I decided to press another button. Hopefully, more dollars would come forth.

My phone rang. It was Protocol Officer.

‘Cash Daddy said I should tell you that he’s going to be on TV on Saturday night,’ he said. ‘It’s a phone-in so make sure you call. Tell the others in the office as well. Write out some questions for them. I’ll ring again later so that you can tell me what the questions will be.’

I went into action on the assignment immediately. When it came to running errands for Cash Daddy, Protocol Officer was as brisk as a bailiff. His ‘later’ could expire within the next thirty minutes, and then he would be at my throat again for the list. I had gone as far as the seventh question when, suddenly, Azuka screamed.

‘Hallelujah! Hallelujah!’

Everybody else rushed over to his desk. I looked up from my screen.

They all joined in the screaming.

It turned out that Azuka’s good luck had reached its very peak. So far, his Iranian mugu had dropped about $70,000. He was eager to invest another $150, 000 and had just sent an email inviting Azuka to a business meeting in Tehran. The Iranian businessman wanted Azuka to meet some of his businessmen friends who were also willing to invest more tons of dough.

‘Congratulations!’ I shouted across.

‘Thank God!’ Azuka replied.

Knowing Azuka, he would probably want to move out and establish his own office as soon as he received his booty. Not that I minded anyway. I preferred working with Wizard and the two new recruits. There was a youthful passion they brought to the work that was almost beautiful to watch, a pure zeal that was not tinged by desperation. Unlike for most of us, who were nudged into this business by circumstances, 419 was a choice they had made simply by aspiring to be like their role models.

Azuka declared free lunch for everyone in the office, then came over to discuss the documents for his Iranian visa.

‘How easy is it to get a visa to Iran?’ I asked. I had never known anyone who went to Iran.

‘It shouldn’t be a problem,’ he replied. ‘It’s almost the same as any other embassy.’

I started putting together the list of documents that Dibia would need to produce.

‘Let me see the letter he sent to you so that I don’t make any mistakes.’

Azuka went to his desk and forwarded the document. The passport would bear the name Sheik Idris Shamshudeen, all other documents would show that he was a contractor for the Zamfara State government. Zamfara was the first state in Nigeria to fully implement Sharia law; the Iranians would definitely fall in love with Azuka.

I read the letter twice to make sure that there was no vital information I had missed. Suddenly, I felt strange. I had this nagging feeling that something was wrong. It was a simple letter of invitation to meet with the mugu’s Iranian partners, but something was amiss.

‘Let me see the other letters he’s been sending you,’ I said to Azuka.

He forwarded many of the previous ones. I had just started reading through, when my cellular rang.

It was Merit!

‘Kings, call me back on this number,’ she said. ‘It’s my office phone.’

I scrambled to obey. Since Ola, I had not woken up in the morning and gone to bed at night with the same girl on my mind, but Merit had stayed with me. There was something about a girl who was not afraid to make the first move. I was never impressed by hard-to-get games. Saying hello when she noticed me staring at her at the wedding was obviously a come-hither gesture, and she had not feigned disinterest when taking my phone number either. Plus, I had not laughed so freely with any woman in a long time. Merit seemed to appreciate my sense of humour as well. Every human being deserved at least one person to laugh at his jokes, no matter how dry.

After a brief chitchat, we agreed that I would pick her up from home later in the evening. My heart started playing a new song.

‘What?’

I still did not hear. He was super skinny, with a plantation of pimples on his forehead, but he did not look like a mugger or a psychotic, so I took a chance and wound down my window.

‘Good evening,’ he said. His pubescent voice was just beginning to crack. ‘Please, is it Merit you’re looking for?’

How was it his business? Nevertheless, I answered.

‘Yes.’

‘Merit said I should ask you to wait for her. She’s coming. Let me go and tell her you’re around.’

He took off at the rate of seven miles per hour, and dashed back out to tell me that Merit would soon be on her way. Soon, she appeared and trotted to the car. She looked and smelt like a rose.

‘Please drive off quickly,’ she panted.

Instinctively, I hit the accelerator.

‘What was all that about?’ I asked when we had left her street.

‘Oh, it’s my parents. They’re usually quite meddlesome about my visitors. That’s why I had to ask my brother to look out and tell me when you arrived.’

The skinny lad was her brother? Perhaps it was true that the most attractive girls seem to have the least attractive brothers. Anyway, he was young, so there was still hope for him.

‘Aren’t you old enough to hang out with whom you please?’ I asked.

‘My parents are deacons in Jehovah the King Assembly. They’re quite strict about certain things.’

It was too early in our relationship for me to express opinions about a full-grown adult sneaking in and out of her house. I let the matter be.

‘Where would you like us to go to?’ I asked. ‘Is there anywhere in particular you have in mind?’

It had been so long since I was on a proper date. I had no clue about where best to spend the evening. She suggested somewhere that I was supposed to know.

‘You don’t know it?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘I don’t believe it. There’s nobody in Aba who doesn’t know where it is. That’s the place everybody goes these days.’

She gave directions. I drove. As soon as we arrived, I understood why Merit had been so eager to come here, why this was the place where everybody went these days. There was a white couple and child sitting at one table and two white men sitting at another. These ones were not real white people like Britons and Americans, though. They looked more like Lebanese or Syrians or one of that type of people, but it did not matter. I had observed the same phenomenon in every Nigerian city I had visited. Any joint that was frequented by any category of white people automatically shot up in ratings amongst indigenes. The place was jammed. As Merit and I searched for a free table, someone called out to me.

