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Cuba here. There’s ways to handle this properly. What we do is speak to Jill –“
    “No, Gary!”
    “Just listen for a minute, will ye?”
    Ewan nodded and fell huffily silent with his arms crossed tightly. Gary continued explaining.
    “As I said, what we do is speak to Jill. Do a wee bit of negotiating with her. Let her know what we have, which gives her the heads up on it – i.e., the fuckin’ exclusive. Then we release it to one or two of the major Web Leaks sites to publish it simultaneously and at the same time Jill gets the scoop on it in before the online tabloids get a sniff. Bingo, we get paid!”
    Ewan remained unconvinced.
    “Yeah, well, I mean to say – it’s not exactly a major exclusive. I admit it is a fairly large blunder by this Ari guy. But what’s your headline. Astronomer puts telescope to blind eye! I mean, c’mon Gaz, big wow!”
    Gary dismissed this with a flurry of his hands quickly crossing over each other.
    “Naw, naw, Ewan, ye’re missing the point. Your pal Jill can make more capital out of this than that. Here we have an Israeli scientist in cahoots with the Yanks, sitting on the doorstep of the League of Islam, or whatever they’re called – “
    “The League of Islamic Nations or just call it the LOIN.”
    “Right, Ewan, right. So as ah said, Israeli scientist – doorstep – LOIN. What does he do? He accidentally punches in a few wrong numbers and makes a complete arse of it. Okay?”
    Ewan was still puzzled and looked quizzically at Gary who was now in top gear with his idea to make a little bit of cash.
    “Here’s the story. Put your friend Ari in a US backed Israeli Nuclear Defence Establishment. Hear me out here, Ewan. Poor old Ari is sitting twiddling with his tadger while he just happens to be inadvertently punching in a few wrong numbers. What happens next?”
    Ewan groaned once more his head going into his hands.
    “Yeah, Gary, what happens?”
    “Poor old Ari only goes and fires 4 or 5 nukes at Iran and Iraq. He gives the old LOIN the chop. Get it, Ewan, the loin chop, ha, ha, ha!”
    Ewan shook his head as Gary continued to laugh at his own joke.
    “Look, Gary, I don’t think this is enough for Jill to make anything of.”
    “Course it is. She’ll make mincemeat of a story like this. Just think what she can say. If the Yanks can’t trust the Israelis with a fuckin’ telescope, how are they gonna trust the Yids with a whole fuckin’ nuclear arsenal!”
    “I need to think about this, Gaz. There might be something there for Jill and the Leaks sites but I still need time to think it through a bit. I mean there might be more capital in it if I could actually see the two minutes and eleven seconds of bum footage. See what our pal Ari actually did record. But -?”
    “But – but what?”
    “Well we don’t actually have those shots from the Nimrod, do we?”
    “Who doesn’t actually have the shots?”
    “Don’t tell me?”
    Gary gloated triumphantly.
    “Yep, good old helpful Ari tagged a hyperlink of the spoiled footage to his email. Given that the rest of his colleagues are more interested in Mekong 123 or whatever you call it, you might actually be the only person on the planet who actually wants to see it.”
    Ewan was now excited about Gary’s find.
    “Can you download it on to a memory stick for me? And don’t do anything about Jill until I’ve looked at it!”
    “Consider it done, old pal. Still want that pint down at Brodie’s?”
    “I thought you’d never ask. And by the way, Gary, it’s M-KON543 and it’s one of the largest galaxies ever found by man. It would blow us all away just to imagine its size even in comparison to our own galaxy. It could eat the Milky Way for breakfast and still feel hungry.”

Chapter 3
    Earthdate 10:02 Monday February 3, 2081 IST
    I t was unusually warm outside for an early Monday morning in February and Tel Aviv was already hitting 25 Celsius and rising. The air-con unit in the meeting room was frazzled