through the strange light of the church and into an adjoining building. A bigger place it seemed, but perhaps it was the darkness that made it look so. It was a building of many columns. We walked in the darkness, and the soldiers had removed their helmets because they were in a church, but they did not sling their rifles on their shoulders, but held them ready. Though it made no difference. In a second, every column produced a robed monk. It was over in a second or two. Everyone was clubbed to the ground and not a shot was fired. There was very little noise…”

Father Armano seemed to be failing, but he was determined to go on and spoke quickly. “I wore on my helmet a large cross which was the army regulation. So perhaps this is what saved me. The others were clubbed again and taken away. I remember seeing this, although I was stunned by the blow. But you see, I had left my helmet on, as it was not required of me to remove a head covering in church. You understand? So the steel absorbed the blow and God saved me. The monks dragged me away and put me in a cell.”

The priest suddenly became rigid, and his face turned pale. His gums bit into his bearded lip, then the pain passed and he exhaled, drew a long breath, and said something in Latin that Mercado recognized as the Lord’s Prayer. He finished the prayer, then he picked up his story in Italian. “A monk’s cell… not a prison… they cared for me… two or three of the Coptic monks spoke some Italian… so I said to them… I said, ‘I have come to see the sacred relic…’ and one who spoke Italian answered, ‘If you have come to see it, you will see it.’ But he also said, ‘Those who see it may never speak of it.’ I agreed to this, though I did not understand that I had sealed my fate…”

Purcell waited for Vivian’s translation, then commented, “I think he understood that.”

And in fact, Father Armano added, “But perhaps I did understand… though when I saw the sacred relic, it did not matter…”

Mercado asked Father Armano, almost casually, “What was it, Father? What did they show you?”

The priest stayed silent for some time, then said, “So… so they brought me to it, and I saw it… and it was the thing that was written in the letter… and I fell to my knees and prayed, and the monks prayed with me… and the pain of the blow to my head vanished… and my soul was at peace.”

Father Armano smiled and closed his eyes, as though reliving the peace that had filled him then. His body shook, then he lay motionless.

Mercado felt for a heartbeat and Purcell felt for a pulse. They looked at each other, and Mercado said, “Dead.”

They waited for more light so they could bury him.

Vivian remained at the priest’s side, holding his hand, which was still warm. She felt something — his fingers tightening the grip on her hand. “Henry.”

“Yes?”

“He’s… squeezing my hand.”

“Rigor mortis. Let go, Vivian.”

She tried to pull her hand out of the priest’s grip, but he held tightly. She pressed her cheek on his forehead which was still burning with fever. “Henry… he’s alive.”

“No—”

The priest suddenly opened his eyes and stared up at the sunlight coming through the open ceiling.

Purcell quickly gave him water and they knelt beside him. Mercado said, “Father — can you speak?”

He nodded, then said in a weak voice, “I have seen it… it was very bright. It was the sun in Berini. I went home… it was so beautiful…”

No one responded.

“My sister, Anna… you must go to her and tell her. She wishes to hear from you.”

Mercado said, “We will go to her.”

He nodded, then seemed to remember what he needed them to know. He licked his cracked lips and spoke. “So then… I was taken into the jungle and given over to some soldiers of the emperor’s army. I thought I was being released… being exchanged, perhaps, for Ethiopian prisoners who were held by our army… but I was taken to a local ras, a prince named Theodore who kept a small garrison in the jungle…” He paused in thought, then continued, “That was almost forty years ago. And last night I walked out of that fortress.” Father Armano looked at Mercado, Purcell, and Vivian and said, “So now you know it, and I can rest in peace. You must go to Berini and tell them what happened to Giuseppe Armano. And go also to the Vatican. Tell them I found the black monastery… and saw the relic.”

Purcell felt that he had missed something in the story or the translation. He looked at Vivian, but she only shrugged.

Mercado asked, “Father, what was in the monastery?”

Father Armano looked up. “You will never find it. And you should not look for it.”

“What was it that you saw?”

Father Armano did not reply directly, but said, “My head was bleeding from the blow of the club. The iron helmet took the blow, but still I cut my head somehow. They touched some of it to my head and the pain was gone and the wound healed immediately… and the monks said I was one of the blessed. One who believed…”

Purcell listened to the translation and said, “Maybe he didn’t understand the question, Henry.”

Mercado let out a breath of exasperation. “Frank—” He turned to the priest. “Please tell us what it was, Father.”

The priest smiled. “Of course you want to know what it was. But it has caused so much suffering already. It is blessed and cursed at the same time. Cursed, not of itself, but cursed because of the greed and treachery of men. It should stay where it is. It is meant to stay hidden until men become less evil… The monks said this to me.”

“What was it?” asked Mercado firmly.

He asked for water. Vivian gave him all he wanted, and he drank too much of it, but no one stopped him. The priest closed his eyes, then said in a soft voice, “The Holy Grail… the sacred vessel which Christ himself used at the Last Supper… It is filled with his most precious blood. It can heal mortal wounds and calm troubled souls. If you believe. And the lance that the Roman soldier, Longinus, used to pierce the side of our Lord… it hangs above the Grail, and the lance drips a never-ending flow of blood into the Grail. I have seen this, and I have experienced this miracle.” He looked at Mercado. “Do you believe this, Henry?”

Mercado did not reply.

The priest said, in a surprisingly clear voice, “If you find it, you will believe in it. But I would advise you to leave here. Go to Rome, to the Vatican, and tell them I found it, and that it is safe where it was. And then forget all that I have said.” He asked, “Will you do this?”

No one replied.

“And go to Berini.” Father Armano blessed them, then recited the Lord’s Prayer in Latin and closed his eyes.

The sun was yellow now and small birds, nesting in the cavernous lobby ceiling, flew around the ruined vaults overhead and made morning noises at the new sun.

They knelt around the old priest and spoke to him, but he did not answer, and within the next quarter hour he died peacefully.

Vivian bent over and kissed the old priest’s cold forehead.

Chapter 5

Henry Mercado retrieved a short spade from the Jeep, and Frank Purcell carried the body of the dead priest, wrapped in the blanket, into the courtyard of the spa.

Vivian chose a spot in the overgrown garden near the dry fountain, and Purcell dug a grave deep enough to keep the jackals from the body.

Purcell, Mercado, and Vivian lowered the body into the grave and took turns filling it with the red African earth. When they were done, Mercado said a short prayer over the grave.

Vivian wiped her sweating face, then picked up her camera and took photographs of the unmarked grave and the surrounding ruins. They had agreed not to make notes of this encounter, in case they or their notebooks fell into the wrong hands, and Purcell wasn’t sure Vivian should be taking pictures, but he said nothing. She said, “We can show these to his family.” She added, “They may want to bring the body home.”

Purcell didn’t think that after forty years there was anyone in Berini who would want to do that. But it was possible, and nice of Vivian to think of it.

Mercado looked at the grave, then said to his companions, “I somehow feel that we killed him with our prodding… and all that water…”

Purcell replied, “He was a dead man when we found him, Henry.” He added, “We did what he wanted us to do. We listened to him.” He reminded Mercado, “He wanted us to let his people know what happened to him. And we’ll do that.”

Vivian sat on a stone garden bench and stared at the grave. She said, “He also wanted us to know about the black monastery… and the Grail. He wanted us to go to Rome… the Vatican, and tell them that Father Giuseppe Armano had found what they sent him to find.”

Purcell glanced at Mercado and he was sure they were both thinking the same thing: They weren’t going to break this story to the Vatican. At least not now. In fact, Father Armano himself had suggested that the Grail was safe where it was, meaning leave it there.

Mercado sat beside Vivian, looked around at the crumbling faux-Roman spa, and said, “This is a fitting place to bury him.” He asked, “Well, what do we think about what Father Armano said?”

No one replied, and Mercado prompted, “About the black monastery… and the Holy Grail?”

Purcell lit a cigarette. “Well… I think his story was basically true… I mean about the cardinal, the pope, his war experiences, and the monastery. But he sort of lost me with the Lance of Longinus dripping blood into the Holy Grail.”

Mercado thought a moment, then nodded and said, “I’m supposed to be the believer, but… you know, in the Gulag, there was a prisoner who said he’d been sent there for trying to kill Stalin. But he was actually there for pilfering state property — twenty years. But you see, he needed a crime big enough to fit the sentence, instead of the other way around.”

No one responded, so Mercado continued. “We don’t know what Father Armano did to spend forty years in a cell. But I think he convinced himself that he was there because he’d seen what he wasn’t supposed to see.”

Vivian said, “But his story was so full of detail.”

Mercado said to her, “Vivian, if you had forty years to work on a story, you would get the details down quite well.” He added, “He wasn’t actually lying to us. He had just deluded himself to the point where it became truth in his own mind.”

Purcell wiped his face with his sleeve. The sun was a brutal yellow now. He asked Mercado, “Where do you think the story became delusional?”

Mercado shrugged, then replied, “Maybe after the Lake Tana part. Maybe he had been captured by the Ethiopian army and they put him in jail as a prisoner of war.”

Purcell asked, “But why lock him up for forty years? The war with the Italians ended within a year.”

Again Mercado shrugged and replied, “I don’t know… the local ras, Prince Theodore, had captured an Italian enemy… a priest who they didn’t want to kill… so they threw him in jail and forgot about him.”

Purcell pointed out, “But when the Italians won the war, the prince would have given Father Armano to them to curry favor, or for a price. Instead, they kept him locked in solitary confinement for four decades. Why?”

Mercado conceded, “I suppose it is possible that Father Armano did find and enter this black monastery, and maybe the monks did kill the Italian soldiers who were with Father Armano, and that’s why the monks handed him over to the Ethiopian prince and had him put away for life — so he couldn’t reveal what they’d done, or reveal the location of the monastery.” He added, “They silenced a witness without killing him. Yes, I can see that happening if the witness was a priest.”

Purcell suggested, “So maybe what the priest said is all true — except for the part about the Holy Grail and the lance dripping blood.”

Mercado replied, “That’s very possible.”

Purcell asked, “So should we look for this black monastery?”

“It would be a dangerous undertaking,” said Mercado.

“But,” said Purcell, “worth the risk if we’re actually looking for the Holy Grail.”

“Yes,” agreed Mercado, “but the Holy Grail does not actually exist, Frank. It is a legend. A myth.”

“I thought you were a true believer, Henry.”

“I am, old boy. But I don’t believe in medieval myths. I believe in God.”

Vivian was looking at Mercado thoughtfully and said to him, “I think, Henry, that you’re not so sure of what you’re saying.”

“I am sure.”

Purcell speculated, “Maybe you’re trying to cut us out of the deal, Henry. Or cut me out, and take your photographer along to look for the black monastery.”

Mercado looked offended and said, “You’ve been in the sun too long.”

“Look, Henry,” said Purcell, “you and I and Vivian all believe every word of Father Armano’s story, including him finding the Holy Grail in the monastery. But the problem is the Grail itself. The priest saw it, but is it actually the Grail? The cup used by Christ at the Last Supper? Or is it something that the monks think is the Holy Grail?”

Mercado nodded. “That’s the most logical conclusion.” He asked rhetorically, “How many false relics are there in the Catholic Church?” He answered his own question: “Probably hundreds. Such as a piece of the true cross. The nails used to crucify Christ. A piece of his robe. That is what the priest saw — a false relic.”

“Correct,” agreed Purcell. “But what we need to decide is whether or not we want to look for this black monastery, and the so-called Holy Grail. Is that enough of a story to risk our lives for?” He added, “Don’t forget what happened to…” He nodded toward the grave.

Mercado glanced at the fresh earth, but didn’t reply.

Vivian reminded them, “Father Armano said that the sacred blood healed his wound.”

Purcell explained, “If you believe strongly enough, you can experience a psychosomatic healing of the body, and certainly of the mind. We all know this.”

“Well… yes…” replied Vivian. “But he also described the Lance of Longinus dripping a never-ending supply of blood into the Grail.”

“Well, you got me there, Vivian.”

She continued, “And apparently the Vatican believes in this — if you believe that part of Father Armano’s story. And I do.”

Purcell pointed out, “The Vatican does not necessarily believe that the Holy Grail even exists, or that it somehow wound up in Ethiopia. But they decided to take advantage of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and send a bunch of priests here with the army to check out something they heard or read — and while they were at it, grab anything they could find.”

Mercado agreed and said, “The Italian army looted a great number of religious artifacts from Ethiopia.” He further informed them, “The steles sitting in front of the Italian Foreign Ministry in Rome were taken from the ancient Ethiopian capital of Axum.” He added, “The Ethiopians want them back.”

“The spoils of war,” Purcell said, “go to the victors.”

Mercado agreed. “Europe, the Vatican, the British Museum are filled with objects looted from the rest of the world. But those days are over, so even if we decide to look for this relic, and we find it, we have no right to try to… take it.”

Purcell said, “You’re getting ahead of yourself, Henry. We’re not sure we’re going to look for it. And if we do look for it and we find it, what we’re going to do is take a few photos and write about it — not steal it.”

Mercado clarified, “We don’t believe it is the actual cup used by Christ at the Last Supper, and we could not prove that in any case. And we most definitely do not believe it has any mystical powers, contrary to legend. But the priest’s story — the Vatican, the cardinal, the pope, the monastery, the monks, the Grail, and the lance — are the stuff of a great news story.” He added, “A human interest story. The dying priest who has been imprisoned since the Italian invasion—”

“Correct, but we couldn’t write only about what the dying priest told us and then not report that we followed up by looking for the black monastery.” Purcell added, “We’d look like all those journalists sitting in the Hilton bar in Addis, rewriting government press releases.”

Mercado replied, “We are certainly not that.” He added, “We’re here.”

Purcell asked rhetorically, “So have we talked ourselves into this? Are we willing to risk our lives to look for the Holy Grail that probably says ‘Made in Japan’ when you turn it over?”

Mercado forced a smile, then said, “I think the story is good enough to pursue to the end.”

Purcell reminded him, “So did Father Armano.”

No one spoke for a while, each lost in thought. Finally, Vivian said, “If we don’t do this, we’ll regret it all our lives.”

“Which might be very short if we do,” Purcell pointed out.

Mercado said, “Or even shorter if we can’t get out of here.” He reminded his companions, “Our immediate problem is that we are in dangerous territory. I don’t suggest we try to drive back to Addis. I have a safe-conduct pass from the Provisional government, so we need to join up with the Ethiopian army, which is less than an hour from here. Or if that’s not possible, we’ll join up with the Royalist forces. What we don’t want to do is run into the Gallas.”

“That’s not a good story,” Purcell agreed. He suggested, “We’ll spend a few days with the army, reporting on their victory, then we will offer them our Jeep in return for a helicopter ride back to Addis. Then when we come to our senses, we can decide over a drink if we want to come back here and look for the black monastery.”

Vivian said, “I’ve already decided.”

“Don’t be impulsive,” Purcell advised.

Mercado said, “We can’t be sure this monastery still exists after forty years — or if it ever existed. We’ll need to do some research at the Italian Library in Addis, and we’ll need terrain maps and all that, and some better equipment—”

“Right,” Purcell interrupted, “but let’s first get away from this spa before the Gallas arrive for a bath.”

Mercado and Vivian stood, and they made their way across the courtyard, then walked through the colonnade, back toward their Jeep.

Vivian asked, “How do we find the army headquarters?”

Mercado replied, “Probably by accident. We just need to drive into the hills and with luck we’ll come across an army unit or an outpost.” He suggested, “Practice waving your press credentials.”

They got back to the lobby of the spa hotel and jumped into the Jeep. Purcell started it up and they drove across the lobby, out to the portico, then down the steps they’d ascended the night before. Purcell continued across the grass field and onto the narrow jungle road, then turned toward the hills and accelerated.

