The Quest

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.

Mercado held up his glass and said, “Benvenuto.”

“Cheers.”

They drank and Mercado asked, “Are you here to tell me you’ve come to your senses?”

“No.”

“All right.” He informed Purcell, “Then I’ve decided to go to Ethiopia.”

Purcell was not completely surprised that Mercado had changed his mind. In fact, he hadn’t. Whatever it was that had taken hold of him that night at the mineral spa still had him, and Henry, like Vivian, had been transformed by Father Armano and by that admittedly strange experience that Henry and Vivian took as a sign.

Mercado continued, “But I can’t promise you that I will go any farther than Addis. I am not keen on going back into Getachu territory.”

“I thought you wanted to write a nice piece about him.”

“I do. His obituary.” He tapped a stack of papers on his desk and said, “I am calling in favors and pulling some strings to get you and Vivian accredited with L’Osservatore Romano.”

“Good. I just lost my AP job.”

“How did you do that?”

“Easy.”

“All right, we will be covering the religious beat, of course, and your starting salary is zero, but all expenses are paid to and in Ethiopia.”

“And back.”

“Your optimism amazes me.” He asked, “Should I finalize this?”

“Where do I sign?”

Mercado finished his gin and contemplated another, then reminded Purcell, “This will all be moot if we can’t get visas.”

“It’s a good first step.”

“And L’Osservatore Romano will look good on our visa applications.”

“Si.”