Stone of Fire: An ARKANE Thriller (Book 1)

Chapter 30

Nefta, Tunisia.
 May 25, 3.24am

      Jake lay on his belly on a sand dune overlooking the citadel and the sparse camp below. After meeting the backup team, they had crossed over the border from Algeria and were now almost in position. The small group of men were led by Jared Rush, one of ARKANE’s senior agents in Africa and a man Jake trusted as a brother. It was good to be out in the field together again.
    Jake knew that the city of Nefta was often busy with tourists but only the militants would come this far out at night. The citadel or ‘ribat’ was one of the fortifications used during the military occupation of North Africa by the Muslim empire. Ribats were built all across this part of the world and had been used as outposts for soldiers. These days they were occupied by a new brand of extremists intent on spreading terror across the world.
    Fires burnt around the entrance as guards tried to warm themselves in the chill of the desert night, assault weapons by their sides. Jake noticed that they didn’t seem especially vigilant, presumably considering themselves immune to attack as the authorities generally searched for bigger prey in the more dangerous playing fields of Libya and Sudan. Jake used his night vision goggles to locate the side entrance of the citadel they had identified from surveillance footage. He could see Jared’s team moving into place near the front of the castle, ready to draw attention from the side group. Jake checked his watch and looked around to make sure the others were ready. Morgan’s body was taut, the black armor tight on her curves. Her eyes were fixed on the scene below and he could sense her readiness in the posture of a warrior. But despite his knowledge of her skill in combat, he still worried about her. That disturbed him, because if he was honest with himself, it was more than an operational concern. Time ticked on. He whispered into his headset.
     “Ninety seconds to go. Be ready to move on my signal.”
     There were five in their side team. Jake and Morgan, then three commandos, Hanson, Margolis and Tien, a Special Forces team borrowed by ARKANE on these types of operation. They all wore camouflaged body armor with night vision goggles, and carried multi-purpose belts with grenades, guns and the tools they might need inside the citadel.
     At the agreed time, Jared’s team started firing from the dunes near the front of the citadel. Jake watched as the guards took cover and then moved towards the aggressors, drawn away from the tower entrance. Jake and Morgan ran low and fast towards the citadel, holding guns at the ready. The three commandos flanked them. They made it through the outer gate, but then the guards inside spotted them and fired, calling for support as they hid behind the stone fountains within.
     The commandos provided cover, throwing grenades and drawing fire, creating havoc amongst the guards. Jake and Morgan ran for the central square tower of the citadel. A man by the main doorway leapt at them with a curved blade. Morgan ducked as the blade swung for her head, then slammed into the man with a rugby tackle, his head smashing against the side of the wall. He lay still as they fell panting inside the main tower entranceway, the sounds of gunfire continuing outside.
     Moments later, two of the commandos, Hanson and Margolis, collapsed inside.
     “Tien is hurt sir, but one of Jared’s team picked him up. They’re still engaging the guards outside. They should be able to hold them off but we’ll need to get in and out as fast as possible in case the militants call for backup.”
     Jake nodded. “I guess it means we’re safe in here for now. Let’s get moving.”
     Morgan carried the image of the mandala tucked inside her protective jacket as well as photos from the Red Book on her smart phone. She flicked through the images.
     “In Jung’s mandala, the most precious object is always in the heart, so we should aim for the middle of the tower.”
     The team looked around. The walls were the color of bleached sand, made up of huge blocks hewn from desert stone and there were corridors in both directions, curling away from the entrance. Both looked as if they headed towards the middle of the citadel.
     “So which way first?” Jake asked. “We need to do this fast. Jared’s team can handle this small group, but not a full-scale assault.”
     Morgan stood close to one of the corridors, running her fingers around the rough hewn rock that circled the doorway.
     “Look, it’s a mark on the wall. A tiny kingfisher, Jung’s spirit guide. It must be this way.”
     Morgan was jubilant. It felt almost surreal to be walking in the footsteps of a legend, a man she had studied and revered for her entire academic life. She held the smart-phone out to Jake. It showed an old man, arms folded and wings outstretched, in the colors of a kingfisher standing over a citadel with palm trees either side with the tangled knot of a snake at his side.
     “What’s the snake for?” Jake asked.
     “Jung used the snake motif in many of his images but don’t worry, it’s not real. It represents wisdom and of course temptation, as well as the ancient creation story but it’s allegorical. Let’s go.”
