19 POWER PLAY

Helena linked in and she felt Gábor's frustration off the bat.

"This man is asking the same questions with other words. Stay connected and you'll see what I mean. He went to get a coffee."

Helena and Leo "saw" the room Gábor sat in. It was a small office with a table and three chairs, filing cabinets with manila folders, a telephone, and some files on the desk beside a computer screen and keyboard. A barred window was to the left, and an air conditioning unit kept the temperature down. The Inspector returned with two cups of coffee and this was the moment when Helena got a deeper understanding of the link. She smelled the coffee and tasted it when Gábor took a sip and even felt the heat on her lips. She experienced everything that Gábor did and so did Leo. Leo did not like the taste of coffee and made a funny face.

"So Mr. Fabien, where did we stop? Ah, oui, when you saw Mr. Lundy, did you know it was him?"

"No, but you asked that before."

"Oui, Yes, but I want to be sure I understand you."

Annoyance washed through Gábor and Helena felt it through Leo. Edgy he replied to the ferret-faced policeman.

"Look, Inspector, if you have a hard time understanding, would it not be wise to have someone with us who does?"

Helena felt Gábor's irritation. The inspector’s face looked as if he'd bitten into a lemon.

"A very good point monsieur, sir. Two pair of ears is better than one, eh?"

He pressed a button on his phone and said: "Gaston, entre s'il vous plait." He leaned forward towards Gábor and remarked.

"Eez ees not a kind man, but Inglish is very good." He exaggerated his accent. His breath was not pleasant and Helena wrinkled her nose. She concluded the man had to be a carnivore and not much into oral hygiene. She felt sorry for Gábor. He was right there, face to face. The door opened and a large Polynesian man came into the room and looked at Julian. Julian indicated the other chair and as he moved toward the chair, he looked at Gábor with a neutral expression on his face. Gábor estimated him to be about 195cm, and about 120kg. The man looked to be in good shape and had a scar on his chin and over his left eye, probably from a brawl. It seemed his nose was flattened a few times too.

"Gaston, this is Mr. Fabien and he speaks only English and thinks I may have a problem understanding him. Would you talk with him for me?"

The large man looked at Gábor.

"Ia Orana." Gábor greeted the man. “E aha te huru? The Inspector does not speak Hungarian or German and my French is not very good,” he said, and nodded in the big man's direction.

Gaston's face cracked into a smile.

"Maitai roa. Maeva Tahiti."

"Mauruuru roa," answered Gábor.

"Do you speak our language?" The big man's voice was pleasant.

"I'm sorry, not yet, but I would love to learn it."

"I speak English and you may call me Matahi. It is my Tahitian name."

"Call me Gabs if you like. My real name is Gábor, but that is too difficult for many." Gábor put out his hand and the big man shook it. It was a firm handshake. Gaston then leafed through the file in front of him for a little while.

"What we have so far is that you were coming to the scene and saw your six-year-old son being manhandled by Mr. Lundy. You wanted to stop him and he turned on you and attacked you with a heavy torch. You shoved him and he fell with your son over the rail into the water. Is that correct so far?"

"Yes."

"How big was Mr. Lundy in your estimation?"

"About like you, maybe a bit taller by a little."

"And you shoved him over the railing? How far would you say Mr. Lundy was from the railing when you shoved him?"

"About a meter, two at the most. I didn't have my measuring tape with me."

"I see." How heavy are you Gábor? May I call you Gábor?"

"Please do. About 67kg. (147lb)"

"I am 120kg. Would you demonstrate to me how you were able to shove Mr. Lundy over the railing two meters away?"

"How?"

"Use me."

"Shove you?" Gábor thought for a moment before he answered. He had bigger opponents before. "What if you get hurt?"

"I'll take that chance." Matahi smiled, almost in a condescending way.

"Okay, but you are not going to arrest me for assaulting an officer, are you?"

"I may if you're bluffing."

"Can I have that in writing? Just in case?" Matahi took a piece of paper and wrote something on it and handed it to Julian who read and signed it with a smirk toward Gábor, then handed it to back to Matahi who gave it to Gábor. Gábor looked at it, folded it, and put the paper into his shirt pocket.

"Are you satisfied, Mr. Fabien?" This time Matahi clearly wore a condescending smile.