They were aware that they were in a battle zone and that anything was possible, especially bad things. The Provisional Army forces were supposed to honor their safe-conduct pass, issued by the Provisional government. The Royalist forces, who’d probably been beaten last night, might not be in a good mood. But their imprisoned emperor, Haile Selassie, had an affinity for the West, and Purcell thought that the Royalists, all Christians, would treat them well if they ran into them first. But as with all armies, you never knew for sure. What Purcell did know for sure was that the Gallas would butcher them without a thought about their status as accredited journalists.

Purcell tried to focus on the bad road and on the problem of avoiding the Gallas. But his thoughts kept returning to the priest and his story. Father Armano had found the black monastery that the Vatican knew existed. Purcell was sure of that part of the story. After that… well, as Henry Mercado said, it was all medieval myth. The search for the Holy Grail had been going on for about a thousand years, and the reason it was never found was because it never existed. Or it did exist for a brief hour or two at the Last Supper — but it had been cleared with the dishes and it was lost forever. More importantly, it had no special powers; that was a tale spun by storytellers, not historians or theologians. That fact, however, had never stopped anyone from looking for it.

Purcell wondered how many people had spent their lives or lost their lives in a quest to find this thing that didn’t exist. He didn’t know, but he did know that there might soon be three more idiots to add to that list.

Chapter 6

Purcell saw that the narrow mountain road hadn’t been repaired since the rainy season ended. As they climbed, the jungle thinned, and behind them, through the dust, they could see the ruins of the white spa in the valley. Ahead, red rock formations jutted out from the red earth. There were no signs of the night’s battle, noted Purcell, but he caught the faint odor of cordite and ripe flesh drifting down the hills with the mountain winds.

Vivian asked, “Why are we not seeing anyone?”

Purcell glanced at her in the rearview mirror. They had taken the canvas top off the Jeep so they could be identified more easily as Westerners. The wind had sifted dust through Vivian’s raven black hair and deposited a fine red powder on her high cheeks. She wore a floppy bush hat to keep the sun off her stark white skin. He said to her, “They will see our dust before we see them.”

Mercado stared absently at the winding road. His mind was elsewhere. Since his release from the Russian Gulag, he had made a career of seeking out religious experiences. In his travels as a journalist, he had spoken with Pope John XXIII, the Dalai Lama, Hindu mystics, Buddhist monks, and people who claimed they were God, or good friends of God. His life and his writing, up to the time of his arrest, had been anti-Fascist and pro-Socialist. But with the collapse of the former system and his imprisonment by a government of the latter, his life and his writings had also collapsed. Both became stale. Empty.

People had urged him to write about his years in the Soviet Gulag, but he had no words to describe his experience. Or, he admitted, he could not find the courage to find the words.

It was his search for God that had revived his flair for the written word and his ability to tell a good story.

He had written a New York Times piece on the Dalai Lama fleeing the Red Chinese and living in exile in India, which gained him new postwar fame as a journalist. In 1962, he had gone boldly back to Russia and done articles on religious persecution. He narrowly escaped re-imprisonment and was expelled. There had been some good pieces since, but lately the writing had become stale again.

Mercado was as worried about his career as he was about his flagging religious fervor. The two were related. He needed something burning in his gut — like the priest’s mortal wound — to make him write well. His current assignment for UPI was to do a series of articles on how the ancient Coptic Church was faring in the civil war. He also had contacts with the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, and they bought much of his output. But there was no fire in his words anymore and his editors knew it. He had almost given up. Until now. Now his brain burned secretly with the experience of the previous night. He felt that he had been chosen by God to tell the priest’s story. There was no other explanation for the string of coincidences that had made him privy to this secret. He remained calm on the outside, but his soul was on fire with the anticipation of the quest for the Grail. But that was his secret.

Purcell glanced at him in the passenger seat. “Are you all right?”

Mercado came out of his reverie. “I’m fine.”

Purcell thought of Henry Mercado as his danger barometer. Henry had seen it all, and if Henry was apprehensive, then a shitstorm was coming.

Purcell, too, was no stranger to war, and both of them had probably seen more combat and death than the average infantry soldier. But Mercado was a seasoned pro, and Purcell had been impressed with the older man’s instinct for survival during the three-day ride through the chaos and violence of this war-torn country. Henry Mercado knew when to bluff and bluster, when to bribe, when to be polite and respectful, and when to run like hell.

Purcell thought that despite their imprisonments, both he and Mercado had been mostly lucky as war correspondents, or at least smart enough to stay alive. But Mercado had stayed alive far longer than Frank Purcell. So when Henry Mercado and Vivian had approached him in the Hilton bar, armed with a safe-conduct pass from the Provisional government, and asked him if he’d like to accompany them to the current hot spot, he’d agreed without too much hesitation.

But now… well, what sounded good in Addis did not look good three days out. Purcell had been in worse places and much tighter situations, but after a year in a Khmer Rouge prison, facing death every day from starvation and disease, and seeing men and women executed for no apparent reason, he felt that he’d used up his quota of luck. Unfortunately, he hadn’t come to that realization until he was a day out of Addis Ababa. And now they had reached that point of no return. Avanti.

Purcell lit a cigarette as he kept the wheel steady with one hand. He said, “I’m hoping we hook up with the army. I’m sure they beat the hell out of Prince Joshua last night, and I’d rather travel with the winner. The Gallas travel with the losers.”

Mercado scanned the high terrain with his field glasses as he replied, “Yes, but I think the better story is with Prince Joshua.” He added, “Lost causes and crumbling empires are always a good story.”

Vivian said, “Can we stop speaking about the Gallas?”

Mercado lowered his field glasses and told her, “Better to speak of them than to them.”

They continued on, and Mercado sat back in his seat. He said, “The dangerous thing about a civil war is that the battle lines change like spaghetti bouncing in a colander.”

Purcell inquired, “Can I quote you on that?”

Mercado ignored him and continued. “I covered the Spanish Civil War. As long as you travel with one side or the other, you are part of their baggage train. But if you get caught in between or out on the fringes and try to get back in, you become arrestable. You know, Frank, if you had been traveling with the Khmer Rouge, you probably wouldn’t have been arrested. I suppose it all has something to do with spy-phobia. They don’t like people who run between armies. The trick is to get inside the battle lines without getting shot. If you’re challenged by a sentry, you must be bold and wave around your press cards and cameras, as if you had been specially invited to the war. Once you get inside, you’ll usually find the top dogs are courteous. But you must never appear to be arrestable. The business of armies, besides fighting, is arrest and execution. They can’t help it. They are programmed for it. You must not look arrestable or executable.” He asked Purcell, “Do you understand?”

“Why don’t you drive, Henry, and I’ll pontificate?”

Mercado laughed. “Did I hit a sore spot, Frank? Don’t fret. I’m speaking from personal experience.”

Purcell thought he was speaking to impress Vivian.

Mercado continued, “There was one moment there in East Berlin when I could have blustered my way out of arrest. But I started to act frightened. And then they became more sure of themselves. From there on, it was all just mechanics. From a street corner in East Berlin, less than a thousand yards from Checkpoint Charlie, to a work camp in the Urals, a thousand frozen miles away. But there was that one moment when I could have brazened my way out of the situation. That’s what happens when you deal with societies where the rule is by men and not by law. I had a friend shot by the Franco forces in Spain because he was wearing the red-and-black bandanna of the Anarchists. Only he didn’t know it was an Anarchist bandanna. He was just wearing something for the sweat. A handkerchief he had brought from England, actually. They stood him against a wall and shot him by the lights of a truck. Poor beggar didn’t even speak Spanish. Never knew why he was being executed. Had he made the appropriate gestures when he realized that it was the bandanna that was offending them, had he whipped it off and spat on it or something, he’d be alive today.”

“He’d have screwed up someplace else and gotten shot.”

“Perhaps. But never look arrestable, Frank.”

Purcell grunted. There had been one moment there, back in Cambodia… a French-speaking Khmer Rouge officer. There were things he could have said to the officer. Being an American was not necessarily grounds for arrest. There were Americans with Communist forces all over Indochina. There were American newsmen with the Khmer Rouge. Yet he had blown it. Yes, Mercado had hit a sore spot.

Purcell came around a curve in the road and said, “Well, you have a chance to prove your point, Henry. There’s a man up ahead pointing a rifle at us.”

Vivian sat up quickly and looked. “Where?”

Mercado shouted, “Stop!”

Purcell kept driving and pointed. “You see him?”

Before Mercado or Vivian could reply, the man fired his automatic weapon and red tracers streaked high over their heads.

Purcell knew the man’s aim couldn’t be that bad, so it was a warning shot. But Mercado dove out of the Jeep and rolled into the ditch on the side of the road.

Purcell stopped the Jeep and shouted to him, “You look arrestable, Henry!” He stood on his seat and waved with both arms. He shouted, “Haile Selassie! Haile Selassie!” He added, “Ras Joshua!”

The soldier in the dirty gray shamma lowered his rifle and motioned them to approach.

Vivian peeked between the seats. “Frank, how did you know he was a Royalist?”

Purcell slid back in the seat and put the Jeep in gear. “I didn’t.”

Mercado climbed out of the ditch and crawled into the passenger seat. “That was a bloody stupid chance you took.”

“But you weren’t taking any chances at all.” Purcell moved the Jeep slowly up the road.

Mercado, trying to explain his dive into the ditch, said, “I thought he was a Galla.”

“I could see that he wasn’t.”

“Do you even know what a Galla looks like?”

“Actually, no.”

They drove closer to the man, who they could now see was wearing a sash of green, yellow, and red — the colors of Ethiopia and of the emperor.

Purcell said, “Well, we’re now in the Royal Army.”

Mercado replied, “Good. This is where the story is.”

Purcell reminded him, “The Provisional government forces could have gotten us back to Addis. Prince Joshua probably can’t even get himself out of here.”

“We don’t know what the situation is.”

“Right. But I know that your safe-conduct pass from the Provisional government won’t do us much good with the prince.”

Mercado didn’t reply for a moment, then said, “I’ve actually met Haile Selassie here in ’36, then again when he was in exile in London.” He assured Purcell and Vivian, “I will tell that to Prince Joshua.”

Vivian, who knew Henry Mercado better than Purcell did, asked, “Is that true, Henry?”

“No. But it will get us royal treatment.”

Vivian said, “That’s why I love you, Henry.”

Purcell advised, “Don’t look arrestable.”

They were within twenty meters of the soldier and they waved to him. He didn’t return the greeting, but he pointed to the right.

Mercado said, “He wants us to take that small path.”

“I see it.” Purcell swung the Jeep to the right and gave a parting wave to the tattered soldier on the rock. The smell of the dead began to permeate the air, although they saw no bodies yet. Purcell navigated the Jeep up the narrow path that looked like a goat track.

Mercado pointed to a flat area ahead. About a dozen bodies lay ripening under the sun. A soldier with an old bolt-action rifle walked toward them. Purcell wove around the dead bodies and drove the Jeep toward the man, who was looking at them curiously.

Mercado stood up and yelled a few Amharic words of greeting. “Tena yastalann!”

“That’s the stuff, Henry,” said Vivian. “Ask him how his kids are doing at Yale.”

“I did.”

The man approached the Jeep and Purcell stopped. Mercado waved his press card and said, “Gazetanna,” as Purcell held out a packet of Egyptian cigarettes.

The soldier wore a shredded shamma and bits and pieces of web gear. He smiled and took the cigarettes. Purcell lit one for him. “Ras Joshua.”

The man nodded and pointed.

Purcell moved the Jeep farther up the hill through grass that came up to the windshield. There was little evidence of military activity and few physical signs of the night’s artillery barrage. As in most third world armies, Purcell knew, the weapons of modern war were more for the sound and the fury than anything else. The artillery barrages were small compared to modern armies, and most of the ordnance went wide of the mark. The real killing was done in a manner that hadn’t changed much in two thousand years — the knife, the spear, the scimitar, and sometimes the bayonet of the rifles without ammunition.

They continued on and Purcell realized he was in the middle of the prince’s headquarters. Low tents, much too colorful for tactical use, sprang up out of the high grass and bush. Ahead, down a small path, Purcell could make out the green, yellow, and red flag of Ethiopia emblazoned with the Lion of Judah. As he drove toward it, the bush around him came alive with soldiers. No one spoke.

“Wave, Henry,” said Vivian. “Invite them all to your country place in Surrey. That’s a good chap.”

“Vivian, keep still and sit down.”

Purcell stopped the Jeep a respectable distance from the tent with the imperial flag. They all climbed out, waved friendly greetings, and smiled. Some of the soldiers smiled back. A few, however, looked gruff and mean, Purcell noticed, like infantry soldiers all over the world fresh out of battle. They didn’t like relatively clean and crisp-looking outsiders walking around. Especially if the army had been beaten. A beaten army was a dangerous thing, Purcell understood, much more dangerous than a victorious one. Morale is bad, respect for superiors is bad, and tempers are rotten. Purcell had seen this with the South Vietnamese Army as the war was being lost. Mercado had seen it all over the world. The embarrassment of defeat. It leads to rape, pillage, and random murder. It’s a sort of catharsis for the soldiers who can’t beat the other soldiers.

They walked quickly toward the prince’s tent, as though they were late for a meeting. Purcell worried about the equipment, but any attempt to carry it with them or to make prohibitory gestures toward the Jeep would have invited trouble. The best thing was to walk away from your expensive possessions as though you expected that they would all be there when you returned. Vivian, however, took one of her cameras.

The prince came toward them. There was no mistaking him. He was young, about forty, and very tall. He wore a European-style crown of gold and precious stones, but he was clad in a lionskin shamma with a cummerbund of leopard. He also carried a spear. His aides, who walked behind him, were dressed in modern battle fatigues, but wore lions’ manes around their necks. They had obviously put on all the trappings for the Europeans. Mercado knew this was a good sign.

The prince and his entourage stopped. The beaten-down track through the high grass was lined with curious soldiers.

Mercado stepped up his pace and walked directly to the prince and bowed. “Ras Joshua.” He spoke in halting Amharic. “Forgive us not announcing our coming. We have traveled a long distance to be with your army—”

“I speak English,” the prince responded in a British accent.

“Good. My name is Henry Mercado. This is Frank Purcell, an American journalist. And our photographer, Vivian Smith.” He bent at the waist again as he took a step to the side.

Vivian came up beside Mercado, who whispered, “Curtsy.” She curtsied and said, “I am pleased to meet you.” Purcell nodded his head in greeting and said, “Thank you for receiving us.”

“Come,” said Prince Joshua.

They followed him to his tent and entered. The red-and-white-striped pavilion was sweltering and the air smelled sour. The prince motioned them to sit on cushions around a low wood-inlaid table that looked like a European antique with the legs cut down. This, thought Purcell, was as incongruous as everything else in the country.

Ethiopia, he had discovered, was a blend of dignity, pageantry, and absurdity. The antique table with the shortened legs said it all. The battle fatigues with lions’ manes maybe said it better. The country was not a mixture of Stone Age, Bronze Age, and modern, like most of Africa below the Sahara; it was an ancient, isolated civilization that had reached towering heights on its own, long before the Italians arrived. But now, as Purcell could see, the unique flavor of the old civilization was dying along with the old emperor.

Mercado asked, “Would you like to see our press credentials?”

“For what purpose?”

“To establish—”

“Who else could you be?”

Mercado nodded.

Prince Joshua inquired, “How did you get here?”

Purcell answered, “By Jeep, from Addis Ababa.”

“Yes? I’m surprised you got this far.”

“So are we,” admitted Purcell.

