The birthday girl

by Stephen Leather

'Mersiha, don't cry,' he said, but she wasn't listening. Tears trickled down her cheeks and her whole body shuddered.

  Suddenly there was an irregular tattoo of loud cracks from upstairs which Freeman realised were gunshots from automatic weapons. Mersiha's head jerked up and then she looked back at Freeman, her cheeks glistening wet. There were more shots, louder this time, and Mersiha turned to cover the door. They both heard screams from upstairs, followed by more shots.

  Mersiha took a couple of steps backward, putting distance between herself and the door. There were muffled voices from outside, then something heavy thudded against the wood. The door bulged inward, the hinges screeched, then the thudding was repeated. 'Stjepan?' Mersiha shouted. 'Stjepan?' She stood next to Freeman, visibly shaken.

  The thudding stopped. Mersiha looked at Freeman, her eyes wide. 'I don't know,' he said in reply to her unspoken question.

  Freeman heard footsteps, running away from the closed door, then silence. 'Get down!' he shouted, and when she didn't react immediately he threw himself on top of her.

  The sound of the explosion was deafening. Fragments of the door blew across Freeman's back and then he heard a rapid footfall on the concrete. He looked up. A large man stood in the doorway wreathed in smoke like some sort of demon, an assault rifle in his gloved hands. He was wearing grey and black camouflage clothing and his face was streaked with black and grey stripes so that Freeman had trouble seeing where the uniform ended and the flesh began.

  'Freeman?' the man said.

  'Yes,' Freeman replied, his voice little more than a guttural whisper. His ears were still ringing from the explosion. 'Who are you?'

  'We're here to get you out,' the man said. He had the bluest eyes Freeman had ever seen. Two more figures appeared behind him, similarly dressed and carrying identical guns. More shots were fired upstairs, singly and with a different sound to the earlier reports. Pistols rather than automatic'fire.

  'Get up.'

  Freeman clambered to his feet, the chain tightening around his waist as he stood up. He reached out to help Mersiha.

  She was lying on the ground, stunned, her Kalashnikov out of reach.

  'Step to the side,' said the man at the door, gesturing with the rifle. Freeman started to obey automatically. The man's voice broached no argument. But as he moved, Freeman saw the man swing the barrel of his gun down towards Mersiha.

  Freeman began to shout, but he knew even before he opened his mouth that there was nothing he could say that would stop what was going to happen. The man with the gun had his eyes fixed on Mersiha and his jaw was set tight in anticipation of the recoil. 'No!' Freeman yelled, and he threw himself at Mersiha, trying to push her out of the way, trying to protect her from the man with the killer blue eyes. Bullets raked Freeman's legs and he screamed in agony. Mersiha began screaming too, and Freeman covered her with his body. His last coherent thought was that if the man with blue eyes wanted to kill the girl, he'd have to shoot her through him.

  Freeman drifted in and out of consciousness several times before becoming fully awake. His mouth was dry and he could barely swallow and he could feel nothing below his waist. He tried to raise his head so that he could look at his legs but all his strength seemed to have evaporated. A woman screamed to his left, a plaintive wail that made Freeman's heart start pounding.

  He slowly turned his head to where the sound had come from, but he couldn't see further than the neighbouring bed and its occupant – a man with heavily bandaged eyes. Blood was seeping from under the bandages and the man's hands were gripping the bedsheets tightly. Somebody was crying, and somebody else was moaning, and he could make out hushed voices in a language he couldn't understand.

  He managed to slide his left arm up the bed in an attempt to see what the time was but when he finally got his wrist up to the pillow he discovered that his watch had been removed.

  He turned his head to the right, looking for a nurse, a doctor, anyone who could tell him where he was and when he'd be going home. There seemed to be no one in authority in the ward, no one treating the sick or consoling the suffering. Freeman lay back and stared at the ceiling. At least he was in a hospital.

  For a while he concentrated on his legs, to see if there was any sensation at all. He tried flexing his toes and moving his feet, but he had no way of telling if he was succeeding or not.

  There was no feeling at all.