"It will do."

Matahi's smile was a bit wider now and he stood up. Almost a head taller than Gábor and nearly twice his weight, he stood about a meter and a half from the filing cabinet behind him. Julian moved his chair to the side and had a sneer on his face that made Gábor wish he were the object of this little demo. The inspector then moved behind Gaston and a bit to the side so he could see Gábor's face during the act.

"Are you ready?" Gábor asked Matahi. Standing about a meter apart the big man smiled at him.

"I'm ready." He leaned a bit forward for the anticipated shove, one could never know. The man in front of him was much smaller than he was and stood too close to really being effective.

Gábor took a deep inhalation and focused his sight on the wall behind the colossal figure, then sank into haragei, the source of power a well-trained martial artist could access at will, and with a kiai Gábor lunged at the big man. The intensity and focus of his mind expressed itself in the strike. He connected with both open palms on Matahi's chest just under his pectoral muscles and lifted Matahi off his feet. His head snapped onto his chest and a puff of air exploded from his mouth. His body thrown back, his flailing arms slammed into Julian, he swept him along and then both men crashed into the filing cabinet, breaking and splintering the shelves in it, and fell to the floor. Loose sheaves from broken folders drifted like sad petals of some flowers onto the government officials, covering them as if to hide them from their embarrassment. Wearing the entire set of police reports from the past ten years on their bodies, both lay there motionless for a few seconds, then with a groan, the Polynesian took a deep breath and rose to a sitting position.

Julian had broken two ribs and lost consciousness when the thrashing arms of Matahi struck him. Matahi's sudden interest to join a Shaolin monastery after his service with the gendarmerie rekindled. Gábor helped the big man up from the floor, then looked at Julian and advised Matahi to call for an ambulance. The large man had a hard time breathing too and turned as pale as linen and sat down on the chair. He faded in and out of consciousness for minutes and finally looked at Gábor, wheezing and coughing, fighting to get air into his lungs.

"You are a real warrior sir. Where were you when Tahiti needed you?" he managed between fits of coughs.

"In my great-grandfather’s twinkling eyes when he met his future wife," replied Gábor as he watched the big man's breath with concern. He hoped he hadn't been too hard on the man; he was not his enemy.

"We will continue our conversation in two weeks if you don't mind. I need a rest. You convinced me. You're free to go now," wheezed the heavy man and then picked up the phone and called someone from the hospital to pick up the inspector. With a glance at the Polynesian man Gábor nodded and left the office. Helena and Leo looked at each other and burst out laughing. The mind-link with Gábor was very intense; they'd felt the whole episode as if they had done the demonstration together with him, virtual reality at its best.

"Gábor, will you come back here today or will you stay the night in Papeete? We have visitors on the beach."

"Honey, I'll go with Ivan to find Lundy. He cares too much about Leo and I worry he might hurt the man if he becomes stubborn. I'll be returning as soon as we find him. The gendarmes think the sharks got him."

"So you will go back to where we found Leo?"

"Yes, Leo, can you get us connected with Ivan? He went to get some provisions for the trip to Niau, but now I'll be going with him as well, so he'll need to buy extra."

"Just a second, Dad."

It took three minutes. Ivan was engaged in conversation with a woman at Carrefour and he'd just left the store when he noticed a pressure on his mind and he ‘heard' Leo calling him. The presence of Leo was in his head and then there was Gábor and Helena. He focused and the link formed. They exchanged information on where to meet and then disengaged again because they needed to concentrate on finding the place where they wanted to meet.

When they got to the place at the ferry terminal and stowed the things they'd been looking for, they informed Helena through Leo about their departure, wished them good night, and promised to be careful. They remained connected for a little while longer, and when their boat passed the reef, at the entrance to the harbor, they disconnected from the link, opened the throttle, and went against the chop toward Niau, two hundred nautical miles east-northeast. Course 066 degrees true. Time: 2100h.

From previous experience, the boat could go about thirty knots on sixty percent power and they figured they could make it in seven hours, theoretically. With the wind and the chop, they estimated it would take about ten. The tender was an excellent boat, stable and running smoothly, but because of its twin hull design, it had a different characteristic than a deep v-hull. Both men were still experimenting with the boat. It had a capacity of six, but with the two drums of fuel aboard, it weighed four hundred kilos, the equivalent of five full-grown men plus them.