     The corridor wound in towards the heart of the citadel, a tight stone passageway that grew narrower, pressing in on them so they soon had to walk in single file. The citadel was clearly packed with these tunnels, a maze of stone, spiraling in on itself. At each fork, they checked for more symbols. Other marks were scratched on tunnels going off at tangents but they followed the tiny kingfisher onwards, trusting in Jung’s guardian bird. Finally, they reached a circular room, with three archways leading away from the central place. Each arch was richly decorated with stone carvings and Arabic script, totally different from what they had seen so far. They examined the doorways and Jake shook his head.    
“None of these have kingfishers on, so which way should we go now?”
     Morgan examined one of the mandala Jung had drawn in his Red Book.
     “Maybe the clue is in here. The image seems to be a phoenix which was Jung’s original family crest. What symbols are carved on the doors?”
     “It looks like water, air, and fire.”
     Morgan looked at Jake, her face uncertain. “It must be fire, because the Phoenix rose from the flames and we’re looking for the Pentecost stone which comes from fire.”
     “Can it really be that easy?” Jake asked.
     “It’s only the first step from the look of the mandala. There will be another choice before we reach the inner sanctum and the center of the citadel. Let’s try it.”
     They went through the archway marked with the fire symbol. Hanson went first, followed by Morgan and Jake with Margolis behind, whispering, “This is creepy. Why are there no people down here? I would have expected some resistance or someone following?”
     “We’re not done yet. Just keep your eyes open,” Jake said.
     Their torchlight flickered on the walls as they walked deeper into the heart of the stone castle. Morgan saw a fat-tailed scorpion lurking against the wall, the segmented tail raised in defense topped by its venomous sting. She walked around it, acutely aware that its Latin name Androctonus meant the man-killer. The path sloped gently but inexorably downward. Hanson’s voice came from up ahead,
     “I’ve found the next split. There are another three archways to choose from.”
     They filed into the tiny antechamber, and gazed at the doorways. They were more intricately carved this time; each symbol an animal that crawled around the doorway in a repeating pattern. 
“It looks like the scarab beetle, the snake and the crocodile,” Morgan said.
     Margolis cursed. “Oh great, it’s just like ‘The Mummy.’ I hate those scarab beetles. We are NOT going down that way.”
Jake silenced him with a look. Morgan studied the images trying to work out which way the psychologist would have gone and why the images were chosen.
     “This is strange, because Jung used all these creatures in his drawings. He was fascinated with Egyptian mythology, hence the scarab, and also drew snakes and multi-legged crocodiles in many of his paintings. There’s no clear direction here. I don’t know.” She ran her fingers along the carvings. “I think we should try the snake though because he used the image so much.”
     Jake nodded, “OK, but I’m sending one of the boys in first.”
     Margolis stepped forward.
     “I’m in. Anything to avoid that scarab door.”
     Jake indicated that he go first and Margolis stepped through the archway. Nothing happened so he took another step, then another one and turned back, “Looks like we’re good to …”
Then the ground disappeared beneath him and he plunged through a hole in the floor, his scream echoing through the chamber as he fell.
    Jake and Hanson threw themselves down to the floor, reaching for him, but there was no way to grab him in time. His cries grew quieter and eventually faded to nothing. It seemed as if they went on for a long time, so the hole must have been incredibly deep. Morgan stood stunned in the ante-chamber, unwilling to believe the man was really gone. Dying in battle was one thing, but falling to your death in an ancient labyrinth was just crazy, especially as she had sent him that way. It was her decision to choose that path and she felt desperately responsible. She was frozen, looking down at the hole in horror. This wasn’t something she had anticipated and it shook her to the core.
    Jake shook her. “Come on, Morgan, we have to find the stone and get out of here. Think of Faye. Concentrate: what are we missing?”
     He was right, her feelings were a pale shadow of what she would feel if Faye and Gemma went to their deaths. So she flicked through the images again and saw the snake motif, this time realizing the long deep body was an actual pit, not just a representation of creation and the tree of life. It’s open mouth was the maw that Margolis had fallen into. After years of looking at Jung in an allegorical sense, she now struggled to make his images fit to the physical surroundings. It seemed that they were representations of this place, albeit embellished with Jung’s eclectic mythologies.
     “Then the crocodile, it must be. Look at this picture, the crocodile chases the round object. It could be an egg … or a stone.”
