My name is Lester Spanda now, but once I was known as Jack Dunne… Mad Dog Dunne, soldier of fortune!
 
Ah, the seventies… in those days there were certain secret, powerful circles amongst whom I had a good reputation. I was reliable, efficient. Very very focused. So I got a call one day requesting my presence at a meeting in California, at which I learned that there was a certain Middle Eastern leader who had grown, um… inconvenient. I was being asked to take out Yasser Arafat, Mr. PLO. Well, I gave it some thought, of course, what else would a reasonable man do? And I said yes.
 
So that was the last summer of my brief interlude with Social Services, leading excursions for delinquent teenagers in the deserts of Utah. After that I was on a different track, forever.
 
Make no mistake, the people who hired me had real influence. I had been, shall we say, a little indiscreet in previous years, so they arranged a cover story by which I could disappear. According to the press, I was tried and convicted for weapons smuggling and sent to prison. Haha!
 
That first meeting, in LA, the guys I met with said they were from the Jewish Defense League, but of course they weren’t, as I found out later. There were two Middle Eastern men who claimed to be Israeli but were actually Palestinian, and there was another chap, perhaps an American, maybe European, I never really knew because he didn’t speak. I don’t really remember his face… very average, tall-ish and slender… but he just sat there without a word, without an expression, through the entire discussion. Gave me the creeps, truly.
 
By the way, a man in my position is a technician—a valuable one, but still just labor. Not management. Information is strictly “need to know.” I was told nothing, but naturally I assumed in the beginning that my employers were Israeli, possibly even the government of Israel. But then, by sly observations and inferences, I gleaned that, no, it was Arafat’s own people betraying him—a couple of high-up guys whose allegiance was really with Black September, and they were angry that Arafat had shut them down. They feared he was just not militant enough, and after his speech to the UN in, um... autumn of ‘74, they decided he had to go. His famous statement about the olive branch versus the freedom fighter’s gun… ha! They didn’t want to hear about an olive branch at all. They were afraid that Arafat would betray their aims and actually bring peace. They were too full of hatred for that. Or so it appeared to me—but that still wasn’t the whole picture.
 
So… we planned and arranged for several months, and I was eventually allowed some contact with the Fatah inner circle, posing as a sympathetic British journalist writing a book—your basic Mission Impossible act. You remember the TV series, right? I studied the movements of Mr. Arafat, with the help of my contacts. He was careful, he moved place to place, but finally, in Cairo, I spotted my window of opportunity. It was a middle-of-the-night, classic ninja-style operation, and I was damned good, if I say so myself. I won’t go into detail, but I did it—I personally brought the end of life on this temporal plane to the being that was Mr. Yasser Arafat. With my own two hands.
 
Then I ducked into hiding, in a place of my own choosing, unknown to my handlers—my fail-safe plan. I had been paid the first two-thirds of my rather hefty fee, so I wasn’t handicapped, I could move. I expected a sudden explosion in the press: celebration on one side, mourning on the other. But imagine my surprise when Mr. Arafat appeared just two days later on television. Live.
 
Well, clearly something was going on that I didn’t know about. That’s how these people work, you know. They make sure the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. Of course, there is somebody somewhere who knows what both hands are doing. But we don’t know who that is.
 
There was one chap, one of my secret handlers, that I managed to kidnap and threaten with his life, to the point that he gave me more information. I learned that I had seen only one small part of the plot all along. The bigger plan was to replace the real Arafat with an impostor.
 
And as it turns out, I was wrong in more ways than one. The people I was working for were not dedicated to Palestinian liberation at all costs, nor to the destruction of the Jews, nor any such thing. Matter of fact, they were traitors to the Arab cause, real Benedict Arnolds, but worse. They were just plain greedy… man’s number one weakness, right?
 
They were not Black September but they didn’t work for Israel, either. There was some shadowy third party playing one side against the other. Like Israel, they did not want a Palestinian martyr; that would be too hard to handle. But they did want a stronger anti-Israel stance. More terrorist attacks, which of course would be answered with extreme prejudice by the IDF. On and on, back and forth, like it still is all these years later....
 
Who knows—maybe Arafat could have brought peace in the Middle East. Imagine that! Maybe it did happen in a parallel universe somewhere, but not here. You’re probably thinking: Why? Why did these people want this? Perhaps to ensure the endless riches that come with endless war, for an elite few. Maybe just for power, plain and simple. Who are they? I suspect they are the people who still run the world today.
 
Anyway, they had a solution to their problem. They found an Iranian guy, an actor who resembled Arafat. He was an Islamic zealot, I was told, passionate and theatrical. His name was Bijan Zaimi. Maybe he felt chosen by Allah, but he got rich in any case. They did a little plastic surgery on him, spent months rehearsing him, preparing him. The day after I did my job, Arafat’s body was disposed of thoroughly, Zaimi took his place, and nobody but a handful of people knew what happened.
 
Oh, they were smart. If you have a good memory, you might even remember that there was a news story about a guy named Abu Sa'ed, a Palestinian agent who’d been working for the Mossad for several years. Apparently he was enlisted to put poison pellets that looked like rice in Arafat's food. But after he got the go-ahead, he came forward and confessed. Said he couldn’t do it because he was first of all a Palestinian and his conscience wouldn't let him.
 
Lies, all lies. This was just a smokescreen, a way to discredit any suspicions, always an effective technique for hiding covert operations. Happened just a week after the big switcheroo, and was an excuse for Arafat to lay low for a while. So… here we are in 1995, and to this day, Zaimi is still parading around in character, as far as I know. Got married, soon to be a father, etc. etc. Unless they switched him again—haha!
 
But… let’s see, where was I?
 
