The Last Christmas On Earth

"Stay in the office and squeeze your brains out, as soon as they tell us something new you will check on the spot," she said.

"As ordered," James replied, standing up, and in that precise moment, Cindy knocked on the office door.

"Come in," said Helen. Cindy looked out timidly at the door. "I am sorry, but the intercom was off ..."

"Oh, how distracted I am! What's going on?"

"The guy from the workshop called ..."

"Damn, I completely forgot about him. Tell him that James will be there as soon as possible."

"He said to go ahead calmly because now he doesn't have the car anymore," Cindy informed her.

"What does it mean?"

"What I just told you. Bob told me that when he went into the workshop this morning he didn't find the car, "the receptionist explained with a shrug.

"It's not possible!" Helen said, banging her fist on the table. At that precise moment, she realized she was in front of an enemy too shrewd and powerful and she had the clear impression that the strange chain of negative events would not stop before having overwhelmed them. "You hear that? And to think that you were afraid of getting bored ..." she said discouraged to James.

Episode III

In the Dead Sea

Abdul had an olive complexion, and on his wrinkled face there were a sharp nose and two small dark eyes, and under the bulky woolen robe that protected him from the heat, he must have been incredibly thin. Abdul was a bedouin and lived as a guide for tourists in search of strong emotions; he got paid so handsomely that soon he could buy camels and become a breeder, in that way he would climb to the top of the social ladder of his clan. But meanwhile, he was seated on an inflatable mattress under the shade of the cross-legged tent, intent on scrutinizing the water vapor rising from the immense surface of the Dead Sea. Apparently he was dozing, in reality, his trained senses were ready to perceive and process tiny signals in an infinitesimal time. With the wind blowing in the right direction, he would have been able to distinguish the smell of a camel almost a hundred yards away, and that was the secret to survive in such an inhospitable place, where you have to fight hunger and thirst, to watch out for the heat of the day as for the cold of the night, for friends as for enemies, for snakes and for scorpions.

Although he was extremely attached to that kind of life, with his customs and traditions, he appreciated so much modernity and technology that he never left any assignment without his inseparable sat phone and a set of spare batteries. The phone vibrated in the folds of his robe and he quickly ran his eyes along the gravelly bank of the great salt lake to make sure that Bryan had not yet emerged, then began to rummage calmly in the meanders of that wool labyrinth.

"Yes," he replied in Arabic, "like every day. I gave the animals a drink, I took up the gun and I started looking at the water ... no, he didn't want to tell me what he was looking for, he talked about a treasure ... of course, he is crazy as most of the crazy people are Westerners. He travels unarmed and has not taken the slightest precaution ... Yes, you are right, usually, those like him are too stupid or too clever, but he seems really naive to me. However, he has already scoured more than half of the lake and now it should be a matter of a few days unless the scuba tanks run out and we have to go back to As Samik once more time to let them recharge. In that case going, coming back and finishing the job, it would be a matter of staying here for about two more weeks and I wouldn't mind that much because he pays well and above all pays in advance. It is true that it is a boring job, but before now nobody had ever paid me to stay almost all day sitting without doing anything. At least, if he finds nothing and we can't steal his treasure, I will still have made good money. You know how much it costs to keep all those wives ... women are no longer as they used to be, now they watch television and want to be modern, so much for the Qur'an.

And they now realize that many hands make light work... just listen to me, my friend, we have to watch out for women!" At that moment an alarm bell sonde in his head, an unspecified sensation of danger quickly made its way. "Now I have to turn it off, I'm busy. Get ready, because depending on what comes out of that lake we will make a good joke about it!" He concluded, then he hid the phone in his robe and left the tent holding up his Kalashnikov. He made a little reconnaissance to understand what had been to make him worry; at first, he had thought he smell the exhaust of a car, but he judged impossible that someone had been so unconscious to venture up there with a motor vehicle. He climbed the highest dune and looked around, smelling in the air and listening to the wind. After a few minutes, he decided to return to the camp to prepare dinner thinking it was just a false alarm. He had just lit a fire to bake shrak bread and warm up the Mansaf when Bryan splashed out of the water with the sprint of a flying fish, spit out his snorkel and began to call him insistently. He took off his fins and threw them on the ground, then started running along the gravelly shore and immediately after to hop, because due to excitement he had even forgotten to put on his shoes and the temperature of the ground at that hour was almost fifty degrees. He went back and slipped his sneakers he had left on the shore like a slipper, then started running again towards the tent. Abdel intercepted him halfway.

