Benjamin calmly closed the doors of his private study, leaning his back against the wood and letting out a long exhale.
For the past forty-five minutes, instead of cowering before General Mbeki's threats or submitting to the British Ambassador's colonial demands, Benjamin had weaponized the most terrifying force known to the modern world: absolute bureaucratic boredom.
He had confidently informed the two conspirators that while he was entirely willing to sign the Emergency Stability Act, international law dictated that a full audit of the nation's export-import ledgers had to be conducted first. He had spent half an hour loudly discussing the fluctuating prices of rubber exports, the import tariffs on British manufactured tractors, and the legal ramifications of foreign natural gas investments.
By the time Benjamin had finished his improvised lecture on macroeconomic theory, Ambassador Sterling had looked like he was suffering from a migraine, and General Mbeki had looked ready to shoot himself just to escape the conversation.
They had retreated, granting Benjamin a temporary twenty-four-hour grace period to "prepare the paperwork."
It was a total bluff, but it had bought him exactly what he needed: time.
Turning away from the door, Benjamin found himself staring down the barrels of two extremely wide-eyed stares.
Standing in the center of the dimly lit study were Kofi, the perpetually terrified caretaker, and Captain Elias, the young, fiercely loyal commander of the remaining Presidential Guard.
Elias was tightly gripping a worn-out assault rifle, his posture stiff, while Kofi looked as though he had just witnessed a man walk on water.
The silence in the room was deafening. Benjamin knew exactly what they were thinking. They had expected the young, fragile President to either be carried out of that drawing-room in a body bag or weeping as a puppet dictator.
Instead, he had walked out with his chin held high, leaving the two most dangerous men in the country utterly baffled.
"Mr. President," Captain Elias finally spoke. "General Mbeki's men are standing down. The armored vehicles are still parked on the front lawn, but the turret cannons have been lowered. You... you made the General back off."
"I merely reminded them that ruling a country requires a functioning economy, Elias," Benjamin stated plainly, walking over to his father's desk and taking a seat.
He did not want to leave them in the dark. A leader who hid his intelligence behind a veil of mystery was a leader who bred distrust. Benjamin needed these men to know exactly how competent he was.
"You must be guided by your great father's spirit!" Kofi gasped, dropping to his knees.
"The ancestors have granted you the strength of a lion!"
Benjamin sighed, immediately shutting down the mystical nonsense. He refused to let his survival be credited to ghosts.
"Get up, Kofi. There are no ghosts in this room, only cold, hard geopolitical facts," Benjamin said.
"General Mbeki is a warlord, but he is a greedy one. He wants money. Ambassador Sterling wants cheap raw materials for his empire. If Mbeki shoots me, the international markets panic, the British lose their favorable trade agreements, and foreign investors pull their money out of the capital. I simply reminded them that a dead President makes for bad business..."
Elias looked at Benjamin with a newfound, burning respect. The young captain had grown up in the military academies, surrounded by brute force and tribal politics. He had never heard anyone dissect the motivations of a foreign superpower so effortlessly.
"But sir, they will not wait forever," Elias warned, stepping closer to the desk. "Mbeki still controls the capital's garrison. His men are armed with the best weapons the British could smuggle in. If you do not sign that treaty by tomorrow, he will use those armored vehicles to tear this palace down."
Benjamin nodded slowly. He knew the economic bluff was a temporary shield.
In 1968, words only mattered if you had the firepower to back them up. Right now, the Republic of Zambura was a playground for proxy wars. If Benjamin wanted to secure the undiscovered oil beneath the western deserts, he needed an army that answered only to him.
"Captain Elias, I need an honest assessment of our military assets," Benjamin commanded, folding his hands on the desk.
"I do not care about Mbeki's men. How many men in the Presidential Guard can you absolutely trust?"
Elias straightened his spine. "Two hundred men, sir. We are stationed inside the palace walls. We will die for you."
"I don't need you to die for me... I need you to kill for the Republic." Benjamin corrected him sharply. "What is the state of your armory? If those armored vehicles breach the gates, can we stop them?"
The confident spark in Elias's eyes suddenly dimmed. The captain looked down at the floor.
