"The Quest" by Nelson DeMille

Above: The Quest. Nelson DeMille - 458 Pages. I completed reading this book today.

The book was a "hat trick" for me.

Background:

Image #1: My motorcyclist friends and burned out tank on road to Lalibela, Ethiopia, heading north from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. November 2006.

In November of 2006, with friends, I motorcycled the northern mountain and plateau areas of Ethiopia.

The "Royalist" tank in the image dates back to the mid '70's when Marxist rebels militarily overpowered and threw out the semitic/Christian monarchy, headed by Emperor Haile Selassi, that, but for a brief period during the 1930's/1940's, when the Italians had colonized Ethiopia, had ruled the African nation for 3000 years. Haile Selassi died in rebel captivity in 1975.

Image #2: Chapel adjacent to church, Our Lady Mary of Zion, where the Ethiopian Copts claim is lodged the Arc of the Covenant and the original stone tablets of the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses atop Mt. Sinai. Axum, Ethiopia. November 2006. (If you don't believe it, just Axum).

A solitary monk resides in the chapel to stand guard over the Arc. The monk is only relieved from his vigil on death. Purportedly, the monk cannot see the actual stone Ten Commandment tablets as they are enclosed in the Arc.

Ethiopian Coptic legend says that the Arc was brought to Ethiopia by Menelik, son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

The visit of the Queen of Sheba to the court of King Solomon is cited in the Old Testament. But, it is legend that says that Menalik returned to Solomon's court while in his twenties, where he was given great accolades. A year later, seeing that he was wearing out his welcome, he purloined the Arc and took it back with him to Ethiopia where it has remained to this day, now under the control of the Ethiopian Coptic Church... or so the story goes.

The Book

DeMille's book draws from the two themes depicted in the images taken during my 2006 trip, above. 1. The Ethiopian Civil War. 2. Religious iconography.

"The Quest" is an adventure story set during the period of the Ethiopian Civil War in the mid 1970's. Two male war correspondents, one, Henry, older, with experience in Ethiopia during the Italian period, the other, Frank, a young, novice reporter, and a young female photographer, Vivian, meet in Addis Ababa. They team up, hire a jeep and make their way, north to Gondar, where fighting is ongoing, to cover the civil war.

By happenstance (providence?), at an abandoned spa, once used by Italian functionnaries and troops, the reporters encounter a Catholic priest who had just escaped from being imprisoned for forty (!) years. The Sicilian priest had been assigned as a chaplain to accompany Italian troops during the Italian colonial period forty years earlier.

The priest and other chaplains, before their departure to Ethiopia, had been summoned to Rome where they were given a charge by a mysterious, unnamed Cardinal, citing the backing of the Pope, to find a monastery, hidden in the jungle, where Ethiopian Coptic monks stood guard over The Holy Grail. The Cardinal's charge was for the priests to somehow get possession of the Holy Grail and bring it to the Vatican, a safer location for its preservation and veneration.

During the remarkable (providential?) encounter with the priest, the war correspondents learn that, forty years previously, the priest had visited the hidden monastery and had seen the Holy Grail. Not trusted to keep his knowledge secret, the priest was imprisoned by Coptic authorities in a solitary cell in a nearby fort. He was not killed, as he was a holy man, even if not Coptic.

Forty years later, and just (providentially?) having escaped from imprisonment, the priest is dying. His miraculously timed prison release (an errant bomb blew open his cell door) occurred as Royalist troops fought revolutionary troops at the prison site.

The priest was shot in the stomach during his escape. He walked twenty kilometers or so to a remote, unoccupied spa, where he incredibly (providentially?) encountered the three westerners. The dying priest was impelled to tell the three eagerly attentive westerners his entire, remarkable, story.

And so... the stage is set for the book's plot. Our two correspondents and one photographer embark on a QUEST to find the Holy Grail. Vivian and Frank are Catholic believers. They feel a providential pull to complete the quest. Frank is a skeptic, but wants to believe...and he likes Vivian.

In their search, Frank, Henry and Vivian encounter battered Royalist troops led by a member of Emperor Haile Selassi's royal family.

The correspondents team up with a British Colonel, Sir Edmund Gann, who had been seconded to a recently defeated Royalist garrison in the area.

The reporters are "captured" by brutal, ruthless, deranged Marxist general, distrustful of their purpose in Ethiopia. They have journalist "papers," so they are released, but not without witnessing horrifying brutality against captured Royalist prisoners in the rebel camp.

Gann is a uniformed, enemy officer, so he is prepared to be killed...but, (providentially?) he, also, is released as the not totally crazy general seeks to avoid diplomatic issues at the beginning stages of the new Marxist government.

After their release from rebel captivity, the three journalists leave Ethiopia and travel to Sicily to verify the provenance of the old Italian priest.

At the Vatican, they notify authorities of their final encounter with the priest. They search records at the Vatican for the history of the Holy Grail. And, of course, considering this is a DeMille novel, they find themselves in a tortuous love triangle where the two war correspondents compete (not without R rated prose) for Vivian.

Our threesome stays in touch with Gann, now back in UK. Gann decides, seemingly much against his better judgment, to join in the quest for the Holy Grail. He can help with maps, and military experience and judgement in the jungle search for the monastery. Besides, the plot requires a solid British fighting guy with an Uzi and a knowledge of how to survive in the wilds.

We learn later that Gann had a motive, not immediately known to the other three, to return to Ethiopia. His girlfriend was an Ethiopian, Jewish princess, about to repatriate to Israel, who had knowledge of the location of the obsidian, Holy Grail Monestery.

That's enough.... its good, page turning, DeMille, thriller prose. During their jungle search for the Holy Grail monestery, the group encounters once again the semi-dranged, Marxist general, and you can read to find out the denouement!

I got hooked on DeMille when, coincident with another motorcycle trip in Vietnam... circa 2004... I read "Up Country," set during the Vietnam war. I've read several other DeMille novels, including most recently "The Panther," centered around contemporary fighting in Yemen.

A copy of "The Quest" was recently sent to me by my revered friend, and motorcycle mentor, Chicago based Burt Richmond, who organized and led our Ethiopian motorcycle expedition in 2006. Burt is also responsible for the images shown in this review. I digitally lifted the images from the Apple photo album Burt prepared and sent to trip participants.

The book was a "hat trick" for me. 1. Its good, DeMille, page turning, thriller prose. 2. I was able to track the paths of the protagonists through many of the same places I had seen on my 2006 trip: the fortress city of Gondar, Axum, where is located the church "holding" the Arc; Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile, and Addis Ababa, where a good amount of the book was set in the five star Hilton Hotel (in 2006, a Sheraton).

In 2006, during my motorcycle riding tour, I probably hadn't processed enough information about Ethiopia to understand the role of the Italians there in the 1930's/1940's. There wasn't much residual sign of the Italian presence in 2006. Our group did, however, go to an outstanding Italian restaurant while in "Addis,..." Abrucci. The restaurant was outstanding.... coulda been in Milan... and it was run by Italians. At the time I remember being surprised at how good Abrucci was, but, now, with a greater sense of how Italy grafted itself onto this Christian nation, I'm no longer so surprised.

The book I read, "The Quest," was published in 2013. However, it is a rewrite of a DeMille book, also entitled "The Quest," written in 1975, near the time of the end of the Ethiopian Civil War. DeMille likes war settings for his fiction. He was a combat soldier during the Vietnam War.

Above: The Bishop hob knobs with children during his motorcycle trip through northern Ethiopia during November of 2006.