Wei Lai felt he himself could manage just fine — but for Cen Jin, it was harder to say. Just a few days ago, she had been a woman dressed in evening gowns, with a full staff preparing her meals.

“Couldn’t you have found something better?”

Ke Ke Shu shot him a sideways look: “What do you think this is? In all of Khartoum, you can count the traffic lights on one hand — and those were built by foreign aid money. The dirt roads out there are full of donkey carts…”

Wei Lai was willing to believe that much — but he also knew that wherever there was poverty and backwardness, there was always luxury and excess lurking somewhere nearby. This place surely had its high-rises, its grand halls, its fine cars and lavish banquets. The idea that Ke Ke Shu couldn’t get his hands on a decent vehicle — he genuinely did not believe it.

“Aren’t you down south protecting a senior military and political figure?”

“Yes — but can I just use his car as I please? Same as you — can you just use Miss Cen’s car whenever you want?”

Wei Lai frowned: fair enough, apparently not.

“Besides, the negotiations will likely be on open waters — meaning you’ll need to head east from Khartoum, through the desert. And the further east you go, the poorer it gets. Didn’t you say you don’t want to attract attention? If you’re driving a nice car through the desert, every satellite and intelligence agency in the world will have its eye on you — who knows what they’ll think you’re up to.”

He hiked up his trouser leg and swung a leg over the seat with great flair: “Miss Cen has been to Africa before — she knows what conditions are like here. She won’t mind, will she? And along the way, I can take you sightseeing — the Blue and White Nile converge at Khartoum. Quite a sight.”

Cen Jin smiled, grabbed the frame of the tuk-tuk, and climbed aboard first. Once seated, she fanned herself even more rapidly with the magazine: “I don’t mind.”

Wei Lai had nothing more to say.

The vehicle set off — putt-putt-putt — reminding him of the black-smoke-belching tractors he’d seen on narrow field paths as a child back home. Before long, as expected, the road turned to dirt. Dust rose from every direction; the inside of the tuk-tuk became a haze of grit, and Cen Jin shut her eyes, holding the magazine over her mouth and nose, jolting against the frame with every bump.

Wei Lai stretched his arm horizontally and gripped the lower edge of her seat, like a safety bar, bracing her body between the seatback and his arm.

They passed through a neighborhood of mud-brick houses, many without roofs. Not far off, the bray of a donkey carried over on the air.

They never did see the famous confluence of the Blue and White Nile. The entire city suffered chronic power shortages, and along the great river’s banks, everything was pitch dark. The water surface still caught some reflected light, and as they passed a rubbish heap along the riverbank, the bleating of goats rose in the darkness — no wonder the dump smelled of livestock.

Cen Jin suddenly asked Ke Ke Shu: “Where are we staying tonight?”

Ke Ke Shu raised his voice to answer: “A grand hotel!”

Before Cen Jin could respond, Wei Lai leaned toward her and lowered his voice: “It’s probably a small guesthouse.”

As it turned out, Ke Ke Shu had been somewhat unfairly misjudged — it was, in fact, a “grand hotel.” A two-story flat-roofed building of brick, with a concrete-paved driveway at the entrance, and white-washed mud walls all around, on which the name had been painted in large letters: Great Hotel.

This set it apart instantly from the roofless dwellings and plastic-sheeting shelters nearby, and lent it a quality that could only be described as “class.”

There was electricity, but the voltage was insufficient — the hallway light bulbs flickered on and off. In the courtyard, under a shed in one corner, a stone hearth supported a wide iron skillet. The Black owner was stir-frying lamb eaten by hand, the fire roaring, the sizzle of lamb fat threading through the air.

Spotting Ke Ke Shu and the others, the owner grinned and pointed to the pan: “Almost ready.”

Cen Jin asked him: “Is the electricity and water reliable?”

The owner shook his head, lifting his spatula in a shrug: “Sometimes it’s on, sometimes it cuts out — hard to say.”

“Then I’ll skip dinner for now. I’m going to wash up.”