  He heard metal grating and glass rattling and he looked towards the sound. An old woman in a blood-stained blue and white uniform was pushing a trolley full of bottles down the middle of the ward. Freeman tried to raise an arm to attract her attention but the effort was beyond him. He tried to call out but his throat was too dry. Tears welled up in his eyes. It wasn't fair, he thought. It just wasn't fair.

  'Tony? Tony, wake up.' The voice pulled Freeman out of a nightmare where he was trapped in a car wreck, covered in blood and screaming. The scream blended into Katherine's voice and when he opened his eyes she was standing by the side of his bed next to a man in a grey suit.

  Katherine saw his eyes open and she sat down on the side of the bed. 'Thank God,' she said. 'Tony, are you okay?' She held his left hand and squeezed it.

  Freeman smiled at the question. He wanted to say something witty, something to make her smile, but no words would come.

  All he could do was blink his eyes to show that he understood.

  Katherine turned to the man in the suit. 'We have to get him out of here,' she said.

  The man nodded. 'That won't be a problem,' he said. He was American, his voice a mid-western drawl.

  Freeman tightened his grip on Katherine's hand and he shook his head. No, there was something he had to do first.

  The car rattled through potholed streets, past buildings that were pockmarked with bullet-holes and gutted by fire. Electric cables draped over the sides of abandoned buildings like dead snakes.

  In the distance Freeman heard gunshots, the single rounds of a sniper. He looked across at Katherine and she forced a smile.

  The man in the passenger seat twisted around and looked at Freeman over the top of his glasses. 'I can't stress enough what a bad idea this is, Mr Freeman,' he said. His name was Connors and he was with the State Department. He was the man who'd taken Katherine to the hospital and who'd had him transferred to a United Nations medical facility where they'd saved his left leg from turning gangrenous.

  'I have to do it,' he said quietly. 'I'm not leaving until I know that she's all right.'

  Connors shook his head and turned back to stare out of the window. A shrill whine was followed by an ear-numbing thud as a mortar shell exploded some distance behind them, and the driver ducked in his seat, an involuntary reaction that would have done nothing to save him if the shell had hit the car. Freeman noticed that Connors was totally unfazed by the explosion.

  The car swerved to avoid a massive hole filled with dirty water and accelerated around a corner. The motion of the car smashed Katherine's head against the window and she yelped. 'Hey, take it easy!' Freeman shouted at the driver, a bulky Serb who hadn't spoken a word since he'd picked them up at the UN medical centre. Connors spoke to the driver in the man's own language, and the driver nodded and grunted, but made no attempt to slow down.

  'We'll be there soon,' Connors said over his shoulder. He was as good as his word; five minutes later the car came to an abrupt halt in front of a football stadium. The driver continued to rev the engine as if he wanted to make a quick getaway until Connors spoke to him sharply. Connors got out of the car and walked around to the rear. The air that blew in through the open door smelled foul and Katherine put her hand over her mouth and nose. 'What on earth is that?' she said.

  'People,' Freeman said. 'A lot of people.'

  Connors appeared at the rear passenger door and opened it.

  He jammed it open with his knee as he assembled the portable wheelchair. The smell was much stronger, and for the first time Freeman became aware of the noise: a distant rumble, like thunde
r.

  Connors and Katherine helped Freeman slide along the car seat and half lifted, half pushed him into the chair. The UN doctor, a thirty-year-old Pakistani, had assured him that eventually he'd be able to run a marathon but for the next few weeks or so he'd have to use the chair. Freeman was just grateful that the pain had gone.

  When Freeman was seated in the chair, Connors stood in front of him, his arms folded across his chest. He was a big man with the shoulders of a heavyweight boxer, but deceptively light on his feet. Freeman wondered if he really was a representative of the State Department as he'd claimed. He suspected that he was with the CIA. 'Mr Freeman, I want to take one last shot at persuading you not to go through with this. There's a plane leaving for Rome this evening. You can be back in the States by tomorrow morning. This is no place for you just now. Or for your wife.' The crack of a rifle in the distance served to emphasise his plea.

  Freeman shook his head. 'You're wasting your time,' he said.

