The Quest

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.”