The guest room was on the second floor. Wei Lai accompanied her upstairs, inspecting the room first: the door and windows were solid, and the surrounding view was reasonably open — the residential buildings were all set some distance away. The room’s furnishings were sparse; the ceiling was fitted with an old three-bladed electric fan that groaned and creaked as it turned; the bed was covered with a palm-mat, and there was also a folding chaise longue — good enough for two people.

The washing area was in one corner: a section of cement wall enclosing not quite two square metres, a plastic shower curtain. He pulled it open to find: a tap, a white enamel basin, and suspended from the ceiling a wooden bucket with over a dozen holes drilled into its base. Wei Lai thought about it for a long moment before he realized — this was a homemade “shower.”

He looked at Cen Jin: “I’ll be outside the door. Call me if you need anything.”

Cen Jin pulled off her outer shirt, then reached up and undid her hair bun with a firm grip, giving her hair a shake. The dust and grit that had accumulated during their tuk-tuk journey drifted and scattered in the dim, amber-toned light.

She stepped into the walled-off washing area, cast him a sideways glance, and said: “What would I need to call you for.”

Then with a sharp swish, she drew the curtain all the way to one end. The iron rod it hung from swayed for a long time, and on the curtain, the flickering light traced the outline of her silhouette.

Wei Lai looked away.

But the scene from a moment ago seemed to linger before him: beneath her outer shirt, she wore a black half-wrapped chest band; her pale skin was rendered honey-gold by the light; the lines of her figure — her waist, her hips, the curve of her shoulders and neck — were all beautiful.

Wei Lai liked her collarbones. When she tilted her head slightly downward, they formed hollows of just the right depth — the kind that made you want to pour in a drop of amber-colored wine and draw it up slowly.

He pushed the door open and stepped outside, pulling it shut behind him. The thought struck him as absurd.

From the top of the staircase came a voice: “Wei!”

He turned. It was Ke Ke Shu — who had finally shed his branded ensemble and was now in nothing but a vest and shorts and plastic sandals, a cloth sack dangling oddly from his neck, striding over with a wooden tray steaming with food.

Dinner was served.

Wei Lai sat down on the floor. The tray was set before him: a bowl of hand-pulled lamb, a plate of sliced tomatoes, a plate of sliced cucumber, and a stack of flatbreads.

“Did you leave some for her?”

“Yes.”

Ke Ke Shu sat down beside him, then reached into the cloth sack around his neck with a conspiratorial air: “The real treasure’s in here.”

What on earth?

He pulled it over for a look: two bottles of pale lager beer.

Wei Lai laughed despite himself: “This is it?”

Ke Ke Shu tilted the neck of one bottle to his teeth — top and bottom row working like a bottle opener — and with a sharp crack, popped it open. Then popped the other.

“My friend,” he said, “Sudan is a dry country. They don’t exactly welcome foreigners who like to drink and go to discos either — if someone sees us, we’ll end up in a cell.”

Is that so? The thrill of getting caught sounded considerably more interesting than the drinking itself. Wei Lai snatched a bottle: “Give me that.”

They clinked bottle necks and tilted their heads back. He chugged down half in one go, and felt his mouth, his throat, and his chest fill entirely with the fizzing foam of the beer.

He exhaled a long breath, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and felt — in that one brief instant — so deeply satisfied he could die with no regrets.

Ahead of them was a half-height cement balustrade railing, which sliced the night scene of Khartoum into strips of equal width; the gaps were wide enough for a person to fall through.

Behind the closed door, the occasional sound of water could be heard.

Wei Lai said: “Beer to drink, meat to eat — not bad at all.”

Ke Ke Shu leaned in: “You’d need a woman to make it perfect — interested? I can arrange it. There’s an underground club here, caters to foreigners only, very upscale, nothing to worry about health-wise.”

“I can’t leave. I can’t leave Miss Cen unattended.”

Ke Ke Shu thought he was being far too fussy: “Just tell her to lock the door — what could happen in one night?”

