The Birthday Girl Read Free

called Anderson in Baltimore to tell him as much. That was when his partner had broken the news of yet another US Army contract that had fallen through. The workforce of almost two hundred men was depending on Freeman, and if he didn't come up with a THE BIRTHDAY GIRL 9 European contract soon almost half of them would have to be laid off. CRW Electronics was a family firm, founded by Freeman's father-in-law, and Freeman knew every one of the employees by name. Anderson had put him in an impossible position. He had no choice but to go.
    Twelve hours later he was in a hotel in Split meeting a German middle-man who knew how to slip through the US trade blockade, for a price. Everything had been done in secrecy, including getting the equipment into the country on a mercy relief convoy, and Freeman had no idea how the Bosnians had discovered what he was up to. He'd asked Stjepan, but the man had refused to answer.
    Stjepan was more forthcoming on his own background. Over the course of several days, he told Freeman that he had been fighting since Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence in June 1991, splitting the Balkans into warring factions. He was a Muslim and his parents had been killed by Serbs, though he refused to go into details. His sister, Mersiha, was also one of Freeman's guards and more often than not it was the young girl who brought his food and emptied the plastic bucket that they made him use as a toilet. Unlike Stjepan, Mersiha refused to talk to Freeman. At first he assumed that she couldn't speak English, because no matter what he said to her she glared at him as if she wished he were dead, and some days she would put his food just out of reach and later take it away, untouched.
    Freeman 'waited until Stjepan seemed in a relaxed mood before asking him about his sister. He said that she had been particularly hard hit by the death of their parents, and that she could speak some English. Their mother had been a schoolteacher, he said. Freeman asked Stjepan why he had the young girl with him but Stjepan shrugged and said there was nowhere else for her to go.
    Mersiha's black hair was tied back in a ponytail and her face was always streaked with dirt but there was no disguising her natural prettiness. Freeman knew that she'd be a lot prettier if she smiled and it became almost a compulsion, the urge to crack her sullen exterior and expose the real girl beneath. He greeted her each time she came down the steps, and thanked her when 10 STEPHEN LEATHER she put his food close enough for him to reach. He even thanked her whenever she emptied his plastic bucket, and he always used her name, but no matter how pleasant he tried to be, her expression never altered. Eventually he could stand it no more and he asked her point blank why she was so angry with him. His question seemed to have no more effect than his pleasantries, and Freeman thought that maybe she hadn't understood, but then she turned to him, almost in slow motion, and pointed her Kalashnikov at his stomach. The gun seemed huge in her small hands, but she handled it confidently and he watched in horror as her finger tightened on the trigger. He cowered as the young girl's lips parted into a grimace of hatred and contempt. 'I hope they let me kill you,' she hissed, and jabbed at him with the barrel of the gun as if it had a bayonet on the end. She looked as if she was going to say something else but then the moment passed and she regained her composure. She turned to go, but before she went back up the stairs she kicked his bucket to the far side of the basement, well beyond the reach of the chain.
    The next time Freeman saw Stjepan he asked him why his sister seemed to hate him so much. Stjepan shrugged and in broken English said that he didn't want to talk about his sister. And he warned Freeman not to antagonise her. Freeman nodded and said he understood, though he wasn't sure that he did. He asked Stjepan how old the girl was and the man smiled. She'd