Andrea Lepri - The Last Christmas On Earth

"This woman left almost twenty years ago," the man continued, "and thanks to my powerful means, I searched for her throughout the continent for years without getting any results. She disappeared in a wink, without leaving the slightest trace and without stealing a single dollar. The only thing that took me away was a precious book from the Potala Palace in Lhasa, which as you know is a sacred city in Tibet."

"What was the book about, if I may ask?" Asked Mc January, slightly intrigued.

"No secret, for the little I know it was a collection of legends concerning some very ancient civilizations. It told about aircraft piloted with the sole force of thought, that flew through the skies and fought epic battles with some destructive weapons that even today we are not able to imagine ...

I have never managed to understand why she took it since it was written in an incomprehensible language. I suppose she only did it to spite me because she knew how I was fond of it ... anyway, speaking of her, after all this time she could be dead or hidden who knows in what remote corner of the world," he had said, and Luke had nodded and raised his eyebrows at up.

"And with all the money I have I could have as many women as I want, young, beautiful and very consenting," he added; at that point Luke had spread his arms, disheartened by his frankness.

"But then why are you here? Do you think that if I had the ability to perform such a miracle I would work in an office like this?"

"The office you have is not important, and I know everything I need about you."

"And that is?"

"For example, those licenses hanging behind you are ... let's say ... not really regular," he replied, and he stiffened in his chair. "Excuse me, but how can you know?" He wanted to ask him, but again the other hadn't even let him have time to start the sentence. "You have no fixed binding and therefore you can go around the world indefinitely and, as far as your professional successes are concerned, let's forget it, the most important aspect is certainly not that. I know you are skeptical, cynical, material and miscreant. And you are stubborn and resolute enough, the classic type capable of spending a whole life behind a case without yielding by an inch, the mastiff that when he sniffs a bone won't let it go even if that means to die."

That intrusion into his private life had irritated Luke, who had been investigated as an investigator does. Moreover, those personal judgments had bothered him deeply because they were extremely close to his person. At that point, he had decided to light a cigarette to conceal his bad mood and had offered one to his interlocutor, who had declined with a wave of his hand.

"What makes you think I will accept this job?" Luke had asked him after a while.

"A lot of reasons."

"For example?"

"For example, those," the old man replied, pointing to a pile of expired bills piled up under a paperweight, and Luke was hating that man because he was touching all his uncovered nerves one after the other.

"But above all these" the man had concluded, scattering under his nose a pile of papers and photographs concerning his wife that he had taken out of a briefcase: they depicted a tall and blond woman with a very particular appearance, in many situations and in so many different places. Luke had examined them for a long time, carefully, holding his breath in disbelief. Then he had shaken his head.

"It's a joke, isn't it?" He had said with a faint smile on his face. In response, the other had placed a Visa Platinum, a blank check and a business card with a highlighted phone number on the desk.

"You do not have a time limit and it will not be required to provide periodic reports, in fact, the less you will provide me, the better it will be because every time the phone rings I will delude myself that you have found her. This card is an unlimited fund to support your expenses and the check is your fee, you just have to write the amount."

"How much time do I have to think about it?" Luke had asked, and for the first time since entering his office, the man had abandoned his stern expression to give him a smile. Then he had taken a pen and a leaf from his desk to write his phone number.

"This is a confidential number for emergencies, in case you will need to tell me something and you can't find me at the other number."

"But why...?"

"That woman hides a secret that is too big" he had simply replied, standing up, then had left the studio discreetly as he had appeared, leaving his briefcase and everything else there. Luke kept nodding alone in front of the photographs for several minutes, scratching his head, then a little bell had rung in his head and reminded him that it was time to get ready for his "Mc January" .

The alarm clock had rung several times and each time it had been a lost battle, but in the end, it had won the war and in spite of it James had to get up, still sleepy and cold because of that midnight bath. After a hot shower he went down to the kitchen and found the table set and breakfast ready, coffee was in the cups but there was anyone inside the room. He heard the voices of Eve and Harry and joined them in the living room, found them bent over the miniature that had been repaired and fitted perfectly. They were so focused that they hadn't noticed his presence, she showed the boy some things about the cards accompanying the miniature and whispered, Harry listened, nodded and answered.

