By late afternoon, the pirates began crawling out one by one, and it was only then that the ship gradually came alive on a larger scale.
Wei Lai went looking for Hu Sha and walked into exactly the scene he’d anticipated: two pirates who had apparently slept on top of Hu Sha were hunching their heads and darting about trying to dodge him. Hu Sha was cursing and kicking out viciously; his slipper wasn’t fastened securely and flew off with one kick. One of the pirates, trying to ingratiate himself, picked the slipper up and returned it, at which Hu Sha grabbed the toe of the shoe and promptly whacked him across the face with it.
Slap slap slap — the sound of each blow landing on flesh made Wei Lai’s scalp prickle: this was worse than being kicked.
There was also an unexpected element: that young boy was standing to the side laughing hysterically, and would sometimes follow up right after Hu Sha struck, spitting at the pirates or adding a kick of his own — a perfect little lackey.
Wei Lai felt that he had earlier directed his sympathy entirely at the wrong person. Right now he could only think: he wouldn’t mind watching this little rascal get a good beating.
Hu Sha wasn’t called a pirate chief for nothing — his expressions came and went at will. The moment he saw Wei Lai, he turned on a smile and called out a greeting: “Hey…”
Then he faltered. He had never once asked Wei Lai’s name.
Wei Lai patiently supplied it for him: “Wei.”
He then laid out the plans going forward, mentioning “the Suakin border” and “Komke.” Hu Sha nodded throughout.
With a face full of regret: “Jin is leaving just like that? I still wanted to take her to Bosaso for a meal. No, no — I must speak to her myself. She saved my life; she’s my good friend…”
Wei Lai stepped in front of him: “Miss Cen is resting… She has an important negotiation at the Suakin border tomorrow and needs to go over some documents. I’d advise you not to disturb her.”
Hu Sha believed him immediately.
The regret gave way to admiration: “Jin is remarkable. She said she’d stepped back from the international organisation — turns out she’s now doing negotiations full-time… When I get abroad, I won’t even know what work to do…”
There was genuine, heavy wistfulness in his voice.
Wei Lai nearly laughed out loud. Negotiations with governments often dragged on for a long time — sometimes there was an observation period lasting a year or two, meaning that whatever you’d agreed to, you had to follow through with for a sustained stretch before the government would recognise it and move to the next stage. Hu Sha was already wondering what job he’d do once he got abroad — wasn’t that a bit premature?
——
While there was still daylight, the fishing boat weighed anchor and set sail. On the way back to the cabin he ran into Sha Di, who apparently had a habit of pressing aromatic tea leaves on people — he pressed another handful on Wei Lai.
It was hard to refuse, so he put some in his mouth to chew.
He munched away as they chatted about the awful weather. Sha Di was remarkably cheerful: “If we keep heading south, we might sail out of the sandstorm pretty soon.”
Wei Lai was puzzled: “Sail out of the sandstorm?”
“Exactly. A sandstorm is like a belt,” Sha Di sketched the idea with his hands, “the Red Sea is very narrow, you know — there’s desert on both sides, and when the wind picks up, the sand blows across and drags over the sea like a great sand-serpent… but the Red Sea is long, and no sandstorm can swallow the whole stretch of it. Keep sailing, and you’ll come out the other side…”
Then he complained: “Last night, I wanted to have a drink with you — I knocked on your door, you didn’t answer.”
Wei Lai startled: “You knocked on my door?”
Sha Di said: “Yes.”
“Did you… hear anything?”
Sha Di wrinkled his brow: “You sleep so deeply, Wei — a bodyguard needs to be alert… I didn’t know what you were doing in there; all I heard was: rustle… rustle… rustle rustle rustle…”
Of course all he could hear was that.
The reality was: he’d been in the dining room with a crowd of people, drinking merrily, when he’d suddenly thought of Wei Lai and shouted: “Drinking needs friends — I’ll go get Wei!”
The people around him beat bowls and pots, clearing a corridor for him; Sha Di, his head heavy and his feet unsteady, stumbled out the door, went in the wrong direction, lurching and staggering along until he finally crashed headlong into the hatch that led up to the deck.
