Stay of Execution

64

If Bob Skinner had ever been asked to nominate, as a frequent flyer, his least favourite European airport, Brussels would have come a close second to Heathrow. For all its turn-of-the-century improvements, he still found it annoying, claustrophobic and difficult to get around. Professionally he felt that its lay-out must make it a nightmare to police.

His flight from Edinburgh had been late, after an air-traffic-control departure delay had thrown it off schedule, so it was just past seven o’clock as he approached the British Airways information desk.

Adam Arrow was nowhere to be seen.

He walked up to the counter, where a richly dressed black woman was querying something on a flight ticket, then turned and looked around. Suddenly he felt something being pressed into the small of his back, something small and round.

‘Turn around very slowly,’ a voice growled.

Skinner began to do as he had been told, moving to his left. Then suddenly, he pivoted on his right foot, dropping his bag as he did so, knocking an arm aside and grabbing it by the wrist.

‘Careful, Bob,’ said Adam Arrow, ‘or you’ll break my fookin’ banana.’

The Scot laughed out loud and released him. ‘You daft wee bugger,’ he exclaimed. ‘How did I do anyway?’

‘Not too bad,’ Arrow answered, as he slipped the fruit back into his blazer pocket, ‘but at best you’d have had a big flesh wound; at worst you’d have been minus your left kidney. Come on, let’s get out of here, there’s a couple of coppers over there giving us funny looks. I should have known better than to pull a stunt like that in an airport these days.’

Adam Arrow was a short man, with massive shoulders and a slim waist that gave him the overall appearance of a spinning top. His hair seemed to be cut shorter every time that Skinner saw him; the DCC suspected this was because there was less of it to cut. The two men had known each other for years. . professionally at least, since Arrow only ever discussed business. . and an absolute trust had developed between them.

They had met after Arrow had moved from undercover SAS work in Northern Ireland and other hotspots into a role in Ministry of Defence security that did not appear in any published documents and was defined only in vague terms to outsiders, even to those as close to him as Skinner. This was fine by the DCC; all he needed to know was that Arrow reported to very few people and that when something secret and serious needed doing, he was the man who could make it happen.

‘Where are we going?’ the Scot asked.

‘There’s a car waiting for us outside.’

Skinner picked up his bag, and the two men walked through the terminal building’s arrivals exit. Less than twenty yards away, a black Citroën waited; its driver was in military uniform and stood beside it. He nodded briefly to Arrow and opened the back door.

‘So now,’ the Scot asked, ‘where are we going?’

‘We’re booked into the Royal Windsor Hotel, on rue Duquesnoy. It’s just about the best hotel in Brussels.’

‘That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?’

‘Don’t worry about it. They’re looking after us, just as we look after them when they come to London. We don’t piss about with two-star accommodation, mate: no fookin’ security. The man we’ve come to see is meeting us there for dinner at eight thirty. One thing about your Belgian. . he does like ’is food.’