The Great Gold Robbery (15 page)

Nilly crawled out the hatch and onto the hour hand of Big Ben, which was right below the hatch, pointing horizontally to the number three. Lisa had been the one to realize that it would be best
to plan the escape for exactly three o’clock so that Nilly could safely stand on the hour hand, which would be straight out.

Nilly scanned the sky. He should have been able to spot Petter by now, since he could already hear the footsteps approaching up the stairs. “Come on, Petter!” Nilly muttered to
himself. “Come on!”

Just then he felt something vibrate in his pocket. He pulled out his cell phone.

“Nilly here.”

“Hi, it’s Petter.”

Nilly gulped. “Do not tell me you’re calling to say you’re running a little late, Petter.”

“No, no.”

“Good!” Nilly said, relieved.

“No, I’m not going to be a
little
bit late. I’m going to be
very
late.”

“What?!” Nilly shouted. “What’s up?”

“You know, England, rain, stuff like that.”

“Rain? The weather is lovely here!” Nilly cried.

“I had a headwind coming over the North Sea, see. And rain when I reached the English coastline. The hang glider was soaking wet, and I . . . I guess I’ve been going a little heavy
on the hot chocolate lately. I’ve just gained a little too much weight, Nilly.”

“You’re—you’re not going to make it?” Nilly groaned.

“I landed in a field and there’s not a soul around, and—”

Just then Big Ben began to strike, drowning out the rest of what Petter said. It reverberated, thundered, and throbbed, and the short hand vibrated. This all happened so quickly that Nilly lost
his balance and fell forward. He flung up his arms in desperation, and his tiny fingers managed to grasp hold of the hour hand. He was only just barely hanging on. He looked down and saw his cell
phone falling and falling some more, down toward the human ants and the toy cars way below, and he didn’t feel like yelling “Ho, ho!” anymore. Nor did he want to know how far it
was to the ground, but Lisa had told him: ninety-six meters. Which, if you want to know, is three hundred and fifteen feet.

Nilly’s fingers were already starting to lose their grasp on the hour hand. Nilly was certainly a rather strong little boy, but with the heavy gold bar in the sack on his back and his
fingers getting sweatier and sweatier, how was this going to go? I’m just asking, you know?

“HELLO?!” PETTER YELLED into the phone.

It sounded like it was really windy on Nilly’s end of the line. Then there was a loud crash.

“Nilly?!” Petter yelled.

But now there was only silence on the other end of the line. And then a dial tone.

Dejected, Petter stuck his phone back in his pocket and looked around. But his glasses were so fogged up from the rain that he couldn’t see much. So he took them off and determined that he
was still in a deserted, rain-soaked field somewhere in the British countryside. He hadn’t seen a place this deserted since . . . well, since he’d left Norway at dawn.

Nilly, Lisa, and Doctor Proctor had called Petter last night. They’d given him thorough instructions on how to fly to Big Ben in London and pick Nilly up from the hour hand at exactly
three o’clock. Petter hadn’t found out any more than that, well, aside from Nilly saying something about the gross domestic gold reserve and it being important.

Petter tugged the waistband of his underwear up—it was the only article of clothing that still had any dry patches left on it—and wiped his eyeglasses. Then he put his glasses on and
looked around. Now he could see a little more, not that what he saw was any more encouraging. A hang glider that was as soaking wet as he was, an equally soaking-wet cow chewing its cud and looking
bored to death. Plus a mirage that was slogging toward him. The mirage was of a woman in a red tracksuit, not unlike his own suit, originally intended for cross-country skiing. The mirage slowly
got bigger and bigger. Until it obviously thought it was big enough and stopped, right in front of Petter. And it must have been quite a mirage, because—go figure— it started talking to
him too.

“How do you do?” it said.

Petter stared. The mirage looked like a woman around his age with wet, stringy hair and glasses with the thickest lenses he’d ever seen. On a woman.

“I—I—” Petter said, surprised to find himself talking back to the mirage! “I’m Petter. I’m the one and only Petter. Who are you?”

“I’m Petronella. Is this your hang glider?”

Petter squinted one eye shut and looked at the woman named Petronella. He nodded that this was indeed his hang glider. “Yes. I sell dem.”

“Really? I like hang gliders. And I’m in sales too. Old Hillman cars,” the mirage said, pointing.

The wisps of fog had thinned a bit, and Petter saw a farm building on top of a hill. In front of the house he saw the contours of the old used cars for sale.

“Sell you very many?” Petter asked.

“There’s no one left to sell to. Everybody’s moved to the city,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s only me left here.”

Petter nodded. Tell him about it. He knew how it was.

“Would you care for some tea?” the mirage asked.

“Vaht?” Petter asked.

“Would you like some tea?”

“Oh,” Petter said when he finally understood her English. “You have some hot chocolate, do you?”

The mirage who called herself Petronella lit up in a big smile. “You prefer hot chocolate to tea, then, too?”

Petter nodded slowly. This had to be a mirage. A woman who liked hang gliders
and
hot chocolate—it was simply too good to be true. If it turned out she liked to play Chinese
checkers too—ha-ha!—well then, he would know for sure he was dreaming.