The prince’s servants brought bronze goblets to the table and poured from a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label. Mercado and Purcell pretended not to be surprised by the good choice of refreshment, but Vivian made a thing of it, as though she had expected fermented sheep dip. “Well, what have we here?” She leaned across the table and raised her camera, saying to the prince, “Do you mind?” and shot a picture of the bottle with Prince Joshua in the background. “Great shot.”

Mercado was mortified. Bad manners were one thing he could not accept from the very young. It was cute in New York and London, but it was dangerous in countries like this. The prince seemed a charming enough fellow, but you never knew what would set these people off. He smiled at Prince Joshua and said, “Wattatacc,” the Amharic word for “youth.”

The prince smiled in return and nodded. “No soda, I’m afraid. And no ice for the American.” He smiled at Purcell. But Mercado knew it was a strain to be polite when a three-thousand-year-old dynasty was coming to an ignominious end, your emperor was under arrest, and about a hundred members of the royal family had already been executed.

Prince Joshua looked at his guests and asked, “So, you have come into the lions’ den? Why?”

Mercado was keenly aware that this was an Old Testament country, and important things were always said with biblical allusions. He replied, “So the Lord was with Joshua; and his fame was noised throughout all the country.”

The prince smiled again.

Vivian said, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” She, too, smiled.

Mercado looked at the prince, then at Vivian. “Vivian.”

“Book of Jeremiah, Henry.” She looked around. “Bad choice?”

The prince stared at her, then said, “I am black but comely; thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies. Song of Solomon.” He eyed her for a long second.

Vivian smiled. “I like that.”

The prince raised his goblet and said, “Welcome.”

They all raised their goblets and Mercado said, “To the emperor.”

Everyone drank, but the prince said nothing further.

Mercado took the lead and began conversationally, “I was here in 1935 when the Italians invaded your country. I had the honor, then, of meeting his royal highness. And then again in England, when the emperor was in exile, I had the honor of writing a news story on him.”

Prince Joshua looked at Henry Mercado with some interest, then said, “You don’t look old enough for that, Mr. Mercado.”

“Well… thank you. But I assure you I’m that old.”

The prince asked, “So what can I do for you?”

“Well,” Mercado replied, “we have come from Addis Ababa to find you and your army. But we have had many mishaps along the way. The Gallas roam the countryside and the fighting is confused. So we ask you to give us safe-conduct passes — perhaps provide us with soldiers so we may return safely to the capital and report—”

“Mr. Mercado. Please. I am no fool. You are here because you couldn’t find the Provisional government army forces. I cannot give a safe-conduct pass anywhere. I am in control of nothing more than this hill. My forces are badly beaten and at any moment the army will ask for my surrender or they will attack again. Unless, of course, the Gallas attack first. My men are deserting by the hundreds. We are living on borrowed time here.”

Mercado glanced at his companions, then said to the prince, “I see… but… that puts us in a rather tight situation…”

“Well, I am sorry for that, Mr. Mercado.”

Purcell said, “We certainly understand that your situation is worse than ours. But we would like to be able to tell your story and tell of the bravery of the Royal forces. So if you could spare a few armed men—”

The prince interrupted, “I will see what I can do to get you into the army forces. From there, perhaps, you can get a helicopter or a resupply convoy to the capital. I have no wish to see you die here with me.” He spoke the words simply, but they were strained. He asked, “Any news of the emperor?”

Mercado replied, “He is still well. The army moves him from one palace to another in and near the capital, but he is reported in good health. A fellow journalist saw him last week.”

“Good.” He sipped his scotch. “I have here another Englishman. A Colonel Sir Edmund Gann. Do you know him?”

Mercado nodded. “Heard of him, yes.”

“He is my military advisor. He is out inspecting the positions. I told him there were no positions left to inspect, but he insisted.” The prince shook his head at the lunacy. “The English are sometimes strange.”

Purcell lifted his glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

“He is overdue now. But when he comes, I will try to make plans to get you all to safety if I can.”

“Thank you, Ras.” Mercado felt the old sadness return. It was the Spanish Civil War again; Mount Aradam, 1936; the trapped men at Dunkirk; fleeing Tibet with the Dalai Lama. All the losing causes met here on this hilltop. And always, he, Henry Mercado, had slipped away at the last moment while brave and doomed men waved at him and wished him bon voyage. But he had gotten his. Berlin, 1946. With a lousy U.S. Army surplus Kodak camera. He no longer felt any guilt at slipping away. He felt relief. “Yes. That would be fine.”

“And if you should get away from here, write a good story about the emperor and his army — as you did when the Italians invaded.”

“I will do that.”

“Good.” The prince rose. “I must see to my duty.”

Purcell, Mercado, and Vivian stood and bowed. As the prince was turning to leave, Vivian called to him, “Prince Joshua?”

“Yes?”

“You must know of a Prince Theodore. He fought the Italians when they invaded and he had a fortress in the jungle a few days’ march from here.”

The prince nodded. “Theodore was my uncle. He was killed fighting the Italians with a band of partisans in 1937. My cousin, also Theodore, still keeps the garrison in the jungle. It is a fine fortress. Cement and stone. Why do you ask?”

“I heard there was fighting there. I just wondered if you knew of it.”

“No. I have heard nothing. I would not even know which side controlled the fortress or who attacked it. Why are you asking?”

“Oh, I just thought that if perhaps the fighting were over, we could find sanctuary there.”

“I think not. Excuse me.”

“Prince Joshua?”

The prince turned and breathed a sigh of impatience. “Yes, madam?”

“There is also a monastery in the area. We thought, perhaps, we could reach that. A monastery of black stone, I think.”

“There is no such place. You will be joined by Sir Edmund shortly and you can ask him your questions. Excuse me.” He turned and left.

Purcell wiped the sweat from his neck. “You are a pushy bitch, Vivian. But good questions.”

Mercado sat down on a cushion and said to Vivian, “The man is contemplating a Galla massacre or an army firing squad and you have to annoy him. Really, you are insensitive.”

Vivian sat also and poured another scotch. “We aren’t exactly at the Hilton in Addis, you know, Henry. His fate could very well be ours.”

“Yes. You’re right, of course. But we have a chance.”

Purcell sat on the low table and helped himself to the scotch. He said, “Well, at least we know that the garrison in the jungle is real.”

They could hear excited noises outside the tent and the unmistakable sounds of military deterioration. Arguments broke out, and at least one disagreement was settled with a gun. Tents around them were being plundered by the fleeing soldiers, but the flag of the Lion of Judah kept their tent inviolate for the time being, though they felt their perimeter of safety shrinking as they sat sipping scotch in the hot, fetid enclosure.

Purcell said to Mercado, “You were right, Henry. This is where the story is. And I think we’re about to be part of it.”

Mercado did not reply.

Vivian said, “I’d like to get some photographs.”

Purcell motioned toward a row of ceremonial shields and spears leaning against the tent wall. “Henry, dress up a bit.”

Again, Mercado did not reply, but he said to Vivian, “You will not leave this tent.”

Purcell suggested they look around to see if there were any other weapons in the tent aside from the spears.

Mercado said firmly, “We cannot be found carrying a firearm. We are journalists.”

“Everyone else has one.”

“That’s the point, Frank. We can’t shoot our way out of here.” He added, “This is not an American cowboys and Indians movie.”

Purcell stayed silent for a moment, then said, “I was thinking more along the lines of avoiding a fate worse than death.”

No one replied, then Mercado said, “You’re being a bit fatalistic, Frank.” He asked, “What would you like to do?”

Purcell thought a moment, then replied, “There’s only one option left.”

“What is that?”

“Another round.” He emptied the remaining scotch into the three bronze goblets and said, “I hope those lances can drip more scotch into our cups.”

“Don’t be blasphemous.”

Purcell took one of the spears and stuck it in the ground next to the table. They all sat on the tabletop, facing the closed tent flap.

Purcell had no idea who would come through that flap — mutinous soldiers, Colonel Gann, the prince, or Gallas. With luck, the cavalry in the form of the government soldiers would arrive and Henry would wave his press credentials and safe-conduct pass and remember how to say in Amharic, “Thank you for rescuing us from the prince.”

Meanwhile, the sounds of desertion and disintegration outside the tent were growing quieter. In fact, ominously quiet.

Vivian said, “I think we’re alone.”

The tent flap opened and Purcell said, “Not anymore.” He reached for the spear.

Chapter 7

A tall, thin man wearing a sweat-stained khaki uniform stooped and entered. He glanced at the spear in Purcell’s hands, then said in a British accent, “Hello. I think we’ve lost the war.”

Purcell noted that Colonel Sir Edmund Gann wore a reddish mustache and carried a riding crop. He was hatless, but there was a tan line on his forehead, so he’d lost his hat somewhere, though not his service revolver, which he wore on his hip. He also had a pair of field glasses hanging around his neck. Purcell stuck the spear back in the ground and stood.

Mercado introduced himself, and Colonel Gann said, “Yes, I’ve read your stuff.”

“Thank you.” Mercado introduced his companions, and Vivian said to Colonel Gann, “If you’ve read Henry’s stuff, I like you already.”

Colonel Gann forced a smile and told them, “We have to move quickly.” He informed everyone, “There are several hundred nasty-looking Gallas less than a thousand yards from here.”

No one replied, but Purcell saw that Mercado had gone pale.

Colonel Gann added, “But they are dismounted and moving slowly.” He explained, “Stripping corpses, finishing off the wounded, and looking for booty.”

And, Purcell knew, mutilating the dead and wounded, and that takes awhile.

Purcell exited the tent and looked around. The entire camp was deserted, and he noticed that the prince’s flag was gone. More importantly, their Jeep was also gone.

Mercado, Gann, and Vivian came out into the bright sunlight, and Purcell asked Gann, “Do you have horses to go with that riding crop?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Vivian asked, “Where’s our Jeep?”

Gann replied, “Last I saw it, there were a dozen Royalist soldiers in it, headed south toward the jungle valley.”

Vivian said, “Everything we own was in that Jeep.”

Mercado added, “Including our chance to get out of here.” He asked Gann, “Where is Prince Joshua?”

“Last I saw of him, he and six of his staff were on horseback, also heading south.”

Purcell remarked, “I hope he remembered to take his crown.”

Vivian said, “This is not funny, Frank.”

“Look at the bright side, Vivian.”

“And what is that?”

“The Gallas can’t castrate you.”

Colonel Gann interjected, “The Provisional government forces are to the north. I would advise you to try to reach their lines and show your press credentials. However, they apparently have allowed the Gallas to have some fun before the army advances. So that puts the Gallas between you and the government army.”

No one replied, and Colonel Gann continued, “But you can give it a go if you’d like.”

Vivian asked, “And will you come with us?”

“No. I’m a known advisor to the Royal Army. The government forces would probably shoot me.”

Purcell said, “So let’s all head south and catch up with the retreating Royalists.”

Colonel Gann informed them, “I’m afraid they don’t fancy me much.” He explained, “I was a strict disciplinarian. You understand?”

Purcell observed, “It seems no one likes you, Colonel.”

“I’m not here to be liked.”

Vivian said, “Well, I like you. So come with us.”

Mercado inquired, “Where are we going?”

Colonel Gann suggested, “We can follow the rear guard of the Royal Army, keeping our distance from them, and staying a few steps ahead of the advancing Gallas.”

“Between a rock and a hard place,” said Purcell.

Colonel Gann also suggested, “You three can probably join up with the Royalist rear guard… though I’m not sure they’d treat you well.” He explained, “The prince is on the run and discipline has broken down.”

“And,” Purcell reminded him, “you’re no longer in a position to enforce good order and discipline.”

“Correct.”

“Well…”

In the distance, to the north, they could hear a man scream.

Colonel Gann said, “The Gallas have arrived.”

Mercado, without a word, began moving quickly downhill toward the goat trail.

Vivian snapped a few quick pictures of the prince’s tent and the deserted camp, then she and Gann started to follow, but Purcell said, “I’ll look for water in the tent and catch up.”

Gann informed him, “We looked. There is no water.” He added, “Whiskey’s gone, too, I’m afraid.”

They caught up to Mercado and headed south, retracing the route they’d taken from the spa to Prince Joshua’s headquarters. They passed the open area where the bloated bodies lay and found the small, ravine-like goat path, then took it downhill, continuing south toward the jungle valley. Purcell noted that their tire marks had been completely obliterated by the sandal prints and bare feet of Royalist soldiers fleeing toward the jungle.

The sun was hot and bright, and the rocks radiated an intense heat. Behind them, they could hear the war cries of the Gallas, and Purcell guessed that they had reached the prince’s deserted camp.

Mercado was having difficulty breathing so they stopped to rest. Colonel Gann pulled an old Italian survey map from his pocket and studied it. Purcell lit a cigarette and studied Henry Mercado. Mercado had seemed to be in good physical shape, but his age was showing now.

Vivian was patting Mercado’s face with a handkerchief, and she said, “We need some water.”

Gann looked up from his map and replied, “There are a few mountain streams close by, but probably dry now.”

Purcell noticed that Vivian had left her bush hat in the Jeep and her cheeks were bright red.

Colonel Gann climbed out of the ravine and surveyed the terrain through his field glasses. He called softly down to his companions, “Some of the Gallas on horseback have actually gotten in front of us — between us and the rear guard of the Royal Army. In fact, they are all around us.”

Purcell climbed out of the ravine and took a look through Gann’s field glasses. Down the hill, on both sides of the ravine, he saw the mounted men picking their way carefully but skillfully down the rock-strewn slopes.

Farther up the slope, coming toward them, were more horsemen, dressed in black robes, their heads and faces swathed in black scarves. They carried scimitars, and they looked to Purcell like Death.

At the top of the hill where they’d come from, Purcell could see dust clouds that meant more horsemen.

He looked across the ravine to the west. A high, razorback ridge of rock ran up to a neighboring peak.

Purcell lowered the field glasses and pointed to the ridgeline.

Gann nodded and said, “Yes, almost impassable for horses…” He consulted his map and said, “If we can get onto that ridge, it will take us up to that peak.” He showed Purcell the map and pointed. “A descending ridge will take us to this plateau below the highlands where the government forces are dug in.” He asked Purcell, “Can you read a terrain map?”

“A little. And I can climb mountains.”

“Good. If we should become separated, just follow the ridgelines — west, then north.”

Purcell and Gann scrambled back into the ravine, and Purcell said, “Okay, there seems to be a route out of here, but it’s a lot of uphill.” He looked at Mercado and asked, “Can you make it, Henry?”

Mercado nodded, but Purcell noticed he wasn’t springing to his feet. Purcell gave him a hand and pulled him up.

Vivian asked Mercado, “Are you all right?”

“Yes… can’t wait here for the Gallas.”

Gann took the field glasses from Purcell and climbed up the west side of the ravine. He scanned the area, then waved everyone up.

Purcell and Vivian helped Mercado out of the ravine, and they all crouched around the jagged boulders, looking for signs of Gallas between them and the base of the ridgeline about three hundred yards across a rock-strewn slope that was covered with chest-high brown brush.

There were dust clouds upslope and downslope, but no visible horsemen.

Gann led the way, followed by Vivian and Mercado, and Purcell brought up the rear, urging Mercado on. They dashed in a crouch, keeping below the brush, from boulder to boulder.

Now and then, Purcell caught a glimpse of the Gallas and saw that some were dismounted, leading their horses, while others remained mounted. They were proceeding at a leisurely pace, like the scavengers they were, he thought, more interested in fallen men and abandoned equipment than engaging the rear guard of the prince’s army.

Gann called for a rest among high, jagged rocks, and commented, “When the Gallas have picked the field clean, they will regroup, then decide if they are strong enough to attack the Royal Army.” He added, “They would very much like to get the prince’s crown and his head with it.”

“Not to mention the prince’s family jewels,” said Purcell.