Then he pounded on it frantically: “Wei! Come out! Drinks!”
No one answered. Sha Di, irritated, kicked at the hatch — it was bolted from the inside with an iron bar, so of course it didn’t budge. So out of curiosity he pressed his ear against the door to listen.
Outside, the sandstorm was blowing; dense grains of sand struck the door.
Rustle. Rustle. Rustle rustle rustle.
——
Sha Di adopted a look of utmost gravity: “Wei, you are a bodyguard — you need to stay alert. Otherwise it is very dangerous…”
——
That night Wei Lai slept fitfully: he was aware at some point of the ship sailing through the night, aware of when it stopped, and aware of it setting out again and then stopping again near dawn.
Not long after it stopped, Sha Di came and knocked once: “Miss Cen, we’ve arrived. The ship can’t get too close to shore — you’ll need to take the speedboat from here. Get yourselves ready and you can head off whenever you like.”
Wei Lai flicked the beer bottle cap from under the bed, landing it square on the door — his way of signalling he was fully alert: “Understood.”
After Sha Di left, he looked down at Cen Jin, still asleep in his arms: “Time to get up.”
Cen Jin was so drowsy she couldn’t prise her eyes open, and burrowed with clear reluctance deeper into his arms. Wei Lai smiled, leaned down to kiss behind her ear, and let his hands find their way to every ticklish, sensitive spot on her body without any particular sense of restraint.
She giggled and squirmed away, and finally couldn’t help it — she opened her eyes: “Get out of here, you’re hopeless.”
Wei Lai said: “If you break the character ‘good’ apart, doesn’t it show one man and one woman together? I’m performing ‘good’ so perfectly — what more could you ask of me?”
Cen Jin had no comeback for that. She got up, took a quick shower, and came out wearing the clothes she’d boarded in — white T-shirt, jeans. The kiss marks and bruising on her body were mostly covered, but at the neck and collarbone and behind the ear…
She glanced at Wei Lai with a half-smile that said: so what are you going to do about this?
Wei Lai smiled ruefully, then had a terrible idea: “It doesn’t really matter if people see, does it? Think about it — dark-skinned people might not even be able to see marks like this on themselves… so even if they notice, they probably won’t know what it is…”
Cen Jin couldn’t help herself: “Are you actually stupid?”
She reached down into the luggage bag and pulled out the black draping cloth, tying it in the style of an Arabic headscarf — front and back folded and knotted, leaving only her face exposed.
Her skin was pale; against the black cloth, the contrast of white and dark was striking, and her eyes shone with a bright lustre.
Wei Lai drew her close and studied her carefully: “A colour on the lips would be even more beautiful.”
Cen Jin said: “You think I don’t know that? But the lip colour was all lost, wasn’t it? And speaking of which, a certain someone at the time, I had prepared at least several dozen shades…”
Here we go again.
Wei Lai smiled: “Putting colour on the lips doesn’t necessarily have to mean lip colour, you know.”
He leaned down and kissed her lips, pressing with more force than usual. Cen Jin gave a sharp flinch from the sting; Wei Lai took the opportunity to draw her close by the waist, deepening the kiss.
When he released her, he was thoroughly satisfied: the skin of the lips is the thinnest; it could not withstand friction. In just a few moments it had already turned rosy and gleaming.
Wei Lai said: “This colour suits you best. I’ll systematically study it going forward — master the pressure and timing, and you can request deeper or lighter as you please. Come to think of it, you’ll never need to buy lip colour again. I can take care of it for you — whenever you need a touch-up, just say the word…”
Cen Jin clenched her teeth: “You…”
Wei Lai finished the sentence for her: “Get out of here, right? Not a chance.”
——
Up on deck, no one was particularly curious about Cen Jin’s attire — local women mostly dressed this way, and a foreigner following suit was perfectly natural.
A speedboat had already been lowered alongside the fishing vessel, bobbing with the slightly murky current. The sea was still veiled in a yellowish haze, but they had clearly left the heart of the sandstorm — visibility had extended considerably outward.
