The main conference room doors closed at half past six.
No one recorded the time. But everyone present would remember it. The way the mahogany door shut with a sound too heavy for wood.
Inside, twenty-three people sat around the long table. Dark green uniforms from the army. White uniforms from the navy. Black suits from civilian ministers barely two months into their appointments. Porcelain ashtrays placed at every corner of the table, though no one had lit a cigarette yet.
Ricardo Guerrero sat at the head. To his right, old Admiral Sebastián Ortega in his stiff white uniform. To his left, Carlos Mendez with an unreadable expression, his fingers wrapped around a pen.
"Read it," Ricardo said.
Admiral Sebastián stood. His voice was hoarse, like a man just woken from sleep. "At five this morning, Brittonian warships—two destroyer-class vessels—were detected at coordinates fourteen degrees thirty-two minutes north latitude, sixty-one degrees five minutes west longitude. Distance from territorial waters: twelve nautical miles. They haven't entered, but—" he paused, his eyes shifting to Ricardo, "—they've been holding position with engines off since six."
"Engines off?" The Foreign Minister, a civilian named Julián with round glasses and thinning hair, looked up. "That's… unusual."
"That's provocation," cut in Colonel Adrián from military intelligence. His voice was sharp, deliberate. He hadn't sat down since entering. "They want us to react. They want us to panic, send our ships out, give them an excuse to—"
"We have no ships to send," Admiral Sebastián said. There was no shame in his voice. Just fact. "Our three old patrol boats are under repair. Assuming spare parts arrive next month."
Silence.
Someone at the end of the table—the Trade Minister—spoke softly. "So we have nothing to fight with?"
No one answered.
Carlos Mendez set his pen down on the table. A small sound, but everyone heard it.
"They won't shoot," he said. His voice was flat. "Not yet. They're just showing teeth. This is standard diplomatic pressure. They want us to know we've angered them, and they have ways to make us pay."
"We're already paying," Ricardo spoke for the first time since the meeting began. His voice was heavy. "We've lost thirteen thousand jobs. We've lost investors. We've lost market confidence. And now they send warships to make sure we know who's stronger."
He looked at each person in the room in turn. His face wasn't angry. Wasn't sad. Just tired.
"What do they want?"
Foreign Minister Julián opened the folder before him. "We've received unofficial communication from their embassy at three this morning. Nothing formal yet, but the message is clear: they're demanding suspension of Decree 47, formation of an arbitration commission, and full compensation for seized assets."
"Suspension?" Colonel Adrián scoffed. "That means cancellation. They're just using nicer words."
"And if we refuse?" Ricardo asked.
Julián exhaled. "Then they'll file a case with the international arbitration court. The process could take one to two years. During that time, our overseas assets—bank accounts, deposits, everything—will be frozen. And they'll ask their allies to do the same."
"How much overseas assets do we have?"
The Finance Minister, a thin man named Fernando who hadn't spoken all meeting, answered in a small voice. "Approximately… eighty-seven million."
Ricardo looked at him. "Pounds Sterling?"
"Pounds Sterling. That includes foreign reserves held in Brittonian and allied banks. If frozen, we'll have no funds for imports. Food, medicine, spare parts—everything will stop within weeks."
The room suddenly felt warmer.
Carlos Mendez leaned back in his chair. His eyes weren't looking at anyone. He stared at the ceiling, at the same painted angels Ricardo saw every day in his dining room.
"So we have no choice…" he said.
"We always have a choice," Ricardo cut in. But his voice lacked conviction. Like a man reciting words he no longer fully believed.
"We have three choices," Carlos continued as if uninterrupted. "First: we hold firm. We say no, continue nationalization, face the economic blockade and their warships. Within three months, maybe six, we'll run out of reserves. The people will starve. The opposition will rise. And in the end, we'll sign an agreement worse than what they're offering now."
He paused. His eyes shifted to Ricardo.
"Second: we retreat completely. Cancel the decree. Return all assets. Apologize publicly. They'll smile, shake hands, and in ten years, we'll still be raw material suppliers without a single warship to our name."
The atmosphere in the room shifted. Some officers sat straighter. Others looked down.
"And the third?" Ricardo asked. His voice was flat.
Carlos looked at him. For the first time that morning, there was something in his eyes that couldn't be read—not anger, not patience, but something deeper, older, colder.
"We negotiate. We offer them higher compensation than originally planned. We agree to arbitration. We delay full implementation of the decree for certain sectors—maybe oil, maybe mining—enough to let them feel they've won. And we buy time."
"Buy time for what?" asked Colonel Adrián.
Carlos didn't answer. He looked at Ricardo.
Ricardo looked back.
"To build warships," Ricardo said finally. His voice was low. "To make sure they can't do this again."
Carlos smiled. Not a happy smile. But a smile that said finally you understand.
"It'll take ten years, General. Maybe fifteen. But we start now. We take their compensation money, invest it in shipyards, train our engineers. And one day, when their ships come again, we won't just sit here reading telegrams."
Admiral Sebastián shook his head. "Ten years? We don't have ten years! They'll keep pressing. Every year, every month, every time we try to build something, they'll send ships again, send ultimatums again. And we'll retreat again. Forever."
"Then we make sure they have no reason to press," Carlos said. "We pay them. We give them what they want—for now. But quietly, we build. While they're busy counting compensation money, we build docks, we build steel mills, we build ships. And when those ships are ready—"
"They'll never be ready," Sebastián cut in. "You know our bureaucracy. The corruption. How—"
"Then we clean house!" Carlos's voice rose for the first time. His palm slammed the table. The coffee cup before the Trade Minister rattled, coffee spilling over open folders.
Silence.
