by Jo Nesbo
“Do they say that?” Nilly moaned, his eyes brimming with tears from the pain.
“So if you don’t want to end up like that cat, maybe you should concentrate on eating.”
“Good suggestion, Mrs. Crunch,” Nilly said. “Brilliant suggestion, actually.”
She let go, and he dropped back down into his chair.
Nilly looked around. It was eerily quiet in the dark room, and he was surrounded by creepily staring eyes.
“Well, well,” he said, brushing his hands together. “Would you look at the time! I think I really ought to thank you for a lovely meal.” He hopped down from the chair, walked quickly toward the door, and hoped that no one would yell “Stop” or “Freeze.”
“Stop!” Alfie yelled.
“Freeze!” Betty yelled.
Nilly’s feet froze on the floor. He wasn’t looking forward to whatever was coming next.
“You forgot this.”
Nilly slowly turned around and saw that Charlie was holding something out.
“Oh that, yes,” Nilly said, grabbing his cigar. “I’ll see if I can’t manage to set my bed on fire tonight, heh-heh!”
Exactly three seconds later he was out the door.
Her Royal Highness’s Even More Secret Service
THE FOG HAD settled like thick pea soup over the streets of London, and Nilly hurried back toward his hotel through the London darkness. The streets and alleys that had been so crowded and lively in the daylight were now a labyrinth, devoid of people, lit only by a few streetlights wearing gray fog hats. And the few sounds Nilly could hear weren’t cozy or homey in the least. Trickling and rattling and rustling, the deep sighs of a few drips falling from gutters and eaves and windowsills. Muffled complaints and wailing from behind walls and doors. A sudden, chilling shriek from nowhere.
“Wasn’t it here?” he mumbled to himself, and turned left.
Walked a little ways.
“Wasn’t it here?” he mumbled, and turned right.
He said this mostly to hear his own voice. And a little to convince himself that he knew where he was, because he had no idea. And the alleys seemed like they were just getting narrower, darker, and more deserted.
“Wasn’t it here?” he mumbled again.
“No, it most certainly wasn’t.”
He was just going to keep on moving when it occurred to him that that last answer hadn’t come from him. The voice had come from somewhere just behind him.
Nilly turned around. And a figure in a hat and trench coat stepped out of the darkness.
“Gulp,” Nilly said, swiveling back around to run. But a second figure stepped out of the darkness ahead of him. This one was also wearing a hat and a trench coat with an upturned collar. He was surrounded!
“Who—who are you?” Nilly asked, looking for a way out.
“Jack,” the first one said. “Jack Jekyll.”
“Ripper,” the second one said. “Ripper Hyde.”
They closed in even more.
“And . . . what you guys want is . . . ,” Nilly said, “to, uh . . .”
“We want what you have,” Jekyll said, reaching inside his coat for something.
“But—but all I have is a half-chewed wad of gum wrapped up in paper,” Nilly said, pressing himself back against the wall. “Or, well, I also have this cigar. Practically unsmoked. Top of the line. Rolled on the thighs of a beautiful Cuban cigar roller. So I’m awfully reluctant to part with it, hard-core smoker that I am. But go ahead, just take it.”
“We mean, we want the information you have,” Jekyll said, holding out the thing he’d pulled out of his coat. It was a business card with his picture on it. Next to his name, above the picture—in all caps—it said H.R.H.E.M.S.S.
“We work for Her Royal Highness’s Even More Secret Service,” Hyde said. “And we’ve been in touch with our Norwegian colleagues, Helge and Hallgeir. We’ve been tailing you since you landed in London.”
“Oh?” Nilly said, relieved.
“Yes,” Jekyll said. “But why are you in this alley? This isn’t anywhere near your hotel.”
“Oh, that,” Nilly said, sticking his cigar in his mouth. “I just wanted to take a little evening stroll to clear my mind.” He tapped his finger lightly on his forehead. “And there’s a lot of brains up here to clear up, so it takes an extra-long stroll.”
