‘Well done,’ Wizard said.

We all stood around, admiring the car and congratulating Ben. But there was no way he could maintain such a car on his cleaner’s salary. He had been working in this office for the past three years and the Port Harcourt Refinery mugu was his first ever hit - a very humble one, for that matter. Unless he made another one pretty soon, he might have to exchange his wife and nine children for spare parts and fuel to keep the V-Boot running. But then, who was I to worry about how another grown man had chosen to spend his hard-earned dollars?

‘You need to see how everyone in my estate came out to look when I parked the car in front of my house,’ he said. ‘From now on, they’ll all be calling me “Yes sir!”

We laughed. Everybody except Azuka. He declined the free lunch expedition, and so did I. Finally, both of us were all alone in the Central Intelligence Agency.

‘Azuka, are you OK?’

He sighed.

‘What’s the problem? You’ve been moody all morning.’

He hissed. The sound was thick with regret.

‘Kings, my brother. I don’t know what is happening to my life. Ben has already bought a car. Me, I’m still here writing letters and receiving insults from white people. Anything I touch . . . kpafuka!’

Actually, Azuka’s history was pathetic. He added a more unfortunate detail each time he narrated it. In his final year of studying Law, he had been rusticated from the University of Calabar for involvement in secret cult activities. He migrated to Spain. Two years later, he got stopped for a driving offence, and was arrested for not having a valid visa on his passport. He was deported to Nigeria after spending months being tortured in a Spanish prison. He resumed work with Cash Daddy and, in the past four years, he had not made a single hit.

‘Azuka, listen. This thing is out of your hands. You have no control over whatever mugu comes your way. All you need to do is just pray that whichever one falls into your hands is the right one.’

He snapped his head abruptly.

‘Kings, this thing is not about mugu or no mugu. It’s not. Just before I started work with Cash Daddy, I managed to hit four hundred dollars from one mugu I met in a chat room. As I was coming out of the Western Union office, the police stopped me and collected all the money from me, as if they were just standing there waiting for me. This happened on two different occasions.’

It did not require any special kind of bad luck to have had such an experience. It was for such reasons that people sought refuge under godfathers like Cash Daddy. Cash Daddy had enough clout to keep the police eyes closed and the Western Union mouths zipped. Such services were incorporated in the sixty per cent he scooped from every dime we made. His percentage also covered the expenses for forged documents, phone bills, internet connection etc. This business of ours was expensive to run. You had to have the financial ammunition to keep the cannon booming.

‘That could have happened to anybody,’ I replied.

‘But there are some people who never have problems. Why do you think Cash Daddy takes you along on big jobs? He knows you have good luck.’

I laughed. Cash Daddy had once told me that I had an honest face. He said it was good for business. Pity that my supposed good luck and honest face had not done much for me in all the oil company interviews I had attended.

‘Kings, you’re finding it funny but I’m not joking.’

‘OK, let me see the replies you received today.’

He shifted to allow me to view his screen. Each email was more vitriolic than the other. Finally, I came across one that was mild.

‘Please, move,’ I said to Azuka.

He allowed me more space to take over his keyboard. I hit reply and typed. This woman was clearly not the greedy type, but she had another human weakness. She was caring.

Azuka was overjoyed.

‘Make sure you keep in touch with her,’ I advised him.

‘But, of course,’ he replied, still grinning.

Condoleezza would be delighted to receive updates on how much progress her African mentee was making down the straight and narrow path. If her delight translated into Benjamin Franklins once in a while, none of us would complain.

The chain of good luck seemed to have been unleashed. An Iranian mugu replied to another one of Azuka’s emails some days later, and soon Azuka received $10,000 for initialisation fees.

‘Kings, maybe it’s your good luck that rubbed off on me,’ he said.

We were still laughing when my phone rang. It was Charity. Sobbing with all her might.

‘Charity, what’s the matter?’ I asked without much panic.

In between thick sobs, she told me that she had just seen her JAMB score.

‘I scored 198.’

Fortunately, she did not hear me gasp. No university in this world was going to give her a place with such a malnourished score. For once, I agreed that my sister had a valid reason for shedding tears.

‘Charity, stop crying,’ I said. ‘You know they have a funny way of marking this JAMB. Even the most intelligent people sometimes make low scores.’

She continued crying until the customers waiting in the business centre grumbled loud enough for me to hear. She hung up, rejoined the queue, and rang back an hour later. Her sobs had not subsided.

‘Charity, stop crying. Failing JAMB is not the end of the world.’

‘Mummy said I’m not allowed to hang out with my friends again,’ she wept. ‘I can’t imagine staying at home for a whole year, waiting to take another JAMB.’

Could my sister’s poor score have had anything to do with the weeks she had spent in my house prior to her exams? Charity had watched quite a lot of Nollywood movies on my VCD player. There was a corner shop at the end of my street which stocked these movies that were released in hundreds every week. Each featured the same yellow-skinned, abundantly chested actresses and the same dreadlocked men, and each had a Part 1, a Part 2, and Part 3 - at least. Too bad that the JAMB exam did not test knowledge of Nollywood.

‘Charity, don’t let it worry you, OK? Just go home and relax and forget about it. I’ll talk to Mummy later.’

But it was hard to forget my sister’s sobbing. My mother must be in great distress and my father must be revolving in his grave. The following day, I spoke to Buchi about it. I had once overheard her telling Wizard where he could purchase expo GCE question papers a week before the exam date.

‘Is there no one you know?’ Buchi asked me.

I had never needed to know someone for things like this.

She gave me the name of one of the faculty deans in her former university.

‘He helped one of my friends get into Accounting,’ she said. ‘He might be able to help.’

But my visit to the professor would have to wait. Mr Winterbottom was coming to town.