by Dermot Davis
"Wow," Fiona said, amazed at the difference. "I couldn't hold my arm up!"
"That's because your body can tell the difference between a truth and a falsehood, even if you can't tell what's what. Your body is like a circuit board; electricity is flowing through it, all the time. When you're in your truth, the circuit is open and the body's natural energies flow strong. You live a lie... then it's like there's a bust capacitor or resistor in the circuit. The electricity can't flow through something broken, can it?"
"I guess not. Do it again, do it again," Fiona said excitedly.
"Grass grows in the earth," Arjuna said as he pressed on her arm that remained strong. "Grass falls from the sky," he then said, her arm falling to her side at the merest downward pressure.
"That's amazing!" Fiona said, clearly impressed. "Does that work for anything? I mean, I can ask any question?"
"Certainly," Arjuna said cautiously. "But this ain't no parlor trick. What I'm showing you here is a concept. It’s called Applied Kinesiology or “muscle testing” to the lay person. Your body knows the truth and, let's face it, truth can be hard to find out there in the world. What you need to do is practice. Practice discernment: what's true for you? Having your arm pressed down like that is a demonstration. I want you to feel the truth, in your body. When you can discern the truth, you can follow your path and no one can take you off it with their lies. You follow?"
"Yeah, I think so," Fiona said, trying hard to understand.
"Finish your drink," he said as he sat back down and retrieved his own.
"How did you learn all this stuff?" she asked and took a sip of her drink.
"It started with Martial Arts," he said, his eyes twinkling, as if remembering the beginning with fondness. "When you face off with an opponent, you look into his or her eyes; always in the eyes. The eyes tell you what you want to know. You want to see if they have belief. Belief is strength and when you see it in their eyes, you know you have a battle on your hands. When you fight, you're not just fighting their body to make them hurt; you're fighting their belief.
What you want to see in their eyes is the first hint of doubt. When you see uncertainty in their eyes, then you know that you have won because, right there, they've lost their strength. Then you hit them hard. You hit them hard and their doubt grows until they lose all their strength. Let me show you what I'm talking about," he then said as he reached for a photo album.
"I collected some photos here of athletes. Different sports but the faces are all the same. See here?" he asked as he showed her a photo of a boxer's frozen face looking in the camera after being hit with what looked like a doozy of a punch. "See his expression?" he asked.
"Yeah," Fiona said as she looked at an unmistakable look of uncertainty in the boxer's eyes. "It's like his eyelids are drooping a tiny amount and he's looking down a little."
"And this one," he said, flipping over to a tennis player as his opponent served an ace.
"Yeah, totally," Fiona said, wanting to see the next one.
"Here's a long distance athlete as another runner sprints past him," he commented.
"Oh, man, he looks beaten," Fiona said. Watching picture after picture of doubting athletes, Fiona could clearly see the shift from belief to doubt. She noticed that in contrast to the defeated, each of their opponents had a look of certainty upon their faces.
"Force alone doesn't win you the battle," Arjuna said as he replaced the photo album. "It’s also about your inner game. Belief wins you the battle. I've fought many bigger guys, more powerful, more trained and more fit than I, but a lot of those times, I've come out on top."
Standing up now, Arjuna looked like he had just entered a boxing ring in his imagination. "Whenever you come up against a more powerful opponent, you don't go force against force because their greater force will crush yours. Instead, you deflect their power and you never waver, you never succumb to the perspective that you are hurting. Pretty soon, if you remain aligned with your inner knowing, your belief, you'll see their arrogance fade; they don't know why you're still standing and they'll begin to doubt their own strength; they'll begin to lose confidence.
You wait for that look and then you strike them hard; hard enough to destabilize them. That's usually when their wheels come off and they lose their appetite for the fight. Fear spreads through their mind and, pretty soon, they'll either end up defeated on the canvas or they have their coach throw the towel into the ring. You getting this, young lady?" Arjuna asked, realizing that he might have gone too deeply into his background and theory.
