Purcell did not reply.
“If you, Mr. Purcell, want to go back, you need to go for the right reason. Your reason is not the right reason.”
Purcell thought a moment, then replied, “I’m not going to tell you that I believe in the Holy Grail. But I do believe there is a hell of a story there.”
“But Vivian, dear boy, believes in the Grail. You need to believe in it as well if you’re going to drag her back there — or if she’s dragging you back.”
Purcell asked, “What do you believe?”
“I believe what Father Armano told us.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
“Then how can you not go back?”
He reminded Purcell, “Father Armano seemed to think that the Grail should be left where it was in a Coptic monastery — and he’s a Catholic priest who was under papal orders to find it and take it for the Vatican.”
“I’m not suggesting we should steal it. Just… look at it. Touch it.”
“That would probably end in life imprisonment. Or death.”
“But if you really believe, Henry, that we’re going back to find the actual Holy Grail, what difference does death make?”
Mercado looked closely at Purcell.
“Father Armano risked death by going on that patrol to find the black monastery. Because he believed in the Grail, and he believed in eternal life.”
“I understand that. But…”
“The Knights of the Round Table risked their lives to look for the Grail—”
“Myth and legend.”
“Right. But there’s a moral to that myth.”
“Which is that the Grail will never be found.”
“Which is that we should never stop looking for what we believe in. Death is not the issue.”
Mercado did not reply.
“Why did Peter come to Rome?”
Mercado smiled. “To annoy the Romans with his arguments, as you are annoying me with yours.”
“And to bring them the word of God. And why did Peter return to Rome?”
“To die.”
“I rest my case.”
Mercado seemed lost in thought, then said, “Look, old man, get a good night’s sleep”—he nodded toward Jean who was still at the bar but settling her bill—“and if you’re still suicidal in the morning, give me a call.” He put his business card on the table and stood.
Purcell stood and said, “Henry, this is what we have to do. We think we have a choice, but we don’t.”
“I understand that. And I also understand that you’re not as cynical as you think you are or pretend to be. You are not going to risk your life for a good story — or for a woman. You’re not that much of a reporter or that romantic. But if you believe in love, then you believe in God. There may or may not be a Holy Grail at the end of your journey, but the journey and the quest is itself an act of faith and belief. And as we Romans say, ‘Credo quia impossibile.’ I believe it because it is impossible.”
Purcell did not reply.
They shook hands and Mercado went to the bar, spoke to Jean, then left.
Jean walked toward his table, smiling tentatively. Purcell stood, and thought: Good old Henry, up to his old tricks again, sticking me with the bill, the lady, and the next move.
Chapter 16
Rome was always crowded at Christmas with visiting clergy, pilgrims, and tourists, and even more so this year in anticipation of the pope’s Christmas Eve announcement of the coming Holy Year. The taxi driver was swearing at the holiday traffic and at the foreign idioti who didn’t know how to cross a street.
Purcell had decided to stay in Rome for Christmas and he’d sent a short telex to Charlie Gibson in Cairo telling him that. The return telex, even shorter, had said, YOU’RE FIRED. HAVE A GOOD CHRISTMAS.
He’d hoped that would be Charlie’s response, and he dreaded a second telex rescinding the first. But if war broke out, as it might after all the Christian tourists left Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth, then the Cairo office would want him back. In the meantime, he was free to pursue other matters. Also, as it turned out, Jean needed to get back to England for Christmas, which further freed him to write, and to think about what he wanted to do about the rest of his life.
He hadn’t called Henry the morning after as Henry had suggested, and Henry hadn’t called him, nor would he ever. So now, three days later, Purcell had made the call to L’Osservatore Romano that morning and he had a 4 P.M. meeting with Signore Mercado. It was 3:45 and the traffic was slower than the pedestrians, so Purcell asked the driver to drop him off at the foot of the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele, and he walked across the Tiber bridge.
It was windy, and the sky was dark and threatening with black clouds scudding across the gray sky, and the Tiber, too, looked black and angry.
Saint Peter’s Square was packed with tourists and with the faithful who were praying in large and small groups. In the center of the square stood the three-thousand-year-old Egyptian obelisk, and at the end of the square rose the marble mountain of Saint Peter’s Basilica, beneath which, according to belief, lay the bones of the martyred saint, and Purcell wondered if Peter, dying on the cross, had regretted his decision on the Via Appia.
Purcell did not enter the square, but walked along the Vatican City wall to the Porta Santa Rosa where two Swiss Guards with halberds stood guarding the gates of the sovereign city-state. He showed his passport and press credentials to a papal gendarme who was better armed than the Swiss Guards, and said, “Buona sera. L’Osservatore Romano, Signore Mercado.”
The man scanned a sheet of paper on his clipboard, said something in Italian, and waved him through.
He’d been there once before and easily found the press office on a narrow street lined with bare trees. The windows of the buildings cast squares of yellow light on the cold ground.
He was fifteen minutes late, which in Italy meant he was a bit early, but maybe not in Vatican City. The male receptionist asked him to be seated.
The offices of L’Osservatore Romano were housed in a building that may have preceded the printing press, but the interior was modern, or had been when the paper was founded a hundred years before. Electricity and telephones had been added, and the result was a modern newspaper that published in six languages and was a mixture of real news and propaganda. And not surprisingly, the pope made every issue.
A lot of articles focused on the persecution of Catholics in various countries, especially Communist Poland. Occasionally the paper covered the plight of non-Catholic Christians, and Purcell recalled that Henry Mercado had been in Ethiopia to write about the state of the Coptic Church in the newly Marxist country, as well as Ethiopia’s small Catholic population. Now Henry was writing press releases about the Holy Year. Purcell was sure that Mercado would like to return to Ethiopia to continue his important coverage. And hadn’t Henry promised General Getachu a few puff pieces about the general’s military prowess?
Mercado came into the waiting room wearing a cardigan over his shirt and tie. They shook hands and Mercado showed Purcell into his windowless office, a small room piled high with books and papers, giving it the look of a storage closet. He could see why Henry was in Harry’s Bar at 4 P.M.
Mercado shut off his IBM electric typewriter and said, “Throw your coat anywhere.” He spun his desk chair around and faced his guest who sat in the only other chair. Purcell asked, “Mind if I smoke?”
Mercado waved his arm around the paper-strewn room and replied, “You’ll set the whole Vatican on fire.”
But he did have a bottle of Boodles in his desk drawer and he poured into two water glasses.