Good Omens

Threlfall, of 9, The Elms, Paignton. They always maintained that one of the nice things about going on holiday was not having to read the newspapers or listen to the news, just getting away from it all really. And due to a tummy bug contracted by Mr. Threlfall, and Mrs. Threlfall rather overdoing it in the sun their first day, this was their first time out of their hotel room for a week and a half.] 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 proGreek 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