Chapter Nine: Coast of the Man-Eating Sharks (2)
“Know him?”
“No. I just thought it was strange.”
This person had once worked with Nan Huai. There was no way she could not know him.
Yet her answer just now had been almost instinctive. Should she let him know the identity of this European? She had not made up her mind yet.
The two of them were “honored guests” here, and every move they made would take place under countless watchful eyes.
Yet when it came to possessing her, he had never been restrained. Sometimes Nan Bei would even wonder whether he truly wanted her out of desire, or whether he was putting on an act, shaping himself into a Cheng family man who had fallen from power but still retained his old dissipated habits.
Whenever he was with her, he always seemed like a man consumed by an obsession.
She always watched his eyes when they were in the throes of passion, trying to guess what, exactly, he was thinking.
Nan Bei was usually very careful. While in the room, she would only watch local English-language programs to pass the time. That evening, Afaf, the woman responsible for cooking for them, suddenly brought up the waters around the nearby reef clusters.
“There are shrimp and crabs, sea anemones, and moray eels,” Afaf said. “Most importantly, there are schools of sharks there.”
She suddenly remembered. “I saw them when I came. They’re whale sharks. They don’t eat people.”
“No. Real man-eating sharks.”
Intrigued, she asked a few more questions.
Seeing how eager Nan Bei was to try it, Cheng Muyang smiled. “Go take a look.”
When Nan Bei followed Afaf to the rocky shore, someone was feeding the sharks.
It was completely unlike the reef area they had visited when they first arrived. Though the afterglow of sunset remained, there was something rather cold and harsh about the place.
Two men threw the head of a young calf down among the rocks.
Soon more than a dozen white sharks appeared. The smallest were barely a meter long. She could not see the full bodies of the larger ones, but from where they stood, they looked to be around three or four meters long. The blood-red color quickly spread outward, then soon faded into the seawater.
The men threw down some more steaks and quickly left, leaving only the two of them there. Unfortunately, the white sharks had not had their fill. Seeing that there were still people on the shore, they refused to disperse for a long time, swimming back and forth incessantly.
The white sharks’ towering dorsal fins sliced through the surface of the water. Their pairs of placid eyes concealed murderous intent, waiting at any moment to leap up and bite their prey to death.
Cheng Muyang. Nan Huai.
They both had eyes like that.
The girl Afaf, who had stayed close beside her the entire time, asked, “Thinking about something?”
She softly answered, “Mm.”
“Thinking about Cheng?”
“Yeah.” Nan Bei smiled and looked at her carefully. “You’re really beautiful. Have you ever felt that it was a shame to have to cover yourself like this since you were little?”
“I wasn’t like this since I was little,” Afaf said. “It was only after I got married that I came to believe in Allah, the Creator.”
“No wonder, hmm.” She smiled. “So it seems they deliberately chose you to keep me company?”
Afaf’s eyes curved as she smiled. “Yes. For a guest like you, an ordinary Muslim woman wouldn’t be able to keep you company.”
“For example?”
“For example, you and Cheng completely disregard our traditions and are intimate whenever and wherever you please.”
Nan Bei rested her chin on her knees, her arms wrapped around her legs. “I heard that married couples who believe in Allah aren’t allowed to see each other’s bodies?” Afaf could not help laughing. “It isn’t quite that strict, but at the very least, we cannot see the most important parts. So when my husband and I are together at night, we need to use a blanket to cover our bodies.”
Nan Bei was somewhat surprised.
She had deliberately used a more euphemistic term, not expecting Afaf to be so candid.
But she had only come to believe after marriage, following her husband’s faith, and she was still a young woman in the prime of her life, so she was not overly conservative either.
Nan Bei continued watching the sharks. She noticed that the people responsible for feeding them had left a small portion of raw beef behind, seemingly for the two of them to have some fun with. As she wondered whether she should try feeding the sharks herself, Afaf had already put on her veil.
Behind them, someone walked over.
It was the European man she had seen that day.
Nan Bei turned her head and glanced back. The man smiled. “Miss Nan Bei, it is my honor to see you again.”
He spoke Chinese. His accent was somewhat strange, but he was very fluent.
Afaf seemed to know him. She quickly walked off into the distance, giving the two of them a chance to be alone.
