my intercom bleeped.
‘Kings, Cash Daddy wants to see you,’ Protocol Officer said. ‘Now.’
I clicked Send before I went.
Cash Daddy had recently taken an excessive interest in newspapers. He had a vendor deliver ten different dailies every morning, which he perused page by page. He ran a commentary on and generated fresh topics from the headlines. He asked me to read lengthy opinion-editorials and give him a verbal summary of whatever the writers had said. Unlike my father, instead of throwing tantrums when he read something outrageous, he nodded his head and saw a new perspective on life.
‘Well,’ he once said after reading about a reform-minded gubernatorial aspirant who had been assassinated in Ekiti State, ‘at least it will always be remembered that he died for the cause of democracy.’
Now, his eyes remained transfixed on whatever he was reading on the front page while I sat beside Protocol Officer and waited. At last, Cash Daddy snapped up his head.
‘Government,’ he said. ‘That’s where the real money is. Do you know how much money Nigeria makes from oil? Billions and billions of dollars. And it belongs to all of us. There’s no reason why people like me should not be able to taste some of it. After all, we’re all Nigerians.’
He tossed the newspaper on top of the thick, black Bible that was open to the book of Ecclesiastes on his desk. I glimpsed the bold front-page headline of the story he had been engrossed in.
SCOTLAND YARD ARRESTS NIGERIAN
STATE GOVERNOR IN LONDON WITH
£2 MILLION CASH
‘Kings, you’re no longer a little bird,’ Cash Daddy continued. ‘It’s time for you to fly out of the nest. I’m having an important meeting with a mugu next month. Ask Dibia to start sorting out the documents for your UK visa. You’re travelling to London with me.’
My heart jumped twice and somersaulted thrice. My intestines started tying themselves up into tight knots. I had always wondered what England, the celebrated land of my father’s traveller’s tales, was like. But for the first time ever, I was going to be face-to-face with one of our mugus.
‘Why is your face like that?’ Cash Daddy asked.
I must have looked as if I wanted to run up a tree and hide, then uproot the tree and pull it up after me.
‘Kings, there’s nothing to be afraid of. What can a white man do to you? Oyibo people are harmless. It’s not today I started dealing with them. There’s no reason why you should be afraid.’
Yes, I had reason to be afraid. The Columbine murderers and the Unabomber and Dr Harold Shipman. I forced my face to look less terrorised.
‘Where are those documents?’ Cash Daddy asked.
Protocol Officer whipped out a sheaf from a folder in front of him. This one must be big. Cash Daddy had boys working for him in Amsterdam, Houston, London. As a godfather, he hardly ever got directly involved in a job unless the dollar prospects were colossal - large enough to require a foreign bank account. He was the only one who knew the details and locations of these foreign accounts, the only one who dealt directly with the bankers.
‘Kings, read them,’ Cash Daddy said.
I started with the business proposal on top of the pile. The left corner of my mouth twitched slightly.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘No . . . nothing.’
‘Why were you laughing?’
‘I wasn’t—’
Protocol Officer chuckled. That gave me the confidence to tell the truth.
‘Is that his real name?’ I asked.
‘No, no, no, no,’ Cash Daddy reprimanded in a soft, serious voice. ‘You people shouldn’t laugh at him. Do you know that this is the man whose money is going to feed your children and your children’s children and your children’s children’s children?’
On that note alone, the mugu could be forgiven. After all, his money was all that really counted. But what on earth had the man’s ancestors been thinking when they took a name like Winterbottom upon themselves?
Twenty-three
Satellite TV bought me my freedom from the national prison sentence of having nothing else to watch at 9 p.m. every day, when all the local TV stations in the land switched to Lagos for the Network News. Occasionally, however, it made sense to touch base with home, irrespective of how doctored the local news might be. I reached for the remote control and flicked from BBC to NTA.
A disgruntled Senator from the thirty-third largest political party had decamped to form a brand new party of his own. Another billionaire had declared his intentions to join the presidential