"Maybe I found it," Bryan informed him enthusiastically, hopping from foot to foot in an attempt to avoid the burning ground, but he knew that surely that evening he would still have some nice blisters under his feet.

"Sahib, are you sure of it?" Abdel asked him, smoothing his thick dark beard.

"Almost sure. Prepare the ropes for the harness and bring a couple of camels to the shore, I want to finish the job before it gets dark ... soon the prayer time will start for you, isn't it?"

"Certainly Sahib, Allah doesn't care about money and treasures."

"Well, then let's get a move," Bryan urged him as he ran back to the boiling pebble beach. Although he had installed a lightning buoy he feared that if he waited too long he would risk losing the exact spot. He put on mask and fins, put the respirator in his mouth and dived. The Bedouin took the opportunity to recall his accomplices. "Get ready to intervene and don't forget to bring a few pitchers of Arak, we'll need them to celebrate!" He whispered at the phone.

Entering the workshop James stepped on an oil stain and slipped and nearly broke his head against the vertical support of the workshop's movable bridge.

"Clean and tidy as always, eh?" He shouted to the mechanic, but he didn't hear it because he had plunged into the engine compartment of a flaming red Ford Mustang. To reach him, James made a slalom of tools, cables, car parts and machinery scattered on the ground.

"Good morning!" Said the mechanic, looking at him sideways from under the hood lid.

"Hi Bob, sorry I'm late ... how are you?"

"Honestly, it could be better," he answered as he carefully lowered the rod and closed the engine compartment. Then he spat a bit of chewing tobacco on the ground, and without even wiping his dirty hands, he caught more from a golden box and put it in his mouth.

"When are you going to finish it, this train? Since I met you a long time ago, you are working on it!" James teased him, caressing the Mustang's hood.

"You know, the shoemaker always wears the worst shoes ... how about you, instead, you keep going around with the usual grinder?" He replied, and James nodded with a smile. Bob was in his sixties, he was portly and had a beard so white and thick that if it hadn't always been dirty with grease it could have been the envy of "Santa Claus". And above all, he had two huge hands, so big that even then James wondered how a man with such stubby fingers could work as a mechanic.

"So what happened last night?" Straight to the point. Bob's lips tightened in anger because he was still a long way from having bitten the bullet. "How the hell did you get your car fooled?" James insisted, rubbing salt into his wound.

"Don't make me think about it," Bob said, slamming a wrench on a workbench; he did it with such violence that a big cylinder just bored jumped and fell to the ground, and he swore because now it would be his turn to polish it again. "Among alarms and chains, pitfalls and padlocks, the only one who in theory could have managed to set foot here tonight without causing hell were me! And instead they screwed me a whole car, can you believe it? A car that didn't even get in motion, what the hell did they do to take it away? But now I'll get organized, even if this means sleeping here for the rest of my life! If only they try again, I get all the tools up their ass, from the smallest to the largest. One by one! »He concluded, banging the wrench on the counter again.

At that moment a boy with a pale and sleepy appearance shuffled in, he was so tall and thin that he looked curved and had long straight bleached hair.

" Morning Bob," he mumbled in a faint voice.

"You were late last night too, eh?" Bob scolded him. "You have to stick in your thick head that rock and roll won't give you food! Arrive late one more time and I'll send you home forever, understood?"

"Sorry boss, you're right ..."

"And don't call me "boss"," I've told you a thousand times. Come on, get to work. The overhaul of that Chevrolet has to be finished, in half an hour they'll come to pick it up and now I am busy with James, "said Bob, entering his little office. He turned on the machine to heat the coffee and James stared at it, admiring the office walls. They were plastered with calendars depicting half-naked girls posing in sexy poses and he thought with some regret that he probably would never find anything like this hidden in his son's books of Egyptology.

