The Birthday Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    'Mrs Freeman, can't you ...?' Connors began, but Katherine THE BIRTHDAY GIRL 25 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 26 STEPHEN LEATHER 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.

The Birthday Girl
    'Is that her?' Katherine asked, horrified.
    Freeman nodded,