Jake picked up a rock and threw it into the doorway of crocodiles. He threw another one, further this time. Nothing moved. Slowly Hanson stepped through. He inched on a little way, hugging the wall, tapping the floor in front of him with foot outstretched in caution. He shouted back.
     “I’ve found the kingfisher again. It must be this way.”
     They rushed on, and finally found themselves at the entrance of a square room with a stone plinth in the center, carved with snakes. The serpents wound around it, open mouths gaping with fangs bared. Morgan walked to the pillar and looked at the detail. Each snake’s head was finely decorated, a perfect replica of a desert killer almost dripping with venom. Their mouths were portals into the depths of the pillar and she could see something within. It looked like a box. She reached out to put her hand into one of the gaping mouths but Jake grabbed her wrist before she could touch it.
     “What if it’s another trap?” he asked as she angrily pulled her hand from his grasp.
     “It doesn’t matter now.” she replied. “I have to get the stone. This is the room from Jung’s painting. Look at the carvings on the checkered floor. The walls are a faded turquoise. This is where Jung was when he saw the fire coming from the stone. It has to be here.”
     Hanson made a frantic motion with his hand for them to be quiet. Morgan and Jake stood in silence and then heard the noise. It was a hissing, slithering sound that came from behind the walls.
     “We have to hurry,” Morgan said, “and I’m getting that box.”
     She thrust her hand inside one of the snake’s jaws before Jake could stop her, her heart hammering in fear and expectation that something would bite at any moment. She grabbed the box and pulled back her arm, a sigh of relief on her lips as she extracted it from the pillar.
     There was a clunking sound as if ancient gears were clicking into place. Jake and Hanson pulled their guns and looked around. They waited but nothing happened. Morgan refocused on the box. It was plain wood, nothing special, just something you would pick up in the souk. She opened it but there was no stone inside and her heart sank as she pulled out a piece of thick sketchpad paper. Unfolding it, she saw a crude rendering of the fiery stone image that was captured in greater detail within the Red Book. Jung must have drawn it here and repainted it at a later time. It showed a small square room, just like the one they were in, with checkered floor and carved walls, an almost exact replica of where they stood now. A man prostrated himself before a tiny stone on the ground, arms outstretched in worship, and from the stone emanated a towering pillar of fire. Flames poured from it, embers scattering to the floor. She read the words written on the page aloud,
     “‘Es ist nicht hier. Es ist mit dem Vater.’ It’s Jung’s writing in German,” she said. “It means ‘It’s not here. It’s with the father.’ But what the hell does that mean?”
     “No time for that now, Morgan, we have to get out of here!” Jake shouted.
     She looked up in horror to see snakes coming out of the walls and slithering from the mouths of the carved pillar by where she stood. They were desert vipers by the look of them, and then they heard scuttling and rattling. Appalled, they watched as a wave of fat-tailed scorpions poured out of the same holes, stingers raised in threat. This was a nightmare that made Morgan’s skin crawl. Snakes she could deal with but scorpions were alien creatures, their armored bodies skittering across the floor in agitation. She stuffed the box and papers into her jacket, while the men both kicked at the ground, clearing a path to the doorway. The three of them ran out, back the way they had come into the entranceway.
    Laying down covering fire to hold the remaining guards at bay, they sprinted up the steps to the top of the square tower that rose above the citadel. Jake fired a flare high into the air and from the desert out west, they heard the helicopter coming for them. At the same time, they could see Jared’s team withdrawing, heading back into the desert where they would rendezvous at the plane. As the helicopter landed the team sprinted aboard.
     “We’ve gotta go now, they’ve got rocket launchers,” Jake shouted. “Go, go!”
     Then they were speeding away, flying low over the desert, as the explosions around them faded into the distance.
     Morgan stared down onto the silver desert, the moonlight slipping across the dunes, pooling in the smooth undulations across the expanse below. She thought of Margolis and her part in his death. The guilt was overwhelming. After all, she was a Jungian psychologist so surely she could have foreseen the traps that awaited them. Yet all her life, Jung’s images had been read as pure symbolism but if those mandala were actually real representations of physical places, what else could that be true of? She looked over at Jake, his face stony in the moonlight. Margolis was one of his men, and they had not even found another stone for their efforts. She needed to get to Faye soon for Pentecost was only a few days away.