Wei Lai clamped a hand on his head and shoved him sideways, hard.

That was the signal to drop it. Ke Ke Shu rubbed his head and, undeterred, straightened back up. His gaze slid toward the closed door: “What’s she like?”

“Milu said she’s strange — apparently she lives alone at home, but she always dresses in the kind of gowns you’d wear to a banquet, and sits in very low lighting… Quite unsettling.”

Wei Lai picked up a piece of lamb and put it in his mouth: “What’s unsettling about that?”

Ke Ke Shu leaned in with exaggerated mystery: “Haven’t you heard that horror story? The woman seduced by a devil, who dresses up in the dead of night inside an ancient castle, dancing alone with a ghost no one else can see…”

Wei Lai swirled his beer bottle and narrowed his eyes.

Quite vivid, actually. Bodyguard work was a young person’s game — when Ke Ke Shu was old, he could go stand on a street corner telling ghost stories, pounding an African skin drum at the eerie parts, drawing a Chinese erhu bow for the truly terrifying ones.

The image made him laugh until he choked.

Ke Ke Shu had no idea what he was laughing at: “I also heard she’s a suspect in a murder case? Wei, don’t laugh — I’m not joking.”

Wei Lai said: “Want to know what I think?”

“What?”

“I quite like her.”

He swirled the dregs in his bottle until they frothed up: “The way she talks, the way she acts — it makes me feel good. You know what I mean? Even when she pushes back against me, I think — there’s something satisfying about the way she does it.”

Not caring about the word “death.” Not being clingy about romance when it came to men and women — if you had both, you were nearly invincible.

He had never met anyone quite like that. He couldn’t say for certain yet whether Cen Jin was that person — but there was something in her, a faint trace of that quality.

“As long as she’s not scheming against me, as long as there’s no conflict of interest between us, we can be friends.”

Ke Ke Shu’s face contorted: “Friends?”

“Wei, as far as we’re concerned, the only people in this world worth trusting are you, me, and Milu. You understand? Everyone else — completely untrustworthy. Even my wife — I don’t trust her!”

A brief silence.

Wei Lai picked up a piece of flatbread, layered tomato, cucumber, and lamb on top, and slowly rolled it into a cylinder.

“You got married?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

When was it…

Ke Ke Shu couldn’t quite remember: “Last year… July or August, I think…”

Wei Lai wanted to grind his teeth. He also wanted to unravel every one of the small braids on Ke Ke Shu’s head and give him a sleek, straight perm.

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“It’s not such a big deal!”

Not a big deal? Even getting married wasn’t a big deal — then what was? Constipation? A toothache? A hen having a difficult labor?

The two of them glared at each other — until a sudden crash came from inside the room.

Every muscle in Wei Lai’s body snapped taut. In the next instant, his hand was already on the door handle: “Miss Cen?”

Cen Jin’s voice came through: “I dropped the basin. It slipped.”

Just that…

Wei Lai exhaled and sat back down. The interruption had broken whatever thread they’d been following — he couldn’t quite pick it back up.

He finished the rest of his beer and worked through the flatbread, one bite at a time, until his stomach was stretched and full.

“Miss Cen is probably fine. She definitely has secrets, but she has no obligation to explain herself to a bodyguard — and she’s not like you, going around telling people about the first underwear of your life the moment you meet them.”

Ke Ke Shu shrugged: “I’m doing this for your good. Don’t go trusting her too easily — how do you know what kind of bones and heart are hidden beneath her skin?”

“You know how it is in our line of work. We’re not afraid of clients who make a fuss, who are cutting and sharp-tongued, who are stingy — even arrogant and overbearing, that’s normal. The only thing we’re afraid of is…”

Wei Lai laughed.

This saying had been circulating in the profession for a long time. He had heard it in various forms, in various settings — it was almost an axiom of the trade, a warning, though no one knew who had first said it.

The only thing you’re afraid of is meeting a true devil.

But in every line of work — what profession didn’t fear meeting a true devil?