The Tropical Issue by Dorothy Dunnett

engines said that there was no way even my voice would carry. The Financial Director of Coombe’s Bananas crossed the balcony and paused to lift up his glass. I picked up a packet of peanuts and lobbed them into it.
    Tennis is one of my games. The bag drop-landed fair and square in his drink and most of it went up his nose. There was a short spell of whooping and choking, during which someone banged him helpfully on the back and a woman, passing, tut-tutted about the streams on his trousers. Then he got his eyes clear, and his mouth open to threaten . . . and saw me.
    Latins love drama. Behind me, the crowd had seen nothing. But as I battled the last two or three yards, the grinning crowd about van Diemen parted, and I found I had no trouble at all walking right through and staring up at him.
    ‘Remember me, Mr van Diemen?’ I said. I looked round at my audience and beyond them. The steps for the incoming TAP were in position.
    When I looked back and up, I hit a violent glare. ‘I certainly do not,’ said Roger van Diemen. ‘But you may be sure from now on that you will be remembered. You threw that object just now?’
    He still held his near-empty glass in one hand, its cuff dripping, and in the other, a soaked mopping-hankie. He sounded bloody annoyed, but not frightened.
    I said, ‘You were lucky.’ The door to the aircraft had opened.
    ‘Lucky we didn’t have flying glass everywhere, I suppose,’ he said. ‘There are children about, you know. I don’t know what airports are coming to. Excuse me. I have to clean up.’
    The tarmac began to look busy. An air hostess came out and stood to one side of the door, while another walked to the foot of the steps. A group of officials wandered out, followed by a fuel wagon and then by a luggage truck.
    I stood plumb in front of the Flying Dutchman, and moved when he did. I said, ‘You were lucky I didn’t louse up the other cheek. What’s the sentence for rape in Madeira?’
    People had begun to walk down the steps from the aircraft. Now he had his back squarely to the balcony and I could watch it round one of his shoulders.
    He said, ‘Let me pass. I’ve never seen you before. What do you want? Money?’
    The enjoyment round us went up a notch. Among the laughter and the exclamations, I risked another quick look behind him.
    The last of a group of heads disappeared under the edge of the balcony, heading for the Arrivals area. Another bunch, in no hurry at all, were filing out and down the steps of the aircraft.
    None of them was Kim-Jim.
    Kim-Jim might be among the passengers that I’d missed. Or he might still have to disembark. I had to keep it up somehow.
    Everyone wasn’t off the plane. The air hostess still stood on the top step, smirking at someone inside, and a small man in some sort of uniform walked to the foot of the stairs with a wheelchair.
    There was some chat between him and the airline man, and then they both stood, looking up at the exit door.
    I had looked too long, and too hard. Roger van Diemen was looking where I was looking. At the TAP plane from Lisbon on the tarmac, with every passenger out but for one.
    I had nothing left to throw. I couldn’t get at his legs for a rugby tackle. If I dropped dead on the spot, Roger van Diemen was unlikely to remove his eyes from the plane, now he guessed why I’d held his attention.
    Outside on the tarmac, there was an extra movement at the top of the gangway, and a steward began to come out, shaking hands with someone. And by the law of Rita’s filthy luck, it was bound to be Kim-Jim who would walk out on the steps, so that Van Damned Roger would see him, and cancel his flight, and stay on in Madeira and take Kim-Jim for a ride in a Mercedes as well, but this time a permanent one.
    I was rescued by Ferdy.
    Ferdy of all people, who had heard Kim-Jim was coming and rushed to the airport to meet him and was told by Aurelio where I was. Who waded through the entire crowd behind me and lifted me up by my