"Yeah," Fiona said and smiled. "But you do know that I've never been in a boxing ring in my life. I've never been in a fight, even. Ever."
"I'm telling you about a boxing ring to help you understand. The principle is the same wherever you are or whomever you're with. Human beings are full of contradictions. They lie a lot and they like to play games. People think that they have to lie or manipulate to get what they want, as if there was no other way. For many people, life is domination, deception, usury, manipulation, power-mongering, and the like. I'm just preparing you; giving you a baseline you can follow and understand. It's easy to get lost, trying to navigate the evil in the world, that's for sure," Arjuna said with a sadness that seemed rooted in personal experience.
"I know," Fiona said and nodded her head in agreement. "I know what you're talking about. This is valuable, thank you."
"Welcome."
"You learned martial arts in the Navy?" Fiona then asked.
"I learned a lot of things in the U.S. Navy but those particular warlike arts weren't one of them, at least not the way that I understand them now."
"How do you mean?"
"Let's just say that some of the things that I've learned since would have gotten me into big trouble when I was a Navy grunt. Not that I regret anything. In the Navy I learned to be a man. When they recruited me into the Office of Naval Intelligence, I learned how the world really works, and that ain't pretty, I'll tell you that."
"You were in foreign intelligence? Like a spy?" Fiona stared at Arjuna.
"Lies, lies and more lies. Does your head in. After a while, you tell so many lies yourself that you don't even know what's true for you. I guess you spend so much time lying to the so-called enemy, that you don't notice when you've started lying to yourself. Takes a while to get your head straight after that. That's why the desert was so healing, so peaceful, so truthful. In the desert, I regained my soul."
"Wow, I'd say you could write some books. Tell some stories?" Fiona said.
"I could but they wouldn't let me. The stories that I'd want to tell would never make it to publication, you can be sure of that. That's why the truth never gets told; too many vested interests, making sure that their stranglehold of lies and deceit keeps the planet locked in lies and fear and preserves the interests of the powers that be."
"I see," Fiona said, not seeing at all, then sipping her drink and not knowing what follow-up questions to ask. "It's pretty out there," she finally said, looking out the window at a glorious blue-orange sunset.
"Yes, it is, Missy. It sure is," he said, getting closer to the window to take a better look.
"Did you get the name Arjuna from the Indian book?" Fiona asked.
Arjuna turned and smiled. "The Bhagavad Gita, yeah," he answered kindly. "But I really have Robert Oppenheimer to thank for that."
"Is he an author?"
"Robert Oppenheimer was considered the 'father of the atomic bomb.' He led the team of mostly foreign-born physicists… back in the forties when they worked together in New Mexico. When I was stationed in the middle east I got to see some major destruction," he continued, as he reclaimed the pitcher of lemonade from the fridge. "On one particular occasion, I took part in a nasty air and sea bombardment of a small village. I watched the explosions and the flames… the fireballs as they climbed to the heavens. Having obliterated every living thing in that village, I remembered what he had said after he had watched the first tes
t atomic bomb go off."
Refilling both their glasses, he stood and replaced the lemonade pitcher back into the small fridge.
"What did he say?" Fiona asked gently.
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds," Arjuna said somberly. "It so described what I was feeling back there, outside of that tiny village, watching the destruction caused by our modern weaponry. So, I looked it up. It's a quote from the Bhagavad Gita and reading it got me hooked."
"Wow," Fiona said, noticing that he had tears in his eyes but, at the same time, not wanting to be disrespectful and look too closely at him. She didn’t want him to feel bad.
"I guess I identified with the Arjuna character," he said, smiling. "You should read it sometime," he said, toasting her.
"I will," Fiona said, meaning it.
