The Medusa Stone

Chapter 18

Nina knocked on Purdue’s door the next morning ready to go. She was still expecting his smugness when he opened the door but found Don sitting at the small round table and chairs near the window of the room.

“Good morning, pretty Nina!” the jovial Don exclaimed.

Nina’s face immediately lit up in a bright smile Purdue found very welcome.

“Good morning, Dr. Graham,” she smiled. “Am I intruding?”

“Your impositions are not only tolerated, my dear, but I actually wish for them,” he winked at the small brunette.

“Tea, Nina?” Purdue asked as if he had never pissed her off at all. She wanted to decimate him, but she decided to eject her bitchiness for once and enjoy the attention instead.

“Please and thank you,” she replied kindly.

The morning light looked icy in its pallid powder blue on the window. Curtains drawn wide open, the two men were apparently examining some of the data from the analysis. Don was frowning heavily above his slanted glasses halfway down his nose, his eyes seeking something in the chemical Babel scripted on the paper.

“Incidentally, I believe you are right about Heidmann and Megalos, Nina,” Purdue said as he sat down on the chair between Don and Nina, setting her tea down carefully. She looked surprised at his statement. He had actually listened to what she was trying to say?

“How so?” she asked. She noticed that his expression showed no ridicule or naughtiness as the night before when he teased her, so he had to be serious.

“They look at each other with a familiarity and some hostility that you don’t see between strangers, really. Besides, the way in which they crossed swords after you left was a testament to bad blood,” Purdue explained while he was struggling to open the sample size margarine tub with his clumsy fingers. “Odd, I can usually open these with no effort,” he moaned.

“Let me,” Nina sighed, and she took it from him to peel the foil-like seal off with her slender hands. “There.”

“Thanks,” he said and proceeded to spread it on his whole wheat toast while Don groaned at something he noticed on the myriad of inked lines on the data sheet.

“What is it? Anything we should know?” Purdue asked just before biting into the crispy bread.

“I am not sure, but from the chemicals in the stone, along with the remnant tissue material I have reason to be pretty sure that this condition was brought about not by calcination from mummification techniques or any of that shit, Dave,” Don gasped, looking up as if he had struck oil.

Purdue shifted in his chair, “Explain?”

“What I see here, my friends is evidence of ancient Alchemical working, but even though I have extensively studied the philosophical and practical elements of Alchemy I have never before seen substantiation of this variant before,” he marveled. “From what I see here, in both instances, the subject had been calcinated on the spot. The very chemistry of their bodies had been reshuffled and instantly dehydrated; then turned to stone by an immeasurable amount of heat which, with the application of a certain chalk could be prevented from turning to ash.”

Purdue worked out the theory in his head while Nina did not bother to hide how confounded she was.

“Look, I take full responsibility for being uninformed in this field, but please, can you explain that more plainly, Don?” she asked, reaching for one of Purdue’s slices of toast. “I mean, how is the chemical process supposed to work then? You know, in short.”

He formulated a very basic explanation in his head to effectively relay the complex structures of chemistry to the historian.

“The process of calcination, in its most common application, usually comprises of the decomposition of calcium carbonate….” he said, but was met with Nina’s blank stare. “Calcium carbonate is limestone, which incidentally is overwhelmingly present in the composition of these statues. But that is to be expected since the mineral is prevalent in Greece anyway.”

“Okay, I’m with you,” she nodded, chewing on the crust of her toast.

“Good. Now, calcination is usually carried out in furnaces or kilns, you know, really high temperatures. With anything less than immense temperatures, this process is impossible,” he described. “Generally, with limestone, this chemical procedure causes carbon dioxide to be driven off to effect the transformation, decomposing carbonate minerals.”

“Like what supposedly turned animals and birds into stone at Lake Natron in Africa,” Purdue muttered inadvertently as he recalled the strange phenomenon he read about.

“That is a good example, yes,” Don pointed a resolute finger at his friend.

“What happened?” Nina asked.

Purdue shrugged, “I read about this lake where the alkaline levels are through the roof, for one thing. And subsequently, any animal or bird venturing into the lake or drinking from it became…”

“Stoned?” Nina giggled.

Purdue chuckled, “Yes, they were petrified, Nina. They practically became mummified by the high concentration of alkaline along with extremely elevated sodium deposits that make the lake inhospitable to animals.”

“Although it is a reach, I believe something similar is happening to these bodies,” Don speculated.