Sha Di was at the helm again, tasked with bringing them to the shore of the Suakin border.
Hu Sha’s reluctance to see them go was genuine enough. With the financial arrangements settled, he could set aside all the rest and address, simply and purely, the matter of friendship and gratitude.
“Jin, you saved my life. I never even got to properly thank you.”
“I was going to take you to Bosaso, but your bodyguard — Wang — said you had things to do.”
Wang? It’s Wei — how hard is it to distinguish the two finals? Never being able to say “Cen” with the right nasal ending was one thing; his mind wasn’t working either. Time to retire, clearly.
“In the future, if I really do make it abroad, and if there’s any chance, I’ll come and find you. Jin, I’ll take you out for a proper meal — you’ve helped me so much…”
Wei Lai stepped down to the speedboat first and reached up his hand to help Cen Jin down. She had already taken his hand, then suddenly let go again, turned back, and said something to Hu Sha.
Hu Sha clearly hadn’t understood — his face went blank, mouth half-open, and he was still standing motionless at the ship’s railing long after the speedboat had pulled away.
The sandstorm haze slowed the speedboat down; the sea wind was fairly strong, and grains of sand occasionally struck their faces. Cen Jin sat inside the hull and pulled the draping cloth up higher, covering her face.
Wei Lai asked her quietly: “What did you say to Hu Sha?”
“I told him: a person should know when to be satisfied and stop while ahead. No matter how triumphant you feel, always keep something in reserve.”
“Could he understand that?”
“Didn’t seem like it.”
“Why did you say that to him?”
“Remember that Nazi scientist von Braun I mentioned during the negotiation?”
Wei Lai nodded.
Cen Jin said: “He was just one notable example. In fact, hundreds of Nazi scientists were protected and brought into the United States at that time.”
“When Germany fell, the race to claim those scientists was not limited to America — Stalin, and Churchill too, had both dispatched special operations units.”
“They had sensed sharply that the war was nearing its end, and that post-war reconstruction would reshape the world order. Whoever controlled the finest minds in the world would pull ahead first.”
“America was the first to seize them — fortune favoured them. But do you know what ultimately became of those Nazi scientists?”
“I thought they escaped trial, received American citizenship, won awards, received money — all of that?”
Cen Jin smiled: “That was at first.”
“Starting in the late 1970s, America systematically expelled hundreds of Nazi scientists. Many had made scientific contributions to the country, and by that time were already in their eighties and nineties — they were stripped of their status and driven out of America.”
Wei Lai found it both bleak and darkly funny. This art of burning bridges after crossing them — Americans had their own accomplished version of it.
Cen Jin looked back at the fishing boat, almost invisible now within the yellow haze.
She said: “Hu Sha has genuinely killed hostages. Whether he’ll actually get to live the good life he’s dreamed of — no one can say. Defecting to the government doesn’t erase everything.”
“Someone may come looking for revenge. And there may come a day when even the government turns on him: you have value, and you also have crimes — once your value is used up, your end will be more wretched than anyone’s.”
Wei Lai was quiet for a long time.
A flicker of sympathy for Hu Sha came over him: people at the height of their swaggering power, convinced they have everything in hand — that is so often exactly when the bleakness begins.
He asked Cen Jin: “What will happen to Hu Sha in the end?”
Cen Jin smiled, then after a pause gestured forward: “If you have the spare thought to worry about him, better to think about ourselves.”
He followed her gaze. An ochre-yellow coastline floated at the far edge of the dark, turbulent sea, stretching infinitely north and south.
Sha Di eased the speedboat down to a crawl; as they drew alongside the shore, the engine sputtered and wheezed, coughing fitfully before finally sounding a sputtering thrum.
Wei Lai helped Cen Jin ashore.
The shore was all rock and reef. Beyond it stretched endless ochre-yellow mud — and surprisingly, scattered shrubs and green trees were actually visible.
Sha Di had come barefoot. He turned the speedboat around and reminded them: “You know this is the border, right?”
“We know.”
