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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 vanished 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