PORT HARCOURT, NIGERIA
WEDNESDAY, 5:25 P.M. WEST AFRICA TIME (12:25 P.M. EST)
Huan was dying to get out. He’d been inside the compound walls for more than a hundred days straight and was feeling claustrophobic. Company rules dictated that all senior employees stay on campus unless escorted by an armed security detail. Many of the engineers got out regularly, Huan knew. They inspected the pipeline, visited with their local counterparts, and occasionally stopped at a restaurant for grilled meats and a cold beer. Sometimes they even met local women.
But not Huan. As the company’s senior on-site account manager, his job was to stay in his office and oversee the money. He paid the salaries of local workers. He procured food, drinking water, and whatever else the teams needed to keep producing in the heat of tropical Nigeria. He also ensured that cash payments were made on time to ensure the safety of his colleagues and the continued flow of oil. This all meant staying put. Staying inside the walls. The most exercise Huan had gotten for the past three months was a morning routine of tai chi and an occasional ride on his bicycle around the dirt path just inside the compound perimeter.
But today Huan needed to be free. The office felt like a prison cell. He needed to breathe the air on the other side of the walls, out in the open, just for a few minutes. That had worked in Venezuela, Turkey, and Algeria. Why not Nigeria?
Huan locked his office door and grabbed his bicycle. He rode around the usual path, stopping at the main security gate to light a cigarette. The security guards barely noticed him. They also didn’t notice Huan and his bicycle slip behind a departing supply truck and out the gate.
Once on the other side, Huan felt a surge of adrenaline. He stood up high on the pedals and raced the bike like an excited schoolboy along the road into town, a cigarette dangling from his lips. As soon as he was far out of sight of the compound gate and confident he’d gotten away cleanly, he slowed his pace to take in his surroundings. The colors were brighter and the sounds sharper than he remembered. He passed hawkers’ stalls selling green fruits and rainbow mounds of used clothes, a crowded petrol station, a buzzing taxi stand, a bright yellow-and-red Mr. Bigg’s fast-food restaurant.
An Asian man on a bicycle in the middle of town might have turned heads ten years ago. But the presence of so many Chinese in the country lately had transformed him into just another part of the new Nigeria. While Huan was trying to absorb everything around him, to enjoy his brief moment of freedom, none of the locals paid him much attention.
Except one boy on a cheap motorbike who had followed Huan from the gate.
After twenty minutes the accounts manager decided it was time to head back. He pulled off the busy main road and down a residential street. As he did, the motorcycle cut him off.
“Hello, Chinaman,” said the boy, his narrowed yellow eyes projecting menace.
“What you want?” Huan scowled.
“Where you going, Chinaman?” the boy asked, stepping off his battered Jincheng two-stroke.
Huan tried to pedal away, but the boy grabbed his handlebars.
“I say, where you going, eh?” the boy huffed.
“What you want?” Huan repeated. “No trouble from me.”
“No wahala, Chinaman.” The boy pulled a pistol from his waistband and pointed it at Huan’s chest.
“No money! No money!” Huan shouted, holding up his hands and letting his cigarette fall to the ground.
“No robbery, eh,” the boy laughed. “I work for Oga.”
“Oga?” Huan lowered his arms and bent down to pick up the smoking cigarette and put it back between his lips. “Which Oga?”
“The big one. The boss man,” he said, waving the pistol.
“I already pay Oga. Every month.”
“You pay?”
“I pay! I pay! You call Oga. He tell you I pay already. That’s the deal. We pay. No one bother us. You keep the company safe.”
“You have cigarette?” the boy asked, with a nonchalance that made Huan nervous.
Huan pulled a packet of imported Chinese smokes from his pocket and tossed it to the boy. “Take it. No gun!” he pleaded. “We have a deal.”
“I know you pay,” said the boy. “Oga tell me. Oga send me to find you, eh.”
“What?”
“Someone else pay more.”
“What?” Huan winced. “Who pay more?”
Pop, pop, pop. Three bullets fired from the gun burst into the Chinese man’s stomach. Huan crumpled to the ground, bleeding from the holes in his gut.
“You pay. Someone else pay more, eh.”