“And you know Sudan and Eritrea don’t get along?”
“…”
They hadn’t known that. Ke Ke Shu hadn’t mentioned it.
“And you know that Sudan and Ethiopia also don’t get along?”
“…”
“And you know that Sudan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia — none of the three of them get along with each other? They’ve all fought wars against each other.”
Sha Di’s parting words were: “Good luck to you both. Goodbye.”
Wei Lai stared at the wake left by the departing speedboat and smiled wryly.
Slightly awkward — he’d asked Cen Jin to get off the ship and follow him, and had ended up walking her straight into an African version of a three-way standoff.
Cen Jin didn’t seem bothered: “Let’s go.”
Wei Lai said: “It seems… a bit dangerous.”
Cen Jin snorted out a laugh.
“Was Sudan not dangerous? Twenty years of civil war. Were the Somali pirates not dangerous? They just seized the world’s largest oil tanker. You’re stepping off a pirate ship and furrowing your brow at me about danger — doesn’t that strike you as funny?”
Wei Lai laughed, then after a pause said: “You’re following me, and I lead you somewhere genuinely dangerous — will you blame me?”
Cen Jin said: “Following you wasn’t something I said lightly — it was my decision. If something really does go wrong, willing to bet, willing to bear the loss. Blaming only you for it would be unfair.”
Wei Lai smiled.
She was a genuinely good travelling companion. How had he ever found her wanting, back at the start, just because she liked sleeping in the car?
He took her hand and said: “Let’s go.”
Cen Jin let herself be led, and made a great many demands.
“If we pass a market, you owe me new clothes — I’ve run out of things to wear.”
“Alright.”
“Buy me a pair of shoes too. Sandals are no good for walking.”
“Alright.”
“Buy me a lip colour…”
Wei Lai glanced at her.
She immediately added: “Some shades you simply can’t kiss into existence — like wine red, for instance…”
“Maybe if I kiss you drunk it works? And you’re not allowed to say get out of here.”
——
Wei Lai stopped abruptly.
He crouched down, frowning as he studied the dense, disordered tyre tracks in the muddy ground. He reached out and pinched a bit of the mud at the track’s edge — soft, waterlogged, clearly very recent.
By rights this place should be fairly remote. How had so many vehicles appeared here all at once?
Cen Jin was about to ask something, but Wei Lai raised a hand to signal silence, pressed both palms to the ground, and put his ear down to listen.
The next second he rose quickly: “There are vehicles. Whoever it is, find somewhere to hide first.”
He looked in every direction and silently cursed.
Shrubs, tall trees, muddy ground — nowhere to take cover.
In just that brief moment, the sound of engines had become audible. An open-top black jeep came racing down the slope, and there was a person in the cargo bed wearing a red vest, rifle raised and braced, as though taking aim at something.
At the same time, sounds reached them from behind. He turned — far in the distance, another one, also an open-top off-road, driven even more aggressively, with great plumes of mud spray erupting from the rear of the vehicle.
Cen Jin gave a small smile and said: “Let’s not run — we can’t outrun a car anyway, and running would only look bad.”
Wei Lai pulled her close to his side and quickly opened the luggage bag. He pushed the Desert Eagle down into the mud pooled at his feet; the dagger he handed to Cen Jin and she tucked it into the folds of her draping cloth. He spoke low and quickly: “Watch my eyes. When the time comes I’ll direct you.”
The two vehicles drew close, both swerving sharply at the same time, their rear ends swinging in an arc, inertia undiminished, circling the two of them before gradually coming to a stop.
Wei Lai smiled, slowly raising both hands to show he posed no threat.
Cen Jin suddenly said in a low voice: “Wei Lai — if something very bad happens, kill me first. I have never been subject to humiliation.”
Wei Lai gave nothing away outwardly, his gaze shifting from one vehicle to the other.
Three people. Three guns.
He answered her quietly: “Don’t you trust me to handle three of them on my own?”
The one in camouflage leaned out and looked Wei Lai over from head to toe with great thoroughness: “Hey — so you’re the one they call Christmas Tree?”
——