'Oh dear,' said the mugu.

'They are our brothers and sisters. Why must we treat our own people that way?'

I could hardly restrain my admiration for Cash Daddy. His tongue must have been made of silver. If this was a rehearsal for his live performance as politician and future governor, my uncle was sure to win rave reviews. And there was something about his voice. It had a certain irresistible attraction like the smell of fried chicken. He could probably even talk a spider into weaving silk socks for him. The same magic was in his face. Under his gaze, you felt like the most important figure in his life. From Mr Winterbottom's face, I could see that his soul was being thoroughly converted to mugu.

'The time for unity has come,' Cash Daddy proclaimed. 'Allah has given the call. Unity amongst Igbo and Hausa, amongst Hausa and Yoruba, amongst Yoruba and Igbo. One Nigeria! My dear friend, it's at times like this that I understand why America had to fight the Cold War. You understand what I mean?'

I did not. The white man, on the other hand, was several scales ahead of me in the evolutionary process. He understood perfectly.

'I'm with you,' he replied.

Cash Daddy speechified some more. By the time he stood up, ready to leave, even I was convinced that we had been breakfasting with the minister of aviation of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

'I have a meeting with the British transport secretary later this morning,' Cash Daddy said, 'to finalise discussions on the Nigerian-British Bilateral Air Services agreement. I need to make some phone calls before then. Mr Winterbottom, it's been nice meeting you.'

The minister departed in a whirl of good humour. We were left sitting around the table in silence.

'Quite a remarkable man,' Mr Winterbottom finally said. 'I like him. I like him very much. Very friendly and down-to-earth.'

Mr Akpiri-Ogologo reminded Mr Winterbottom of something.

'Oh yes! I almost forgot.'

Mr Winterbottom leaned under his seat and brought out a carrier bag. It contained the two Rolex watches, one Sony camcorder, and two Nokia handsets Protocol Officer had told him that the chairman of the Contracts Award Committee had specifically requested as part of his bribes. Thanks to Wizard's online search, Protocol Officer knew the exact high-tech models to ask for.

'I hope I got the right ones,' Mr Winterbottom said.

Protocol Officer dug his hands into the carrier bag and inspected each item.

'I won't know for sure until the Chairman sees them,' he replied. It was always wise to make allowance for future requests.

Back upstairs, Cash Daddy flung one of the Rolex watches at me.

'Throw away that toy on your wrist,' he said.

I switched watches immediately. My new Rolex was as fabulous as Aladdin's ring. But instead of throwing the Swatch away, I would pass it down to Godfrey.

That was one thing everybody liked about Cash Daddy. He was not a cheat. Unlike some godfathers who reversed tongues when good things came in, Cash Daddy always made sure that each participant in a job received his fair share.

In his own special way, my uncle was an honest man.

Twenty-seven

Everybody poured outside to look. Ben, the office cleaner, had bought his first car. It was a tokunbo, secondhand, Mercedes-Benz V-Boot. Smuggled across the border from Cotonou. He had driven it to work that morning, dashed into every room in the office and invited us out to see, declaring that he was hosting the whole office to free lunch.

'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.

Dear Sheik Idris Shamshuden (or whatever your real name is), Your letter is a classic 419 scam. I can smell these things a mile away.

I love Africa and Africans. Please stop harming your economy by causing any more people to distrust Africans. I know this is a way you can make some quick money, but the long-term effects to the African economy are terrible.

I am not against you. If we met in person, we probably would have a wonderful conversation. I really do hope that you turn from your illegal ways. Please use your obvious talents and creativity for things that will count 1,000 years from now and throughout all eternity.

God bless you,Condoleezza '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.

DEAR CONDOLEEZZA, PLEASE FORGIVE ME. YOU MIGHT NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DONE FOR ME. YOUR EMAIL HAS CHANGED MY LIFE AND FORCED ME TO RECONSIDER MY WAYS. I KNOW I HAVE THE POTENTIALS TO DO THE RIGHT THING IF ONLY I COULD BE GIVEN A CHANCE.

CONDOLEEZZA, PLEASE IS THERE ANY WAY YOU CAN POSSIBLY ASSIST ME TO START SOMETHING USEFUL? I WOULD BE VERY GRATEFUL FOR ANY HELPYOU CAN GIVE. I LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING FROM YOU. THANK YOU FOR TAKING TIME TO WRITE ME THAT LIFE-CHANGING EMAIL.

GOD BLESS YOU.

YOURS,DAVID On second thoughts, I deleted 'David' and wrote Azuka's real first name. After all, there was absolutely nothing irregular about an African begging for foreign aid.

I definitely had the Midas touch. This 419 thing was my calling. Condoleezza sent him $600 the very next day and a letter full of advice on how to turn his life around. Dollars were hard currency, no matter how small.

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.

Twenty-eight

Abuja was different from other Nigerian cities. There were no hawkers in the streets, no okadas buzzing about like flies, no overflowing bins with unclothed schizophrenics scavenging in them for their daily sustenance. None of the roads had potholes and all the traffic lights were working. And unlike in our parts, where a flashy car was the ninth wonder of the world, most of the cars here were sleek, many with tinted windows.

I and the hired driver waited at the entrance to the arrival lounge. Mr Winterbottom soon appeared, sweating like a hog. I strode across and welcomed him with a handshake. The driver rushed out and grabbed the handle of his suitcase.

'It's so terribly hot,' the mugu groaned.

The Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport was even fully air-conditioned. Fighting for space high up on a prominent side of the arrival lounge wall were massive portraits of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, of the minister of the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria, of the minister of aviation of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and of the chairman of the Nigerian Federal Airports Authority. I placed my hand on Mr Winterbottom's shoulder and steered him away from the incriminating view. Just before leaving the hotel, I had remembered to take off my Rolex.

'Thanks a lot for coming to get me,' he said.

The pleasure was all mine.

A few weeks after the London meeting, Ozu High Seas and Changeling Development Cooperation were awarded a $187 million contract for the upgrading of the Akanu Ibiam Airport, Enugu, to an international airport. The government officials had insisted on a $10 million bribe before the contract documents could be released.

Mr Winterbottom sent the money in four instalments. The arrival of the first batch threw me into a massive shock that left me in a species of trance for days. Two and a half million dollars! In one transaction. Just like that. Did such amounts actually exist in real human beings' accounts?

And from what I had seen, Mr Winterbottom was a normal human being like me. He did not have two heads.

I tried to imagine a life with access to that kind of money. Glorious. All my problems solved forever. But how? By what means? Not even the oil companies paid enough to give anyone that much. Many Nigerian superbillionaires I knew of had attained their wealth after stints in high public office but such an opportunity was not likely to come my way anytime soon, even if I had the heart. Siphoning from foreigners in parts of the world where the economy was sound was one thing, but stealing from your own brothers and sisters who had entrusted you to serve was the abyss of wickedness, especially when you had the firsthand opportunity to witness their daily sufferings and struggles. I was not hurting anyone by taking a little of what the Winterbottoms of this world had. There was much, much more where those millions had come from.

When the subsequent three instalments arrived, I received them without flinching a single muscle.

Now that everyone had received their due bribes, Mr Winterbottom had come to finalise things at the Ministry of Aviation and to sign the memorandum of understanding. Since it was his first time visiting the Lion of Africa, as an act of goodwill I reserved his ticket, booked his hotel room, and picked him up from the airport.

'Your country is beautiful,' he said on the way back to the hotel. 'Everywhere looks so well organised. This isn't what I expected.'