“Could we go back to your hotel now and discuss the case?” Jekyll asked.
“Sure,” Nilly said.
They stood there looking at one another for a few seconds.
“You can go first,” Nilly said.
Then they went.
DOCTOR PROCTOR AND Lisa opened the door, and Nilly introduced them to the two British agents.
“Please forget our names,” Jekyll said, taking off his coat. “Just call us Agent One and Agent Two.”
“No double O in front of that?” Lisa asked.
“Double O?” Hyde asked, sounding surprised and adjusting his tie. “Why would there be?”
“No reason,” Lisa said. “Are you guys just coming from a wedding?”
“What do you mean?” Jekyll asked.
“Well, you guys are wearing . . . uh, well, tuxedos.”
The two men obviously had no idea what she was talking about.
“Let’s get started,” Hyde said. “What happened?”
They sat down and explained everything. Lisa explained about the money they’d taken from Nilly’s Monopoly game and put in the baby carriage, about their disguises, and the mock mugging in the park. And Nilly described fleeing the scene, the bank deposit, and the super-secure bank vault the Crunch Brothers had told him about, where the gold and the diamond were being kept.
“Hmm,” Jekyll said, tugging on his handlebar mustache as he listened to Nilly’s description of the vault. “There’s only one vault in London, well, in the whole world, that has both infrared and outfrayellow rays and motion detectors. And that’s the vault at the Bank of the Very Rich.”
“And where’s that?” Doctor Proctor asked.
“Oh, it’s not far away,” Hyde said.
“More specifically,” Jekyll began, and then moved over to the window and pointed, “it’s right there.”
Everyone else ran over to him. The fog had miraculously just burned off, in typical English fashion, and London lay below them, glittering in the darkness.
“There?” Nilly asked.
“There,” Jekyll said.
“Inside Big Ben?” Lisa asked.
“The actual bank is in the Parliament building under the tower,” Hyde said. “The government used to meet in that building, but it got bought up and now it’s a private bank.”
“Someone bought the Parliament?” Doctor Proctor asked in his Scottish accent. “Who—”
“Who do you think?” Hyde said. “There’s only one person willing to pay whatever it takes to get exactly what he wants.”
“Rublov,” Lisa said. “Maximus Rublov.”
“You hit the nail on the head,” Jekyll said.
“But . . . why would Rublov agree to store the stolen gold?” Doctor Proctor asked. “It even says Bank of Norway right on the gold bar.”
“Elementary, my dear Doctor Proctor,” Lisa said. “Maximus Rublov must be behind all the robberies. The Crunch Brothers were working for him.”
“But—but what would a rich man like him want with so much money?” Doctor Proctor asked.
“Just as elementary,” Lisa said, but then didn’t say anything else. She just watched the others as they stood there, scratching their heads.
“Come on, don’t be so dim,” she said.
“Of course,” Doctor Proctor said, smacking himself on the forehead.
“What?” Nilly yelled, hopping up and down impatiently. “What?”
“She means that he needed the extra money to buy that superexpensive soccer player no one could afford to buy,” Doctor Proctor said.
“Ibranaldovez,” Lisa said.
There were a c
ouple of seconds of silence while everyone let this sink in.
“Okay,” Nilly said. “But then we’ve found the Norwegian gold reserve. Now you secret service guys can just arrest Rublov and go get the Bank of Norway’s gold bar back for us.”
Jack Jekyll smacked his lips and shook his head. Ripper Hyde shook his head and smacked his lips.
“We can’t just arrest a man as important as Rublov without any evidence,” Jekyll said.
“Then he’ll just buy all of Buckingham Palace and kick out the Queen along with her entire Her Royal Highness’s Even More Secret Service,” Hyde said.
“Then the Queen would be out of a job, and so would we,” Jekyll said.
“Which would mean that, unfortunately, we can’t help you,” Hyde said.
“Actually, sooner the opposite,” Jekyll said, cocking his head and wiggling his eyebrows at Hyde in a funny way. “If you guys are planning to break into the Bank of the Very Rich to take your gold bar back on your own, we’re going to have to arrest you.”