Andrew woke up in Fiona's bed. Preferring her bedroom to any other room in the vast house, he felt closer to his love there than any other place. On some mornings before work, when he could afford the extra time, he would visit her old playroom. Trying to get a sense of what she was like as a child, he would dreamily walk around and idly take a note of each of the toys and playthings. He imagined which ones she would have gravitated to the most and which ones would have been her favorites. Judging by the amount of wear on some of the toys, he was sure that he was mostly correct in his guesses.
He kicked himself for previously being so insufferably insensitive that he had suggested to her that he turn the room into a gym. Thinking about the past, and how he had blown it, Andrew felt a burst of anger at himself. He didn’t blame Fiona for being so disgusted that she ran away. It was his attitude and callous disregard for her feelings, about everything that happened, including her father being in prison, that had chased her away.
What had he been he thinking, having her accompany him while some fast-talking, smarmy snake oil salesman took them on a sales tour of her own home? Her father had just been imprisoned and she must have been in shock. How she must have cringed as the company realtor took them from room to room, outlining the features of the house that she had called her home since birth. What a selfish idiot he could be at times. He flushed with shame to think of his insensitivity.
He was embarrassed to realize that, In addition to his seeming like an obnoxious upstart, he must have made her feel superfluous to his newly-acquired life of wealth and status. He probably had made her feel like she was some kind of possession or chattel, a belonging that went along with the rest of the possessions of the house.
The house comes with a guest house, a five car garage, a swimming pool... and a beautiful young lady called Fiona. What a jerk he was; the irony being that he would give it all up, the position, the wealth, the home, and the cars, everything, in an instant, if she would only agree to return and have them be together, like before.
Running late for his meeting with Abigail, Andrew took the Jaguar and rushed downtown. He hurried into the building and headed straight to the conference room. Noticing that Abigail was looking a bit more haggard each time that he saw her, he reasoned that the stress of the job and being away from her home in England must be finally taking its toll.
"We need to speed things up a bit, I'm afraid," she said to him as he sat across from her at the long conference room table. "It's not your fault but progress has been happening at a snail's pace and at this rate," she said without finishing. "Well, anyway," she said as she looked over her notes. "We need to get creative, more creative than we have been in the past. I need some fresh ideas," she said, looking at him expectantly.
"Okay," he said, looking through his papers as if he could very possibly come up with something if he stared down at his notes. "What kind of fresh ideas?" he then asked, realizing that he wasn't too sure what she was looking for.
"Simon's right hand man, when he was here, what was his name?" she asked.
"Uh, Balik," Andrew answered, checking his notes. "Stanislaw Balik. He's got an office down the hall."
"We should make an example of him," Abigail said sternly. "We should demote him and subject him to some major interrogation. Get him talking. Get him naming names."
Andrew looked at Abigail with a confused expression. He had never heard her talking like that before; in fact, she had been always pleasant and civil. Was she serious in her suggestion or was she testing him in some way? "We don't know if Balik is in on anything. I mean, for all we know he's clean." He tried to imagine the pleasant woman before him overseeing a “major interrogation.”
"How can he be clean, if he was Simon's right-hand man? Of course he had to be involved. Just because we haven't found a smoking gun," she said resolutely. "Besides, even if he is innocent, we stand to make progress. The guilty get nervous when they see someone punished. Causes them to move and from their movements we can see their connections. The guilty make mistakes when they get nervous. We need to take down this man Balik."
"Okay," Andrew said, doubtfully. "And maybe reinstate him… should we prove his innocence?"
Abigail took a long hard look at Andrew before she spoke. "If you don't have the heart for this job you shouldn't have taken it," she said harshly. "I usually can read character but now I'm not so sure."