"How much sugar?"

"... What?"

"Come back to us, I asked you how much sugar you want."

"Two teaspoons, thanks," said James as he sat down.

The mechanic spilled the sugar in the cafes using a dispenser, then mixed his own with a screwdriver and then handed it to James.

"I'm sorry, but I used the last spoon to do a job on a Freelander," he justified himself, then wiped his mouth full of tobacco with his fingers.

"Don't worry, it's fine ... I hope that at least now the car works," James said with a shrug.

"Damn if it works ..." the mechanic replied, then took a sip of coffee.

"We'll talk about the theft later, now I want you to tell me about the Cadillac. What was so special about the car that made you call us last night so we could see it?"

Bob came to the door to check that the boy was quite distant and busy that he couldn't hear. He saw him sitting in front of the computer analyzing the smoke discharge and found him strangely still. The Chevrolet had been on for some time and was booming, the workshop was filling up with smoke and he had to run to activate the vacuum cleaner.

"Fred, you wretch!" He yelled with all his breath. The boy jumped on the chair and looked around alienated, then hurriedly turned off the car.

"It's unbelievable, he fell asleep another time! If it were not that he is the son of a dear friend of mine ... "Bob explained to James, showing him a clenched fist, then leaned over the table to get as close as possible and looked him straight in his eyes. "That car didn't belong to ordinary people, I think those two deaths were secret agents or something," he whispered.

"What makes you think so?"

"I had set to work to find the fault, I had sworn I would have found it at the cost of removing bolt after bolt. I started with the engine, it was perfect but it showed no signs of life. I put it on the bridge and started looking at it from beneath, looking for an idea, and finally, I realized what was wrong with it. That car had two mufflers but instead, that production model has only one.

I took them apart and discovered, as I had suspected, that one of the two was fake ... it was a hidden storage compartment."

"Are you serious?"

Bob nodded.

"And what did it contain?"

"What did it contain?" Bob echoed emphatically. "When I opened it, I found everything in it: fake licenses and documents headed to those two who have died, license plates, bundles of banknotes for a few thousand dollars, some very strange devices, three Glocks and even a laser rifle."

"... a rifle what?"

"A laser rifle."

"Have you ever seen a laser rifle before?"

"Of course not, where do you want me to have seen it?"

"So how do you know it was really a laser rifle?" James asked him, showing him all his perplexity. In response, the other pointed to the outline of a perfectly cut wrench in a sheet of steel of one inch thick. James made such an absurd expression that Bob had to try hard not to laugh in his face.

"At least did you take some pictures?" James asked, but knowing him, he hadn't hoped so much for that.

"No, honestly I didn't really think about it. And then who was expecting that in a few hours they would have taken everything away from me?" Replied the other one.

"So you don't have anything left of all the stuff you listed before ..."

"I had put everything in the safe, when I went into the office this morning and found it open, I almost fell off my feet. Luckily they only took their things without touching my money, otherwise, it would have been trouble. However, this means that they were people who knew exactly what they were looking for, as professionals. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to get in here so easily."

"You're probably right ..." agreed James.

"Of course I'm right! Surely someone is doing a nice clean-up to cancel the evidence of some kind of inexplicable event, I wouldn't be surprised if those two corpses have even disappeared," hypothesized Bob. James shuddered, because as Helen had dared to say it was not excluded that Harry had somehow been involved in that strange story.

"Maybe your theory isn't completely wrong, but now you're exaggerating!" Whether they are professionals or not, it seems impossible to me that they could even take away two bodies from inside a police station! "He replied.

"On television, you can hear so many stories..."

"Anyway, didn't you notice anything strange yesterday?"

"Nothing, all those who passed by the workshop yesterday were people I know well. Ah, damn it, I was about to forget it!" He added, rummaging in a pocket of his suit.

He pulled out a metal object as big as a matchbox, placed it on the table and pushed it towards him. "There is only this one left, I took it home last night to show it to my son," he explained.

James grabbed him by two opposing edges and examine it: it seemed hermetically closed on all sides, but no welds; it looked like a printed block and, weighing it, he found it very light.