Purdue agreed. “They are not mummified, because the organs are still full and shaped like healthy, functioning organs. It has to be a rapid transformation… like trolls exposed to UV light,” he winked, referring to a Norwegian movie they watched at Purdue’s mansion before the expedition meeting.

“Too right!” Don laughed. “Well, I am not quite sure if it makes sense even to people who know this stuff, actually,” he admitted. “It is after all just a theory.”

“Carry on, old boy,” Purdue insisted. “What is the difference, then?”

Don looked both intrigued and a little unnerved. He shrugged, “From what I gather here, the chemistry of these men’s bodies was altered by intense heat concentrated on them, savvy?”

“Yes.”

“But here is the missing marvel,” he continued, still scrutinizing the print-out. “There was something else involved to bring about this unrealistically sudden transformation that not even Alchemy has mentioned in any of its teachings or texts,” Don admitted, rubbing his darkening jaw in thought. He looked up at them, still fraught with uncertainty. “This is an unprecedented side of both alchemical and scientific study, guys. There is something in this equation that either does not belong here, or that has somehow remained secret for centuries.”

“That is positively fascinating!” Nina said with a mouthful of cottage cheese she scooped up from the tub with her finger.

“It is,” Purdue agreed. “Now I really cannot wait to get to Ostrava. I am sure if that warehouse really exists there will be ample evidence of the element we might be looking for to complete this heinous transformation.”

“On that note,” Don said, clearing his throat. “We are due in the parking lot within eight minutes.”

“Yes! Nina, are you ready, dear?” Purdue asked.

After wolfing down two slices of toast and gorging herself with the chunky plain cottage cheese, Nina was bloated with food and very uncomfortable. Nothing would have profited her better than getting a move on.

Outside, Heidmann was waiting in the car. Don and Nina followed Purdue into the parking lot, but something was missing.

“Where is Costa?” Purdue asked Heidmann.

“I have no idea. Maybe he overslept,” the indifferent archeologist shrugged.

Nina and Purdue exchanged a knowing look.

“There he is!” Don announced. “Come on, Zorba! Tick-tock, son!”

The Greek professor looked disheveled and a bit hung over, but Nina could only see Sam’s features simmering through the handsome man as he approached. Even now he had the same skew gait Sam exhibited when he had been through a particularly wild night, but his big dark eyes still peered right into her soul, even when Costa was unaware of their power over the fetching Scottish historian.

Nina did not realize that she was gawking until Don nudged her out of her spell with a grin.

“You like Zorba, don’t you, love?” he teased under his breath. At first, Nina wanted to react defensively, which was her go-to, but instead she winked at Don. She simply liked him too much to be mean to him. He just nodded and said, “Nina, you can sit between Costa and me in the helicopter. I’m sure Dave and James will have to talk about their infiltration of the as yet un-pinpointed structure.”

“Aye, that is true,” she agreed and shifted into the backseat of the SUV.

They were well on time, but they still had to pick up Purdue’s German pilot who stayed over at his sister’s house in the city. With traffic the trip to the airport was tedious. Had it not been for the relatively good music on the regional radio station the group would have been properly annoyed by the slow movement of proceedings.

An hour and a half later they arrived at the airfield. Flying down southeastwards across Germany it was a relatively quick transfer although it took the party approximately three hours to make their way out of Germany toward the border between the Czech Republic and Poland.

“Ostrava is situated near the border, a few miles off,” Heidmann told Purdue. The helicopter pilot had already fixed the coordinates on departure from Hamburg, but Purdue requested more details on the location of the warehouse Heidmann had visited before.

“And the warehouse is in the city?” Purdue asked as he surveyed the terrain beneath them while they approached Leoš Janáček Airport to check in.

Heidmann shook his head. “No, the warehouse is a way out, eastward. Let me see if I can find a route there on my iPhone.”

While the pilot communicated with the air traffic controller, Nina and her colleagues were all quietly looking down to see what the town looked like. It was a bit warmer here than it was in Germany a few hours ago, which Costa especially welcomed. After they had touched down, Purdue sorted out their administration for the craft and other necessary papers before joining the group.

While he waited for his copy of the aircraft’s permit, Purdue received a call from Britain. His screen displayed the number of the British Museum, which he thought nothing of, guessing that it was probably an update on the repairs at the museum since the awful earthquake had wreaked its havoc.