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 thunder.
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.