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“Sam, I believe you deserve to hear this but I am Israeli and my heart will always be Israel’s first. I will deny it all.”

Sam just nodded his head as he walked along beside her.

“The day I left you, I saw a ghost. I was not joking I did see a ghost. It was the ghost of my dead husband. A man I loved with all my heart. My son’s father.”

Sam nodded.

“But of course there are no such things as ghosts. I saw my husband that day. He was driving a minivan that was taking the President’s advisers away.”

Sam instantly liked the guy, knowing exactly what she meant by ‘away’.

“Something had always bothered me. When I first discovered the nuclear weapon plot, I saw something I recognized in the terrorist called The Sheikh.”

Sam nodded for her to go on.

“I recognized his eyes. They were my husband’s eyes. My husband is The Sheikh.”

“Your husband’s a Palestinian terrorist, but wait…”

“Exactly, a Palestinian terrorist would not have killed people for Ben!” Rebecca could see the confusion in Sam’s face.

Sam looked around at the infrastructure. He thought back to New Tel Aviv, the talk of the man on the plane of the new port. What he could see was years of preparation and building. The Sheikh was an Israeli plant.

“But that means…”

“Yes, every bit of this has been planned, even down to the original nuclear explosion which was actually a neutron bomb, not a nuclear bomb. Neutron bombs let off a large amount of radiation but it disappears almost immediately. Within forty-eight hours, the land was safe and construction was underway.”

Rebecca slowly turned round, her arms outstretched. “I give you Project Ararat!”

Sam fell to the sand. The whole world had been fooled.

“That day I left with Ben, it all became clear. I challenged him and he couldn’t deny it. He told me the plan had been drawn up many years earlier and the attack four years ago that killed all our children, including my Josh, was the trigger. Israel was not safe for her people and never would be. Enough was enough.”

“Jesus,” said Sam, still struggling to comprehend the enormity of it all.

“For the next two years or so, we’ll play the martyrs. Nobody will challenge our right to be here after being chased from our old land. After then, we’ll drop the covers and no-one will think anything of a new building here or there. It’ll be old news and let’s face it, our guys control most media outlets anyway. People will believe what we tell them. They’ll never know we orchestrated the whole thing, they’ll never know we gave the Palestinians the nuclear bombs that they chased us away with!”

“You gave them the nukes!” exclaimed Sam angrily.

“Every bit of what has happened since the attack four years ago has been part of Ararat!”

Sam shook his head, “I can’t believe you gave them five nuclear weapons, what in the hell were they thinking.”

“That they wouldn’t work, well at least they weren’t supposed to but Deif must have smelled a rat. He got a Russian nuclear scientist to re-engineer them. They would have worked better than ever.”

“Jesus Christ!” the scale of the deception and Ararat was mind blowing.

“So we didn’t get defeated, we have what we wanted. Peace!”

Sam suddenly realized. “What about your husband?”

Rebecca took his hand. “I met with him. He chose his country over me and his son many years ago and I realized I still only love one man. I know you may still have some grieving to do but I just want you to know that I’m here and waiting!”

Sam sat speechless. Before he could respond, Rebecca added with a smile,

“Just don’t take too long about it, I’m expecting your baby.”