  'I can't leave without knowing that she's okay.'

  Connors shook his head in bewilderment. 'She's a terrorist.

  She'd have killed you without a second thought.'

  'She's thirteen years old,' Freeman said. 'They killed her family, did God knows what to her parents, and they would've blown her away if I hadn't stopped them. I want to make sure they haven't murdered her.'

  'This is a war, Mr Freeman, and she's a soldier. There's something else you should know.'

  Freeman narrowed his eyes. 'What?'

  'The rescue operation. Your company funded it.'

  'They what?' Freeman looked at Katherine. 'Is that true?'

  Katherine shrugged. 'Maury said he'd handle it. He arranged to have the ransom and the equipment delivered to a middleman in Sarajevo and the man disappeared with it. He called in a security firm. They said that once the equipment had been delivered they'd probably have killed you anyway and that the only thing to do was to bring you out ourselves. They put Maury in touch with some people. Mercenaries.'

  'So you see, Mr Freeman, it's your company that's responsible for what happened in the basement. If anyone's to blame…'

  Freeman pushed at the wheels of the chair and rolled forward.

  'Mrs Freeman, can't you…?' Connors began, but Katherine grabbed the handles at the back of the wheelchair and helped push her husband.

  'I've told him what I think,' she said. Connors followed Katherine and Freeman along the broken pavement towards the entrance to the stadium. The closer they got to the entrance the more noticeable the smell became. It was the smell of sweat, urine and faeces, the smell of a thousand people gathered together without adequate sewage or washing facilities. The metal gates that barred their way were three times the height of a man and looked as if they were a recent addition.

  A smaller doorway was set into one of the gates and it opened as the three of them approached. A young soldier stepped out and spoke to Connors. The soldier nodded and stepped aside to allow Connors inside. Freeman realised that his wheelchair wouldn't go through the doorway. He looked up at the soldier and shrugged. The soldier looked back at him with unfeeling eyes and sneered. He shouted something to two more soldiers behind the gates and they all laughed. The gates grated back and Katherine pushed Freeman inside.

  'My God,' Katherine said. 'What is this place?'

  'It's a holding facility,' Connors responded.

  'It's a concentration camp,' Freeman said, his voice little more than a whisper.

  The prisoners were confined to the area that had once been the football pitch; the white markings could still just about be seen in places through the mud. There were hundreds of them, dressed in rags and with their heads shaved. Many of the men were bare-chested; some of them were little more than skeletons with deep-set eyes and slack mouths. A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire ran around the perimeter of the playing area and machine-gun emplacements looked down on the encampment from the stands. Inside the fence were a few makeshift huts surrounded by tents, but most of the prisoners stood or sat out in the open, talking in huddled groups or staring vacantly out at their guards.

  Connors seemed oblivious to the suffering and misery. He stood with his hands on his hips and surveyed the camp. A soldier with a bushy beard came over and spoke to him, and they both looked over at Freeman and his wife who were staring at the prisoners with looks of horror on their faces. Connors and the soldier laughed and the soldier slapped Connors on the back.

  Katherine looked down at Freeman. 'You wanted to do business with these people?' she asked.

  'I had no idea,' he said, shaking his head. 'I didn't know.'

  'They wouldn't keep her here, surely? They're all adults.'

  Freeman stared at the human scarecrows behind the wire and shuddered. Connors walked back and loomed over Freeman.

  'She's not here, is she?' Freeman asked.

  'Uh-huh,' Connors grunted. 'She fought like a soldier so that's how she's being treated. They're going to find her now.'

  A guttural amplified voice boomed across the stadium from loudspeakers that had once announced nothing more sinister than the half-time score. A skeletal figure stood scratching its chin and stared at Freeman with blank eyes. Freeman shuddered. There was no way of telling if it was a man or a woman. The electronic voice barked again, and as it did the crowds parted. Freeman shaded his eyes with the flat of his hand.

  'Can you see her?' Katherine asked.

  Freeman shook his head, then he stiffened as a small figure walked towards the wire fence. He looked up at Katherine but before he could speak she began to push his wheelchair forward.

