Ms. Zuigiber just smiled and bought another round of drinks for everybody, on the National World Weekly. And watched the fights break out around her. And smiled.

She had been right. Journalism suited her.

Even so, everyone needs a holiday, and Red Zuigiber was on her first in eleven years.

She was on a small Mediterranean island which made its money from the tourist trade, and that in itself was odd. Red looked to be the kind of woman who, if she took a holiday on any island smaller than Australia, would be doing so because she was friends with the man who owned it. And had you told any islander a month before that war was coming, he would have laughed at you and tried to sell you a raffiawork wine holder or a picture of the bay done in seashells; that was then.

This was now.

Now a deep religio‑political divide, concerning which of four small mainland countries they weren't actually a part of, had split the country into three factions, destroyed the statue of Santa Maria in the town square, and done for the tourist trade.

Red Zuigiber sat in the bar of the Hotel de Palomar del Sol, drink­ing what passed for a cocktail. In one corner a tired pianist played, and a waiter in a toupee crooned into a microphone:

"AAAAAAAAAAAonce‑pon‑a‑time‑dere‑was

LITTLE WHITE BOOOL

AAAAAAAAAAAvery‑sad‑because‑e‑was

LITTLE WHITE BOOL . . ."

A man threw himself through the window, a knife between his teeth, a Kalashnikov automatic rifle in one hand, a grenade in the other.

"I glaim gis oteg id der gaing og der‑" he paused. He took the knife out of his mouth and began again. "I claim this hotel in the name of the pro‑Turkish Liberation Faction!"

The last two holidaymakers remaining on the island[19] climbed un­derneath their table. Red unconcernedly withdrew the maraschino cherry from her drink, put it to her scarlet lips, and sucked it slowly off its stick in a way that made several men in the room break into a cold sweat.

The pianist stood up, reached into his piano, and pulled out a vintage sub‑machine gun. "This hotel has already been claimed by the pro-­Greek Territorial Brigade!" he screamed. "Make one false move, and I shoot out your living daylight!"

There was a motion at the door. A huge, black‑bearded individual with a golden smile and a genuine antique Gatling gun stood there, with a cohort of equally huge although less impressively armed men behind him.

"This strategically important hotel, for years a symbol of the fascist imperialist Turko‑Greek running dog tourist trade, is now the property of the Italo‑Maltese Freedom Fighters!" he boomed affably. "Now we kill everybody!"

"Rubbish!" said the pianist. "Is not strategically important. Just has extremely well‑stocked wine cellar!"

"He's right, Pedro," said the man with the Kalashnikov, "That's why my lot wanted it. 11 General Ernesto de Montoya said to me, he said, Fernando, the war'll be over by Saturday, and the lads'll be wanting a good time. Pop down to the Hotel de Palomar del Sol and claim it as booty, will you?"

The bearded man turned red. "Is bloddy important strategically, Fernando Chianti! I drew big map of the island and is right in the middle, which makes it pretty bloddy strategically important, I can tell you."

"Ha!" said Fernando. "You might as well say that just because Little Diego's house has a view of the decadent capitalist topless private beach, that it's strategically important!"

The pianist blushed a deep red. "Our lot got that this morning," he admitted.

There was silence.

In the silence was a faint, silken rasping. Red had uncrossed her legs.

The pianist's Adam's apple bobbed up and down. "Well, it's pretty strategically important," he managed, trying to ignore the woman on the bar stool. "I mean, if someone landed a submarine on it, you'd want to be somewhere you could see it all."

Silence.

"Well, it's a lot more strategically important than this hotel any­way," he finished.

Pedro coughed, ominously. "The next person who says anything. Anything at all. Is dead." He grinned. Hefted his gun. "Right. Now­ everyone against far wall."

Nobody moved. They weren't listening to him any more. They were listening to a low, indistinct murmuring from the hallway behind him, quiet and monotonous.

There was some shuffling among the cohort in the doorway. They seemed to be doing their best to stand firm, but they were being inexorably edged out of the way by the muttering, which had begun to resolve itself into audible phrases. "Don't mind me, gents, what a night, eh? Three times round the island, nearly didn't find the place, someone doesn't be­lieve in signposts, eh? Still, found it in the end, had to stop and ask four times, finally asked at the post office, they always know at the post office, had to draw me a map though, got it here somewhere . . ."

Sliding serenely past the men with guns, like a pike through a trout pond, came a small, bespectacled man in a blue uniform, carrying a long, thin, brown paper‑wrapped parcel, tied with string. His sole concession to the climate were his open‑toed brown plastic sandals, although the green woolen socks he wore underneath them showed his deep and natural dis­trust of foreign weather.

He had a peaked cap on, with International Express written on it in large white letters.

He was unarmed, but no one touched him. No one even pointed a gun at him. They just stared.

The little man looked around the room, scanning the faces, and then looking back down at his clipboard; then he walked straight over to Red, still sitting on her bar stool. "Package for you, miss," he said.

Red took it, and began to untie the string.

The International Express man coughed discreetly and presented the journalist with a well‑thumbed receipt pad and a yellow plastic ballpoint pen attached to the clipboard by a piece of string. "You have to sign for it, miss. Just there. Print your full name over here, signature down there."

"Of course." Red signed the receipt pad, illegibly, then printed her name. The name she wrote was not Carmine Zuigiber. It was a much shorter name.

The man thanked her kindly, and made his way out, muttering lovely place you've got here, gents, always meant to come out here on holiday, sorry to trouble you, excuse me, sir . . . And he passed out of their lives as serenely as he had come.

Red finished opening the parcel. People began to edge around to get a better look. Inside the package was a large sword.

She examined it. It was a very straightforward sword, long and sharp; it looked both old and unused; and it had nothing ornamental or impressive about it. This was no magical sword, no mystic weapon of power and might. It was very obviously a sword created to slice, chop, cut, preferably kill, but, failing that, irreparably maim, a very large number of people indeed. It had an indefinable aura of hatred and menace.

Red clasped the hilt in her exquisitely manicured right hand, and held it up to eye level. The blade glinted.

"Awwwright!" she said, stepping down from the stool. "Finally."

She finished the drink, hefted the sword over one shoulder, and looked around at the puzzled factions, who now encircled her completely. "Sorry to run out on you, chaps," she said. "Would love to stay and get to know you better."