“Kyle.” Nan Bei crouched down, picked out a piece of beef that looked particularly appetizing, and tossed it down beneath the rocks. “How did you know I was here?” She had deliberately avoided going out these past two days, precisely because she was afraid Kyle would see her.
She had not expected him to notice her anyway.
“I heard them say that there was a Burmese woman beside Cheng Muyun, so I had a suspicion. Perhaps that woman was you.” Kyle also smiled as he bent down, accompanying her in feeding the sharks.
But when he threw his piece of meat down, a one-meter-long white shark suddenly shot out of the water, carrying a spray of waves with it.
“Shit!”
Kyle cursed under his breath and suddenly swung his fist, smashing it straight into the white shark’s eye.
She had not had time to stand up.
Seawater mixed with the smell of blood splashed all over her. She could not tell whether it was the shark’s blood or the beef’s. The little white shark had become frantic with excitement from feeding and wanted to drag the two of them into the water, but it had not expected that the people standing on the rocks would have fists as hard as iron.
Just one punch.
The little white shark had already lost its ability to attack and abruptly fell back into the sea.
Nan Bei stood up at the same time. “Why did you guess it was me?”
Kyle shrugged. “A woman, not very old, together with the Cheng family from Moscow, able to speak Burmese. When I heard that, I wondered if it might be you. And someone who’s this interested in feeding sharks sounds even more like you.” He bent down, looking at Nan Bei curiously. “But I’m very surprised. When I saw you three years ago, you said that you didn’t like leaving home.”
Nan Bei answered half truthfully, half falsely, “I’m eloping. You know, with an identity like Cheng Muyun’s, I suppose the only thing we can do is elope.”
Kyle laughed.
She stood up. “So, if you ruin my honeymoon, I’ll...” She tapped two fingers against Kyle’s chest. “Feed you to the sharks.”
She put some force into her fingers. Kyle dodged away from her with a grin. “Don’t worry, Bei. This time, my coming here has nothing to do with you, and I absolutely don’t want anything to do with you either.”
“Then why did you deliberately invite me here? What do you want?”
“Curiosity.” Kyle smiled. “Your brother is the man who saved my life, as you know.”
Nan Huai had not mentioned Kyle very often.
What she knew about him was limited to one failed mission he had undertaken in Thailand. Thailand had issued an arrest warrant for Kyle on suspicion of engaging in terrorist activities. But he was clever enough to flee to Myanmar one step ahead of them, and had asked Nan Huai to buy him ten days.
Within those ten days, the Myanmar government refused to extradite Kyle to Thailand.
Ten days later, Kyle disappeared.
The strangest thing was that Thailand never pursued the matter again. Clearly, someone had stepped in and made some kind of deal in exchange for Kyle’s life. A man like this, though he wore the skin of a European, she had no idea who he was actually working for.
The sharks disappeared from the surface of the sea before nightfall.
Nan Bei had little interest in making small talk with Kyle either. By the time she returned to the room, there was no natural light left outside the window.
After coming to the Philippines, she had discovered that it rained every day here, but it was always just a passing shower. So weather like tonight’s was rare. After the sun went down, even the moon could not be seen.
A very strange weather.
The kitchen in this room was open-plan.
She pushed open the door and entered. Cheng Muyang was enthusiastically making steaks. He held a small brush and coated the steaks with a thin layer of olive oil, but did not turn around. “Give me ten minutes.”
Perhaps it was the lighting, but the smiling profile of his face inexplicably made her feel at ease.
“Chengcheng?” She leaned against his left shoulder and, imitating the voice of the old auntie in his family, called him by his childhood name. “Don’t you think the name Chengcheng sounds very familiar?”
Cheng Muyang smiled. “Feng Chengcheng?”
“You’ve seen Shanghai Bund too?”
“I watched it when I was bored. But the old version, the one starring Zhao Yazhi.”
“Feng Chengcheng really loved Xu Wenqiang,” Nan Bei sighed with feeling. “It’s a pity there was the family feud. In the end, they still couldn’t be together.”
Once Cheng Muyang had finished frying the steaks, she, ravenous with hunger, picked up her knife and fork and cut the entire steak into a dozen or so equal-sized pieces before finally opening her mouth to eat. Seeing her do this, Cheng Muyang’s gaze softened, something rare for him.
This was her favorite way of eating.