The tender had been loaded to capacity. Their intention was to go to Tupana village as there was a landing strip nearby and Lundy would seek it out.

"You think he made it to Tupana?" Gábor inquired. "He must have been exhausted and it's a long walk from where we found Leo."

Gábor and Ivan discussed their plan and tossed ideas and speculations around to find the most promising action to take. It has been two days since they found Leo, this was the second night they spent in the Pacific, and they found it exciting, but also tiring.

Now with the chop, and the wind on their faces, it was like the stuff one reads stories about or watches on TV white-knuckled in front of the set in an armchair snacking on chips and drinking beer. Waves exploded over the bow and drenched them occasionally with salty spray, sometimes a solid wave crashed on the bow, and the boat would slow down only to surge forward again, like a racing horse. The swells combined with the waves made for a bumpy ride and when a wave washed over the windshield, the men swore, wiping the water from their faces and continued their conversation with elevated voices so they could hear each other. Another large wave slammed into the bow, the boat shuddered, and green water washed over them. Hanging on to the rails, drenched to the bone, both cussed in their native language and then laughed. It was an adventure and for a little while, neither spoke, but they looked at the chart-plotter on the screen of the GPS, which indicated their progress, showing a symbol for the boat as it worked its way toward their destination. Ivan traced a finger along the eastern side of the island and remarked to Gábor.

"According to the chart, there is nothing on the western side where he could get help, or possibly a ride. I doubt he knows about the airstrip, but he could find out about it from the locals. There are a lot of pearl farms in the area where he could get help."

"Someone could take him over to Papeete on a boat if he can pay. I wonder if he had a wallet on him when he went over the rail," mused Gábor and adjusted the collar of his rain jacket. Water was running from his head and his hair was a mess of Einsteinian appearance, but in the dark nobody would notice and Helena was sound asleep a bit to the Northeast.

Ivan had sharp lines around his mouth and his face illuminated by the glow of the plotter gave him a savage look. His lips pressed together into a thin line resembled a pencil mark as he squinted into the darkness, watching for the whitecaps on the water. As he played with the helm to avoid bigger waves, the men fell into silence, and it was Gábor who broke it.

"You know, Julian will go after me when we return to Papeete. He will not forget today as long as he sees me around."

"So what really happened there? Tell me all the fun." Ivan grinned fiercely in the dark.

"Not much. He made an ass of himself before I had the chance to do it. He called this big Polynesian guy in to interrogate me. The man was not unfriendly like Julian, and when I greeted him in his language, he actually smiled. He asked far more pertinent questions and when I told him about shoving Lundy hard enough to make him go over, he challenged me to demonstrate it." Gábor stopped at that. Ivan looked at him as if to say"...and?" However, that was all Gábor said, so Ivan pushed a bit.

"Come on now, open your mouth. It will not hurt, I'm not a dentist, you know." Gábor thought for a minute while Ivan looked ahead and then he continued the story.

"The guy was about two meters tall and at least hundred-twenty kilo. He stood in the middle of the room. Julian stood behind him, and I told the big guy to get ready and I think he underestimated me a little. When I shoved him, he flew back and crashed into a filing cabinet, taking Julian with him, knocking him out and he may have broken a rib or two. I thought I heard something cracking." Ivan whistled through his teeth.

"Whose ribs cracked?" he asked.

"The Inspector's, as the big guy Matahi crashed into him."

"Did you use haragei?"

"Yes, but he is a big man, Ivan."

"You could have killed him."

"Smaller ones survived." Ivan shook his head.

"You could have killed him and then they would have had something real in their hands to shave you with their guillotine."

Gábor did not answer and was thinking that what Ivan had said was correct and he had not considered it. The opportunity to teach this arrogant Julian a lesson was too tempting and he gave into his Ego. Now he looked at himself and saw his own arrogance. He could have swallowed his pride and self-importance and practiced more patience.  But then, how else could he convince these people that size didn't matter much if one can utilize their strength properly. He couldn't have demonstrated how Lundy ended up in the water without doing what he did.