Oh yes… suddenly I was one of the few who knew the truth. That meant I was in danger of immediate execution. I left my informant, shall we say, indisposed, and took off. Never to return.
 
I wanted to do whatever they didn’t think I would do, so I headed east. It was slow going and damned stressful, but I eventually made my way to India—Bombay. You might be surprised at how well I can blend in, live, travel in the darker-skinned countries, make my way through their slums and market places, a big pale Brit like me... I’ve done it much of my life.
 
So I was in Bombay, and some weeks went by and I felt pretty safe there so I decided I would stay—ha! I mean, who would do that? I would. There I was in the heart of steamy, grimy Bombay, hiding in a little hovel in a maze of streets that would be called a slum in any western city. But it was far nicer than the real Bombay slums, where thousands of people live in cardboard shacks on polluted riverbanks or between highway interchanges. I walked the streets, talked to people, occasionally visited the Colaba district down at the southern tip of the city, but mostly avoided that because there were too many tourists and expats and people like me. Too dangerous.
 
Anyway, as chance would have it—do you believe in chance? haha!—I learned of a holy man who lived not far away in an attic above a smoke shop, Khetwadi 10th Lane. He was said to be one of the truly enlightened. So I decided to check him out.
 
Now as you might guess from my church job today, I’ve always been deeply interested in spiritual truths. When I was in Utah, I joined the LDS Church, and had I not been given my big opportunity, maybe I’d still be there. A happy Mormon guy with a family—ha!
 
You see, I’m devout. Bhakti yoga, my friend—the path of devotion. I’m a naturally religious man. It’s in my genes. I come from a long line of religious men, men of vision, men of the cloth. My father was vicar of a small country parish, my mother the daughter of an Anglican deacon. I loved the ritual, the fancy vestments—was even an altar boy, briefly, before the trouble. Jesus was the hero of my bedtime stories. Love, forgiveness and all that. But that doesn’t mean we ignored the Old Testament, oh no—fire and brimstone have their place. And fierce was the belt on my backside, or the backhand across my face, if I spoke my own opinion! Both my parents abhorred a spoiled child. And I hated control, so we parted ways, the usual story. But still… something deep in me always sought after the transcendent stories, the secret truths. I always wanted to worship, to kneel at the feet of the beloved, to give my life to service.
 
Hmm, perhaps I strayed from the holy path. Or did I? No mortal man knows for sure, haha!
 
So… an enlightened guru, right there in my Bombay neighborhood. I wanted to know what he knew. I went up the steep little staircase into his room, which would only hold ten, fifteen people at the most. Crowded, sweaty. When I got there I wasn’t even sure which one was him. That’s the level of nothingness he had attained. But soon it became evident by the fierceness of his eyes and by the authority with which he spoke. Just a plain, grizzled little guy, bald, no fancy guru robes and such. Just sitting on a deerskin, smoking, coughing, speaking hoarsely. This was Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. I doubt you’ve ever heard of him, but he was one of the few truly awake beings in history. Dead now, cancer, 1981. I was long gone by then; I didn’t even know he died until years later.
 
Anyway, I attended his teaching sessions, twice a week at first, for several months, then later once a week. Then less, as I gained deeper understanding. At first I wasn’t sure I was safe, because there were often two or three Europeans, Brits, Americans in the room. Spiritual seekers, yoga pilgrims, ashram-dwellers, you get the picture. Not like me, but that was good. No CIA, no Interpol, no military. No hired killers there but me—haha!
 
Nisargadatta’s message was very clear, almost brutal, like a slashing sword. Question everything, don’t believe in anything. You find out what you truly are by discovering what you are not. Concept by concept, illusion by illusion, you look clearly at it, see it is false, and discard it. Neti neti—not this, not this. You peel off the layers of the onion until the only knowledge left is simply: “I am.” And then you discard that one as well: No Self. Emptiness. Union with the absolute.
 
That is enlightenment. Being fully awake.
 
I wanted that. I sat at his feet frequently for the next, oh, many months, maybe even a year. I meditated daily. I grew ever closer to the full realization of truth. I could feel it coming, haha! And there would be glimpses, but then… nope, sorry. It was just so easy to slip back into the illusion, the illusion of myself, my big old egotistical self.
 
Still, today, I’m working on it, bit by bit, closer and closer.
 
Anyway, that was my India journey, a turning point in my life. It was... what, ‘77 or ‘78 by then? And I had heard nothing from my pursuers, whoever they might be. I seemed to have outsmarted them... but I knew I could never return to my previous life. I had grown homesick for the western world. So I left Bombay.
 
I went home to England but felt strangely lonely there, a new feeling for me. No relationships left with former family or friends. Managed to find a secluded place in the countryside up near Halifax. Beautiful. Y’know, I actually fell in love there, almost got married. But it seemed I had too many secrets, so she changed her mind.
 
Ah… well… such are the consequences of one’s life decisions.
 
At that point I decided it was time to come back to the States. I knew I couldn’t go anywhere near my old stomping grounds, so I ended up in New York City, a good place to hide, almost as good as Bombay. But after a year or so, I decided I wanted a little more peace and quiet so I moved to Kingston and found this job, a caretaker in a church, perfect!
 
I’ve had so many identities throughout all the years… but of course I know that all of them, even the one I was born with—not Jack Dunne, by the way—are just costumes. When I die—and it may be soon, right? haha!—when I die I’ll just throw off the final costume and merge back into the absolute, just be part of the divine pulsation, the great, beautiful throb of creation. That’s what “spanda” means, in Sanskrit. And it is my aim to be truly less and less every day. So I’ve been known as Les, Lester Spanda, ever since I left Bombay. I think it suits me, don’t you?
 
 
© Brent Robison 2019
 
This story is an excerpt from the novel Ponckhockie Union by Brent Robison, Recital Publishing 2019.