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.’ ”