This week in the saga

Two years to the day since the morning that started the war, the chapter's last week opens on a prosecutor caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Wednesday morning a mayor should be in jail for failing to protect federal officers, and his governor too. And Wednesday evening, at ten to seven, the sentence the whole chapter has been walking toward: both sides have signed the first phase, all of the hostages will be released very soon, and the troops withdraw to a line. Blessed are the peacemakers. Two days later a hostile letter goes out from China and the answer is a hundred per cent on everything from the first of November; two days after that the same man is highly respected again and merely had a bad moment, and the country is told not to worry. Then Monday, in a foreign parliament, twenty hostages come home and he tells the chamber it is a new beginning. The peace he has promised since the first campaign and the indictment he demanded in a post arrive in the same fortnight. Both of them are his.