Because she was lazy and did not like cutting as she ate, she preferred to cut all the meat first, then use her fork to send the pieces into her mouth one by one. There was something adorably lazy about eating this way.
Nan Bei held out a piece of meat from her plate to his mouth. “Speaking of which, your grandfather is also in Shanghai, and your family is involved in the underworld too. Isn’t that like a male version of Feng Chengcheng?”
Before she could finish, she lost control and laughed first.
Cheng Muyang did not seem to care. He bit down on the meat from her fork. “If I were Feng Chengcheng, and there was a conflict of interest between my family and me, who would you choose?”
Without hesitation, she looked at him. “My brother.”
“Just as expected.” Cheng Muyang was not surprised. “So I won’t let something like that happen.”
“What if it did?”
“I’d give up.”
“If you gave up, and my brother still wanted your life?”
“Then so be it.” Cheng Muyang cut another piece of steak from his own plate and fed it to her. “But before he takes my life, he’d at least have to let you spend one night with me.” His voice was, indeed, intoxicating.
Nan Bei laughed in exasperation. “You really are the kind of man who would die beneath the peony blossoms and still be a romantic ghost.”
He shrugged, neither confirming nor denying it.
Cheng Muyang did not continue the topic and casually asked about the white sharks. Nan Bei thought of the bloody scene that afternoon and suddenly realized that she had been eating the same thing as those sharks earlier in the day. Her appetite disappeared at once.
While Cheng Muyang tidied away the plates with almost domestic efficiency, she thought of Kyle.
Just as Nan Huai had said, the Nan family had no permanent friends. Even though her brother had saved Kyle’s life back then, it had only been an exchange of interests. So she did not believe that Kyle would really conceal her identity simply because of some personal bond.
“When will Oman arrive, approximately?” she finally decided to tell him the truth.
“The earliest is the day after tomorrow. At the latest, it won’t be more than four days.”
“The day after tomorrow?” Nan Bei wrapped her arms around his waist and said softly, “Remember that European we saw? He’s seen me before. He recognized me just now when I was feeding the sharks. Maybe by now, the people here already know that you’re Cheng Muyang.”
The Cheng family’s gambling ship trip was not a secret.
As long as someone recognized Nan Bei, there was a ninety percent chance they could determine that the man beside her was Cheng Muyang. After all, the two of them had disappeared from the ship at the same time, and more than ten days had passed since then. No matter how tightly information was controlled, it would eventually spread.
Cheng Muyang did not speak immediately. He simply arranged the plates and cutlery neatly, one by one.
“Will it be troublesome?” she asked him.
“Somewhat.”
“Should we leave tonight?”
“If we could leave, I would have taken you away on the first night. Ever since we entered this village, there have always been more than forty gunmen following us, forty meters away,” Cheng Muyang merely smiled. “It’s hard to just leave whenever we want.”
Nan Bei softly let out a breath.
She could not think of a good solution either.
“However, what these organizations need are weapons. Whether I’m Cheng Muyang or Cheng Muyun, as long as they hold me, they can get weapons. So even if they hate me as much as they possibly can, we won’t be in danger.” He put the last plate back in its place. “But it should not be long before there’s going to be a lot of trouble.”
Nan Bei looked at him in confusion.
First he said they would not be in danger, then he said there would soon be major trouble.
Other than these Filipinos, what other trouble could he possibly have?
“Oman told me she has already found that traitor.” Cheng Muyang picked up a clean towel and wiped the water from his hands. “Unfortunately, he got away. So once my whereabouts are exposed, while Oman and the others are hunting him down, his associates will also come after me.”
“His associates?”
Cheng Muyang answered with a quiet “Mm.” “The CIA.”
Nan Bei froze for a moment, then released her arms from around him in disbelief.
She had once suspected that the person Cheng Muyang wanted to capture was not an ordinary traitor. Otherwise, he would not have personally risked himself to draw this person out. But she had absolutely never expected that the person he was after was from the CIA.
If his attempt to seize the tellurium deposit on the gambling ship back then was likely to have offended the CIA, then now, he had already become an enemy of the CIA.
In other words, Nan Huai’s ally was Cheng Muyang’s enemy.
Too many thoughts flashed through her mind at once.
A deafening boom suddenly erupted beside her ear. The instant the explosion went off, the blast wave swept over everything. Cheng Muyang slammed her to the ground, his entire body covering hers.
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