"What kind of language you are using?" James asked them angrily after a couple of minutes because he had failed to grasp the meaning of a single word. Meanwhile, he kept wondering at what time they must have got up to be able to complete the miniature.

"Good morning, Dad, Mom is teaching me the ancient Egyptian," Harry explained enthusiastically.

"The ancient Egyptian?" Echoed James doubtfully, looking at Eve.

"Yes, but it was just a game," she said, smiling.

"But it wasn't a game! It also taught me to read hieroglyphics, it wasn't a game," Harry protested.

"Of course, of course," Eve confirmed, looking at James as he placed a hand on the boy's knee to silence him. "Do you have breakfast with us?" She asked James.

"I'm sorry, but I'm too late, I don't even have time to accompany Harry to the Scout Camp."

"Don't worry, honey, I've already called the bus. I'll wait for them to come and get him."

"Are you serious?"

"Sure!"

"Then I run, I'll stop and buy something on the street," he replied, taking the car keys from the glove box on the shelf near the door. "Hi Professor, play nice," he told Harry as he left.

"James, wait!" Eve called him as he closed the door behind him, he stepped back and leaned his head toward her.

"What happened to you tonight?" He asked, startling him. He doubted that she had already discovered everything, including kissing Helen, blushed and ran with his mind to find a justification.

"You seem destroyed ..." Eve added instead, in an accomplice tone, winking at him, and he felt like being reborn.

"If I have to be honest, I didn't sleep a wink ... then you will wait for the bus?" He said after taking a breath.

"Sure dear, bye."

"See you later," said James.

"Of course dear, bye... the world is probably going crazy," James repeated to himself several times as he drove to work.

Cape Canaveral, Florida, local time almost nine in the morning. The stage equipped with seats and microphones, intended to welcome astronauts for greetings and ritual interviews, had been ready for a couple of days. The small stage packed with people had been set up next to the runway so that in the last meters of the landing maneuver the shuttle would slowly pull out until it stops right in front of the spectators. The rescue vehicles, newly polished and arranged in a herringbone formation on the opposite side to the grandstand, awaited the arrival of the Space Shuttle to make the sirens sound like a party. In a small hangar just a few meters from the runway, a buffet had been prepared in honor of the astronauts, understandably fed up with eating just dehydrated single-serving dishes and eager to return tasting real food. For the hundreds of curious people who came to enjoy the show, with their nose stuck to the fence of J.F.K. Space Center, witnessing the return of a Shuttle was always a very exciting event. It was not as interesting as the takeoff, when the shuttle is pointing straight up against the sky to pierce it in a deafening din while everything around seems to collapse, but to see the shuttle landing and come out normal people who had just taken a nice walk in space had anyway its charm. And this time the enthusiasts were driven by one more reason: the official closure of the Shuttle Space Program had taken place with the return of Atlantis on June 20, 2011, and that unscheduled mission a few years later would probably have been really the last one. Although this kind of operation has to be considered pure routine, a certain apprehension has been circulating for some days among the technicians of the Johnson Space Center in Houston; some of them feared that the long period of inactivity had rusted them. They would have finally relaxed at the exact moment in which the astronauts, after spending the last twenty minutes inside the Orbiter to turn off all the systems onboard, would put their feet on the asphalt of the runway. Only then the mission really could have ended satisfactorily. Inside the Control Tower, the ground staff was following with their maximum concentration the returning maneuver of the shuttle in the atmosphere, which represented the most critical moment of the whole mission. The Reaction Control System had fulfilled its duty perfectly: entering the Ionosphere it had given the correct inclination to the Atlantis and immediately afterward there was the awaited and feared Ionization Blackout band. Those twelve minutes of radio silence were always the most terrible because that inability to communicate, even if planned, kept everyone in suspense. Everything was proceeding as planned, but the heat of the moment still reigned supreme, the fronts that dripped sweat due to stress were more than one. After all, the experience of the Columbia a few years before taught that a very small unforeseen event, like a microscopic crack in the outer covering of the shuttle traveling at a speed of twenty-eight thousand kilometers per hour, would have been able to destroy years of work and take away their heroes'life in an instant. The countdown was just finished, a few moments after the Atlantis had left the ionized belt it was framed by the very high-definition cameras installed on the satellite which, through the big screen, showed its images to the public while flying over the Atlantic Ocean like a great white angel.