"Oh, I do," insisted Andrew. "It's just, I don't know, a bit rough on the guy, if he has been dedicated and loyal. I mean, he's been working for the organization almost twenty years. What would it do to his family—"
"What is wrong with you?" Abigail interrupted. "If I wanted to hear a sob story I'd watch It's a Wonderful Life on cable or something. This is not a movie, Andrew. Out here, in the real world, tough decisions need to be made, every day. You want to have a discussion about what's right and what's fair?" she asked but not knowing if it was a genuine question he remained silent. "You're fighting a war and you want to talk about morals? And ethics?" she asked, like she was up for a debate. "Fine, let's discuss morals and ethics, shall we?" she asked, like it was what she really wanted.
"Okay," Andrew agreed meekly.
"There's a runaway train," she then said, leaning forward. "There's five people walking along the train track. Their lives are in danger. Now, suppose it was possible for you to reroute the train and save the five people, would you do it?"
"Sure, yeah, of course," Andrew answered.
"Not so fast," Abigail said, as if there was more.
"There's one person walking on the other track. If you reroute the train you will save five people but you most certainly would kill that one, innocent person walking on the other track. Now what do you do?" she asked with an index finger extended in the air, for effect.
"Do I kill five people or just one?" Andrew asked, hoping to clarify.
Sitting back in her chair, Abigail all but smiled.
"I guess it would make sense to save the five people, right?" Andrew answered uncertainly.
"So you'd be okay with killing that one other person?" she asked, with purpose. "He's not even walking on the track where the runaway train is having a problem. If you did nothing, the man would live. He's totally innocent. He may have a loving wife and a family of adorable children to support. You'd have to go out of your way to kill him. Yet, you say you would deliberately sacrifice this man to save the lives of five other people, yes? Just so we're clear," she said, making sure he was aware of the full implications of the ethical dilemma.
"I guess," Andrew said, looking pained.
"You don't sound so sure now?" she asked with the hint of a grin. "The higher you climb in this world, the more you will be faced with dilemmas such as this one. Being put in the position where you have to make decisions that will determine the future lives of people beneath you..." she said and paused like she could feel the weight. "Pretty soon you come to realize that there are no right answers, just least destructive ones. The decisions one takes are, what's the expression? Darned if you do, darned if you don't?"
"Yes," Andrew answered, beginning to understand.
"Anyone who struggles with these dilemmas and who subseq
uently suffers from remorse having witnessed the consequences of their decisions, because, trust me, there can be some very gruesome consequences... well, perhaps they should think twice about how far up the ladder of success they wish to climb. You see?"
"Yes," Andrew answered, knowing that her question was directed at him.
"So, this man Balik," she said, leaning forward with her hands placed on the table. "What say you?"
Andrew wanted to say yes, let's go ahead and take this man down, yet something inside of him told him that this still was not right. Balik seemed like a decent guy and why ruin a man's life unless you were sure of his guilt?
"Yes?" Abigail asked again.
"I have an idea," Andrew said, going on a hunch. "What if I could get Simon to incriminate Balik, if indeed the man is a fellow rogue?"
"How would you go about doing that?" Abigail asked, her curiosity peeked.
"Today is visiting day at the prison. I go talk to him and feel him out. See what names he can give me."
"Why would Simon volunteer names?" Abigail asked, her curiosity now diminished. "Simon is the king of secrecy and lies."
"I'll think of something," Andrew said with confidence. "It's worth a shot?"
"I suppose a few more hours won't make much difference," Abigail concurred. "Call me first thing," she said, ending the meeting. "I need names and I need them fast."
Chapter 3
Aside from wanting to do the right thing, Andrew had an ulterior motive for suggesting that he go and visit Simon in prison: he hoped to chance upon Fiona. Using the excuse that he was making the visit purely within a work context, he could act surprised if Fiona happened to also be visiting at the same time. He knew that she loved and must desperately miss her father. She was certain to be visiting him, at some time.
Feeling more nervous about the possibility of seeing Fiona than he was about visiting Simon, Andrew sat at the long table in the visiting room while he waited for Simon to be brought down. Constantly looking back over his shoulder towards the visitor’s line, he didn't see Simon enter from the prisoner entrance.