Desert, Algeria.
 May 25, 8.13am

      Once they returned to the plane, Jake went down the back with Jared to debrief the men. There was a heaviness in the atmosphere, a grief but also a pragmatism. These men knew loss, but Morgan was determined to make the sacrifice worthwhile. She took the image from the box, trying to work out what the words meant. ‘It’s with the father.’ What the hell did it mean? It could be Jung’s real father, who was a great influence on him, or his God, but neither of those made sense with the timeline or with Jung’s own conflicting beliefs. Morgan sat looking at the words in a trance of concentration, tracing back her studies of Jung and how his career had progressed. He had written so many books with layers of meaning. But an idea niggled at the back of her mind, something she had seen once that lay just out of reach. She calmed her breathing, letting the feelings of guilt subside and focused inwards.
     After a time, she sat up sharply, calling for Jake to come back to the main cabin. Her voice was high-pitched with the excitement of realization.
     “I think Jung’s stone is in America,” she said, “at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. It’s the last place where he and the ‘father of psychology,’ Sigmund Freud were still on speaking terms.”
     “What do you mean?” Jake looked tired and beaten. “This hasn’t come up in any of the research so far.”
Morgan was determined to convince him.
     “Jung and Freud went on a trip together with other psychologists in the early 1900s. They were hosted by G Stanley Hall at Clark University, which is where psychoanalysis was introduced to the Americans. Think about it, Jake. At that point Jung still considered Freud to be a father figure. He was meant to assume the mantle of psychoanalysis in the Freudian tradition, but it was also on that trip that Jung started to go his own way.”
     “Why’s that significant?”
     “Jung wanted to include the mystic aspect of the human quest into his own theories. He believed in so many things that Freud dismissed, so Clark University was this turning point, when the father figure was no longer a father. It must be there. Don’t you see?”
     Jake sat down opposite her, considering what she said.
     “No, I don’t see. I’m beginning to doubt this whole Carl Jung connection, even with the painting. We’ve risked enough, Morgan. I’m not wasting time looking somewhere that might be wrong at this late stage. We should explore other options.”
     Morgan would not be dissuaded.
     “But I’ve been to the university hall where they held their meetings. There was a centennial celebration of the visit in 2009 which I spoke at. There’s a bust of Freud, pictures of the men together and most importantly, the twin image to this mandala.” She held up the one that had represented the maze they had navigated at the wadi. “One of Jung’s drawings was made into a framed image and put into the drawing room where they taught and discussed. It was an amazing time for them all, a life changing event for those men. Jung must have considered it pivotal to his career, so he put the stone there for safe keeping away from the prying eyes in Europe.”
     Jake was studying the timeline of Jung’s life that she had sketched out and laid on the table.
     “But the timelines are confused. How did the image and note get left at the wadi when the North Africa trip in 1920 was after Clark University in 1909? Jung didn’t have the stone with him at Clark.”
     Morgan pointed down at the timeline.
     “But look, Jung did return to America in 1924 and must have worked with some of his disciples to hide it then. He clearly wanted it hidden, but he left clues in locations that only his true disciples would understand. If he held the stone and knew the myth, he would have loved the role of the Keeper. He always believed in gnosis, a spiritual knowledge known only to the enlightened few, and he certainly kept secrets.”
     “So it’s Massachusetts, then, you’re sure?” Jake said. “Because we’ve been wrong before and there are only forty-eight hours until Pentecost dawns in America. This is our last chance to get the final stone.”
     Morgan closed her eyes for a second and when she opened them again, they were cobalt blue steel, the violet slash a deeper shade.
     “Yes, I believe that this is what Jung meant. I’m getting this last stone, and then I’ll bargain them all for Faye and Gemma. I just want this to be over.”
     Jake nodded, then moved to the cockpit to direct their journey towards America, to Massachusetts.

***

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