‘Graveyard!’

I turned.

‘Graveyard! Longest time!’

It was my roommate from university.

‘Ah! Enyi. How are you?’

We shook hands. I had not seen him since my father’s burial.

‘Graveyard, you look good. You look really good. I hear you’re now a big—’

I cut him off.

‘Merit, this is Enyi. We were roommates on campus.’

I asked her to go ahead and find somewhere to sit.

‘I’ll join you soon,’ I said.

‘Graveyard, you look really good,’ Enyi continued after Merit left. ‘I hear you’re now a bigger boy in Aba. I hear you’re doing very, very well. And you’ve put on weight!’

Who would ever have imagined? When they came to spend time with me during their last holidays, I had handed down a mountain of tight shirts to my brothers. I would probably have to pass on yet another batch when next any one of them was around.

‘Honestly, Graveyard, I’m so glad I saw you today. The other day, I was telling some people that both of us were very good friends in school and they thought I was lying.’

I smiled some more. He dipped into the messenger bag strapped across his chest and extracted a book.

‘Graveyard, I just wrote my first novel. Honestly, I’ll be very honoured if you can attend my book launching.’

He handed me the book. From Morocco to Spain in 80 Days.

I was impressed.

‘I didn’t know you were a writer. That’s great. Who’re your publishers?’

‘My uncle owns a printing press in Ngwa. They published it for me.’

I flipped through the uneven, poorly printed pages and paused to read. At least nine muscular typographical errors rose from the page and gave me a slap across the face.

‘This book is just too much,’ Enyi continued. ‘I’m sure it’s going to be a bestseller. It’s about my experiences while travelling across the Sahara to Europe.’

I had heard of several Nigerians ready to risk wind and limb by making this treacherous journey across the desert in search of greener pastures. Some died or were arrested along the way, some were captured and kept in detention camps the moment they arrived. I considered myself lucky for the opportunity to sit at my desk and reach across to greener pastures with my keyboard.

I handed back the book.

‘No, keep it. This one is your own copy. You can give me the money for it even if you’re not attending the launching.’

I asked him how much it was; he told me.

‘But that’s the official price,’ he added, then smiled and winked. ‘A bigger boy like you, you can’t just pay the official price. You have to put something good on top.’

‘I haven’t got much with me here,’ I smiled back. ‘I just came out with enough for our meal.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I can stop over at your office and collect it some other time. Is it not that building behind Bon Bonny Hotel?’

I handed him a complimentary card, anyway - as an act of noblesse oblige. He assured me that he would see me soon.

I joined Merit at the obscure table she had chosen in a far corner of the room. A waiter came round and took our orders. With Ola, we always requested that the waiters go and come back later to allow us calculate what aspects of the menu our pockets could handle. Merit made her choice of appetizer, main meal, and dessert without restraint. I felt like a real man.

We laughed and talked while we ate. She was an Accountancy graduate and worked with her father’s friend’s private firm in Aba. She was a year younger than I. She had an elder brother, an elder sister, and three younger ones. Her father had a private law practice, her mother was a civil servant. Her elder brother was doing a Masters in International Law, her elder sister had finished university two years ago and was now doing a course at Bible School.

‘You know, you’re very different from the first impression I had of you when I saw you at the wedding,’ Merit said.

‘What first impression?’

‘Hmmmmm . . . ?’

‘Was it the way I looked?’

‘No, not the way you looked. I’m not really sure what it was. Maybe it’s the people I saw you sitting with. I was a bit confused because you looked different from them, but at the same time I was wondering why you were sitting with them. It was after you told me Cash Daddy was your uncle that I understood.’

I shifted about in my chair. Perhaps I should hint at the truth.

‘But I work for my uncle, though.’

She stiffened.

‘Work for him doing what?’

‘I help him with some investments . . . sort of like consultancy. He didn’t like the way other people were handling some of his business deals, so he decided that he wanted a relative to do it for him.’

‘Oh.’ She relaxed. ‘I hear he has a lot of businesses on the side.’

On the side of what? Like my mother, Merit was using euphemisms. Probably to spare me the embarrassment of having an uncle who was a 419 kingpin. The nice girl.

‘Anyway, be careful about first impressions,’ I said. ‘The mind’s construction is not written on the face.’

‘Or in the clothes,’ she added.

I laughed. She laughed. My cellular rang. It was Mr Winterbottom. I stood hastily.

‘Excuse me, let me take this call,’ I said to Merit and moved some distance away.

‘It was really tough trying to convince some of the senior bankers, ’ Mr Winterbottom said. ‘We’ve been arguing about it all day. They agreed to release this last $4.5 million dollars under the condition that the CBN will pay the full amount before the end of next month.’

I smiled.

‘But I’m definitely not paying any more fees,’ he continued. ‘The bank has decided that this is the last.’

No need for Mr Winterbottom to take his bank’s words too seriously. If given another good enough reason, they would cough out more.

I hurried back to Merit. We talked some more about false appearances, about life and current affairs.

‘Do you have my house land phone number?’ she asked at the end of the evening.

‘No. You only gave me your office number.’

‘OK, I’ll give it to you. But whenever you call, please, if it’s my dad or mum who picks up, pretend that you want to speak to my older brother. His name is Mezie.’