On that note, Mercado rallied a bit and said, “Let’s get moving.” They covered the remainder of the three hundred yards in a few minutes and stopped at the base of the ridgeline.

Purcell looked up the narrow ridge. It was a steep rise, comprised of large jagged red rocks, and between the rocks was more brown scrub brush.

Gann said, “Good cover and concealment, not passable on horseback.” He asked, “Are we ready?”

Purcell looked at Mercado, who nodded without enthusiasm.

They began the climb, picking their way up the ridge between the large rocks. Now and then they had to squeeze sideways between close rock formations, which assured them that Gallas on horseback could not follow — though Gallas on foot could.

About halfway up the ridge, they stopped for a rest and sat in the shade of a large rock formation.

Gann, noticed Purcell, seemed okay, though he wasn’t a young man. But he had been hardened by a few wars and he’d probably pushed himself harder than this the night before, trying to rally the prince’s army.

Purcell looked at Mercado. He, too, had experienced hardships, but those hardships had taken their toll.

Vivian was wiping Mercado’s face again, but Purcell noticed that Mercado was barely sweating, which was not a good sign.

Vivian herself seemed in decent shape, but her arms and face were burning red from the sun. Purcell took off his bush jacket, leaving him in a sweat-soaked T-shirt. He pitched the bush jacket toward her and said, “Drape that over your head.”

She hesitated, then picked up the khaki jacket and threw it back to him.

Colonel Gann had climbed onto a tall rock and was scouting the terrain through his field glasses. He said, “The Gallas are coming together… perhaps two or three hundred of them… heading down into the valley. They’ll harass the remnants of the Royal Army… and if they think the army is very weakened, they’ll go in for the kill.”

No one had anything to say about that, but everyone felt relieved that the Gallas had shifted their attention to the retreating army.

Purcell was hoping he’d see some signs of the Provisional Revolutionary government army in pursuit of the Royalists. That would save them a long hike. He asked Gann, “Do you see any signs of the army?”

Gann kept scanning as he replied, “No. They’re letting the Gallas do the work. Lazy beggars.” He added, “Bunch of damned Marxists.”

Vivian said to Gann, “If we reach the Provisional Army, we can pass you off as a journalist.”

Purcell added, “But you need to take off your royal insignia, and get rid of that gun and lose the riding crop.”

Gann replied, “I appreciate the offer. But my presence will endanger you.” He added, “They’ll know who I am, even without the royal insignia on my uniform, and then they can shoot me as a spy instead of as a Royalist.” He informed them, “I’d rather be shot as a soldier.”

Purcell didn’t see what difference it made, but Colonel Gann did, and he made a good point — about him endangering them all. Also, their safe-conduct pass from the Provisional government in Addis had only three names on it, and one of those names wasn’t Colonel Sir Edmund Gann.

Purcell looked at Mercado, who hadn’t said anything on the subject. “What do you think, Henry?”

Mercado replied, “We should cross that bridge when we come to it. We’re still in a bad situation.”

Gann agreed, and said, “I’ll try to get you as close as I can to the army lines, then I’ll scoot off.”

Vivian asked him, “To where?”

He informed them, “Most of the Amharic peasants around here are loyal to the emperor, and I’ll look for a friendly village.”

No one replied, but Purcell didn’t think much of Colonel Gann’s plan. In fact, Purcell thought, Colonel Gann probably didn’t think much of it either. Most likely he would die of thirst, hunger, or disease in the hills or in the jungle. But the Gallas would not get him. Not as long as Colonel Gann had his service revolver and one bullet left. Purcell said to Gann and to Mercado and Vivian, “I think we should stay together. Maybe we can find this Prince Theodore, or some other ras.”

Gann said, “Nonsense. You have press credentials and a safe-conduct pass. Your best bet is the Provisional government forces, and they are close by.”

Again, no one replied, but then Purcell said, “Let’s play it by ear. Ready?”

Everyone stood and they continued up the ridge. Within half an hour, they reached the summit, which gave them a clear view of the surrounding terrain.

The sun was almost overhead now, and there wasn’t much shade, but Mercado lay down in a sliver of shadow at the base of a tall rock. Vivian knelt beside him and put her damp, sweaty handkerchief over his face.

Gann was scanning the terrain with his field glasses, and he said, “I can see soldiers dug in on the ridgelines.” He passed the glasses to Purcell.

Below was a grassy plateau, like an alpine meadow, between them and the hills to the north, and rocky ridges ran from the hills to the plateau.

Purcell focused on the closest ridge, less than a kilometer away, and saw a group of uniformed men. They’d piled up some rocks to construct a safe firing position, and he thought he saw the long firing tube of a mortar protruding above the rock. He looked farther up the ridge at the next summit and saw more gun positions.

Gann said, “The bulk of the Provisional Army are in those hills.” He told them, “They attacked us in force last night, right there on that plateau, and we inflicted a good number of casualties on them. Unfortunately, they had heavy mortars and they pounded us through the night.”

Purcell nodded. That’s what they’d seen from the spa.

Gann went on, “At daybreak we expected another attack, and I was preparing for it, but panic had set in, and the troops started deserting. And once that starts, it’s impossible to stop.”

Purcell asked Gann, “Was the prince paying you enough for this?”

Gann thought about that, then replied, “A soldier’s pay is never enough. You must also believe in the cause.”

Purcell reminded him, “You’re a mercenary.” He added, “An honorable profession, I’m sure. But not one that believes in causes.”

Gann informed everyone, “I was here in 1941 with the British Expeditionary Force that drove out the Italians.” He added, “I developed a fondness for Ethiopia and the people. And the monarchy. The emperor. He’s a remarkable man… the last in a three-thousand-year-old line of succession.”

“Right,” said Purcell. “The last.”

Gann turned the question around and asked, “Why are you here?”

Purcell replied, “To cover the war.”

“Are they paying you enough for this?”

“No.” He suggested, “Let’s get moving.” He looked at Vivian, who was kneeling beside Mercado and blocking the sun from him. “Is he all right?”

“No.”

Purcell said, “Try to wake him, Vivian.”

“No. He needs sleep.”

“It’s all downhill to the plateau.”

Gann suggested, “Look, I’m not going with you into the army lines, so I’ll stay here with him and you two make contact with the government forces, then come back for him with an army medic and a few men to carry him.” He added, “I’ll scoot off before you get up here.”

Purcell thought that was a good idea, but Vivian said, “I’m not leaving him.”

Gann explained, “You’re not leaving him. You’re going for help.”

Purcell said to her, “You can stay here, too. I don’t need company.”

Mercado was awake now and he sat up with his back against the rock. He’d heard the discussion and said to Vivian in a weak voice, “Go with Frank.”

“No. I’m staying with you.” She knelt beside him and put her hand on his forehead. “You’re burning…”

Purcell looked at Gann and they both knew that Mercado was close to heatstroke.

Gann said to Purcell, “You’d better start off now.”

Mercado pulled a plastic wrapped paper from his pocket and gave it to Vivian, saying, “The safe-conduct pass… go with Frank.”

She took the pass and handed it to Purcell, but remained kneeling beside Mercado. Purcell put the pass in his pocket and said to Gann, “I won’t be seeing you later. Thanks for your help.”

They shook and Gann said, “Well, good luck.” He added, “The commander of the Provisional government forces is a chap named Getachu. Nasty fellow. Red through and through. Likes to shoot Royalists. Doesn’t think much of Westerners either. Your pass from the Provisional government should be all right, but be careful with him.”

Purcell replied, “I know who he is.” He said to Vivian and Mercado, “See you later.”

Purcell moved toward the descending ridge, then turned and asked Gann, “Have you ever heard of a black monastery in this area?”

Colonel Gann didn’t reply immediately, then said, “Yes. But not worth the side trip.” He added, “Maybe after the war is over.”

Purcell nodded, then started to pick his way down the rocky ridge.

Chapter 8

Below, the grassy plateau looked inviting, and Purcell thought there could be water there. Or Gallas.

Across the plateau was the base of the rocky hills, and in those hills was the victorious army of the Provisional government. But even if he made it to an army outpost, he wasn’t sure what kind of reception he’d get. Theoretically, his American passport and press credentials and the safe-conduct pass from the Provisional Revolutionary government would ensure a good reception — which was why he and his traveling companions were trying to reach the army forces to begin with. But theory, when it butts up against reality, sometimes produces unexpected results. Especially if he had to deal with General Getachu, who was notoriously cruel, and probably insane; the perfect subject for a press interview — if he didn’t kill the reporter.

Purcell heard something behind him, and he froze, then squeezed himself into a rock cleft. He listened and heard it again. Someone was coming down the ridge.

He waited, then saw her sliding on her butt down a long flat rock, holding on to her camera that was hanging from her neck. She jumped off the rock and he let her get a little ahead of him, then fell in behind her as she was scrambling over another large rock.

“Change your mind?”

She made a startled sound, then turned toward him. “God… Frank… you scared the hell—”

“Me too. Where you going?”

“To find you…” She took a deep breath, then said, “Henry gave you… he didn’t give you the pass.”

“Really?” Purcell took the plastic-wrapped sheet from his pocket and opened it. He smiled and said, “Looks like his bar bill from the Hilton.”

She didn’t reply to that but said, “I have the pass.”

“Good. I’ll take it.”

She gave it to him.

He looked at it, put it in his pocket, and said, “Thanks. See you later.”

She glanced up at the ridge.

He said, “Right. The climb up will kill you. Stay here.”

“I’m coming with you.”

He didn’t respond to that and asked, “How’s Henry?”

“A little better.”

“Good. And how are you?”

“Dizzy.”

He put his hand on her blistered forehead and asked her, “Tongue swollen?”

“A little…”

He took off his bush jacket and draped it over her head. “Okay. Let’s go.”

She followed him as he moved down the ridge.

She said to him, “Colonel Gann saw three Gallas on horseback riding through the tall grass ahead.”

“News I can use.”

They continued on and she said, “I wouldn’t have left him… but he tricked me. Tricked you.”

Purcell didn’t reply.

She said, “He and Colonel Gann thought you’d have a better chance if I were along.”

“You have not increased my chances.”

“In case you got hurt. Or… whatever. Better to send two people on a rescue mission.”

“True.” Unless one of them was an attractive woman.

The ridge flattened and they stopped a hundred feet from the high grass of the plateau. Purcell said to her, “You stay here. If all goes well, I’ll be back with a medic and some soldiers to collect you and get Henry. If I’m not back in, say, two hours—”

“I am not staying here.”

“You will do what I tell you—”

“Frank, if something happens to you, I’m as good as dead here. And so is Henry.”

“Vivian—”

“I can’t get back up that hill, and I will not sit here waiting for the Gallas — or dying of fucking thirst.” She moved toward him and gave him a push on the chest. “Let’s go.”

They continued on and entered the tall grass. Purcell said, “Keep a separation of twenty feet, and if you hear hoofbeats, drop and freeze.”

They walked silently through the elephant grass, which was taller than they were. Purcell could see evidence of the battle that had been fought here during the night — naked bloated bodies lay strewn in the high grass, covered with big green flies. There was no mutilation, and Purcell guessed that it was not the Gallas but the victorious government forces that had carried off the pitiful war spoils from the slain soldiers of Prince Joshua. Fresh graves marked the spots where the government forces had buried their own dead. If he’d hoped to find a canteen of water among the carnage, that hope quickly faded.

They continued on and the nauseating stench of death hung in the hot air. Vultures circled overhead, and one swooped down and landed near a naked body, then bent its long neck and plucked out an eyeball. Vivian, who had come up behind him, let out a stifled cry of disgust.

Purcell rushed toward the vulture and it flew off. They continued on.

The tall grass was beaten down where horses had passed through, and where men had fought and fallen. He saw craters made by impacting mortar rounds that had set the grass on fire, and in the ash he saw jagged shrapnel and burned body parts. Brass shell casings littered the ground.

Purcell tried to imagine what had gone on here during the night, but despite his years of war reporting he could not conjure up the images of men joined in close combat. But he could imagine how Colonel Gann had felt when he realized the battle was lost.

The plateau began to rise toward the base of the high hills and the ground became rocky and the grass began to thin as they continued up the slope.

Somewhere to the west he could hear hoofbeats, and he hoped Vivian also heard them. Ignoring his own advice to freeze and drop, he doubled back and saw her walking toward him. The hoofbeats got louder and she heard them at the same time as she saw him. They both dove to the ground in the thin grass and remained motionless, staring at each other across a patch of open space.

The hoofbeats were close now, and Purcell guessed there were three or four horses, about twenty or thirty yards’ distance. The hoofbeats stopped, and he could hear the rustle of grass as the riders moved slowly, looking for anything of value, and for anyone unfortunate enough to still be alive.

Purcell made eye contact with Vivian and he could see she was terrified, but she remained motionless and resisted the instinct to run.

The Gallas were so close now that he could hear them speaking. One of them laughed. A horse snorted.

After what seemed like an eternity, he heard them ride off.

He motioned for Vivian to remain still, tapped his watch, and flashed five fingers twice. She nodded.

They waited the full ten minutes, then Purcell stood and Vivian moved quickly toward him. He glanced at the rising ridge about three hundred yards away and said, “We’re going to make a run for that. Ready?”

She nodded, but he could see she was close to collapse.

He took her arm and they began moving at a half run toward the rising ridge of red rock, which he could see was impassable for mounted riders.

They had to stop every few minutes and rest, and Vivian scanned the ground for water. At one rest stop she announced she saw a pool of water that turned out to be a flat rock. Purcell recognized the signs of severe dehydration, which were confusion and hallucination. Water, water everywhere. He thought of all those bloated bodies — ninety-eight percent water… but he wasn’t that desperate yet.

They reached the base of the ridge and continued up the exposed slope of sun-baked rock. Vivian suddenly scrambled away from him and he caught her by the ankle, but she kicked free and continued off to her left.

Purcell followed and saw what she’d seen; a clump of what looked like spiky cactus, nestled between two flat rocks.

She grabbed at the vegetation and brought it directly to her mouth. Purcell did the same and guessed, by the soft viscous flesh of the plant, that it was some sort of aloe. He squeezed some pulp into his hand and rubbed it across his burning face, then did the same for Vivian as she continued to chew on the plant.

Within a minute or two, the aloe plants were eaten and Purcell dug out the shallow roots with his penknife and they ate those as well.

Neither of them spoke for a while, then Vivian said, “Thank God…”

Purcell retrieved his bush jacket, which she’d let fall off her head, and covered both their heads with it as they sat and looked down onto the plateau below. He treated himself to a cigarette.

A few hundred yards away, he could see four Gallas on horseback, riding slowly through the elephant grass, heads down, still looking for the living and the dead.

Vivian followed his gaze and said softly, “Ghouls.”

Purcell looked across the plateau at the mountain they had descended, and where Henry and Colonel Gann were hopefully still alive. Possibly Gann was able to follow their progress through his field glasses, so Purcell waved his arms.

Vivian, too, was waving, and Purcell heard her murmur, “Hang on, Henry.”

Purcell didn’t want to attract the attention of the Gallas, who, if they spotted them, would start taking potshots at them — or they’d dismount and start climbing up the ridge. Assuming the Gallas were in better shape than he or Vivian, they would catch up with them before he and Vivian reached the army lines.

He glanced at Vivian. Her lips were cracked and her face was a mess, but her eyes looked more alert now. Her torn khakis were crusted with sweat salt, but not damp with new sweat. He guessed she had been very near heatstroke, but she should be able to finish the climb. He, himself, felt better. He’d had worse days in the Khmer Rouge prison camp, sick with dysentery and fever… Another interned reporter, a Frenchman, had saved his life, then died a few weeks later.

He asked Vivian, “How are you doing?”

She stood and moved up the ridge and Purcell followed.

