Adaobi Nwaubani - I Do Not Come to You by Chance

He had glared for a while, then shrugged, as if finally willing to concede.

‘OK. Since you don’t appreciate this opportunity God has given you to abolish poverty from your family once and for all, continue worrying about one oyibo woman in America. Be there worrying about her and leave off your own sister and your mother.’

Cash Daddy was right. Not being able to take care of my family was the real sin. Gradually, I had learnt to take my mind off the mugus and focus on the things that really mattered. Thanks to me, my family was now as safe as a tortoise under its shell. My mother could finally stop picking pennies from her shop and start enjoying the rest of her life. My brothers and sister could focus completely on their studies without worrying about fees.

Mirabelle had her problems, I had mine.

Suddenly, I heard a mouth-watering sound. My head snapped up from the computer screen. In this business, the ringing of a phone – whether cellular or land – was the sound of music. It was also a call for order. Buchi, who was sitting at the desk with the five phones and the fax machines, removed chewing gum from her mouth, pasted it onto her wrist with her tongue, then clapped her hands quickly to catch everybody’s attention.

‘Shhhhhhh!’ she shouted.

All talking ceased.

There were five of us who shared this room that Cash Daddy had called the Central Intelligence Agency. The receptionist, the menial staff, the dark-suited otimkpu whose main duty was to herald the arrival of their master and to make sure his presence was well-noticed, all stayed in the outer office. Buchi received all incoming calls before passing them on. At different points in time, depending on who was calling, she could say she was speaking from the Federal Ministry of Finance, the Nigerian National Petroleum Cooperation, the Central Bank of Nigeria… Now, after ensuring that the noise in the office had reduced to a more conducive level, she cleared her throat and lifted the receiver.

‘Good morning. May I help you?’ she asked in a clear, professional voice.

Buchi was a graduate of Mass Communication from the Abia State University, Uturu.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes,’ she said again.

While listening, she nodded and scribbled diligently in a jotter. Buchi took her job quite seriously.

‘All right if you could just hold on for one second, please, I’ll pass you on to the person in charge of that department.’

She pressed the mute button and extended the appliance in my direction.

‘Kings,’ she whispered as an extra precaution, ‘it’s Ben’s Port Harcourt Refinery mugu.’

Ben was one of our office cleaners. As well as those of us in the CIA, everybody else – the otimkpu, gatemen, drivers, cleaners, cook, receptionist, the boys who lived in Cash Daddy’s house – was entitled to compose their own letters and blast them out to whomever they pleased. Like Cash Daddy always said, there were more than enough mugus to go round. But as soon as contact was established and it looked like money was on the way, whoever had initiated the correspondence was supposed to let me know. Only I and Protocol Officer had keys to the cabinet where we stored the letterheaded sheets, death certificates, bank statements, call-to-bar certificates, proof of funds, money orders, cheques, and any other documents that might be required to prove the authenticity of a transaction. Only I and Protocol Officer could make the phone call to authorise our Western Union official to look the other way.

Some weeks ago, Ben had sent out letters claiming that he was the head of a committee that tendered for and recently completed some construction work on the Port Harcourt Refinery. The project, he stated, was purposely over-inflated by $40 million and he needed help to smuggle the money out of Nigeria. All the recipient had to do was to claim that his business had been awarded the $40 million contract and provide a bank account detail for the transaction. For that, he would keep twenty-five per cent for himself – as long as he transferred the remaining seventy-five per cent to Ben’s bank account. This mugu had agreed and was told to fax his business details so that his business could be registered in Nigeria. He had sent the $6,000 required for the process last week.

The Corporate Affairs Commission registration documents had been faxed back to him yesterday. I took in a deep breath as I grabbed the receiver from Buchi.

‘Good afternoon,’ I said after letting out the air from my lungs, ‘This is Mr Odiegwu on the line. How may I help you?’

‘Hello,’ the Englander replied. ‘I have a document here that shows my business has been registered with the Nigerian Corporate Affairs Commission, and I just wanted to confirm my registration details.’

Naturally, he had rung the number on the CAC letterheaded sheet.

‘May I have the registration number, please?’

He read it out slowly, careful not to miss any slashes or hyphens. I repeated after him without making record anywhere. What he did not know was that the registration certificate had been faxed from this same office. Dibia, our document expert, was quite good. All the logos and stamps on the documents he supplied were authentic, and so were the signatures.

‘Could you please hold on while I go through our records?’

While waiting for a plausible length of time to elapse, I admired the Atilogwu acrobatic dancers on the wall calendar in front of me. I had seen their energetic and entertaining dance on television several times before. Their uniforms were remarkably colourful.

‘Is that Mr Del B. Trotter?’ I asked at last.

He confirmed his name eagerly.

‘Yes, we have the documents here,’ I said. ‘The registration was processed on the 12th.’

I could almost hear the splashes of the grin that swam out onto his face. After all, every Homo sapiens – whether Englander or Burkinabe – had the natural right to grin over the prospect of colliding with $10 million for doing almost nothing.

‘Thanks for your kind assistance,’ he said.

I returned the phone to Buchi and made a mental note of the fact that I would still need to speak with this same mugu soon. If Ben successfully convinced him to send another $9,000 for the contract documents to be drawn up, Mr Trotter would probably want to ring the Port Harcourt Refinery office to make some further enquiries.

The clicking of gum and the talking resumed. I was about to return to my screen when Wizard let out a high-pitched cry.

‘My lollipop is awake o! My lollipop is awake!’

All of us recognised this as our daily call to amusement. We rushed over to Wizard’s desk. The words he typed onto the screen sent everybody quaking with laughter.

‘Oh lollipop,’ he had written, ‘am really scared, hun. Am really scared that I ain’t gonna see you again no more, my darl. These people are really threatening me. You know how wild these Africans can be.’

My laughter became the loudest of all.

Wizard had been conducting several online relationships with randy foreigners he met in chatrooms. His romance with this particular American had been going on for six weeks. When their loooove blossomed to the point where the man proposed to ‘Suzie’ that she travel from East Windsor, New Jersey to visit him in Salt Lake City, Utah or vice versa, she informed him that she was just on her way to Nigeria on a business trip. She was a make-up artist, you see, and had an offer to transform girls strutting down the catwalk for an AIDS charity in Lagos. She had arrived in Lagos two days before, and had her American passport stolen in a taxi. Now, she had no way of cashing her traveller’s cheques and the proprietor of the hotel was threatening arrest.

‘Oh babe,’ the man replied, ‘what you gonna do now? Ain’t there no way of taking it to the police?’