Chapter Fourteen: Duel in the Desert (2)
Nan Bei asked Cheng Muyang where his next stop would be. Cheng Muyang was holding her hand, gently kissing her palm, making it tingle and go numb.
“Nowhere. I’m staying right here, in Al-Ahsa.” He looked up, his amber eyes dangerously alluring. “This is a very interesting game. A man who believes in Buddhism, on the land of Allah, is going to make the followers of God suffer a crushing defeat.”
After saying this, he reached out and put a black veil over her face.
“When the sun sets, I’ll take you to see our ‘Pagoda.’”
The city they were in, Al-Ahsa, was home to the world’s largest Ghawar oil field. And the one responsible for Cheng Muyang’s food and daily needs here was not an individual, but the world’s largest oil company, Saudi Aramco.
When Bodongha learned of this, he laughed as he marveled to Nan Bei that Cheng Muyang really was a very qualified “businessman.”
However, Bodongha told Nan Bei, “I don’t know what Cheng Muyang is trying to do.”
“He hasn’t told me,” Nan Bei said after thinking for a moment. “Perhaps he has already finished everything without us knowing.”
Bodongha laughed. “With the relationship between you and him, I’m not worried about anything. A person like Cheng Muyang, as long as you don’t make an enemy of him, anything he does should be very interesting.”
It was very interesting.
She remembered when they reunited in Taizhou, when Cheng Muyang had taken her to see the underwater ancient city in Qiandao Lake. How, at the bottom of the pitch-black, still water, he had surprised her with a thousand-year-old ancient city.
He could always catch people off guard, yet somehow he never felt dangerous.
Perhaps he was only not dangerous to her.
Those towering rocks that seemed close enough to touch were farther away than she had imagined.
In the evening, after Cheng Muyang had undergone a medical examination, he drove the car himself and took her into the desert. Through the car window, she could see free-roaming camels in the distance, dragging long black shadows as they ambled along.
The car moved slowly across the desert. Cheng Muyang drove very slowly, allowing her to take in the desert scenery.
“Beibei?”
“Hmm?”
She turned to look at him.
He had one hand on the steering wheel and was holding a ring in the other. “Give me your hand.”
Nan Bei was both amused and exasperated.
Still, she obediently held out her hand and watched him slip an antique ruby ring onto her ring finger. “How many years old is this ring?” It looked very medieval.
But she had never been interested in studying jewelry. She only felt that it must have a story.
“I don’t know. Probably very old. I only heard that all the women who had owned it were very beautiful and had happy marriages, so I kept it, intending to give it to you.”
She murmured, “Mm,” then raised her hand and examined the ring carefully.
Then she heard Cheng Muyang say, “There’s something I’ve always wanted to tell you. The thing I regret most in this life is leaving you alone in the Philippines and leaving the estate first. After that, did you suffer a lot?”
“A little.” Nan Bei loved the ring dearly. “It’s just that sometimes, when I think back on it, I’m a little frightened. If things had taken any longer, perhaps we wouldn’t have been able to save Baobao.”
Cheng Muyang glanced at her.
As if sensing it, Nan Bei turned her head and glanced at him too.
She admitted that whether she had been beside Nan Huai, at the Shen family’s home, or even in Belgium, she had never encountered a life-and-death crisis like the one in the Philippines. Cheng Muyang had made all the arrangements very well. It was just that the CIA was too pervasive, and the Philippines was never a place that belonged to him or to her. Any accident there could have been fatal.
“The thing I regret most in this life was also in the Philippines, when I said those things to Du.” Nan Bei touched his shoulder, remembering the scene she had just witnessed of him receiving an intramuscular injection. “If I had known you were next door then, I absolutely wouldn’t have said those things. Cheng Muyang, were you angry? Were you furious at the time?”
“Not angry.” His voice carried a smile as he told her, “I lost my reason. And I lost it completely.”
Indeed, completely.
So he must have been hurt very badly.
Nan Bei moved closer to him and slipped her arms around his neck. The instant he turned back, she lightly brushed her lips against his. Just as Cheng Muyang was about to hold the back of her neck and deepen the kiss, she laughed and pulled away.
“Why isn’t there anyone on this road?”
“There aren’t many people here. The oil company’s people knew I was bringing my wife, so they temporarily closed this road. It’s safer that way.”
Nan Bei gave a little huff and muttered, “You really say that quite naturally.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” She waved her hand. “Of all the people in the world, you must be the one who finds it easiest to have a wife.”
“But I’m the father who has it hardest in this world.” He smiled and said quietly, “When is your brother planning to give my daughter back to me? Should I send him a few women from Moscow and have him father a few more children, in exchange for getting my daughter back?”
Nan Bei looked at him, amused. “I thought you didn’t care.”
He did not immediately refute her. Instead, he suddenly asked, “Have you heard the saying, ‘Only by taking the greater and forsaking the lesser can one prevail’?”
She laughed. “I have. It’s from Continuation of the Principles of Go.”
She remembered that on the gambling ship, she and Cheng Muyang had even set up Shi Xiangxia’s “Ten Games of Danghu.”
So it was not strange that Cheng Muyang could recite this line. What was strange was what he meant by saying it.
Seeing her puzzled expression, Cheng Muyang suddenly laughed.
“As for me, I just want to let Nan Huai lower his guard first,” he said quietly, his expression like that of a crafty old fox. “Baobao’s mother has already gone back to Moscow with me. Do you think Baobao will still stay in Belgium?”
Now that was truly “taking the greater and forsaking the lesser.”
“Devious.” Nan Bei could not help laughing. “Cheng Muyang, you’re really devious.”