They continued the climb, rock by rock. It would have been an easy climb if they’d had something in their stomachs aside from a few aloe plants. Also, their goal — the government forces — might not be a touchdown if Getachu was playing by his own rules.

Purcell stood on a flat rock, shielded his eyes with his hand, and scanned the jagged slope ahead. Less than two hundred yards up the ridgeline he spotted what looked like a revetment of stones. Then he saw a figure moving among the rocks. He said to Vivian, “I think I see an army outpost.”

They continued up the ridge. As they got closer to the piled stone, Purcell could see at least five men in camouflage uniforms sitting beneath a green tarp that had been strung between tent poles. The men seemed engaged in conversation and didn’t notice that anyone was approaching.

This was the critical moment, Purcell knew, the two or three seconds when the guys with the guns had to decide if you were friend or foe, or something else.

He motioned for Vivian to lie flat behind a rock, then he took his white handkerchief from his pocket and shouted one of the few Amharic phrases he knew. “Tena yastalann!” Hello.

A shot rang out and Purcell threw himself on the ground. More shots rang out and Purcell realized the shooting was coming from behind him — the Gallas — then return fire started coming from the soldiers. He put his hand on Vivian’s back and pressed hard to keep her from moving.

The exchange of gunfire lasted a few minutes, then abruptly stopped.

Purcell whispered to Vivian, “Don’t move.”

She nodded.

He raised his body slightly and craned his head around the rock to see if the Gallas were behind them. He didn’t see any movement below and he turned his head toward the army outpost. An arm’s length from his face were two dark feet in leather sandals. He looked up into the muzzle of an AK-47.

The soldier motioned with the barrel of his gun for him to stand.

Purcell got slowly to his feet. Keeping his hands up, he smiled and said to the man dressed in camouflage fatigues, “Amerikawi. Gazetanna.”

Vivian was also standing now and she asked, “Capisce Italiano?”

The soldier understood the question, but shook his head. He kept his automatic rifle pointed at them, but glanced down the ridge to see if the Gallas were still coming.

Purcell motioned up the ridge and said in English, “Okay, buddy, we’re here to see General Getachu.”

Vivian added, “Giornalista. Gazetanna.” She tapped her camera. “General Getachu.”

The soldier stared at her.

Two more soldiers in cammies came down from the gun emplacement carrying their Soviet-made AK-47s. The three men began conversing in what sounded like Amharic. As they spoke, they kept glancing at Vivian, who Purcell thought looked awful, but maybe not to the soldiers.

Vivian tapped her pants pocket to indicate she had something for them, then slid out her passport and press credentials.

One of the soldiers snatched the items from her hand and stared at the press credentials, which were written in several languages, including Amharic. He then opened Vivian’s passport, which Purcell knew was Swiss — a good passport to have — and flipped through it.

Purcell drew his American passport and press credentials from his pocket along with the safe-conduct pass wrapped in plastic. One of the soldiers took the documents from him and all of them gave a look, though it appeared that none of them could read even Amharic.

Purcell pointed to the safe-conduct pass and said, “Signed by General Andom.” He added, “Brezhnev is numero uno. Power to the people. Avanti.”

One of the soldiers looked at him, then motioned for him and Vivian to walk up the ridge. The soldiers followed.

On the way up, Vivian asked, “Are we going to get a bullet in the back?”

Purcell remembered the executions he’d seen in Cambodia; the victims were almost always naked so that their clothes wouldn’t he ruined. Also, the women were usually raped first. He suspected it was the same here. “No,” he replied. “Reporters can be shot only by the general.”

They reached the gun emplacement and Purcell could see an 81-millimeter mortar surrounded by piled stone. A fire pit held the charred wooden remains of ammunition crates and the blackened bones of small animals.

They stopped and Purcell said, in Amharic, “Weha.”

One of the soldiers indicated a five-gallon jerry can, which Purcell lifted and poured over Vivian’s head and clothes to bring down her body temperature. She took the can and did the same for him, saying, “Spa, Ethiopian style.” A soldier handed them a canteen and they drank.

Vivian smiled at the soldiers and thanked them in Amharic: “Agzer yastallan.”

Purcell gave the soldiers his last pack of Egyptian cigarettes and they all lit up. So far, so good, he thought, though Vivian’s gender was a complication.

One of the soldiers was talking on a field radio, then he said something to his companions. The soldier who seemed to be in charge handed them their documents and motioned them up the ridge.

Before anyone changed their minds, Purcell took Vivian’s arm and they continued unescorted up the mountain.

Vivian said, “I think we’re all right.”

“I think I could have done this on my own.”

“Me too.”

He didn’t reply and they continued on in silence.

Finally, she said, apropos of something she was thinking, “Go to hell.”

“Already here.”

She asked him, “Are you married? Girlfriend?”

“No.”

“I can’t imagine why not.”

“Can we save this for the Hilton bar?”

“I don’t ever want to see you again after this.”

“Sorry you feel that way.”

“And we don’t need you to look for the black monastery.”

He didn’t reply and they continued on toward the top of the mountain.

Purcell thought about Father Armano, the black monastery, and the so-called Holy Grail. There was no Holy Grail, but sometimes his editors or other war correspondents described a story as the Holy Grail of stories — the story that would win a Pulitzer, or a National Journalism Award, or at least the admiration of their colleagues and a few drinks in a good bar.

He glanced at Vivian, and thought of Henry Mercado. Could he let them go without him? What if they died? What if they didn’t and they found something? He wished he had something better to do with his life.

Chapter 9

Purcell and Vivian sat side by side on a cot inside the medical aid tent. Vivian’s face was covered with white ointment and she wore a reasonably clean gray shamma, as did Purcell.

The army doctor sat in a camp chair and smoked a cigarette. Purcell also smoked one of the doctor’s cigarettes, while Vivian finished the bowl of cooked wheat that Dr. Mato had brought.

Vivian said in Italian, “Thank you, Doctor. You have been very kind.”

The big Ethiopian smiled. “It was nothing. You are both fine. Continue to rehydrate.” He added, “You may keep the ointment.”

Vivian translated for Purcell, then she asked the doctor, “Any word on our colleague?”

Doctor Mato replied, “As I said, we have sent ten armed men and a mule. I’m sure your colleague will be joining you shortly.”

Vivian nodded, and again translated for Purcell.

The doctor stood. “I have many sick and wounded. Excuse me.” He left.

Purcell said, “I’m sure Henry is enjoying the mule ride.”

She nodded absently, then said, “I hope they reach him in time.”

He didn’t reply.

She continued, “I worry about the Gallas.”

“The Gallas,” said Purcell, “attack the weak and the dying. Not ten armed soldiers.”

She looked at him, forced a smile, and said, “You do know how to con a worried lady.”

He smiled in return, though he found himself for some reason annoyed at her worry about Mercado, justified as it might be. He stood and looked around the aid tent. His and Vivian’s personal possessions were in neat piles at the foot of their cots, but their clothes and boots were gone, and he didn’t see any native sandals for either of them. He said, “I’m going to take a look around.”

She stood. “I’ll go with you.”

“Be here when they bring Henry in.”

She hesitated, then nodded, and said, “Find a toothbrush.”

As he began walking, he could see soldiers lounging under jerry-rigged tarps, eating, talking, and smoking, which was what soldiers did when they weren’t killing other soldiers. In any case, they didn’t seem that interested in the white guy walking around barefoot in a gray shamma—though a few did point to him. If Vivian had been with him, the soldiers may have shown more interest.

He passed a long open-sided tent marked with a white medical cross, and inside the tent he could see men lying close together on the dirt floor, mostly naked and bandaged. An overpowering stench came from the tent, and he could hear the moaning and crying of men in pain. Human misery. War, pestilence, famine, and civil strife. Ethiopia had it all.

In the distance, on a low hill, he noticed a big pavilion-style tent that flew the revolutionary red-starred flag of the new Ethiopia. That must be the headquarters, and when — or if — Henry arrived, they’d all go over there and see if General Getachu was in a good enough mood to offer them a helicopter ride to Addis — after they interviewed the victorious general, of course. There wasn’t much frontline reporting in this war, and based on the events of the last forty-eight hours, he could see why.

Near the hill, he saw a windsock, indicating a helipad, though there was no helicopter there. He pictured himself in Getachu’s helicopter, with Mercado and Vivian, high above the heat and stench of this place. The helicopter was the magic carpet of modern war, and if they left here by noon tomorrow, they could be in the Hilton bar tomorrow night, answering questions from their colleagues about their excursion into the interior of this benighted country. The etiquette was to modestly downplay the big dangerous adventure, but make it interesting enough to keep everyone’s attention, and keep the drinks flowing. He thought about how to mention finding the dying priest without giving away the whole story.

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 softly, “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.

Lying facedown on the dirt floor of the tent were three men, each naked. Getachu motioned for Purcell and Vivian to come near and they took a few steps toward the circle of light. They could see that the men’s backs and buttocks were streaked with blood as though they’d been whipped.

Getachu barked something in Amharic and the men rose to their knees.

Each man had a collar around his neck — like a dog collar — with a chain attached to it. In the lamplight, Purcell could make out three battered faces, one of which was that of Prince Joshua. His long aristocratic nose was broken, and his eyes were swollen almost shut, but the prince was looking at him and Vivian.

Getachu said, “You see, I did not shoot them or hang them as I thought I would. But if you look closely, you will see that the Gallas have castrated them.”

Purcell kept looking at the prince’s face, but Vivian turned away.

Getachu reached into the pocket of his fatigues and extracted a piece of bread, which he held to the prince’s swollen lips, and said, in English, “Eat.”

The prince bit into the bread. Getachu did the same with the other two men, who Purcell thought must be what was left of the prince’s staff.

Getachu dropped the bread to the ground and said, “The Revolutionary government has executed nearly all of the royal family and many rasses, so they are becoming more rare. It is my idea to put them to some use.” He further explained, “These men are now my servants, and they attend to my personal needs. When I am sick of looking at them — which will be soon — they will become the eunuchs assigned to the tent of the women who are their loyal subjects.” He added, “These men will also give pleasure to my soldiers who enjoy something different.”

Vivian had turned her back to the scene, but Purcell continued to look at Prince Joshua, whose head was now bowed.

Getachu said to the prince, “Is this not better than death?”

The prince nodded his head.

Getachu again barked something in Amharic and the three men dropped to their hands and knees. Getachu produced a riding crop from the deep cargo pocket of his pants and moved behind the men. He said, “Colonel Gann’s riding crop.” He swung the leather crop across the prince’s buttocks and the man yelled out in pain. The soldier holding the lamp laughed.

Getachu delivered a blow to each of the other two men, who also cried out, causing the soldier to laugh louder.

Getachu put the crop away and said, “Much better than hanging or shooting. Better for me.” He came around to the front of the men and made an exaggerated bow, saying to Prince Joshua, “Forgive me, Ras. I am just a simple peasant who does not know how to show proper respect to my master.”

The soldier again laughed.

Getachu turned to Purcell and Vivian. “That will be all.”

Purcell took Vivian’s arm and they passed through the curtain and out of the tent. Vivian was shaking and Purcell put his arm around her.

As they walked toward the hospital tent, she said in a breaking voice, “Those poor men… Frank… promise me…”

“That will not happen to us.”

“He’s insane… sadistic…”

“Yes.” And he was history, getting its revenge. Purcell said, “But he’s not stupid. He knows what he can get away with and what he can’t get away with.”

Neither of them believed that, but it was all they had at the moment. Purcell thought about their ill-advised decision to leave the relative safety of the capital to find General Getachu. Henry Mercado had miscalculated the situation, and ironically Mercado had half believed the good press that General Getachu was getting in the English- and Italian-language newspapers in Addis. Purcell was angry at Mercado, and angry at himself, but anger wasn’t going to get them out of here. They needed to work on Getachu. A little flattery, a little bluster, and a lot of luck.

Vivian, however, had another thought and she said in a barely audible voice, “We will get out of here because we are supposed to find the black monastery and the Grail.” She asked him, “Do you believe that?”

“No. But you do. And I’m sure Henry does.”

“The signs are all there, Frank.”

“Right.” The signs all said Dead End. But he recalled that Henry had said that faith had kept him alive in the Gulag, so he said to Vivian, to keep her spirits up, “You may be right.”

She took his arm and they moved quickly toward the hospital tent.

Chapter 10

Purcell and Vivian entered the long hospital tent, which was badly lit by candles and oil lamps. The air was filled with the stench of blood and excrement, and with the moans and cries of the sick and wounded. A bright Coleman lamp hung in the rear, and Purcell could see three men with surgical masks standing around a table, attending to a patient.

Purcell took Vivian’s arm and they picked their way between the rows of bandaged men who lay naked on dark blankets. Huge flies landed on their faces and Vivian covered her mouth and nose with her hand as she walked, her head and eyes darting around the darkness, looking for Mercado and Gann.

Doctor Mato spotted them and pulled off his surgical mask, and he and Vivian exchanged a few sentences in Italian, then Dr. Mato returned to his patient.

Vivian said to Purcell, “Henry and Colonel Gann were taken away as soon as Doctor Mato pronounced them well enough to be moved. They are under arrest.”

“We know that. Where were they taken?”

“He says there is a campo… parata militare — a parade ground where prisoners are kept. Due east about five hundred meters.”

Purcell took her arm and led her quickly out of the tent.

A nearly full moon was rising over the eastern hills, and the quiet camp was bathed in an eerie silver glow. Red sparks rose from a hundred campfires, and the air was heavy with the smell of burning straw and dried dung.

They headed east, avoiding the clusters of men around the fires, and avoiding the scattered tents as they tried to maintain their heading across the sprawling camp. In the dark, in their shammas, they attracted no attention.

No military camp, thought Purcell, was complete without a stockade where an army’s misfits and criminals were held to await trial and punishment, and he scanned the moonlit camp for a structure in a field that could serve as a stockade, but he didn’t see anything more substantial than canvas tents.

They continued on, and Purcell spotted the other thing that was a necessity in many military camps; the thing that Getachu had mentioned to Vivian. A long line of soldiers stood smoking and joking in front of a large tent, waiting their turn.

Vivian asked, “What’s going on there?”

Purcell did not reply, and Vivian said, “Oh…”

They moved on.

Vivian was becoming concerned, and she said, “I think we missed it. Let’s ask—”

“Let’s not.”

They continued on and ahead was a large sunken field, which formed a natural amphitheater. At the end of the field, Purcell saw a raised wooden platform, and he realized that this was the parade ground and the muster area where General Getachu and his officers could address their troops.

In front of the platform Purcell also saw a line of poles driven into the ground, which he recognized from too many other third world military camps as whipping posts, or tethering posts where soldiers were chained for punishment and humiliation in front of their comrades. He saw a movement near one of the posts and said, “There.”

They ran toward the posts, and as they got closer they could see three men with their arms over their heads, hanging by their wrists.

Purcell saw that Mercado and Gann were still wearing the clothes he’d last seen them in, but they were barefoot. The third man, a naked and unconscious Ethiopian, hung between Gann and Mercado.

Vivian ran up to Mercado and threw her arms around his chest. He, too, seemed unconscious — or dead — but then Purcell saw his chest heave. Vivian sobbed, “Henry… wake up…” She shouted, “Henry!”

He opened his eyes and looked at her. She stood on her toes and kissed his cheeks.

Purcell saw that the three men wore wrist shackles connected to chains that hung from iron rings embedded in the posts. Their feet touched the ground so they could stand until their knees buckled from fatigue or unconsciousness.

Purcell looked at the Ethiopian in the bright moonlight and saw that the man’s face was puffy and blistered, and his dark skin showed the result of a whipping.

Mercado was fully awake now and standing straight up as Vivian put her face into his chest and sobbed as she squeezed him in her arms.

