It wasn’t the first time Hiro had stolen the village longboat and traveled back through the tunnel, but it would be the last. Without a lamp he negotiated the caverns instinctively, as if he had always been an eel or a bat. He emerged even before the sun had risen and he took in the scents of the early morning blooms and enjoyed the laughter of the shrews even louder than the growl of the boat engine as he worked his way to Thakhek. He had two visits to make. The first was to the old white colonial house where the senior officers had met the evening before. There were sentries at the bottom of the driveway, but they had no discipline. They played cards under a bamboo shelter and barely looked up when he passed. The empire had fallen to ruin. It was decaying before his eyes. But Hiro was at his most senior, his most decorated. He had spent many hours embroidering his new rank and his esteemed ribbons of valor. He was a full general now and deserved to be.

The front door to the house was ajar. He walked through the large, high-ceilinged rooms, stepping over drunks and debaucherers. Whores from Thailand gathered in the kitchen, cackling and comparing their bruises and their take-home pay. There were puddles of vomit and urine and empty bottles and broken glass. Somebody had been mortally injured judging by the amount of blood everywhere. Hiro went to the master bedroom. The door wasn’t locked but when he pushed against it there was resistance. He had to lean into it with some force in order to give himself a view inside the room. There was a body behind the door, a boy, fourteen or so, covered in blood. But it didn’t concern Hiro whether he was dead or not. In the scheme of things, it was irrelevant. All he needed was to identify the figure on the bed: sleeping deeply, naked, snoring. He entered the air-conditioned room, which stank of sweat, and leaned over the man. There is often little in an old man’s face to distinguish him from any other old man. With hair cut close to his scalp and skin browned by a tropical sun, he could have been a cyclo rider or a street barber. There was nothing of character in the face Hiro saw before him. There was no smile of contentment. There was no outward sign of a dream under way: no evidence that this old man was living in two dimensions simultaneously. The only thing clear was that this was General Shosen Umiji, who had wreaked brutality upon innocents in China, who had destroyed lives and handed out party favors as a reward; this was the same bastard demon Shuten Doji who led the dark forces of the underworld. There was no mistaking him.