As they approached that stretch of rocky hills, she realized that it looked a lot like Yixiantian at Mount Emei in China. Except that Mount Emei had flowing water and ancient trees reaching into the sky, while here there was nothing but yellow sand. Cheng Muyang accompanied her as they looked around, and the two of them climbed all the way from beneath the split rock walls to the mountaintop. It could hardly be called beautiful scenery. There was simply some vegetation stretching into the distance, a very pure green.
“They’re date palms.” Cheng Muyang wrapped his arms around her waist from behind. “They’re a specialty of these desert kingdoms. They call them a national treasure. There are more than ten thousand mu of them over there, a date-palm grove exclusively for the Saudi Crown Prince.”
Looking at the date palms, Nan Bei thought of the many wondrous plants found in Yunnan alone.
In this water-starved desert country, only plants like these could thrive.
“God really is fair,” Nan Bei said. “He gave the people here nothing but desert, yet buried the best oil underground. You said that grove of date palms belongs to the Crown Prince?”
Cheng Muyang gave a quiet “Mm.”
“I heard that Al-Ahsa has the largest oil field in all of Saudi Arabia, but the factions here are at odds with the ruling royal family?”
“More or less. So the royal family planting a date-palm grove here is also a way of showing their sincerity,” he said. “Tomorrow, the Saudi princess’s spokesperson will represent the princess in opening the World Technology Summit here.”
“A technology summit?”
“Yes.” Cheng Muyang smiled. “Saudi Arabia wants to build the best technology university in the world next year, hire the best professors, and recruit the best students. So these past few years, they’ve held this kind of technology forum every year to attract talent and promote it at the same time.”
Nan Bei was curious about why he was paying attention to something like this.
“Don’t tell me you only want to be a philanthropist, and now you want to become a university professor too?” She leaned back, resting her head against his shoulder. “Now that you mention it, I remember. You were a top student in physics.”
Back when they studied in Belgium, both of them had been in the Faculty of Science.
Whenever people talked about the name Cheng Mu, they were invariably full of admiration. He was a man of exceptionally high intelligence. Even when Shen Jiaming had first described Cheng Muyang to her, those had been the terms he used. But Nan Bei simply could not imagine what Cheng Muyang would look like doing scientific research. Studying the atomic bomb, perhaps?
“This is the only major international event in Saudi Arabia this month. There will be many foreign scholars and researchers.” Cheng Muyang curled a finger and flicked her forehead. “It’s also the best way to send ‘that person’ away. With so many people entering and leaving the country, there will be special authorization from the King. It’s the CIA’s best opportunity.”
“You keep saying ‘that person’ is especially difficult to find. Is there really no information on them?”
“There’s no visual record of them at all, because they’re a woman.”
“A woman?”
Nan Bei suddenly understood.
No wonder. In this country, apart from foreigners, all the women looked exactly the same, from their clothing to the way they dressed. Even if there were slight differences around their eyes, it would still be difficult to tell them apart at first glance.
Besides, this was a country where photography was prohibited.
Especially photographing women.
So finding complete close-up visual records of her was practically harder than reaching the heavens.
But since Cheng Muyang had dared to come here, dared to enter Saudi Arabia under the name of an “international fugitive,” he had certainly already laid out an inescapable net. Nan Bei’s faith in him was absolutely no different from the faith she had in Nan Huai.
As long as a problem arose, there would always be a way to solve it.
That evening, when the two returned to the hotel, Nan Bei finally met the legendary “Ning Hao” while accompanying Cheng Muyang at dinner.
“Oh... the legendary woman.” Ning Hao laughed as he lifted the brim of his hat and looked at Nan Bei. “A pleasure, a pleasure. I really admire women who are good fighters, especially one who can make our young boss risk his life.”
She remembered very clearly that when they had been trapped on the deserted island, it had been this very voice that had cheerfully informed Cheng Muyang of one piece of bad news after another, while also mocking his romantic gesture of jumping into the sea with a woman in his arms.
So she was not surprised by anything Ning Hao said.
Ning Hao rambled on for a couple more sentences before finally sitting down and beginning to show Cheng Muyang various pieces of information.
“That day, we transported an entire truckload of surface-to-air missiles near the airport and actually stopped them.” Ning Hao pointed to a middle-aged blond man and the men and women around him. The men were all dressed in suits, while the two women were covered in black robes and veils. “A team from the second group followed them. After the surface-to-air missiles were discovered, the airport went on full alert, and their flight was delayed for two hours. I had just managed to track down the passports of everyone in the group when they gave up boarding.”
Giving up boarding meant returning to a state of lying low.
What a pity.
The passports those people carried could be changed at any time. Once they left the airport, it would be easy for them to change their identities and appearances. If they wanted to investigate them again, they would have to start from scratch. Cheng Muyang stood up and walked to the other side of the room, looking outside as he thought about something.
Nan Bei looked at the frozen image on the screen and kept feeling that something was strange. “Can you enlarge it?”
Ning Hao enlarged it for her.
As if she had noticed something, she pointed to a corner, and Ning Hao immediately understood, continuing to enlarge the details.
Nan Bei paused slightly, then called Cheng Muyang over. Pointing at that corner, she asked him, “Do you think he came this time as an enemy, or as a friend?” Cheng Muyang’s hand naturally settled on her shoulder, his fingers gently moving back and forth, caressing her through the fabric of her clothes. After a while, he finally laughed as though he found it very interesting. “I don’t know. It’s really hard to say.”
A very young man, with an unmistakably scholarly air between his brows. Nan Bei remembered that he was several years younger than her.
She had not expected this person to be alone, standing there with a small suitcase beside him, his head lowered as though he were wiping the glasses in his hand.
“He definitely didn’t come to Saudi Arabia to collect Wu songs,” Nan Bei said softly.
She really had not expected it to be Zhousheng Chen.
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