Purcell moved over to Gann, who was awake and alert, and Gann said to him, “I’m very glad to see you and to see that you and Miss Smith are well and free.”

Purcell found he was slightly embarrassed by their relative fortunes. But that could change quickly. He did not want to give false hope to a man hanging by chains who was condemned to death, but he said, “I’ve spoken to Getachu and there is a chance—”

“Getachu plays with his intended victims. Save your breath.”

Purcell changed the subject and asked, “Is there anything I can get you?”

“We were fed by Doctor Mato and made well enough to hang here until dawn.” He added, “I will be able to walk to my own execution.”

Purcell didn’t respond.

Colonel Gann continued, “Just see if you can convince Getachu to make it quick and clean with a firing squad.”

“He said he respects you as a soldier.”

“I can’t say the same for him. But I’ll take him at his word and expect a proper firing squad.”

Purcell did not reply, but he nodded, then said, “We’ll stay with you through the night.”

“Good. Plenty of empty poles, old boy.”

Purcell smiled at the gallows humor despite the circumstances. He looked up at the shackles and saw they were held by a padlock, as were the chains on the iron ring. If he could find something to cut the locks or the chains, he could free Gann and Mercado and they could all make a run for it.

Gann saw what Purcell was looking at and said, “There hasn’t been a single guard by here, but if you look to your right, you’ll see a watchtower a few hundred meters’ distance.”

“Okay… maybe after the moon sets.” Purcell considered telling Colonel Gann that his old boss, Prince Joshua, had been captured and was no longer a prince or a man. But that wasn’t news that Colonel Gann would find helpful or hopeful. He said to Gann, “I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll be here.”

Purcell walked past the Ethiopian, who was still unconscious, and came up beside Vivian, who was murmuring to Mercado and caressing his chest and hair.

He stared at Mercado and they made eye contact. Finally Mercado took a deep breath and said, “Sorry about all this.”

“It’s been interesting, Henry.”

“Good story if you can file it.”

“Right.”

Mercado said to Vivian, “Go see Colonel Gann. He’s feeling left out.”

She hesitated, then moved past the Ethiopian, but then came back and looked at him. She put her hand on his face and his chest and said, “He’s dying.”

Purcell looked at the three men hanging from the posts. In the morning, Getachu would muster his troops so they could see what happens to people who annoy the general. If he was insane, which he was, he would harangue the troops and threaten them with the same punishment if they stepped out of line. But if he was an accomplished sadist, he would speak to them about their victory, or some other matter, without explaining the three men hanging there. The soldiers could draw their own conclusions.

It also occurred to Purcell that he and Vivian might be paraded out at first muster and also chained to the poles. Or… Vivian could be taken to the tent. Recalling the prince’s fate, he also knew that he, Mercado, and Gann could be serving time in that tent.

It was not a good thing to be at the mercy of an omnipotent psychopath who was probably also a sexual sadist. He realized he had to do something while he could. But what? Escape was still possible. But could he leave Henry and Colonel Gann? And should he take Vivian?

Mercado said, “My fault, really. Shouldn’t have left Addis.”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Shouldn’t have gone to sleep. Gann asked if I could stay awake while he caught a few winks… I said, ‘Get some rest, old man,’ and next thing I know, we’re surrounded by soldiers and a donkey.”

“Mule.”

“Whatever. And now we’re all guilty by association.”

“Henry, we are guilty of nothing except being stupid enough to come here expecting to be treated as accredited journalists.”

“Well… it may have gone better if we hadn’t teamed up with Colonel Gann.”

Purcell thought that Colonel Gann had probably saved them all from the Gallas, but Henry needed to share the blame.

Mercado sensed that Purcell was not sympathetic to his interpretation of their predicament, so he said, “Fate. Fate is what brought us here. There is a reason for this…”

“Let me know when you find out.”

Mercado continued, “When Doctor Mato told me that you and Vivian were here and well, I knew that there was a higher power watching over us.”

“That thought never once crossed my mind, Henry.”

“You need to have faith, Frank. Faith will see us through this.”

Purcell was tempted to point out that he of little faith was not hanging from the pole, but instead he said, “Vivian and I saw Getachu.”

Mercado did not respond.

Purcell continued, “He’s basically held a court-martial in his head and condemned Gann to death.”

Again, Mercado didn’t respond, and Purcell looked at him to see if he was conscious. He was, and he was staring at Purcell waiting for news of his own fate. Purcell said, “You, I, and Vivian are to be court-martialed in the morning.” He added, to ease Mercado’s anxiety, “But maybe not.”

Mercado had no response, so Purcell related his and Vivian’s meeting with Getachu, trying to sound optimistic, but also realistic, though he didn’t mention Getachu’s thinly veiled threat to put Vivian in the camp bordello. Henry had enough on his mind. Purcell concluded, “Getachu may be waiting to hear from his bosses. Or he may have something else in mind for us that he’s not saying.”

Mercado did not respond immediately, then said, “We’re more useful to him alive than dead.”

“Unfortunately, that may be true.”

“Or the Provisional government will just order him to release us. In fact, I’m sure they will.” He added, “General Andom and I have a good relationship.”

“Good. I hope General Andom and General Getachu have as good a relationship.”

Mercado did not reply.

Purcell asked, “Did Vivian tell you that the Gallas captured Prince Joshua and two of his staff and turned them over to Getachu?”

“No… God take pity on them.”

“God is on holiday this week, Henry. In the meantime, I’ll do what I can for all of us as long as I’m not hanging on the next pole.”

“I know you will, Frank. If you can keep talking to Getachu—”

“But I have to tell you, Henry, I may decide to bust out of here. Without Vivian. If I can get to Gondar, I may be able to get a flight to Addis and get to the American, Swiss, or British embassy, and get you all sprung.” He looked at Mercado and asked, “Are you all right with that?”

Mercado seemed to be thinking, then replied, “You’ll never make it, Frank.”

“Worth a try.”

“You have no money, no credentials, no… no shoes for God’s sake.”

“I’ll try to do what Gann was going to do — find some friendly Royalists.”

“They can’t even help themselves. They’re finished. Hunted down like dogs.” He said, “You need to stay here. To help us all here.”

“I’ll leave you here in God’s hands.”

Vivian returned and embraced Mercado, saying to Purcell, “We need to get them some water, Frank.”

“All right. Stay here.”

He headed up the slope of the amphitheater, got his bearings, and walked west toward the hospital tent — the only oasis of humanity in this desert of death. Though to be less cynical, probably any man here would offer water, as the soldiers did at the outpost. These were not bad people, but war, as he’d seen too many times, in too many places, changes people.

Whenever he started to believe in humanity, he thought of the Khmer Rouge who murdered millions of their own people. And now he’d made the acquaintance of the Gallas, who were a barbaric throwback to the dark side of humanity. In fact, he admitted, his chances of making it to Gondar and Addis were nil.

Faith, said Henry Mercado. A higher power is watching over us. There is a reason for all this. Well, he thought, it better be a very good reason. And, he supposed, Henry, and also Vivian, thought the reason had to do with them coming upon Father Armano, which Purcell thought was pure chance, but which Henry and Vivian believed was divinely ordained. In any case, they’d see in the morning who was right.

He reached the hospital tent and helped himself to two canteens of water that he found among what was called the muddied and bloodied — the discarded uniforms and field gear of the dead and wounded.

He looked, too, for a knife or bayonet, or anything else that could be useful, but the pile had been picked over.

Purcell wrapped the canteens in a fatigue shirt and made his way back.

He wasn’t quite sure why Getachu had allowed him and Vivian to wander around freely, but his experience with sadistic despots had always had an element of inconsistency — random acts of cruelty, tempered with expansive acts of kindness. The despot wants to be feared, but also loved for his mercy. The despot wants to be like God.

Purcell got back to the parade ground and handed a canteen to Vivian, who held it to Mercado’s lips.

Purcell moved to the Ethiopian, but it appeared that the man was dead. Purcell put his hand on the man’s chest, then put his ear to his still heart.

Gann, on the next pole, called out, “Saw him go through his death throes.”

Purcell moved to Gann and held the canteen to his lips while he drank.

Gann said, “Save some of that.”

Purcell assured him, “This will all be over in the morning.”

“Indeed.”

There wasn’t much else to say, so Purcell moved toward Vivian, who was washing Mercado’s face with the water.

Purcell stood there, watching this display of womanly compassion and grief. Pietà. Which he knew in Italian meant both pity and piety. The dying son or husband, the warrior or father, comforted in the hour of death by the mother or wife, the pious woman, filled with love and pity. We should all be so fortunate, Purcell thought, to die like that.

He said to Vivian and to Mercado, “I’m going to go up on that platform and get some sleep.” He assured Mercado, “I’m here if you need anything.” He gave Gann the same assurance, then climbed the three steps onto the crudely built platform. The moon was overhead now and illuminated the large, empty field.

He counted ten poles running in front of the platform. Gann was to his left, standing straight, and the Ethiopian was also to his left, hanging dead by his wrists. He wondered what the man had done to suffer a death like that. Probably not much. To his immediate front was Henry Mercado, barely ten feet away, and he could hear Vivian speaking softly to him as she stroked his face. Mercado said something now and then, but Purcell couldn’t hear the words, and in any case he didn’t want to eavesdrop on their private moment — if one could call this place of public punishment and death private. He did hope, however, that Mercado was man enough, like Gann, to suffer in dignity, and that his words to his lover were as comforting as hers to him.

Purcell spread the shirt from the hospital on the logs that made up the floor of the platform and lay down. He was fatigued beyond sleep and found he couldn’t put his mind to rest.

At some point, maybe fifteen minutes later, Vivian joined him and without a word lay down beside him, though the platform was large.

He shifted to his left and said to her, “Lie on this shirt.”

She moved onto the shirt and lay on her back, staring at the sky.

A wind came down from the surrounding mountains, and she said, “I’m cold. Move closer to me.”

He moved closer to her, and she rolled on her side, facing him, and he did the same, and they wrapped their bare legs and arms around each other and drew closer for warmth.

He could feel her heart beating, and her breathing, and her breasts pressing against him. Their shammas had ridden up to their thighs, and she rubbed her legs and feet over his, then rolled on her back with him on top.

He hesitated, then kissed her, and she threw her arms around his neck and held her lips against his.

He pulled both their shammas up to their waists and entered her without resistance. She raised her legs, then crossed them over his buttocks and pulled him down farther as he thrust deeper into her.

Her body began to tremble, then stiffened, and suddenly went loose as she let out a long moan. He came inside her and they lay still, breathing heavily into the cool night air.

“My God…” Tears ran down her cheeks.

They lay on their backs, side by side, holding hands, staring up at the starry sky.

They hadn’t spoken a word, and Purcell thought there was nothing to say, but finally he said, “Try to get some sleep.”

“I need to check on Henry. And Colonel Gann.”

He sat up. “I can do that.”

She stood, took the canteen, and said, “Be right back.”

Purcell stood as she descended the steps, and he watched her as she moved first toward Gann.

The moon was in the west now and it cast moonshadows down the line of poles. Purcell realized that Mercado had walked himself around his pole and was now facing the platform.

Vivian checked on Gann, then moved slowly toward Mercado, who was not looking at her but looking up at him.

Was it possible, he wondered, that Mercado had seen — or heard — what happened?

Vivian approached Mercado and he seemed to notice her for the first time.

As she lifted the canteen to his lips and touched his face, he said in a surprisingly strong voice, “Get away from me.”

She spoke to him softly, but he shook his head and wouldn’t drink from the canteen. She tried again, but again he said, “Get away from me.”

Finally, she turned and moved back to the platform, and Purcell noticed that she was walking slowly, with her head down.

He glanced at Mercado, who was looking at him again, and they made eye contact in the bright moonlight.

Purcell turned and watched Vivian come up the steps. She threw the canteen on the floor, then lay down on the shirt and stared up at the sky.

Purcell knelt a few feet from her and said, “Sorry.”

She didn’t reply.

He put ten feet between them and lay on his back.

He heard her say, “Not your fault.”

No, he thought, it certainly was not. He said, “Get some sleep. We’re going to have a long day.”

“We’ll all be dead tomorrow. Then none of this matters.”

“We will be in Addis tomorrow.”

“I think not.” She asked him, “Will you make love to me again?”

“No… not here. In Addis.”

“If we get out of here, this won’t happen again.”

He asked, “Will you be with Henry?”

“Maybe… he’ll get over it.”

“Good. We’ll all get over it.”

“We will.” She said, “Good night.”

“Night.”

He looked up at the starry African sky. Beautiful, he thought. So very beautiful up there.

He closed his eyes, and as he was drifting into sleep he heard her sobbing silently. He wanted to comfort her, but he couldn’t, and he fell into a deep sleep, and dreamt of Vivian naked in the water, and of Mercado shouting her name.

Chapter 11

At dawn, Purcell watched as a squad of soldiers marched through the ground mist toward the three men hanging from the posts.

It was too early for a firing squad, he thought — the troops had not yet arrived to witness the execution.

Purcell let Vivian sleep and he came down from the platform.

The ten soldiers didn’t seem bothered by his appearance — they had no orders regarding him, and they didn’t know if he was the general’s guest or his next victim, so they ignored him.

Purcell saw that Mercado was half awake, watching the soldiers approach. Purcell asked him, “How are you doing?”

He looked at Purcell but did not reply.

Purcell held the canteen to Mercado’s lips, and he drank, but then spit the water at Purcell.

Purcell said to him, “You were delirious last night.”

“Get out of my sight.”

In fact, Purcell thought, Henry was having a recurring nightmare about Vivian that had come true.

The soldiers were now unshackling Gann, who was able to stand on his own, then they moved to Mercado, leaving the dead Ethiopian hanging for the troops to see at the morning muster.

Purcell went over to Gann, who was rubbing his raw wrists, and handed him the canteen. Gann finished the last few ounces, then asked, “How is Mercado?”

“Seems okay.”

“He had a bad night.”

Purcell reminded Gann, “Neither of you would be hanging here if he’d stayed awake on the mountain.”

“Don’t blame him. I should have stayed awake.”

Purcell didn’t reply, and Gann said, “He was shouting at God all night.”

Again, Purcell did not reply, but he’d heard Henry shouting at God, and also cursing him and Vivian, and Gann had heard that too, and probably surmised what and who Henry was angry at. But that was the least of their problems.

Gann asked, “Where is Miss Smith?”

“Sleeping.” He asked Gann, “What’s happening?”

“Don’t know, old boy. But it’s either something very good, or very bad.”

“I’ll settle for anything in between.”

“That doesn’t happen here.” He asked Purcell, “Why didn’t you make a run for it last night?”

“I fell asleep.”

Purcell noticed now in the dawn light that the post from which Gann had hung was splintered and pocked with holes that could only have been made by bullets.

Gann, too, noticed and said, “Well, the good news is that they do execute people by firing squad.” He nodded toward the dead Ethiopian. “Not like that poor bugger.”

Purcell didn’t want to get into that conversation, so he returned to Gann’s other subject and said, “If I did make a run for it, where would I go?”

Gann replied, “Well, first, I’d advise you to go alone. You don’t need a photographer.”

Purcell did not reply, but he didn’t want to leave Vivian here.

He continued, “About ten kilometers south and east of the Italian spa is a Falasha village. Ethiopian Jews. They’ll take you in and you’ll be safe there.”

“How do you know?”

“I know Ethiopia, old boy. That’s where I was going to head. They’re Royalists.”

Recalling what Mercado had said, Purcell pointed out, “The Royalists are being hunted down.”

“The Falashas are immune for the moment.”

“Why?”

“It’s rather complex. The Falashas trace their ancestry to the time of Solomon and Sheba, and they are revered by some as a link to the Solomonic past, as is the emperor.”

“And we know what happened to him.”

