Stone of Fire: An ARKANE Thriller (Book 1)

Chapter 31

Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA
 May 26, 10.02am

      They arrived at the airport near Worcester having slept fitfully on the way over the Atlantic. Morgan drowned her nightmares in several cups of coffee and made a final study of the University plans. Jake organized the small group, Jared and one other man, Morrison, would accompany them, their cover as visiting professors with a hastily constructed back story. Morgan didn’t think they looked much like academics, but no one paid them much attention as they arrived at the imposing main entrance.
    The red brick façade rose above them, four stories with large windows looking out over spring green lawns. Morgan glanced up at the clock, the Stars and Stripes flapping above it in the breeze. Her body screamed with jet lag. They had covered so many time zones in the last few days, she felt like her soul was still in transit from the desert wadi, and it would be some time before she was a whole person again.
    They passed a statue of Sigmund Freud, sitting on a stone bench, book in one hand and cane in the other, a commemoration of the 1909 visit. Morgan ran her hand over the cool smoothness of the statue’s head, his austere face giving her pause. What if this was the wrong place? They no longer had enough time to make a mistake. She shook her head to clear the lingering doubt and they progressed into the University.
     A meeting had been arranged at short notice citing investigation into Jung’s history, so they were escorted straight to the suite of rooms where the professor had lectured over one hundred years ago. It was a place to start at least. Jared and Morrison remained outside to watch the doors while Morgan and Jake went into the main dark wood paneled room. Deep red wing back armchairs sat around a fireplace that clearly hadn’t been used in a while. A square table centered the room on a circular rug of Turkish origin.
     “It’s just like all the offices at Oxford,” Morgan said. “Great universities are the same the world over. Look, there’s the picture.”
     Morgan went to the mandala that hung on the far wall, next to the famous picture of the psychologists. It was the same as the one she now unpacked from her backpack, red lines tracing towards the center.
     “There’s one difference between the two mandala. Do you see it?”
     Jake looked closer. “Here, the wasp drawn on the corner.”
     Morgan traced the tiny intricate image with her fingertip.
     “It’s strange because Jung didn’t use wasps much in his paintings and imagery. It seems out of place.”
     She paused, deep in thought and then said with surprise. “Oh, the wasp symbol. It must be Wolfgang Pauli!”
     “Wasn’t Pauli a physicist?” Jake said. “What’s he got to do with this?”
     “Yes, Wolfgang Pauli was an Austrian physicist who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the exclusion principle, a key part of quantum physics. The man was brilliant but deeply troubled and there was a strange myth that surrounded him called the Pauli Effect. It seemed his presence changed matter and made things happen, like experimental equipment breaking as he walked past, but his creativity in science was phenomenal.”
     “Do you think this Pauli effect had something to do with the stone’s power?” Jake asked.
     “I’m not sure, but he certainly worked closely with Jung. Pauli had a breakdown and Jung interpreted his dreams. They also worked together on ideas about the paranormal and synchronicity so it’s possible he knew about the Pentecost stone and even experienced its power. Maybe he was the one who hid it here.”
     Her eyes shone with the light of discovery and for a moment Morgan forgot the awful circumstances of why they were there, but then her eyes darkened again.
     “Pauli feared wasps. He had nightmares about them and they appeared in the archetypal dreams that Jung interpreted. It’s a symbol of what he was ultimately scared of, a weapon of some kind, a destruction of all that’s good.”
     Jake raised an eyebrow. “You think the Pentecost stone might be this weapon?”
     “Maybe. We need to find it. Look harder.”
     They searched the room carefully, looking for some indication of where the stone might be hidden. Jake lifted the mandala picture off the wall but the back was blank. They felt the walls around the pictures but nothing stood out.
     Morgan turned around in the center of the room,
“What are we missing?”
Then she saw it. The room was square, with the round rug in the center, with a square table in the center of that again.
     “Look, this whole room is a mandala, the circle in the square. The center is where truth lies. Help me move the table.”
     They managed to drag the heavy mahogany engraved table to one side, then pulled back the circular rug. Underneath was a trapdoor in the stone floor with some kind of key mechanism. Jake tugged at it, trying to pull it open, while Morgan studied the markings etched in the top. It was engraved as a mandala, with twelve engraved stones spiraling into the center where a groove was hollowed out with a copper ring for lifting.
     Morgan looked up at Jake with hope in her eyes.
     “This has to be it.”
As she bent down to pull the ring, the noise of a scuffle and gunfire came from outside the door. They pulled their guns as the door burst open and six men rushed in, weapons trained on the pair. They were outnumbered.

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