  'My God, what have they done to her?' he whispered. Her head had been shaved and they'd taken away her clothes and given her a threadbare cotton jacket and trousers and she was wearing shoes that were several sizes too big for her so that she had to shuffle her feet. She reached the wire and gripped it with one hand as she waved to a guard.

  'Is that her?' Katherine asked, horrified.

  Freeman nodded, unable to speak. His eyes filled with tears and he reached down to push the wheels of his chair, trying to move faster. Freeman and Katherine got to the fence before the guard. Freeman put out his hand slowly and stroked the back of Mersiha's hand. She looked back at him blankly. Her face was stained with dirt and one eye was almost closed amid an egg-shaped greenish-yellow bruise.

  'Mersiha?' he said softly.

  She didn't reply, but a tear ran down her left cheek. Freeman looked up at Katherine. 'We're not leaving her here,' he said.

  Katherine nodded. 'I know,' she said.

  The meeting took place in a windowless office with no name on the door and a sterile air about it, as if it was used only for emergencies, or for business that was supposed to remain secret.

  Connors was there, but he said nothing. He stood by the door with his arms folded across his barrel chest like an executioner awaiting his orders. Freeman sat in his wheelchair, his hands lying loosely on the tops of the wheels. The two other men had arrived separately. One was American, a State Department official called Elliott who had a clammy handshake and an over-earnest stare and who clearly outranked the now-taciturn Connors. The final member of the group was a Serb, a small thick-set man with a square chin and eyes that never seemed to blink. He made no move to introduce himself and the Americans didn't tell Freeman who he was or why he was there, but it was soon apparent that it was the Serb who was going to have the final say. It was, when all was said and done, his country.

  Elliott was shaking his head. 'Out of the question,' he said.

  'She has no relatives,' Freeman said. 'No family members to take care of her.'

  'She is a prisoner of war,' the Serb said.

  'She's a child!' Freeman protested. 'A small, frightened child.'

  'Mr Freeman, I can assure you that once hostilities are over, she will be released. This war will not go on for ever.'

  Freeman thought he saw the beginnings of a smile flit across Elliott's face, but it v
anished as quickly as it appeared. 'And what then? How's a thirteen-year-old girl going to survive on her own?'

  The Serb made a small shrugging movement. His eyes were hard and unreadable. Freeman couldn't see what he had to gain by refusing to allow him to take Mersiha out of the country.

  'I can take care of her. I can give her a home.' Freeman leant forward in his chair. 'I'm the only friend she has.'

  'She tried to kill you,' said the Serb.

  'No,' Freeman said quietly. 'Your people tried to kill her.'

  The Serb looked across at Elliott. 'Mr Freeman,' the American said, 'have you really thought this through? This girl knows nothing of America, she has no connections with the country, and she is a Muslim. What religion are you, Mr Freeman?'

  Freeman was an irregular church-goer at best but he had no wish to be drawn into a religious argument. 'I'll be responsible for her religious upbringing. I'll make sure she has a tutor who teaches her about her religion, and her culture.'

  Elliott had a file under one arm, but he made no move to open it. Freeman doubted that the State Department would have a file on a thirteen-year-old girl, and he wondered what was in the folder.

  'The girl is a terrorist, and she will be treated as such,' the Serb said.

  Freeman's eyes flashed fire. 'The girl has a name,' he retorted.

  'Mersiha. Her name is Mersiha. She was with her brother, because you killed her parents. There was nowhere else for her to go. She's an orphan. Now you've killed her brother, she has no one. Where's it going to end? When they're all dead?

  When you've cleansed the whole fucking country?' His hands were snaking with rage and he had to struggle to keep himself from shouting.

  'Mr Freeman, there's no need to be offensive,' Elliott said.

  Freeman glared at him. 'Listen to what he's saying, will you?

  First of all he says she's a prisoner of war and that she'll be as right as rain once the war's over. Now he says she's a terrorist.

  She's a thirteen-year-old girl, for God's sake. She needs help.

  She needs a family.'

  Elliott nodded as if he understood, but it was clear from the look on his face that he didn't care one bit how Freeman felt.