"What is it?" He asked his friend after trying in vain to open it, the other shook his head.

"I have no idea," he replied.

James studied the metal box for a few moments curiously, waved it and then took it near to his ear to hear if by chance it made some noise, finally put it in a transparent nylon bag and put it in his pocket.

"What else can you tell me about the car and what you have found out? Even something that to you may seem silly and meaningless but to us could be fundamental."

"I'm sorry, but I can't think of anything else," the mechanic declared, and James sighed because the mystery was thickening. He opened his folder and took a form to report the fact. "Well, now tell me about the theft."

"Forget it," said Bob, "would it be useful to file a complaint? After all, as you can see, nothing has been stolen ..."

"I don't want to contradict you, but they cheated you of one of the main findings of our case," James pointed out.

When at last by pulling and pulling the "treasure" emerged laboriously from the water, Abdul stood motionless and watched it for several seconds, unable to determine whether the damned Westerner had teased him since day one or if he was simply fucking crazy. The camels lay on the ground exhausted and the Bedouin was certain that they would not get up for a while, they were offended for having been treated like mules and solicited to do their work with the sound of straps and sticks. Bryan continued to turn excitedly around his jewel-like a child and Abdul said he must have missed some detail. What he had before could not really be the fortune so much sought by that man; the treasure could not only be an insignificant hollow wooden trunk eaten by salt. Probably inside it hid a secret compartment from which a treasure chest overflowing with gold coins or diamonds would have come out, or at least a map bearing the indications to reach the real treasure. No, it couldn't be otherwise! He looked puzzled as Bryan stopped to remove the oxygen tank and his scuba suit.

"What?" He asked, smiling at the Bedouin who kept staring at him in astonishment.

"Sahib ... but this is ...?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I was looking for."

"A ... a piece of wood?"

"A piece of wood is what you see, in reality, this object represents much, much more," Bryan answered. At that point Abdel doubted that infidel was brazenly making fun of him and struggled to keep the temptation to draw the scimitar; he would have loved to cut him in slices and leave him agonizing on the spot. Then he told himself that Bryan might have become suspicious and had therefore decided to leave the treasure there and return to take it secretly at a later date; maybe that tree trunk was just a distraction.

"Forgive me, Sahib, but I don't understand," he said, pretending to be more humble than he could to try to hide instead his anger. "If it's not just a piece of wood, then what is it?"

"You know who Jesus Christ was, don't you?"

"Of course Sahib, the Qur'an speaks of him as a prophet ... but I still don't understand!"

"Do you know what the priest says at the most important moment of the Christian Eucharist when he gives the sacramental bread to the faithful?" Asked Bryan. He shook his head more and more confused.

"The Body of Christ".

"What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said! Some time ago, during an expedition near this place, I found the true Gospel of Judas Iscariot in a cave and I managed to translate it! It looked like reading a science fiction novel, but I believed it and did researches after researches. And if I am not wrong, what we have in front of us is the body of Jesus Christ, or rather, the body with which he fell on Earth aboard his spaceship. The body he then abandoned in order to look like a human being."

Abdul haven't even the time to process that information, because, just a moment after the ranting revelations of that man, he saw many heads appearing from behind the dunes in the distance. After only a moment, he became aware that he had bothered the entire merciless tribe of marauders of Sinai. In order to get them involved in his plan, he had told them about a great treasure and now that he found out the treasure did not exist he was in trouble. A deadly mess, to be precise.

"Those up there are your friends, aren't they?" Bryan read in his thoughts.

"No Sahib, I swear to you ..." the Bedouin tried to deny, but the way Bryan looked at him took away his desire to finish the sentence.

"I think now they'll really want to pull that greedy heart out of your chest," said Bryan indifferently. Knowing he made that mess, the Bedouin looked around desperately, but knowing they were the ones looking for them, then the desert was not a place large enough to hide. Seeing that the sunset was approaching, he hastened to unroll the mat and knelt down, then began to pray towards Mecca and the marauders standing on the surrounding dunes descended from their camels and did the same thing. Bryan pressed a button on his watch and communicated with his partner.