“Ach, but we dunnae have any plans to—” Doctor Proctor began, but was interrupted by Hyde’s unnaturally high voice: “So we’d best be going now before we hear any of you suggest anything like that.”
“But if you should happen to find any stolen goods in Rublov’s bank vault,” Jekyll continued, “of course we would be thrilled. Because then we’d have the evidence we need to put Rublov in jail.”
“Before he has a chance to buy Buckingham Palace,” Hyde said, putting on his trench coat. A piece of paper
sailed out of his pocket and landed on the floor in front of Doctor Proctor.
“Hmm,” Jekyll said. “How odd that we happened to bring the floor plans for the bank vault with us, which sadly I’ve just lost on the floor. What a weird coincidence. You’d almost think we suspected Rublov of these robberies.”
“Well, anyway, have a good night,” Jekyll said.
“WHAT WAS ALL that about?” Nilly asked after Jekyll and Hyde had gone.
“Don’t you get it?” Lisa said. “They want us to break into the vault to get them the evidence they need against Rublov.”
Doctor Proctor, who had spread out the sheet of paper Jekyll had dropped and was studying the diagrams on it, said, “But I’m afraid that might be very, very difficult.”
“How difficult?” Lisa asked, her brow furrowed with worry.
“Almost impossible,” Doctor Proctor said in a sorrowful voice.
“Yippee!” Nilly said. “Let’s get going!”
A Plan Where Absolutely Nothing Can Go Wrong. GUARANTEED. Just Kidding.
THE MOON PEERED down at London as Big Ben chimed heavily three times. And since clockmaker Edward John Dent, who had made the Big Ben clock sometime in 1853, had done a very meticulous job, that meant that the time was now exactly three o’clock in the morning. London was asleep, but the hotel room of our three friends was full of activity.
“What else do you see?” Doctor Proctor asked as he continued to study the diagrams they’d received from Hyde and Jekyll.
“The place is absolutely crawling with guards,” said Lisa, who sat with binoculars in front of her eyes. “They’re standing around the entire Parliament building and at the entrance to the Big Ben tower. Plus, I’ve seen them coming and going out of the manhole covers, too. They have stethoscopes around their necks.”
“That thing doctors put on your chest to listen and see if your heart is beating the way it’s supposed to?” asked Nilly, who was standing on a chair next to Doctor Proctor, looking at the drawings.
“Yes,” he answered. “That thing doctors put on your chest to listen and see if your heart is beating the way it’s supposed to. But these guards are using them down in the sewers to listen to see if anyone is trying to dig their way into the vault from below.”
“Yup,” Lisa said, pointing the binoculars up toward the sky. “And they have floodlights lighting up the airspace over the roof in case anyone tries to break in from above.”
“In other words,” Doctor Proctor said tiredly, pointing back at the floor plan diagrams to illustrate to Nilly just how impossible it was, “even if we were to make it through all three locked, steel-reinforced doors, we still have to get through a room full of laser beams darting back and forth as close together as the strings in a shrimping trawler’s nets. And if you break one single beam, then the alarm goes off.”
But Nilly wouldn’t give in. “You said there’s a light switch that turns off the lasers?”
“Yes, but listen to me, Nilly!” Doctor Proctor said, exhausted, rubbing a hand over his face. “The light switch is here, on the wall behind all the lasers.” He pointed. “You can’t get to it without triggering the alarm. They’ve thought of everything!”
“Hmm,” Nilly said, scratching his left sideburn with his right hand. “So if we do make it through there, what’s next?”
Doctor Proctor rolled his eyes. “Then you’re in the room where the door of the vault is. And motion sensors will detect that you’re there and give you thirty seconds to open the door before the alarm goes off.”
“Why did they do it like that?” Nilly asked.
“If someone is in there for thirty seconds without being able to open the vault door, then they’re probably not supposed to be in there. In other words, a burglar. Right?”
“Clever. And the door and the lock?”
