The Quest: A Novel

some in Italian, and many in what looked like Amharic script.
    Mercado said, “Here’s a Bible in Geez.”
    Purcell’s three minutes of pretending were up and he moved toward the far end of the long room, where there was a closed door, which he opened, expecting to be shouted at by the monk. But the monk didn’t say anything, so Purcell entered the room, which was indeed the cartography room.
    A long, marble-topped table sat in the center of the room, andhundreds of rolled maps sat stacked on deep shelves, each with a stringed tag attached. He looked at a tag that was handwritten in Italian, Latin, and Amharic.
    He heard something behind him and turned to see the monk standing a few feet from him. Purcell asked, “Mind if I smoke?”
    The monk did not reply.
    Purcell moved along the shelves, looking at the hanging tags, though he couldn’t read any of them.
    Mercado and Gann joined him, and they seemed pleased to see all the maps. Mercado began immediately reading tags, and Gann said, “Here are the Italian Army maps.” As he picked a few dust-covered maps off the shelf, Purcell unrolled them and laid them on the map table, weighting their corners with brass bars that had been stacked there for that purpose.
    There didn’t seem to be a card catalog, but Mercado soon figured out how the maps were grouped, and he took a few ancient maps, hand drawn on parchment and papyrus, and set them gently on the table.
    The monk watched, but said nothing.
    Gann was now sitting at the table, studying the unfurled army maps, and Purcell sat to his right and Mercado to his left. Sir Edmund was once again Colonel Gann.
    Purcell saw that the army maps were color printed, with shades of green for vegetation, shades of brown for arid areas, and pale blue for water. The elevation lines were in dark brown, and the few roads were represented by black dotted lines. The symbols for other man-made objects were also in black, as were the grid lines and the latitudes and longitudes. The map legend and all the other writing was in Italian. Gann said, “We used these captured maps in ’41, and map words are the extent of my Italian.”
    Gann pointed to a map and said, “This one is a 1:50,000 map of the east bank of Lake Tana. It was partially field checked by the Italian Army’s map ordnance section that made it, but most of this map was compiled from aerial photographs. This map here is of the fortress city of Gondar and environs. It is a more accurate 1:25,000, and completely field checked. Everything else seems to be crude 1:100,000- and 1:250,000-scale maps, not field checked.”
    Purcell knew how to read aviation charts, but these were terrain maps, and unless you understood what everything meant, it was like looking at paint spills on graph paper.
    Gann continued, “Most of Africa was accurately mapped by the colonial powers. Ethiopia, however, was not a European colony until the Italians invaded, and the Ethies themselves hadn’t any idea how to make a map, or what use they were. Therefore, most of what exists is a result of the Italian Army’s brief control of the country.”
    Mercado asked, “And nothing since then?”
    Gann informed them, “The former Ethiopian government had a small cartography office, but they mostly reproduced Italian maps, and now and again they’d produce a city map or a road map, though never a proper field-checked terrain map.” He added, “Both armies in the current civil war are using what we see here from 1935 until 1941.”
    Purcell pointed out, “I assume the black monastery hasn’t been moved, so maybe these are better than nothing.”
    “Quite so.”
    Gann studied the maps closely, then unrolled a few more.
    “Here. This is the area where we were, and this is the map I was using then.” He ran his finger in a circle around a green-and-brown-shaded area. “This is the jungle valley where the spa is located, and this is the unimproved road by which you presumably arrived.”
    Purcell asked, “Where is the spa?”
    “Not here, actually. Probably built after the map was done. But right here”—he pointed—“is where it is.”
    Gann bent over the map and said, “These are the hills where Prince Joshua set up his camp… These are the hills where Getachu’s camp was located. And this is the high plains or plateau between the camps where… where the armies met.”
    Purcell stared at the map—the same one Gann had shown him—and that unpleasant day came back to him as it had