Carlos took a breath. His hand was still on the table, fingers splayed wide, like he was trying to hold something back from exploding.
"Apologies," he said. Unclear to whom. "Apologies, Admiral. I didn't mean to—but we have no other choice. We can't win now. We have no ships, no advanced weapons, nothing to fight with. The only thing we have is time. And if we don't use it properly, we deserve to be a raw material supplier forever."
Ricardo listened to all of it. Didn't interrupt. Didn't add. Just listened, with a face that grew harder to read by the minute.
"Foreign Minister," he called finally.
Julián looked up.
"Schedule a meeting with the Brittonian embassy today. I want to know their exact numbers."
"General—"
"And prepare a negotiation team. But I'll speak to them directly."
Finance Minister Fernando raised his hand. "General, if we agree to arbitration and full compensation, it could reach…"
"How much?"
Fernando swallowed. "Two hundred million… maybe more."
Ricardo didn't move. Didn't blink.
"Two hundred million," he repeated. His voice didn't rise, didn't fall. Just flat. As if the number meant nothing.
"Two hundred million," Fernando said again. "That's half our total reserves. Maybe more if they also claim operational losses."
"Then we borrow," Carlos cut in. "There are banks in the world not too close to Brittonia. We borrow, pay them off, and repay within five years with revenue from nationalization—for sectors not touched by arbitration."
"That's assuming we still have revenue from nationalization," Fernando said. "If we agree to arbitration, they'll freeze our assets during the process. At least a year. Maybe two."
"Then we hold out for a year."
"With what?"
"With other loans."
"With mounting debt?"
"With—" Carlos stopped. His eyes went to Ricardo.
Ricardo looked at him.
And for the first time that morning, Ricardo smiled. A smile that didn't reach his eyes. A smile that made everyone in the room suddenly feel cold.
"You heard them," he said. "We have no choice. No ships. No advanced weapons. Nothing but debt and promises. And the only way out is to borrow more, promise more, and hope that one day we're strong enough not to have to do this again."
He stood. His chair scraped back, a sharp sound on the marble floor.
"So we'll do it. We'll negotiate, we'll pay, we'll retreat. But—" he pointed at Carlos, at Sebastián, at all the officers sitting in those chairs, "—we mark this day. We mark their names. We mark these numbers. And one day, when we have our own ships, when we have our own weapons, we remind them that we never forgot."
The room was silent.
Carlos Mendez was the first to stand. Followed by Admiral Sebastián. Colonel Adrián. One by one, twenty-three people rose, facing Ricardo who stood at the head of the table in his uniform without a tie, with eyes that—if anyone dared look long enough—no longer looked like those of a general who had just won a revolution.
Those were the eyes of a man who had just learned what it meant to lose.
***
Two days later, my father signed the agreement in the same room.
No press conference. No speech. Just a sheet of paper, black ink, and twenty-three signatures on different sides.
I didn't know the agreement's contents. No one told me. No one needed to tell a ten-year-old about compensation, arbitration, and warships returning to their bases with small victories in their pockets.
But I saw my father after he signed it.
He sat in his study chair, uniform still on but his tie loose, his shirt collar open one button. On the desk, beside the signed folders, was a half-empty glass of whiskey. The clock showed eleven in the morning.
I passed by the hallway. The door was open. He saw me.
"Mateo," he called. His voice was ordinary. Neither heavy nor light. Just ordinary.
I entered. I stood before his desk, waiting.
"Have you eaten?"
"Yes."
"Your mother?"
"Mother's in the garden, with Eleanor."
He nodded. His gaze shifted to the window, to the sky that was brilliantly blue without a cloud. The same sky as the day of his speech at the Plaza de la República. But now there were no flags, no tens of thousands of people, no cheers.
"Is Father alright?"
He didn't answer quickly. His hand reached for the glass, sipped, set it back. The movements were slow, like he was relearning how to hold things.
"I just did something," he said finally. His eyes were still on the window. "Something I didn't want to do. But had to."
I didn't ask what. I just waited.
"Do you know the worst feeling, son?"
"What?"
"Not anger. Not sadness." He turned to me. His eyes—under the morning light streaming through the window—looked like cracked glass that hadn't yet shattered. "Shame. Feeling small... Feeling that everything you built, everything you fought for, means nothing in front of those with greater power."
I didn't answer.
But in my head, a memory surfaced.
That face.
I'd seen that face before. In my previous life. My superior's face, my commander's, the man who ordered me to do things I didn't want to remember. After closed-door meetings, after pressure from above, after being forced to retreat by greater powers—his face would turn like that.
Tired. Humiliated. Unbearable. And behind those cracks, something grew. Not patience. Not wisdom. But something darker, something waiting to explode.
My superior had never raged after being pushed back. Instead, he grew calmer, more controlled. And in every wrinkle on his face, I could read one sentence he never spoke aloud: "One day, I'll make them pay."
I saw that same sentence in my father's face now.
And I was afraid. Not because Father would do something bad. But because I knew where that road ended.
A man humiliated, forced to retreat, watching his idealism trampled—in the end, he would look for a way out. And that way out was almost always darker than the original problem.
Even I had ended up that way…
"Father," I said.
He looked at me.
"Do you still remember what you said about a new vase?"
He blinked. Like he'd just realized someone else was in the room. "I remember."
"A new vase won't break if we keep hitting it."
He stared at me for a long time. Then, slowly, the corner of his mouth lifted. Like a man who'd just realized his son was trying to comfort him in a way he didn't quite understand.
"You're right," he said. "A new vase won't break if you hit it."
He stood, walked to the window, his back to me.
I didn't know if that was wisdom or danger growing. Perhaps there was no difference.
That night, the sky was darker than usual.