“The door is made of the thickest steel there is, Uddevalla steel. And the combination lock has thirteen numbers and four letters, and the combination changes automatically every hour.”
“I see,” Nilly said. “But that doesn’t sound so hard, does it?”
Doctor Proctor just closed his eyes in response, tilted his head back, and moaned aloud.
“Come on, Doctor, there’s a way around everything!” Nilly said. “At least when you’re a genius. And you are. Think about it and come up with the perfect bank robbery. Now!”
“If I had four months, maybe. But this has to happen in the next two days if we’re going to get the gold back home to Norway in time for the World Bank inspection on Monday! And even if we could pull all that off, which is already impossible, not to mention getting into the vault somehow . . .”
“Yes!” Nilly said. “Great! We’re in the vault! What happens then?”
Doctor Proctor blinked. For a second it looked like he was about to cry. But instead he started laughing like a man who’d finally lost it.
“Don’t you remember what Hyde and Jekyll said?” Doctor Proctor finally responded. “The alarm will go off the second the gold or the diamond is moved. And as you can see from the diagrams, there’s only one way out. And it leads straight into the arms of Rublov’s guards. And where do you suppose the road leads from there?”
“The Crunch Brothers,” Lisa said gloomily. “Blood knuckles. Shredded Parmesan cheese.”
Nilly didn’t look like he was listening. He pointed at the floor plan. “What about this way over here?”
Doctor Proctor leaned over the diagram again. “Sorry, that’s just the staircase up into the tower, Nilly. Three hundred and thirty-four steps leading up to the clock. It’s just there so the clockmaker can set Big Ben.”
“Hmm,” Nilly said, scratching his right sideburn with his left hand. “I think I have an idea.”
“Oh yes?” Doctor Proctor said.
“Oh no,” Lisa said.
“Oh yeah,” Nilly said, hopping down off the chair and running over to the hotel window. “We won’t make our escape through the front entrance, you see. We’ll go up. Up there.”
Nilly pointed to the clock face on Big Ben, where the beams of light from the floodlights were sweeping back and forth.
“And how are we going to get away from there?” Lisa asked.
“Not us,” Nilly said. “I need to break in alone, because with the mode of transport we’re going to be using, there won’t be room for anyone besides little old me and the guy flying the getaway craft.”
“What kin
d of craft?” Doctor Proctor asked, puzzled. “And who are you talking about? Who’s going to be flying it?”
“I’m talking about a friend of mine who needs to get out a little more,” Nilly said, rubbing his hands together. “I’m going to go call him right now.”
“Out of where?” Doctor Proctor asked, still puzzled.
“That little backwater village,” Nilly said. “Does anyone know the area code for South Trøndelag?”
“You don’t m-m-mean . . . ?” Lisa stammered.
“You don’t mean . . . ?” Victor Proctor groaned.
And then in unison they both said, “YOU’RE CRAZY, NILLY!”
The Great Gold Robbery
THE CLOCK OVER Mr. Stumbleweed’s window at the Bank of the Very Rich was exactly—and now I mean exactly—2:16:23:14 p.m., or about a quarter past two, when the front door of the bank opened.
In walked a man dressed in a top hat and an elegant penguin suit—not actually a penguin costume, a tuxedo, but there was something rather penguinlike about it. He was carrying a briefcase that was attached to his wrist. At his side there was a very young, elegantly dressed girl in a sun hat decorated like a fruit plate, except hopefully the fruit was fake. Hopefully the mink stole around her neck was also fake.
They walked right up to the window where Mr. Stumbleweed was sitting and asked him if they could rent a safety-deposit box. Mr. Stumbleweed explained the hair-raising sum the bank charged annually for a safety-deposit box, and they listened without fainting or protesting. Then he and two armed guards escorted the two new customers down to the basement. There Mr. Stumbleweed unlocked not just one but three locked steel doors, and then they were standing in the safety-deposit room. The safety-deposit boxes were the size of shoe boxes stacked on their sides, and they covered two of the walls in the room.