“Come on, let’s go make some hot chocolate,” she said, holding out the palest hand Petter had ever seen. So pale it was almost transparent. But it
was
a hand. She was
no mirage. Because now he was holding it. And he felt absolutely no desire to ever let go of this hand. A wonderful thought hit him. That maybe this was the most successful unsuccessful landing in
his entire hang-gliding life.

And with that the two of them strolled across the field toward the farmhouse and the rusty Hillman cars at the top of the hill. And then Petter had the thought that Nilly had probably been
exaggerating—surely picking him up off that behemoth of a clock in London couldn’t be
that
important.

I’M GOING TO die,
Nilly thought.
I’m going to die because of England’s lousy weather and a slightly overweight dude from South
Trøndelag.

He twitched, but his hands and feet were bound too tightly to the chair he was sitting in.

The reason Nilly was so sure he was going to die was that the little man in front of him had just said so. “You’re going to die,” the man had said. And he had sounded rather
convincing.

Nilly stared at the man’s familiar face. Familiar because Nilly had a mask that looked just like it. Prominent forehead, receding hairline, and narrow, painfully precisely trimmed eyebrows
and goatee. Maximus Rublov in the diminutive flesh.

And behind him, on the sofa in the dim light of the Crunch family’s living room, sat the Crunch Brothers, staring at him with cold, accusatory looks. And then behind them, with her arms
crossed, stood she whose name people only just barely dare to whisper.

“Kill me here, kill me there,” Nilly said. “If you really wanted me dead, why’d you save me from Big Ben? Two more seconds and I would have lost my grip and you
would’ve been spared all this killing and I would have been spared these ropes and you would’ve been spared tying them and—”

“Quiet!” Rublov screamed so the blackout curtains fluttered. “My guards saved you for two simple reasons, you freckled pygmy! First of all, because you had a gold bar in your
backpack. And second of all, because before you die you’re going to tell me who else was in on this robbery.”

“Who else?” Nilly said with as scornful a laugh as he could muster. “I don’t trust any other robbers, Mr. Rublov. I work alone.”

Rublov crossed his arms and ran a gloved finger thoughtfully over his lips. “Are you really even a robber, Mr. Sherl? If that’s even your real name. Are you sure you don’t work
for Scotland Yard? Or Her Royal Highness’s Even More Secret Service?”

“The police?” Nilly said, laughing so hard he felt the fillings in his molars clacking together. “I hardly think a career in police work would be a good fit for a master thief.
. . .”

“Quiet! You’re going to die anyway. The only choice you have is whether it will be a pain-free death or”— Rublov smiled wanly—“death by blood
knuckles.”

Nilly gulped. Dread and horror, he’d be shredded like Parmesan if he didn’t talk! If only he were wearing his wood-chopping shoe. But they’d removed it when they captured him.
Now it was sitting on the coffee table along with his aiming mitten, the darts, and the bottle containing the rest of Doctor Proctor’s Frost Fluid.

Rublov came all the way up to Nilly’s chair and lowered his voice. “Or were you perhaps stealing the gold for someone who wants to buy Ibranaldovez right out from under my nose? If
so, you lose, you little barn gnome, because the purchase will be final as of five o’clock tonight. The gold was all dispatched from the vault an hour ago. So you might as well give up and
tell me everything.”

“So Lisa was right. That’s what you needed all that money for,” Nilly said. “To buy the world’s best soccer player before Saturday’s final World Cup
game.”

“I don’t know who this Lisa person is, but let me put it this way,” Rublov said, sneering so his sharp, wet teeth gleamed. “The Rotten Ham team had hardly a microchance
of beating us before we had the world’s best player on our team. Now they have even less of one.” Rublov laughed a wheezy, high-pitched laugh.

“But why are you willing to pay so much just to win a—a soccer game?”

“Surely someone like you must understand that, Sherl,” Rublov said, raising one of his overly pruned eyebrows.

“Someone like me?” Nilly asked.

“Yes. You were teased in school for being small too, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, sure,” Nilly said, contemplating that for a moment.

“Well then, I’m sure you can imagine how I felt when my dad sent me from Moscow to England to a ridiculously expensive boarding school for upper-class boys? My father thought it
would teach me to act like a proper rich person, so I’d be ready to inherit all his money someday. But all I learned there was to hate those confounded snobs who made fun of me because I
wasn’t just like them!”

“Yes, well, I suppose we’re both in a bad situation, Maximus,” Nilly said with a sigh. “But maybe especially me, since I’m about to die. So what do you say you just
untie me and—”

“Shh,” Maximus said, staring stiffly straight ahead, and then continued, his voice trembling with emotion. “They wouldn’t let me play on the soccer team at school because
I was on the short side.”

“Surely it was because you weren’t particularly good—” Nilly began.

“Silence! But now they can sit in their trite upper-class homes with their disgruntled wives and children and watch who’s going to win the World Cup! Who’s the best
now
, huh?” Rublov moved his silver-plated cane up to touch the bottom of Nilly’s chin. “Who, Sherl? Say it!”