“Yes, but the Ethiopians are a superstitious lot, and they believe if you harm a Falasha you have angered God — the common God of Christians, Jews, and Muslims.”

“Works for the Falashas.”

“For now. The name of this village is Shoan.” He suggested, “If you’re not being shot or chained up today, you should give it a try tonight.”

“I was hoping for a helicopter ride to Addis this morning.”

“And I hope you are having a whiskey for me tonight in Addis. But you should have an alternate plan.”

“Right.”

“And if you should ever find yourself in Shoan, tonight or some other time, they will know a thing or two about the black monastery.” He looked at Purcell. “If you are still interested in that.”

Purcell had the feeling he’d stepped into Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. The mysterious dying priest, the surreal Roman ruin, the fortress city of Gondar, the good Prince Joshua, the evil General Getachu, Sir Edmund Gann, and the black monastery. And the Holy Grail, of course. And now the village of the Falashas. None of this seemed possible or real — but it was. Except for the Grail.

Purcell looked at Gann. “Thanks.” He felt he needed to tell Gann about his former employer, Prince Joshua, so he did, sparing no detail.

Gann listened without comment, and Purcell could see he was more angry than he was frightened that this could also be his fate. When Purcell had finished, Gann said, “Bloody bastard.”

“He’s insane.”

“Yes, but I’m sure you can convince him that a British soldier rates a firing squad, or at least a quick bullet in the head.”

“I’ll try to do better than that.” He reminded Gann, and himself, “I’m not sure what Getachu has planned for any of us.”

“He’s treading lightly with you and Miss Smith, or you’d be hanging on these posts.”

“Good thought.”

“Getachu may be insane, but he’s not reckless enough to endanger his own position with the Derg.” He explained, “They’d like nothing better than to find an excuse to summon him to Addis, and General Andom would be glad to arrest his rival and have him shot.”

“That’s good.”

“Or strangled.”

“Even better.”

“The Revolution,” said Colonel Gann, “eats its own.”

“It always does.”

“I predict that Getachu will put you and Miss Smith on a helicopter to Addis.”

“And Mercado?”

“Getachu will send him off to Addis to be dealt with at a higher level. Probably get expelled.” He added, “They’re not shooting Western reporters yet.”

“Good. Well, you seem to know these people.” He informed Colonel Gann, “Getachu hinted that he may want you to train and advise his officers.”

“That will not happen.”

“Don’t turn down that job.”

Gann did not reply, and Purcell pointed out, “The war is almost over. You won’t be helping him much.”

“I won’t be helping him at all.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I’ve asked a favor of you. Please do it.”

“Do it yourself.” He made eye contact with Gann and said, “Look, Colonel, I’m trying to save your life, and you’re not helping. Don’t take the knight thing too seriously.”

Gann didn’t reply, but he looked past Purcell and said, “I think it’s time to go.”

Purcell turned around and saw that Mercado was on his feet without help from the soldiers, and Vivian had awoken and was trying to minister to her lover, who was having none of it — which seemed to confuse the soldiers who’d missed the reason for Mercado’s bad behavior toward the lady.

Purcell looked up at the dead Ethiopian, who seemed almost Christlike hanging there with his flesh torn. It occurred to Purcell that the new Ethiopia didn’t look much different than the old Ethiopia.

Purcell turned to the rising sun above the eastern mountains, then to the large open field shrouded in morning mist. God did a good job with the heaven and the earth. Not so good with the people.

The squad leader formed everyone up in a line of march and barked something in Amharic, then shouted, “Avanti!”

Forward.

Chapter 12

General Getachu sat at his camp desk in his headquarters tent, speaking to an aide in Amharic and ignoring his four guests who were sitting facing him.

Mercado sat on the far right, and Vivian had taken the chair next to him, though Mercado was pointedly ignoring her. Gann had sat himself between Vivian and Purcell, and behind them was a soldier armed with an AK-47 automatic rifle.

Purcell was surprised that Getachu had included Gann in this meeting, but possibly this was a summary court-martial, with the general acting as judge and jury, and the soldier as instant executioner.

The tent was not as dark as it had been at night, and the morning sun shone through mosquito net windows, revealing a dirt floor strewn with cigarette butts. Getachu took a call on his field phone, and spoke as he signed papers for his aide. A busy executive, thought Purcell, but there’s always time for fun and sport.

On that subject, Purcell saw that neither Prince Joshua nor his two officers were present, and Purcell wondered if Getachu had sent his royal highness to the women’s tent.

The aide left and Getachu looked at Gann and asked, “Do you know that your prince is here?”

Gann did not reply, and Getachu seemed angry at the insolence.

Purcell volunteered, “I informed him.”

“Do not speak unless spoken to.” Getachu looked at Gann again, smiled, and said, “That is what I learned in the English missionary school.” He also informed Colonel Gann, “The prince has confessed that you and he have engaged in war crimes.”

Gann had no response.

Getachu saw that this was not productive, so he looked at Purcell and asked, “Who gave you permission to leave the medical tent and walk through my camp?”

“We had no indication that we were under confinement.”

“This is a secure military facility.”

“As you know, we were looking for our colleagues.”

“Yes? And is Colonel Gann your colleague?”

“According to you he is.”

“Then you are all guilty by association.”

“According to you.”

Getachu was sipping water from a canteen cup and Purcell said, “We need something to eat and drink.”

“Why should I waste food and water on people who are to be executed? But I promise you a cigarette before you are shot.” Getachu thought that was funny and he translated for the soldier, who laughed.

Getachu tapped Vivian’s camera, then held up three notepads and said, “There is enough evidence here to condemn you, Mr. Purcell, and you, Miss Smith, and you, Mr. Mercado, to death by firing squad.”

Purcell didn’t think so, but he also knew that Getachu didn’t need any evidence, except maybe to justify an execution to his superiors in Addis.

Purcell said, “I must ask you, General, to return our personal property, including our credentials and passports, and to provide us transportation to the capital.” He reminded Getachu, “We came here expecting to be treated as journalists, not as criminals.”

Getachu pointed out, “I think we have had this conversation.”

“I think we need to have it again.”

General Getachu looked at Colonel Gann, then said to his other guests, “Before we discuss your status, do you agree that this man deserves what he is to suffer?”

Purcell replied, “No, we do not. Colonel Gann was captured in uniform and he is to be treated as a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention, which Ethiopia has signed.”

“That was the previous government.”

Gann said to Purcell, “Save your breath.”

“Excellent advice,” agreed Getachu.

Mercado cleared his throat and said, “General… if you agree to release us, we will write and sign statements of any wrongdoing that we may have engaged in. We will also write a press story praising your victory and your qualities as a leader. We also agree to have our passports held by your foreign office and to stay in Addis writing articles for the duration of this war.”

Getachu looked at Mercado. “Well, you are offering less than Mr. Purcell and Miss Smith have already offered.” He informed Mercado, “They offered to stay here with me for the duration of the war. I was looking forward to their company.”

Vivian took a deep breath, hesitated, then said, “General, if this is supposed to be an inquiry or a trial, it’s actually a farce.” She concluded, “You are keeping us here unlawfully and against our will, and our press offices and our embassies know where we are, and they will be making inquiries, if they haven’t already. Please provide us with transportation to the capital and please return our belongings.”

Getachu stared at her for a long time, then said, “But you look very good in the shamma.”

Vivian did not reply, but she held Getachu’s stare.

Finally, he said, “The Revolutionary Army came into possession of some interesting equipment which the Americans provided to the Royal Army. One such item was a device called a starlight scope. You know of this? A telescopic sight that allows one to see in the dark, which my sentries use in the watchtower to look for the enemy, outside and inside the camp.”

No one responded, and Getachu continued, “So it appeared — to my sentry at least — that you, Miss Smith, and you, Mr. Purcell, engaged in a behavior that did not please Mr. Mercado.” He asked, “Or did my sentry misunderstand what he saw?”

Again no one replied, and if anyone thought that Getachu had brought this up solely to amuse himself, Purcell knew otherwise.

Getachu said to Mercado, “So perhaps you will write in your confession that you discovered that Mr. Purcell and Miss Smith were spying for the Royalists.” He assured Mercado, “You need not write that about yourself. That would condemn you to death.”

Purcell glanced at Mercado, expecting that Mercado understood that he needed to reply with a firm fuck you, but Mercado did not reply.

“Mr. Mercado?”

“I… don’t know what you’re talking about, General.”

“You do. And you should consider my offer.”

Again, Mercado made no reply.

Getachu glanced at his watch as though this was all taking more time than he’d allowed for it. He said, “To my mind, you are all guilty, but as I said to Mr. Purcell and Miss Smith last night, it is possible to make your punishment less severe.” He looked at Gann. “Even you, Colonel, could be spared from death.”

“As you spared Prince Joshua?”

“I’m glad to see that Mr. Purcell has told you everything, and I’m glad to see that you speak.”

“Go to hell.”

“There is no hell. And no heaven. There is no more than what you see here.”

Gann did not reply, and Getachu continued, “They taught me otherwise in the missionary school, but I did not believe them then or now. But I do believe in the use of earthly pain to punish bad behavior, or to make a person confess to his sins.” He pulled Gann’s riding crop from his pocket and said, “Or simply to give me pleasure.” He flexed the crop.

Gann stared at Getachu and they made eye contact.

Getachu stood and said to Gann, “So, the good headmaster beat me in that English school, and he taught me something. But not the lesson he thought. He taught me that some men can be broken with the whip, and some cannot. My spirit was not broken.”

Purcell thought Getachu’s mind was broken, and he saw what was coming, so he said, “General, we will not sit here and witness—”

Getachu slapped the crop on his desk. “Shut up!” He said to Gann, “I will spare your life if you drop your pants, as I did many times, and allow me to deliver thirty blows to your bare buttocks.” He added, “Here and now, leaning over this desk, in front of your friends.”

“I think it’s you, Mikael, who needs another good beating.”

Getachu literally shook with rage, then pulled his pistol, aimed it at Gann, and shouted, “I give you five seconds to do what I say!”

“You can give me five years and I will tell you to go to hell.”

“One—”

Purcell stood. “Stop this.”

The soldier behind Purcell pushed him down into his chair.

“Two.”

Vivian said, “Colonel, please. Just do what he wants… please…”

“Three.”

Mercado closed his eyes and lowered his head.

“Four.”

Gann stood and Getachu smiled. Gann turned, dropped his pants, and said, “Kiss my arse.”

Purcell thought he’d hear the loud explosion of the gun, but there was complete silence in the room.

Finally, Getachu let out a forced laugh, then said, “Very good, Colonel, you may sit.”

Gann pulled up his pants, but did not sit and kept his back to Getachu.

Getachu saw that Gann was not going to turn around, and he said, “You will not provoke me into giving you an easy death.”

Gann remained standing with his back to the general, and Getachu said something to the soldier, who came around and drove the butt of his rifle into Gann’s groin. Gann doubled over, and the soldier pushed him into his chair.

Getachu holstered his gun and put down the riding crop, but remained standing. “You all understand, I hope, that I can have each of you shot as spies.”

Vivian surprised everyone, and herself, by saying, “If that were true, you would have done it.”

Getachu looked at her and said, “It is true, Miss Smith, but as we discussed, there are some men — and women — who I would rather see broken than dead.” He reminded everyone, “And those who agree to serve the people’s revolution may also be spared.”

Mercado spoke up. “I did serve the revolution for many years, and I would be willing to serve it again with my written words—”

“Your written words are like adding your shit to a fire.”

Mercado seemed to shrink in his chair.

Getachu looked at Gann, who was obviously in extreme pain, and said, “Colonel, if you agree to become an advisor to my army — as you did for the former prince’s army — I will spare your life.”

Gann shook his head.

Getachu seemed frustrated with the man’s stubbornness and said, “I will take you to see your former employer and also his aides, who I am sure you know, and then you can decide if you wish to help the revolution or if you wish to assist the prince in his new duties.”

Gann did not reply, and Getachu said, “Or perhaps I will turn you over to the Gallas, and wash my hands of you.”

Purcell leaned toward Gann and said softly, “Just say you’ll do it.”

Gann shook his head, and Purcell wondered if Getachu really wanted or needed Colonel Gann’s military skills, or if he just wanted the satisfaction of seeing the Englishman — the knight — crawling to him before he killed him. Getachu had tried the carrot and the stick, and neither was working on Gann, who Purcell suspected knew Getachu’s game better than anyone.

Getachu’s field phone rang, he answered it, spoke briefly, then hung up and said, “My helicopter has arrived from Gondar.” He asked, “Would you all enjoy a ride to the capital?”

Purcell assumed there was a small catch, but the carrot sounded good. He said, “We’re ready to go.”

“So you said. But first I need some information from all of you. If you give me this information, you will be put on my helicopter and flown to the capital. If you do not give me what I am looking for, then a fate worse than death awaits you here.” He looked at Vivian and said, “Unless, of course, you enjoy the attention of thirty or forty men a day.”

Purcell knew these were not empty threats, but everyone seemed to have become numb to Getachu’s words, and Getachu sensed this as well, so he sat and lit a cigarette, then remembered to offer the pack to Purcell, who declined.

Getachu seemed deep in thought, then began, “A company of my soldiers occupied the Italian spa, where they found empty cans of food and tire tracks.” He looked at Purcell. “You were there?”

Purcell replied, “We said we were.”

“Correct.” He continued, “My men also found fresh earth which they took to be a grave, and which they dug up.” He asked his guests, “Did you dig that grave?”

The easy answer, Purcell thought, was, Yes, so what? But Getachu was not asking out of idle curiosity, and a better answer might be no. Vivian, however, had taken a photograph of the grave, and her camera was sitting on Getachu’s desk. Still, they could deny digging the grave, and he would have done so if it was only he and Vivian answering this psychopath’s questions; but Henry, he realized, was ready to say or do anything to save himself from death or torture. Some men, like Gann, could hang from a pole all night and say, “Kiss my arse.” Others, like Henry, cracked easy and early. But Purcell couldn’t judge Mercado unless he himself had been hanging from the next pole.

“Did you dig that grave?”

Purcell replied, “We did.”

“Who did you bury?”

“We buried who you dug up.”

“My men dug up the body of an old man, Mr. Purcell. I am asking you who it was.”

“A man we found dying in the spa.”

“Why was he dying?”

“He had a stomach wound.”

“How did he get this wound?”

“I have no idea.”

“Did you not speak to him?”

Purcell thought it was time to turn this over to Henry to see what, if anything, he had to say about this, so he replied, “The man spoke Italian and I do not.”

Getachu looked at Mercado. “Doctor Mato informs me that you speak Italian.”

Mercado nodded.

“Did you speak to this dying man?”

“I… I did… but, he died before I could… find out much about him.”

Purcell was not completely surprised that Mercado was keeping a secret from Getachu, because to Mercado it was a secret worth keeping.

Getachu looked long at Mercado. “If you are lying to me, I will find out and then we have no agreement, Mr. Mercado. And then… well, you have sealed your fate.”

Mercado kept eye contact with Getachu. “The man died without telling us who he was.”

Getachu kept staring at him, then shifted his attention to Vivian. “And Doctor Mato informs me that you speak Italian.”

“I do.”

“And what did this dying man say to you?”

Purcell wondered if Vivian would take this opportunity to repay Mercado for not firmly defending her against Getachu’s charges of spying. But women, Purcell had learned, are loyal to men who don’t deserve loyalty. On the other hand, it was Vivian who’d been disloyal first, and probably she was feeling as guilty as Henry was feeling angry. Sex has consequences beyond the act.

“Miss Smith?”

Vivian replied, “The man said nothing more to me than he said to Mr. Mercado.”

“How convenient. Well, let me tell you who I think this old man was. It could only have been Father Armano.” He looked at his guests. “As I’m sure he told you.”

