The Quest

Purcell jumped on the wing and helped Mercado up, then took Vivian’s hand and pulled her onto the wing. They looked at each other a second, then she released his hand and climbed into the cockpit and over to the right-hand seat.

Purcell got in, hit the master switch, and checked his flight controls, then pumped the throttle and hit the starter. The engine fired up quickly, and he checked his instrument panel. Oil pressure still low.

Mercado said, “It’s a bit tight back here with the luggage.”

Vivian said to him, “Do not disturb the pilot when he is doing his pilot stuff.”

Purcell said, “Seat belts.”

He released the handbrake and brought the Navion around. He saw Signore Bocaccio standing beside his old Fiat, waving to them. He returned the wave, then slid the canopy closed and taxied toward the end of the longer runway, which was clear of traffic this afternoon.

Vivian asked him, “Do I need to pray to Saint Christopher?”

He didn’t reply.

Vivian had been trying to engage him in light banter all morning, but he wasn’t in the mood. She’d been good enough not to call him in his room last night, or knock on his door, and he was fairly certain she hadn’t spoken to Mercado about the new sleeping arrangement because Henry seemed himself.

Purcell ran the engine up, checked his controls and instruments again, then wheeled onto the runway. “Ready for takeoff.” He pushed the throttle forward and the Navion began its run.

The aircraft lifted off and Purcell began banking right, north toward Gondar. To his right lay Addis Ababa, a city he would probably never see again, or if he did, it would be from a prison cell-unless they gave him the same view of the courtyard and gallows.

Purcell steered the Navion between two towering peaks, then glanced back at what he hoped was his last look at Addis Ababa.

Henry, as it turned out, had not gone to the press office that morning, but he’d sent a telex from the hotel to L’Osservatore Romano telling his editors that the team was going to Gondar for a few days to report on the Falasha exodus.

Purcell, Vivian, and Mercado had spent the morning in Henry’s room, giving the photos a last look and marking the terrain maps with a few more suspected hiding places for the black monastery. The other suspicious thing in Mercado’s room, the strand of black hair, was still there. Henry should speak to the maid. But they would not be returning to their hotel rooms ever. It was time, as Colonel Gann suggested, to go and find it.

Regarding where to go next if they did find it, Colonel Gann, in the maps he’d sent them, had included contiguous terrain maps from Gondar and Lake Tana to French Somaliland on the coast. Clearly Gann was suggesting an exit plan for them.

So, with or without the Holy Grail, they would make their way to French Somaliland, the closest safe haven, where many Westerners and Ethiopians on the run had gone. The French officials were good about providing assistance to anyone who reached the border. All they had to do was get there.

Vivian said to him, in a soft voice, “You told me we would be friends.”

“We are.”

“You’ve barely spoken to me all morning.”

“I’m not good in the morning.”

She glanced back at Henry, who was concentrating on a photograph with the magnifier. She said to Purcell, “It will never happen again. I promise you.”

“Let’s talk about this in Gondar.” He added, “I’m flying.”

She looked at him, then turned her head and stared out the side of the canopy.

They continued on, and Mercado said, “We have reached the point of no return on our journey.”

Purcell replied, “Not yet. We have burned no bridges, and I can still fly back to Addis and say we had engine problems.”

Mercado did not reply, but Vivian said, “Avanti.”

Chapter 43

Purcell spotted the single-lane road and followed it north. Off to his right front, he could see Shoan about ten kilometers away. He banked right and began descending, saying to his passengers, “I want Colonel Gann to know we are on the way.”

As they got lower and closer, Mercado leaned forward with his binoculars. “I don’t see the vehicle.”

Purcell replied, “We don’t know if that vehicle had anything to do with Gann.”

Purcell flew over the village at four hundred feet and tipped his wings.

Mercado said, “I saw someone waving.”

“Did he have a mustache and a riding crop?”

“He was wearing a white shamma… but it could have been him.”

“Going native.”

They flew over the spa, then Purcell banked right, to the area east of the single-lane road where most of their photographs had been taken of the jungle and rain forests that lay between Lake Tana and the area around the destroyed fortress-an area that Purcell estimated at more than a thousand square miles.

Vivian had the large-scale maps on her lap, and Purcell asked her to hold up the one of the area below.

She held the map for him, and he glanced at the circled sites, then banked east toward the first circle on the map. He dropped down to three hundred feet and slowed his airspeed as much as he could.