"That is the problem, Mr. President," Elias admitted. "We are carrying old, bolt-action rifles from the Second World War. Mbeki controls the national armory. We have no modern assault rifles. We have no heavy machine guns. And we certainly have nothing that can pierce the armor of a British light tank. If they push forward, we will be slaughtered."
Benjamin rubbed his temples, feeling a headache creeping back into his skull. He scanned his vast knowledge of Cold War history, searching for a loophole in the global arms trade of the late sixties.
"What about the Soviet shipments?" Benjamin asked suddenly, his eyes snapping up to meet Elias's.
Elias blinked, entirely thrown off by the question. "Sir?"
"Six months ago, the Soviet Union attempted to court my father's favor," Benjamin explained, reciting the historical timeline from his memory. "They wanted a friendly port on the western coast. To sweeten the deal, they secretly docked a freighter in the dead of night and offloaded a 'gift' of military surplus. My father was a pacifist. He rejected the Soviet alliance, but the weapons were already here. Where are they?"
Kofi gasped, stepping forward. "The sealed warehouses at the old docks! Your father ordered them locked away and hidden. He did not want to provoke the West by using communist weapons!"
Benjamin smiled."My father was a good man, but a terrible pragmatist. In this world, an assault rifle does not have a political ideology. It only matters who is pulling the trigger."
"Mr. President," Elias said, his voice rising with sudden excitement. "If those crates contain what I think they contain..."
"They contain exactly what we need, Captain," Benjamin interrupted, leaning forward.
"There should be hundreds of modern AK-47 assault rifles and, more importantly, a stockpile of RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenades. One loyal man with an RPG-7 on the palace roof can turn Mbeki's armored vehicles into burning scrap metal before they ever reach the front steps."
The atmosphere in the room completely shifted. Elias stood taller, his hand practically twitching toward the door as if he wanted to run to the docks right that very second.
However, before Benjamin could give the order to mobilize, the doors burst open.
Another guard, sweating profusely, rushed into the room.
"Captain! Mr. President!" the guard panted. "General Mbeki has officially locked down the perimeter! He used a megaphone to announce to the public that the armored vehicles are here to 'protect' the President from the student protests. No one is allowed in or out of the estate without the General's express written permission!"
Elias cursed under his breath, slamming his fist onto a nearby bookshelf. "He is boxing us in. He knows that if he completely cuts off the palace, our supplies will run out. He is trying to starve us out before the twenty-four hours are up."
"We can still sneak a small team out through the servant tunnels, sir," Elias suggested quickly, turning back to Benjamin.
"I can take ten men, slip past the perimeter, and secure the Soviet weapons from the docks. But..." The captain hesitated, biting his lip.
"But what, Elias? Speak plainly," Benjamin demanded.
"But we cannot just carry crates of RPG-7s and assault rifles back through the city streets on our backs," Elias explained, frustration evident in his voice.
"We need heavy trucks to move the armaments from the docks to the palace secretly. And the palace motor pool is completely dry."
Benjamin frowned. "Dry? What do you mean?"
"I mean there is no fuel, sir," Elias said grimly. "The military council cut our rationing lines last week. The gas tanks in our transport trucks are completely empty. And even if we could find fuel in the civilian markets..."
"We have no money to buy it," Kofi finished quietly. "We do not have a single dollar, pound, or local coin to our name."
Benjamin stared at the two men.
He knew there were billions of dollars worth of black gold resting quietly beneath the deserts of Zambura. He was sitting on top of an economic empire. Yet, in this exact moment, the government was so incredibly broke they couldn't even afford the gas needed to go pick up the weapons required to save their own lives.
Benjamin let out a loud laugh. Elias and Kofi stared at him, genuinely wondering if the stress had finally broken the young man's mind.
"Oh, the absolute irony," Benjamin chuckled, shaking his head. "Alright, gentlemen. Since we are completely broke, we are going to have to do this the old-fashioned way."
"The old-fashioned way, sir?" Elias asked nervously.
"Yes, Captain," Benjamin grinned, walking around the deskr. "If we cannot buy the gasoline, we are just going to have to steal it from the British."