No one replied, and Getachu continued, “Two nights ago, one of my artillery batteries bombarded the nearby fortress of Ras Theodore, who is of the family of my present guest, Joshua. Within this fortress was this Father Armano, who had been imprisoned there since the days of the Italian war.” He asked his guests, “Do you know this story?”

Vivian and Mercado shook their heads.

Getachu went on, “The bombardment attracted the attention of the Gallas, as it always does, and they descended on the fortress and massacred the Royalist survivors, though some managed to flee into the jungle. But my infantry company captured some of these men and brought them here. In fact, you may have seen these soldiers of Ras Theodore hanging outside this tent alongside the soldiers of Ras Joshua.”

Getachu lit another cigarette, sipped some water, then continued. “But before they were brought here, they were brought back to their fortress. Why? To assist my men in determining the fate of Father Armano — and as they discovered, the prison cell of this priest was empty, and the captured soldiers could not identify a body as that of the priest. But they did find a Bible, in Italian, on the floor of his cell, with a hole in it — perhaps a bullet hole. So it is my assumption that the wounded man you discovered was Father Armano.” He looked at his guests closely, then asked Mercado directly, “Why do you think this priest who you came upon was so important?”

Mercado replied, “I don’t know.”

“Then I will tell you. Well, perhaps I won’t. You seem to have no information about this man or this matter, so we have nothing to discuss, and you have nothing to trade for your freedom or your lives.”

Purcell said, “I hope you had the decency to rebury the old man.”

“I have no idea if he was reburied, and I don’t care if the jackals eat his body. But it is interesting that you took the time and effort to give an unknown man a burial.”

“Interesting to you. Common decency to us.”

“I don’t like your attitude of moral superiority, Mr. Purcell. I had enough of that in school.”

“Apparently not.”

“Don’t provoke me.”

“We have no information for you, General. May we leave?”

Getachu seemed not to hear him, and he sat back in his chair and said, “I will be open with you, and perhaps you will do the same for me.” He looked at each of them, then said, “The black monastery. You know of this place. What is in it, I do not know, nor do I know its exact location. But Father Armano knew its location and he may have told you something of this.” He looked at Purcell, then Vivian, then Mercado, and said, “I hope for your sake that he did.”

Mercado said, “He did not.”

“I will ask you again later. But for now, I will explain to you my interest in the black monastery.” He leaned forward and said, “The Provisional Revolutionary government is interested in selling precious objects to museums and churches outside the country. The government is selling most of the emperor’s trinkets now. We need the money for food and medicine for the people. But when a very old regime ends, some people become upset. Nostalgic. Some people are fond of kings and emperors and aristocrats on horses — as long as it’s not in their own country. You understand? The end of the empire is a historical necessity. And gold and jewels are worthless in a modern state. We need capital. And we are acquiring it in the only way we can. The traditional way of revolutionary governments. We rob the rich of their baubles. A few suffer. Many gain. The churches, especially, are better off without their gold. They can concentrate more on God and saving souls without the worry of keeping their property intact. Everyone benefits. So in exchange for any information you might have on the location of this monastery — and what is in it — I will allow you all to return to the capital, including Colonel Gann, who will be dealt with at a higher level, and therefore dealt with less severely than I would here at the front.” He added, “You all have my word on that.”

Purcell wondered if Getachu knew specifically about the so-called Holy Grail, or if he was just interested in looting another Coptic monastery. It made no difference to Purcell, but it did to Henry Mercado. Henry wanted to get out of here and go look for the monastery and the Grail; Henry wanted to have his cake and eat it too. But he couldn’t.

Getachu suggested, “Perhaps you would like a private moment to discuss this.”

Purcell knew, and he hoped Henry and Vivian also knew that even if they could take Getachu at his word, what little they knew was not enough to get them out of here. But it was enough to keep them as Getachu’s guests for a long time — just as Father Armano had been a guest of Ethiopia for a very long time. Or Getachu would just do away with them if Henry decided to clarify his lie.

“Mr. Mercado?”

Mercado said, “We told you all we know about this man. He was dying, and in pain, and he said almost nothing except to ask for water.”

“I know you are lying.”

Purcell didn’t think that Mercado was doing a good job of putting this to rest, so he pointed out, “Why would we lie about something that has no meaning to us?”

“I told you. Some people are fond of the old regime and the old church, which are one.”

“I don’t care about either.” Purcell added, “And if this old man did speak to us, and if he was Father Armano, what do you think he would tell us? The location of the monastery? I don’t understand how he would know that. You said he was in this fortress for almost forty years. I’m not understanding what you think we should know.”

Getachu seemed to have a lucid moment, and he nodded. “You make a good point. In fact, you have nothing to give me.” He added, “And I have nothing to give you.”

“Except,” Purcell suggested, “our belongings, and a ride to Addis.” He added, “Our embassies and our offices are awaiting word from us.”

“Then they will have a long wait.” Getachu informed everyone, “This proceeding is finished. I will consider my judgment. You remain under arrest.” He said something to the soldier, who escorted them out into the bright sunlight where a squad of soldiers waited with leg shackles.

Chapter 13

They were marched to a deep ravine, and Purcell saw that there was fresh earth at the bottom, and shovels, and it was obvious that this was a mass grave, and perhaps a place of execution. They were ordered to climb into the ravine, and it seemed to Purcell that Getachu’s judgment had traveled faster than they had. But to be more optimistic, he didn’t think that Getachu was through with them yet.

At the bottom of the ravine, they could smell the buried corpses. Purcell and Gann looked up at the soldiers, to see if these men were their executioners, but the soldiers were sitting at the edge of the ravine smoking and talking.

Gann said to Purcell, “Sloppy discipline.”

“You should have taken the job.”

“They’re a hopeless lot.”

“Right.” But they won.

No one had anything else to say, and Purcell was sure that each of them was thinking about what had transpired in Getachu’s office. It had been a very unpleasant experience, he thought, but it could have gone worse, though not better. In any case, everyone seemed relieved that it was over, even if it wasn’t.

Finally, Gann said, “The man’s a bloody lunatic.”

No one argued with that, and Gann added, “Ungrateful bastard. Got a decent education from the good Church of England missionaries, and he complains about a few strokes on his arse. Did him more good than harm, I’m sure.”

Purcell smiled despite the fact that little Mikael had grown up fucked up and was looking for payback. And he didn’t have to look too far.

Vivian admitted, “I was very frightened.”

Purcell wanted to tell her she did fine, but that was Henry’s job, though Henry wasn’t speaking to her. Mercado, in fact, was glancing nervously up at the soldiers with the automatic rifles.

Gann noticed Mercado’s anxiety and assured him, “We’re not getting off that easily, Mr. Mercado.”

Mercado did not reply.

Vivian looked at Purcell and said, “You gave me courage, Frank.”

He didn’t reply.

Vivian said to Gann, “You’re very brave.”

“Thank you, but you were seeing more anger than bravery.” He added, “Men like that are taking over the world.”

That might be true, Purcell thought. He’d seen the Getachus of Southeast Asia, and they seemed to be springing up everywhere. Or maybe they’d been around since the beginning of time. He’d written about these men and about their so-called ideologies without comment or judgment. He reported. Maybe, he thought, if he got out of here, he should start being more judgmental. But then he’d sound like Henry Mercado.

Purcell looked at Mercado, who was sitting on a pile of fresh earth, staring off into space, unaware that there was probably a rotting corpse under his ass. No one had told Henry how brave he’d been. Maybe because he hadn’t been. But he had lied, boldly and recklessly, to Getachu about Father Armano. And Vivian had loyally backed him up on that lie. It was a good lie and the right lie, but Purcell knew that Mercado had lied for the wrong reason. So, this being the private moment that Getachu had offered them, he said to Mercado, “You put us in some jeopardy, Henry, by lying about the priest.”

Clearly, Henry Mercado had nothing to say to Frank Purcell, but he replied for everyone’s benefit, “Getachu has no way to discover the truth.”

“Well, he does if he hangs us all from a post for a few days.”

Mercado said impatiently, “It may have occurred to you that even if I told him what little we knew, he wouldn’t have released us.”

“Right. In fact we’d be here forever. But you’re not answering my question, Henry. Why did you risk lying to him about Father Armano and the black monastery?”

Mercado replied sharply, “You know damned well why.”

“I do, but if we do get out of here, none of us should be coming back to find the black monastery.”

Mercado glanced at Gann and said to Purcell, “I don’t know if we’re getting out of here or if I’m ever coming back, but I don’t want them to find it.”

Henry Mercado, Purcell knew, was comforted by thinking he was protecting the Holy Grail from the Antichrist, or whatever, and he could go to his martyrdom happy in the knowledge that when he met Jesus he could say, “I saved your cup.”

Colonel Gann could feel the tension between the two men, and he knew the cause of it, which was a very old story; one chap had cuckolded the other, and to make matters worse, the lady in question was not declaring herself for one or the other. Awkward, he thought, and though he was sure he had far greater issues to worry about, it made him uncomfortable nonetheless.

To clear the air on at least one thing, however, Gann said, “As I’ve acknowledged to Mr. Purcell, I know about the black monastery, and though it’s well hidden in the jungle, Getachu will eventually find it. You can be sure of that.”

No one responded, and Gann continued, “As you may also have heard, perhaps from this Father Armano, there is a legend that this monastery is the resting place of the Holy Grail.”

Again, no one responded, and Gann went on, “Can’t say I believe in all that, but I can assure you that whenever the revolutionary bastards here show up at a church or monastery, the priests and monks make off with their earthly treasures.”

Purcell figured as much. There were two things the churches were good at: acquiring gold and keeping gold. Half the world’s priceless religious objects had been on the lam at one time or another. And there was no reason to think that this would be any different when the Ethiopian revolutionaries got close to the black monastery. Same if Henry Mercado or Vivian got close. Poof! The Grail disappears again.

Purcell said to Mercado, “We are getting out of here, and I can guarantee you I’m never coming back. My advice to you and to Vivian is to forget you ever met Father Armano or ever heard of the black monastery. This is not a good thing to know about.”

Mercado did not reply.

Purcell added, “God is not telling you to find the Holy Grail, Henry. He is telling you to go home.”

“And I’m telling you to mind your own business.”

Purcell changed the subject to something more immediate and asked Gann, “Do you think Getachu is at all concerned about overstepping his authority?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? Well, I can tell you that he can’t overstep his power, which is absolute here, as you see. But he can overstep his authority and get on the wrong side of the Derg and his rival, General Andom. Not that those two care about us, or about international law, but Andom has to decide if it would be good for him or bad for him if Getachu kills us.”

Vivian asked, “Do we think anyone outside of the Revolutionary government even knows we’re here?”

Mercado reminded everyone, “Our press offices know we were heading this way, and we mentioned to some of our colleagues that we had a safe-conduct pass to make contact with General Getachu.”

Which, Purcell thought, meant very little. Basically, they were all freelancers, which worked well except when they got in trouble or went missing. Possibly, if they didn’t show up in the Hilton bar in a week or so, someone might think to contact their respective embassies if they could remember their drinking buddies’ nationalities.

As for himself, Purcell was aware that the American embassy in Addis was barely open, and not on good terms with the new government. If he wasn’t wearing leg shackles, he’d have kicked himself in the ass for making this trip.

And as for Mercado with his UK passport, and Vivian with her Swiss passport, any requests for information made by their respective embassies to the Ethiopian government would be met by indifference on a good day, and hostility and lies on most days.

Bottom line here, Purcell thought, there was no outside help on the way. Mercado should know that, but maybe Vivian should not.

The sun was higher and hotter now, and the temperature at the bottom of the ravine had to be over a hundred degrees. Purcell noticed that most of Vivian’s white ointment was gone, and her face and arms were getting redder. He called up to the soldiers at the top of the ravine, “Weha!”

They looked down at him, then one of them unhooked a canteen from his belt and threw it to him.

He gave the canteen to Vivian, and she drank, but then seemed uncertain who to pass it to. Old lover? New lover? She gave it to Gann. He drank and passed it to Mercado, who drank and held it out for Purcell to take.

Purcell finished the last few ounces, then suggested to Mercado, “Give Vivian your shirt for her head.”

Mercado seemed angry at being told by Purcell to be a gentleman, and he snapped, “Give her your own shirt.”

Purcell would have, if he’d had a shirt, but he had a shamma, and no underwear, and he didn’t want to bring that up. He stared at Mercado, who started to unbutton his khaki shirt.

But Gann had already taken off his uniform shirt and handed it to Vivian, who said, “Thank you,” and draped it over her head.

Purcell understood Mercado’s anger, but it amazed him that the man could hold on to it while he was contemplating a firing squad or worse. But on second thought, men are men. He thought, too, that if he had a chance to do last night over, he’d do the same thing, but twice. No regrets. He wondered if he could convince Mercado that what happened last night was God’s will.

He looked at Vivian sitting at the side of the ravine, closer to Mercado than to him. They made eye contact, and she held it, then looked away.

He wondered what she was thinking or feeling. Probably he’d never know, and that was just as well.

Another group of soldiers appeared at the top of the ravine, and it was obvious that something was going to happen, and probably not anything good.

Vivian suddenly moved closer to Mercado and grabbed his arm. “Henry…”

Mercado appeared more aware of the soldiers, thought Purcell, than of Vivian’s hold on him. Purcell could hear her say softly, “I love you… please forgive me.”

Mercado seemed to notice her for the first time, and he hesitated, then asked, “Are you truly sorry?”

“I am.”

“Then I will forgive you.”

She put her arms around him and buried her face in his chest.

Purcell assumed that Mercado’s absolution didn’t include him, even if he asked for it, but he didn’t think he needed forgiveness, so he didn’t ask. He did, however, want to say something to Vivian, in case this was the last time they’d see each other. But what he wanted to say, he couldn’t say, so he turned away and looked at the soldiers, who were speaking rapidly and glancing down at the prisoners at the bottom of the ravine.

Mercado spoke some Amharic, but he seemed preoccupied, so Purcell asked Gann, “Can you understand what they’re saying?”

“A bit… I think you three are going to be taken somewhere else.”

“Why do you think that?”

“The leg shackles are for traveling, old boy. When they tie your hands behind your back, you know you’re not going far.”

Purcell knew this made sense, but he pointed out, “Your legs are also shackled, Colonel.”

“Yes, I noticed. Can’t say why, though.”

Henry and Vivian seemed oblivious to what was going on, but then one of the soldiers shouted to them, “Come! Come!” He motioned for all of them to climb out of the ravine.

They all looked at one another, then stood and began climbing up the slope, dragging their chains with them as the soldier kept shouting, “Come! Come!”

They reached the top of the ravine and stood among the soldiers, who seemed indifferent to them. Purcell noticed that in the distance, where he’d spotted the helipad, an American-made Huey sat with its rotor spinning.

The soldier in charge pointed to the helicopter and shouted, “Go! Go!”

Purcell looked at Gann, expecting that he’d be pulled aside, but one of the soldiers gave Gann a push and shouted, “Go!”

Vivian and Mercado joined hands and began running as fast as their chains allowed. Purcell and Gann followed. Four soldiers accompanied them, urging them to move faster. Vivian stumbled and Mercado helped her up, and they continued toward the helicopter.

Vivian and Mercado reached the open door of the aircraft and were pulled aboard. As Purcell got closer, he could see a large red star painted on the olive drab fuselage — the red star of the revolution, which he knew covered the old emblem of the Lion of Judah.

Gann scrambled aboard without help, and Purcell followed.

Vivian called out over the noise of the engine and rotors, “Pilot says we’re going to Addis!” She flashed a big smile and shouted, “Avanti!”

The helicopter lifted, pivoted, and headed south toward Addis Ababa.