"Your Excellency Msiri, this is the payment from our East African government. You may count it." Merke said.
"Mm." Msiri gave the two Black men beside him a look.
To Msiri, no amount of polite niceties could compare to profit. He directly had his men begin counting the firearms East Africa had provided.
The two native officials began carefully counting the crates one by one. It was truly no easy feat for the Yeke Kingdom, where the average man had barely graduated from prenatal education, to scrape together two people who knew even a little arithmetic.
Before long.
"Your Majesty, not one is missing," the two Yeke Kingdom native officials said.
Yet Msiri was not reassured. He went to one crate, took out a rifle, and inspected it carefully in his hands before spot-checking several more crates.
"Mr. Merke, may I test-fire one?" Msiri asked.
"Of course. That is your right," Merke said.
Msiri skillfully loaded ammunition into a rifle, then aimed at a large tree in the distance and pulled the trigger. With a bang, a hole appeared in the tree.
Only then did Msiri reveal a satisfied smile. "You have done well! I am very satisfied with this deal."
"Naturally. Our East African government values good faith as well. We would never use such junk to deceive you, my friend," Merke said.
Though that was what Merke said, he thought otherwise. This batch of guns consisted of defective goods that East Africa had repaired. They could still be used normally, but in the East African colony, they would definitely have been considered junk.
East Africa had at least a hundred thousand firearms, most of them old rifles phased out from Europe. They had plenty of faults, and some developed all sorts of problems after only a few uses.