However, Ivan had a point. Haragei was not something to play with. Undisciplined application of primordial power can lead to death in the hands of untrained people. He had received proper instructions and trained with qualified instructors and was confident enough to use it wisely. His need to be back with his family was strong but he'd practiced Zen meditation long enough to have developed an understanding of what desires were, and their effects on one's rational and wise behaviour.

Ever since he'd finished University he'd wanted a family; he'd dated a few girls and had his share of intimacy, and each encounter deepened in him the realization that sex was not the only thing that made a relationship work. Some past experiences with a sexually deranged predator ten years older than him had left their marks on him, and he had barely escaped her grasp when he was nineteen. He often found a good and deep conversation, with joking, bantering, a challenge of intellect and just sharing moments in silence were often better than a steamy sexual encounter.

Women felt attracted to him and felt safe with him, trusted him, but young Gábor kept a distance between them and him, a wall, if you will, that never allowed them to get ‘inside' him. His heart was out of reach like a carrot on a stick attached to one's forehead, a woman once told him. This emotional detachment made him a desirable item to look at, but he wasn't available to just anyone. He was not cold, no, he was a passionate man when it came to intimacy, but detached. Something inside him didn't catch fire, although his partners felt deeply satisfied. He was unsure of who he was and answered questions cryptically to the inquiring person about who he was.

To many, he was an enigma and others called him weird and strange. He had given up dating, was celibate for four years, and didn't really miss sex that much. He kept himself busy with teaching Kenjutsu and archery in a small community center and had his work to keep him busy. He didn't drink, or smoke, or use any drugs, and going out to meet other people only made it clearer, that one can be lonelier in a crowd than on the top of a mountain. The few who knew him thought him to be centered and even wise.

Clients sought after him as a professional in massage and for counselling and he excelled in it, but he was mostly alone. Then Helena showed up in his life and he realized what he'd been missing all his life. She accepted him the way he was, supported him instead of holding him back, and laughed with him, not at him when he did something dumb. She felt his down moments and was there to lend him a hand to get up again and she trusted him when sometimes he did not trust himself. Helena was open, curious, and was not afraid to ask for what she wanted in a way that was not demanding, but rather seductive. She was not afraid to live and took responsibility for the things she did and never blamed anyone. She said once that people give up their own power when they make circumstances or others responsible for what is happening to them. He recognized that trait as a past behaviour in him and made changes.

His clients often said he should patent that as a personal slogan. He couldn't. It was Helena's credo. It was how she lived her life and imparted that onto him. When he advised his clients to take responsibility for everything that happens, they walked out of his office because they remained too attached to the benefits they got out of their suffering and so stayed in their stuck place. They wanted changes without changing anything in themselves. When he struck Matahi, he wanted them to realize that things were very seldom what they appeared to be. Often, something that they believed was a tragedy could very well be a blessing if only they would be able to transcend the experience.

He hoped both of them had learned something from this little demonstration, but what Ivan pointed out to him was a very good point. His intention might have come from his ego to show them up and to get Julian to leave him alone. Analyzing his action in hindsight, he saw it was ego that had the better of him. Old habits are hard to break, he realized.

Normally, Helena and he were without any malice toward others, and when someone did something out of line to either of them, they let it slide or just ignored it and went on with their own agenda. When they became lovers, the athletic team and their supervisors lamented the fact that they were upsetting the unwritten rules that colleagues were not to date one another.

Rooted in stupid regulations that served only the mechanism of work ethics as prescribed by economics, they would never understand that they couldn't rule love. Helena had asked if Gábor would like to be married to put an end to the squabble. Neither one liked the idea of a legal marriage, but they did it anyway. That made work easier for them and then Helena became pregnant. Three months before term Helena quit and then gave birth to Leo. She stayed home with the baby while Gábor continued working. A year later, Leo began to change and it confused both of them. Helena was running yoga classes then and had to stop because she wanted to find out what the situation with Leo was. She became an expert in Internet surfing, but couldn't find any leads on Leo's condition. It began to be difficult with the neighbours and then the relatives and Helena's parents withdrew more and more from them. Gábor's father was disturbed by Leo's condition, but not judgmental. He tried to support them and did what he could in his way to placate relatives, but the gossip was impossible to stop.

