He loved music.

That is one possibility, There are others, Is it too much to admit that? Admit, perhaps, but not doubt, I have not doubted him. That is not true, We have your letters, You shouldn’t lie, It helps no one.

My letters?

Anything you wrote since you left Mandalay.

Those were for my wife, They are my thoughts, I didn’t…

You didn’t think that we would wonder about a man who disappeared?

She never read them.

Tell me about Carroll, Edgar.

Silence.

Edgar.

Captain, I have questioned intentions only, I have not doubted his loyalty. You admit this. Yes, I do, but intentions and loyalty are not the same, There is nothing wrong with questions, We mustn’t destroy everything we don’t understand. Tell me those questions then. My questions. Your questions, Edgar.

Perhaps I wonder why he asked for a piano.

You wonder. Of course, I have asked myself this every day since I left Britain. And have you answered it yet? No, Must I, What does it matter why he requested it, why he requested me, Perhaps it was central to his strategy, Perhaps he only missed music and was alone.

And which do you believe?

I don’t think it matters, I have my own thoughts;

As do I.

Tell me your thoughts, Captain.

The shadow shifted, Anthony Carroll is an agent working for Russia, He is a Shan nationalist, He is a French spy, Anthony Carroll wants to build his own kingdom in the jungles of Burma, Possibilities, Edgar, only admit that they are possibilities.

We signed a treaty.

You don’t speak Shan.

I saw it, I saw dozens, no hundreds, of Shan warriors bow down before him. And you were not surprised? No. I don’t think that is true.

I wondered, perhaps.

And now?

He gave me his word.

And then the Limbin Confederacy attacked our troops.

Perhaps they were traitors to him.

The two were silent, and in the vacuum of their words once again came the sound of the forest.

I believed in him once too, Edgar, Perhaps more than you. In this bloody war of dark intentions, I thought he stood for the best of England, He remained the reason I stayed here.

I don’t know if I can believe you now.

I am not asking you to, I am asking you only to dissociate what he was from what we wanted him to be, what she was from what you wanted her to be.

You do not know about her.

Nor do you, Edgar, Was that smile only the hospitality due a guest?

I don’t believe that.

Then do you believe her affections were his request, a seduction only to make you stay, Do you believe he didn’t know?

There was nothing to know, there was no transgression.

Or he had faith in her. Faith in what? Possibilities only, Think, Edgar, beyond your fleeting glances, you did not even know what she was to him.

You know nothing about this.

I warned you once, Do not fall in love.

I did not.

No, Perhaps not, Yet she remains entangled in everything.

I don’t understand you.

We come and go, armies and pianos and Grand Intentions, and she remains, and you think that if you can understand her, the rest will come, Think, Was she also your creation, Is the reason you couldn’t understand her because you couldn’t understand your own imaginings, what you wanted to be, It is not too much to suppose that even our own dreams elude us?

Silence again.

You don’t even know what this has meant to her, what it is like to be someone else’s creation. Why are you telling me that? Because you are different now from when I met you last. What does it matter, we are not talking about me, Captain. When I met you last, you said that you couldn’t play the piano. I still cannot. Yet you played for the Shan sawbwa.

You don’t know that.

You played for the Shan sawbwa of Mongnai, and you played The Well-Tempered Clavier, but only to the twenty-fourth fugue.

I told you, you cannot know that, I have not told you that.

You began at Prelude and Fugue number 4, that is sad, number 2 is so beautiful, You think that your song would have brought peace, You cannot admit Anthony Carroll is a traitor because it denies everything you have done here.

You don’t know about the song.

I know a lot more about you than you think.

You aren’t here.

Edgar, Don’t destroy that which you cannot understand, Those are your words.

You aren’t here, I hear nothing, you are only the crickets’ shrill, you are my imagination.

Perhaps, or perhaps only a dream. Perhaps I am only the night playing tricks. Perhaps you picked the lock on the door yourself. Possibilities, no? Perhaps four shots were fired from the bank instead of three. Perhaps I came here not to ask questions for anyone but myself.

And now.

The door is open, Go, I won’t stop you, You are escaping alone.

Is this why you came?

I didn’t know until now.

I wish to embrace you but that will answer a question I do not yet want to answer.

You wish to ask if I am real, or but a ghost.

And you wish to answer.

We have been ghosts since this all began, said the shadow.

Good-bye, said Edgar Drake, and walked through the open door and into the night.

The camp was empty, the guards were all asleep. He moved silently, and left the door open behind him. He began heading north, thinking only of putting distance between himself and the camp. Heavy storm clouds covered the moon and the sky was black. He walked.

He ran.

24

Only minutes away, and rain began to fall. He was running, already breathless, when the first drops hit him, one two three points of moisture on warm skin. And then, without hesitation, the sky opened. Like a dam breaking, clouds cracking as if sundered. Water drops falling like spools of unraveling thread.

As he ran, Edgar tried to picture a map of the river, but his memory was blurred. Although they had been traveling for almost two days, they had been slowed by the piano, and could not have traveled more than twenty miles. And the wide bends in the river meant that perhaps Mae Lwin was even closer by land. Perhaps. He tried to recall the terrain, but distance suddenly seemed less important than direction. He ran faster through the falling water, his feet kicking up soft mud.

And then suddenly he stopped.

The piano. He stood in a small clearing. The rain pounded on his body, stronger now, washing over his hair, running down his cheeks in rivulets. He closed his eyes. He could see the Erard, floating at the shore as the soldiers had left it, shaking in the current. He could see them coming down to take it, pulling it in, grabbing it, pawing it with hands dirty with rifle grease. He could see it sitting in a powdered parlor, revarnished, retuned, and deep inside, a piece of bamboo removed and replaced with spruce. He stood still. Each breath brought the warm spray of rain. He opened his eyes and turned. Back to the river.

The bank was heavily forested, making walking almost impossible. At the river, he slipped into the water, its surface shaking with the drumming of the storm. He let the current move him downstream. It wasn’t far, and he pulled himself into the shore with the willow branches. Water laced his face. He struggled onto the bank.

Around him, the rain crashed through the trees in massive sheets, carried on lashes of wind that whipped through the willows. Tied to a tree on the bank, the raft tugged wildly, the river foaming over its edge, threatening to tear it downstream. The piano was still tied to the deck. They had forgotten to cover it, and the rain beat at the mahogany.

For a moment Edgar stood and felt the current build up against his legs, the sting of water through his shirt. He watched the piano. There was no moon, and in the shifting curtains of rain, the Erard trembled in and out of perception, its shape outlined by the droplets that shattered against the dark wood, its legs tensing as it swung with the cant of the raft.