A PUPPET ON A STRING

Chapter 12

The cab pulls up outside the gates to a park some distance from his hotel. Frank pulls himself from it and looks about for people that could be watching him.Willing the cab to leave. Wondering if the cabbie would remember him if ever questioned by the police.

Walking a random pathway, he is drawn towards to a random bench beside an idyllic pond.His legs could not support the guilt he was carrying. Feeling the coldness of the wooden bench as he sat. The morning dew had still to dry, but Frank sat down anyway. That would be the least of his worries. Dazed, he looks around hoping no one was about. A white swam guilds smoothly on the surface of the calm water. Oblivious to the threatening world around it.Frank sits numb. His mind in desperate denial as to what he had just done.And what was about to happen. Wondering if he should go back and undo what he had just set in motion. Was there time to warn the young woman in 5F?F for Freddy, he recites the phrase like a nursery rhyme.But it was too late.He could not risk showing his face again. Implicating himself further. If only he had taken the girls number. To warn her. To leave the building.

His mind played out the impending disaster. Knowing he was the one that would cause it.Wishing that it was all just a bad dream. That Marilyn would wake him and be by his side. Back in Seattle. But the park looked nothing like Seattle. An eerie feeling came over him.He was about to kill another human being.Shoving his hands deep into his pockets going as if to hide himself. His head sunk to his chest and he stared into the space before him. Letting his mind to go blank. He slipped from this world into another. A sanctuary. Grimm's world.

"National Security... The boys overseas..." He muttered to himself,reaffirming Smith's words.He couldn't let them die because of a traitor. A spy. But Frank had doubts.An intuition that said, Smith was not all he said he was. Yet here he sat.Entangled in Smith's web.

"God help me."The serenity of the lake. The graceful swam. Weeping willows dipping long thin limbs into the dark waters. The blue cloudless sky. The idyllic sun suspended in the sky by the hand of God. Then suddenly Frank's world imploded.An explosion was suddenly heard echoing over the park. Pulling him from his warm sanctuary. Sounding from the direction of the apartment building.Closing his eyes he visualized the moment. Recalling the apartment as he remembered it. Clean. Intact. A door opening. The man reaching for the light switch.

Then... A bright light... And silence... There was nothing. The guilt,however patriotic, would not allow him to move.His mind began to play out the exact moment like a broken record. Over and over and over and over again in his head.Wailing sirens squawked, rushing urgently to the disaster. The carnage. Who else was harmed? What incident people had Smith written off as collateral damage? Friendly fire? All in the name of National Security?

Closing his eyes again, the idyllic scenery was not so idyllic. He had become the deliverer of death. How could he face Marilyn? He had saved her from deportation. But at the cost of a man's life. A man responsible for the lives of soldiers overseas.The moral scales of Frank's mind leveled. As patriotism balanced the immoral sin.Frank waited for an hour to pass before walking back to the hotel. It would be along walk, but one that would consume time. Procrastinating the inevitable. Dark smoke ascended the heavens, giving him an indication of which way to head.Cab's slowed down hawking for fares, but he just waved them on. In no rush to get back to his hotel.

Turning the corner onto the street, discovers fire trucks still pumping water onto the fifth level apartment. Its window's blown out. Cloudy grey smoke smoldered from the open scars. Outside walls Blackened with charring. On the street an ambulance was in attendance to the injured.