Neighbours turned into rumourmongers. They had enough of the prejudice of the people and it was one of the reasons they'd immigrated to Canada. They didn't hold grudges; they just stepped out of the way. Just in the moment, he didn't feel he'd done any of that. What Ivan pointed out to him, made him feel uncomfortable about himself, and he thought he needed to watch Ivan, should they meet with Lundy. Better learn what you teach, he thought to himself.

"Ivan, why don't you rest a bit? There is a dry place right under the windshield and it is padded enough to be comfortable. I'll wake you in three hours, okay? It will allow me to think a little on what we could do with Lundy when we find him, and then we can talk about it when you are up again. Deal?"

Ivan yawned, nodded, and moved under the cover of the windshield. "See you later, and try to stay dry and drive carefully. Lots of bumps out there," Ivan closed his eyes and one breath later he was asleep. Gábor was alone with his thoughts. They had made about thirty miles now and still had hundred-seventy nautical miles to go. He hoped the weather wouldn't get heavier and the wind wouldn't change too much, he'd preferred it more from the South.

He recalled the weather forecast and it called for fifteen-knot winds from the East, changing to lighter winds for the following days. That would be good, and he looked forward to seeing Helena and Leo perhaps as early as tomorrow if things with Lundy could be worked out. He also wanted to explore this "mind-link", a concept he'd read about in some science fiction stories while he was still in school. However, this was real and his head still had a hard time accepting it, but when Helena thought about the "hard drive" and Leo conveyed it, there was no longer any doubt in his mind. Only Helena and he knew about this private little joke. He wanted to see if he could contact Leo in the morning and ask him to "show" him and Ivan the face of Lundy so they would be able to identify him when they found him. He did not think there would be many black people on an atoll, but it would exclude an error and aid in identification. He also had to stay away from Lundy because he could recognize him and would wonder why he was looking for him on the island. Lundy could have seen them and recognized them, although they never really met.

They had to approach Lundy carefully so he would not become suspicious and do something stupid before they had him under control. Ivan had to be the one who would have to initiate the first contact. Of course, they had to find him first. He could have found a ride on a boat or hired someone to take him to Tahiti.

Gábor surveyed the plotter chart; the atoll was pretty much a circle, eight km in diameter, the lagoon, he was sure, was completely enclosed by a low-lying coral reef and like all of these island’s, there would be predominantly a load of coconut trees fringing the shoreline on the outer edges. There was an airstrip on the northern tip of the island and the only populated area was at Tupana of about two hundred inhabitants. If Lundy made it, he would be easy to find. A charter company serviced the island, and flights were very sporadic. That was what the two men were hoping would be to their advantage.

A spray knocked Gábor out of his thoughts; he looked up from the display and paid more attention to his surroundings. There it was again, this time he saw the spray to the port of the boat, and he throttled back. Whales! He'd seen many orcas in Canada, mainly from shore where he and they were safe from each other; now he was in the middle of the Pacific with whales close by. Ivan woke and asked what the matter was and Gábor told him.

His friend sat up and looked, but saw nothing for a few minutes. Then the sound of a whale expelling air was right in front of the boat and the head and back of a humpback whale emerged from the dark waters. The men worried they would hit one of them, but to their relief that did not happen, and a few minutes later, they heard the exhalation off to starboard, so Gábor put the boat into gear and cleared the area. Ivan lay back again for a bit but didn't go to sleep. Marvelling how bright and close the stars seemed to be, he searched the sky for familiar constellations up in the sky, and he saw the belt of Orion and the Southern Cross, which was a new one, and the broad band of the Milky Way. When he was a young man, he had dreams about one day perhaps living, at least part time, in the South Pacific. He shared this dream with many others who traveled these waters.

He looked up to Gábor. Ivan liked the man a lot. He was straight and good-natured. His martial arts training made him reserved and disciplined and he was authentic. They'd had good talks and enjoyed each other's company, yet Ivan felt there was always something on Gábor's mind he would have liked to talk about, but he never did and Ivan was sensitive enough not to pry. Sometimes they saw each other in Vancouver and on the ferry to Horseshoe Bay, and during those times, Gábor had talked about his work as a coach, his training as a counsellor, and his Zen meditation, but never about Leo and not much about Helena. Then he had talked about building his own log house and since he had done that himself, he offered his advice and assistance and that's how he got to know him better.

