The Quest: A Novel

disappeared into the building, and Purcell waited. A few minutes later, Gann reappeared and signaled all clear.
    Purcell looked back to the edge of the jungle and saw Mercado and Vivian making their way through the chest-high grass. He motioned them to join him, and together they walked quickly to the front of the spa hotel.
    They stood at the base of the steps that they’d climbed with the Jeep and looked at the crumbling ruin.
    Vivian said, “We are back.”
    Purcell looked across the field toward the narrow road they’d driven that night, and he could see the place where he’d crashed the Jeep through the thick wall of high brush that blocked the spa from the road. He looked back at the hotel. He must have seen the dome, he thought, or it registered subconsciously, and that was why he’d suddenly turned off the road.
    Vivian saw what Purcell was looking at and said, “Fate, Frank. Don’t try to understand it.”
    Mercado agreed, “I see God’s hand in this.”
    Hard to argue with that, so he didn’t.
    Vivian walked halfway up the steps, and Mercado and Purcell joined her.
    She looked around and asked, “Can you believe this?” She turned to Purcell. “We are back where it began.”
    Actually, Purcell thought, this all began in the Hilton bar, with Henry inviting him to come with them to the front lines. A simple “No” would have been a good answer. But Henry’s invitation was flattering. And Vivian had smiled at him. And he may have had one cocktail more than he needed.
    Ego, balls, alcohol, and a restless dick; a sure combination for glory or disaster.
    Vivian said, “We will begin here, where Father Armano ended his life. We have been to Berini, and we have been to Rome, and we will follow the priest’s footsteps to his prison. And with his help and God’s help we will also follow his footsteps to the black monastery, and the Holy Grail.”
    Vivian took both their hands, and they continued up the steps to the place where Father Armano’s fate had intersected with theirs.

Chapter 47
    T hey found Colonel Gann standing in the rubble-filled lobby. It looked the same as when they’d last seen it, except that along the frescoed wall where Purcell had parked the Jeep, and where they had heard Father Armano’s story, there were bones and skulls strewn over the marble floor.
    Gann said, “Firing squad.”
    Vivian stared at the skulls and bones, put her hand over her mouth, and said, “Oh my God…”
    Purcell moved closer to the execution wall. Some military gear and rotted
shammas
confirmed that this was a mass slaughter of Prince Joshua’s soldiers. Jackals and ants had nearly cleaned the bones, but some desiccated brown tissue remained, and dried blood covered the marble floor.
    The plaster fresco on the wall was shattered where fusillade after fusillade had cut down the condemned men. Purcell noticed that splashes of blood and perhaps brain stained the remnants of the fresco, as high as ten feet off the floor, adding a grisly touch to the pink bathing nymphs.
    Mercado, too, was staring at the scene, and he said, “This is evidence of a war crime.”
    Purcell, trying not to sound too cynical or unfeeling, replied, “Henry, this country is drowning in blood. What difference does this make?”
    “This is inhuman.”
    “Right.” They’d both seen battle deaths, but that was what passed for normal in war. Mass executions, on the other hand, had a special ugliness.
    Purcell counted skulls, but stopped at about fifty.
    Gann was poking around the lobby, gun in hand.
    Vivian had walked away and was standing at the back of the lobby, which opened out onto the courtyard and gardens.
    Mercado stared at the corner where they had laid the priest and covered him with a blanket—the now desecrated spot where he and Vivian felt a miracle of sorts had taken place.
    Mercado said, as if to himself, “The blood of the martyrs gives nourishment to the church.”
    Purcell could not completely understand how people like Henry Mercado, and to some extent Vivian, persisted in their belief in a benevolent power. But he’d come to see that there was a special language used to explain the simultaneous existence of God and human depravity. You would need the right words, Purcell thought, evolved over thousands of years, to keep your faith from slipping.
    Vivian had unexpectedly returned to the scene, and she had her camera out now. She took a deep breath and shot a few pictures of the grisly carnage. She moved