The Quest: A Novel

your photographer.”
    “She is. But I met her only a few months ago. At the Hilton in Addis. Don’t know if she can photograph or not. We’ve taken scads of pictures, but nothing’s been developed yet. Don’t even know if she uses film, to be honest with you.” He laughed.
    Purcell smiled. The moon was below the main building now and a pleasant darkness enveloped the spa. A soft evening breeze carried the scent of tropical flowers, and a feeling very near inner peace filled him. He wondered if he was getting Indochina out of his system. Apropos of that, he asked Mercado, “You were in jail, weren’t you?”
    “Not jail, old man. We political prisoners don’t call it jail. If you’re going to talk about it, use the correct term, for Christ’s sake. The
camps
. Sounds better. More dignified.”
    “Still sounds like shit.”
    Mercado continued, “That it should have happened to me was more ironic, since I was a little pink in those days myself.”
    “What days?”
    “After the war. The Russians grabbed me in East Berlin. January of 1946. All I was doing was photographing a damned food line. Never understood it. There were food lines all over Europe in the winter of 1946. But I guess there weren’t supposed to be any in the workers’ paradise. And the damned Russkies had been in charge there for only—what? About nine months? Hard to erect a Socialist paradise in only nine months. That’s what I told them. Don’t take it personally, chaps, I said. You beat the Huns fair and square. So what if they have to stand on bread lines? Good for the little Nazis. You see? But they didn’t quite get my point.”
    Purcell nodded absently.
    Mercado continued, “I had Reuters send all the press clippings Ihad written since the Spanish Civil War in 1936. All my best anti-Fascist stuff. I even had a lot of nice things to say about the brave Red Army in some of those pieces. I don’t know if the bloody beggars even saw my articles. All I know is that I was bundled off to Siberia. Didn’t get out until 1950 because of some prisoner exchange. And not so much as an apology, mind you. One day I was 168AM382. Next day I was Henry Mercado again, Reuters correspondent, back in London, with a nice bit of back pay coming. Four years, Frank. And was it cold. Oh my, was it cold. Four years for snapping a picture. And me a nice pink Cambridge boy. Fabian Society and all that. Workers of the world, unite.”
    Again, Purcell did not respond.
    Mercado asked, “How many years did you do, Frank? A year in Cambo? Well, we can’t compare it in years alone, can we? Hell is hell, and when you’re there, it’s an eternity, isn’t it? Especially with an open-ended sentence. You can’t even count off the days you have left.”
    Purcell nodded.
    Mercado asked rhetorically, “What are you to them? Nothing. Do they let you know that your wife has died? Certainly not. They don’t even know themselves, probably, that you have a wife. They don’t know anything about you, except that you are 168AM382, and that you must work. So what if your wife is dying of pneumonia and penicillin is like gold and a woman by herself can’t—”
    Mercado stopped abruptly, and a look of weariness came into his watery blue eyes. He said in a low, hoarse voice, “Bloody Reds. Bloody Nazis. Bloody politicians. Don’t believe in any of them, Frank. That’s good advice from an older man. They all want your body and your soul. The body’s not important, but the soul is. And that belongs to God when He calls for it.”
    “Henry, no religion, please.”
    “Sorry. I’m a believer, you know. Those priests in the camps. The Russian Orthodox priests. Had a few Baptist ministers, too. Some Catholic priests, some rabbis. I was in a camp with a lot of religious people. Some of them had been there since the 1920s. They kept me alive, Frank. They
had
something.”
    “Lizards and centipedes kept me alive in Cambodia.” Purcellpulled on his pants and stood. “Let’s get moving.” He walked away from Henry Mercado.
    Vivian had been awakened by their conversation, and she moved past Purcell in the darkness. He could hear the soft sounds of whispering as she spoke to Mercado. The words were lost, but the tone was soothing. Poor Henry, Purcell thought, the grizzled old newsman having a teary moment in front of a woman half his age.
    They dressed and headed back toward the hotel lobby in the darkness. Mercado, who seemed to be feeling better, said, “I’ll