When Ivan finally met Leo, he understood what Gábor must have been going through. Gábor looked for ways to help Leo, but he did not see that Leo was not the problem. The problem was in Gábor, why he thought about Leo the way he did. Leo's form brought prejudice to the surface of consciousness in others, including his own father. Ivan decided to help them as well as he could to understand the issue. He didn't have a very deep understanding of psychology and he'd only had eight years of school education, but life had its ways of teaching ‘acceptance' if one was observant and open enough to understand and draw conclusions from events, and one could admit errors along the way.

At Midnight, Ivan changed places with Gábor. There was not much to being on watch. The boat held its course with the help of a small autopilot the previous owner had installed. They'd had to buy a new servo unit and they'd installed it in fifteen minutes; it worked well, but they needed to keep a lookout for other vessels and like a while ago, for whales. In any case, whales had the right of way anytime. Gábor took off his foul weather jacket, put it under his head for a pillow, and almost instantly went to sleep. Ivan's glance went over the phosphorescent whitecaps and he increased the speed of the boat to a point where it could handle the waves without bouncing too much, the waves were not hitting the bow, and thus, they didn't have to deal with spray as much as they had before.

The wind, he noticed, had decreased a bit, which he welcomed. Whitecaps were now less frequent and it seemed the waves had flattened out. Ivan picked a star and tried to keep it in the same position, and with time and as the stars changed their place in the sky, he corrected the position to stay on course.

He was in a kind of dreamy state and the drone of the engines being the only event in a changeless ocean with its eternal waves, lulled him almost into a trance. Gábor made some sounds as if he was having bad dreams, but did not wake up. Two hours later, Ivan checked the plotter and with satisfaction noted their progress toward Niau. 6.5 hours had passed since they left Papeete and they'd made one hundred and fifty nautical miles. Checking on the fuel gauge, it told him they needed to fuel up soon again. When his turn on watch was finished and Gábor awoke, they got the plastic hose and went to work. The Eastern sky indicated the new day and made a flashlight unnecessary. Without words, they filled both tanks to the top and still had a bit of fuel left in the barrel. When they got to Niau, they would empty them completely and leave the empty drums on the Island if someone wanted it. They were sure someone there could use them. It would make more space on the boat for other things.

"How was your sleep?" Ivan asked Gábor when they finished the fuelling. Gábor, stowing the hose onto the tank compartment turned back to Ivan.

"I feel like a cocktail. Shaken but not stirred. How was the watch? Did I miss anything?"

"More "Zzz's perhaps. You moaned in your sleep with either pleasure or pain. Something on your mind?"

"I had a dream about us being tough with Lundy and we were accused by dolphins and cats of cruelty and lack of intelligence. It was bizarre."

Deep lines on his friend's face indicated stress, and Ivan looked at Gábor with some concern. "We need to talk with him and it depends on his response as to what we must do. If he can be reasoned with, it will be easier on him, if not…" Ivan left it hanging unsaid and Gábor felt uneasy. After both being quiet for a while, Ivan spoke up.

"If we offer him money for his silence, how can we make sure he will not milk us like cows for as long as we live? He may want to use his knowledge to become rich in a short time and not have to work for the rest of his life. Have you thought of a plan that will make sure he doesn't talk?"

"No, I would like Helena's input on any decision we make. They may be up already and able to "hear" us." He focused his thoughts on Leo and had instant contact. It was as if Leo had waited for him.

"Hello, son, is your mother awake?"

"I'm here, and good morning, sailors." Gábor and Ivan's face bore a grin when they caught the undercurrent of the implied "Sailor's" greeting. The mind-link was very accurate in relaying information.

"Whereabouts are you two?" Ivan looked at the plotter and informed Helena and Leo in the same instant. Gábor wanted to get info from Leo and formulated his request. Still awed by this telepathic means of communication, where all could link in and relay information to each other as if they were all in one mind, what one saw, thought, heard or felt was instantly received without misunderstanding, Gábor feeling the affection of his wife as well as that of Leo and his friend Ivan, he begun to get used to their authentic nature. In turn, they too felt him and the bond between them strengthened.