The Quest: A Novel

Frank.”
    “I’ll try.”
    “You will.”
    They rejoined the others.

Chapter 50
    T hey rose before dawn and had some bread and boiled eggs as they waited for better light.
    The night had been long and uncomfortable, and the jungle sounds had kept them awake. Purcell began to wonder if anything short of the Holy Grail was worth getting eaten by mosquitoes and listening for Gallas.
    Vivian seemed cheerful, and that annoyed him.
    Gann, too, seemed ready to get moving, but Henry didn’t look well, and Purcell was a bit concerned about him. But if Henry complained, Purcell would remind him whose idea this was. Or was this his own idea?
    The dawn came and they left the relative comfort of the spa hotel and walked down the steps. They moved quickly across the field and through the brush, then looked up and down the road. Gann said in a whisper, “I will cross first, then one at a time.”
    Gann crossed the narrow road and knelt in the brush on the far side. Mercado followed, and then Vivian and Purcell brought up the rear.
    They beat the bush on the side of the road, looking for an obvious trail—a trail that Father Armano might have taken to his imprisonment forty years ago, and which he may have been looking for again before he died in the spa.
Dov’è la strada
? But even Gann couldn’t find an opening in the wall of tangled vegetation that lined the road.
    Gann said, “We will walk on the road, though I’d rather not.” He instructed them, “The drainage ditch here is partially filled with dirt, as you see, and choked with brush. But we will dive into it if we hear a vehicle, or the sound of hoofbeats.”
    Especially hoofbeats, Purcell thought.
    “We will continue until we’ve found a trail that will take us into the interior of this rain forest.” He said, “I suggest we try south, toward Shoan.”
    They began their walk south on the old Italian road that Purcell, Mercado, and Vivian had driven from Addis what seemed so long ago. The road, as Purcell recalled, was hard-packed, and he could now see evidence of the tar and gravel that the Italian Army had laid forty years before. But when Father Armano had walked the road—if he had walked it—the Italian engineers had not yet gotten this far. More important, any trails intersecting this road may have been more obvious forty years ago, before this area had become less traveled and less populated.
    Gann stepped off the road now and then and smacked the brush with the side of his machete. After half an hour, Purcell said, “We’re going to wind up in Shoan soon.”
    “That will be another two hours, Mr. Purcell.”
    Up ahead was a huge gnarled tree, and Purcell picked up his pace. He got to the tree and said to his companions, “I am going to do some aerial recon.” He took the binoculars from Mercado, dropped his backpack, and shimmied up the wide trunk, then got hold of a branch and pulled himself up.
    Gann said, “Watch for snakes, old boy.”
    Purcell continued to climb the twisted branches and got about forty feet off the ground.
    He sat on a bare branch and scanned the area around him with the binoculars. The trees near the road were not tightly spaced, though there was very dense brush between them. As he looked west, he could see the beginning of a great triple-canopy rain forest.
    He turned his attention to the road and looked north, toward Tana and Gondar, but he saw no one approaching. The road was probably better traveled before the revolution and civil war, he thought, but now only armed men roamed the countryside, and he didn’t want to meet any of them—unless they were friends of Colonel Gann.
    Purcell scanned the road to the south, and it was also deserted, though he saw some sort of catlike animals crossing a hundred yards up the road. He watched them go into the bush, then he focused closely on the area where they’d disappeared.
    Gann called up softly, “See anything?”
    “Maybe.” He made sure he knew where the cats had disappeared, then climbed down and jumped onto the road.
    Gann asked, “How was your view?”
    “Lots of trees out there.”
    “What type of trees, old boy?”
    Purcell described the terrain and suggested to Gann, “You can climb the next tree.” He told everyone, “The good news is I saw some sort of… medium-sized cats going into the bush. So maybe there’s a game trail.”
    “Excellent.” Gann guessed, “Some sort of lynx, I would think.”
    Mercado asked, “Are they dangerous?”
    Gann