The Magical Fruit

  The Not-Quite-So-Great Gold Robbery

  IT IS NIGHTTIME in Oslo, and it’s raining on the quiet, sleeping city. Or is it sleeping? One of the raindrops hits the enormous clock on the side of the Oslo City Hall tower and clings to the tip of the minute hand before letting go and falling twenty stories, striking the asphalt with a soft splat, and starting to join the other raindrops running down the streetcar tracks. Now, if we were to follow this raindrop as it made its way to a manhole cover during this Oslo night, we would hear a faint sound through the silence. The faint sound would get a little louder when the drop of water fell through the hole in the manhole cover, plunging down into the Oslo sewer system, where the darkness is even thicker. And along with the raindrop we would start sailing in the filthy, reeking sewage water, through the pipes—some small and narrow, some so big you can stand up—that run this way and that, way below ground level in this rather insignificant, big, little city, which is the capital of Norway. And as this intestinal system of pipes carries us deeper into Oslo’s innards, the sound gets louder.

  It is not a pleasant sound. Actually, it sounds like a dentist’s office.

  Like the sound of a drill crushing its way through tooth enamel, gums, and sensitive nerve endings. Sometimes the rumbling is low and sometimes screeching high, depending on what the drill’s diamond-hard, whirling bit is digging into.

  But, whatever! At least it’s not the sound of an anaconda’s hissing, yard-long tongue, the creaking of half a ton of constrictor muscles tightening, or the deafening bang of jaws—the size of an inflatable swimming ring—slamming shut on their victim. I only mention that because of the rumor that a snake like that lives down here. And because a pair of yellow, glowing reptilian eyes are just visible in the sewer there in the darkness to the left. So if you are regretting having come already, now’s your chance to vamoose. Just quietly close the book and tiptoe out of the room or crawl under the covers. Forget that you ever heard of the Oslo sewer system, that dentist’s drill sound, or snakes that eat enormous water voles, average-sized kids, and occasionally small adult humans—if they’re not too hairy and don’t have beards.

  SO, GOOD-BYE AND have a good life. And close the door behind you.

  THERE. NOW IT’S just us.

  WE WILL CONTINUE down this filthy river toward the dark heart of the city. By now the noise has grown to a roar and we see a light, but we realize that this is neither paradise nor the dentist from hell, but something totally different.

  There is a loud machine in front of us with a wheel on it. A steel arm juts up from the machine and disappears into a large hole that has been drilled in the top of the sewer pipe.

  “We’re almost there, boys!” says the biggest of the three men standing around the machine, shining flashlights up into the hole. They’re all dressed the same in black leather boots, rolled-up jeans with suspenders, and white T-shirts. The biggest one also had a bowler hat on his head. But he’s taken it off right now to wipe the sweat away, allowing us to see that all three of their heads are shaved, and each one has a letter tattooed on his forehead, above his thick unibrow.

  A small cracking sound is heard, and suddenly the drill starts squealing like a spoiled brat.

  “We’re in,” the man with a B tattooed on his forehead snarls, flipping a switch. The drilling noise slowly fades away. The drill bit comes into view, and it’s quite a sight: It glitters in the light from the flashlights like the biggest diamond in the world. And, well, that’s probably because it is the biggest diamond in the world, newly stolen from a diamond mine in South Africa.

  The guy with a C tattooed on his forehead angles a ladder up into the hole above them and scampers up its rungs.

  The other two guys watch him anxiously.

  For five seconds absolutely nothing happens.

  “Charlie?” the guy with the bowler hat calls.

  Nothing happens for three more seconds.

  Then Charlie comes back into view. He is struggling to carry something that looks like a brick, except that it’s golden and obviously much heavier. The side is engraved with some words: BANK OF NORWAY.

  And below that, in slightly smaller letters: GOLD BAR NUMBER 101.

  “Help me, Betty,” Charlie says, and the man with the B tattoo hurries over and takes the gold bar.

  “What about the rest of them?” the guy with the bowler hat asks, blowing dust off it. He has an A tattooed on his forehead, but it’s a little hard to read right now since a massive wrinkle is curling the whole letter.

  “This is all there is, Alfie.”

  “What?”

  Now, I’m sure at this point the most geographically astute of you are wondering why these three are speaking English. After all, we are in the sewers beneath Oslo, which is the capital of Norway, and don’t people speak Norwegian there? Sadly for those of us who don’t understand Norwegian, most of the characters in this book will actually be speaking Norwegian. Happily, we will simply pretend we took one of Doctor Proctor’s multilingual pills. But in this specific case that wasn’t even necessary. For some reason these three are already speaking English.

  “This was the only bar in there, Alfie. The rest of the bank vault is completely empty,” Charlie says.

  “You mean this is it? The entire gold reserve of the whole darned central bank of Norway?” sputters Betty, the medium-sized one, and then drops the gold bar with a thump into the machine’s baggage compartment.

  “Calm down, Betty,” Alfie says. “It looks good, this one. Pure, solid gold all the way through. We’d better be getting home, boys.”

  “Shh!” Charlie exclaims. “Did you guys hear that sound?”

  “What sound?”

  “That hissing sound,” Charlie says.

  “There’s no hissing in the sewers, Charlie,” Alfie groans. “Rats squeaking and frogs croaking, maybe, but you’ve got to head farther into the jungle to hear hissing.”

  “Look!” Charlie says urgently.

  “Look at what?” Alfie says.

  “Didn’t you guys see that? Yellow eyes! They blinked and disappeared,” Charlie says.

  “Red rat tails and green frog thighs, maybe,” says Alfie. “But yellow eyes, you’ve got to head farther into the jung—”

  He is interrupted by a deafening bang.

  “Hmm,” says Alfie, rubbing his chin. “Maybe we are in the jungle, boys, because that sounded undeniably like snake jaws slamming shut, if you ask me. And I think you’d better ask me. Now!”

  “All right, Alfie,” Charlie says with a sigh. “Were those snake jaws?”

  “Yup. And Mom said she wanted us to bring her something nice from Oslo. How about a boa constrictor?”

  “Yippee!” squeals Betty, pulling a heavy, metal F16 out of the baggage compartment. All right, fine. It turns out it isn’t an F16 at all. It’s an M16. He loads it and starts firing away. The muzzle flash from the machine gun lights up the sewer as the bullets whistle and pop in the sewer pipe.

  The other two point their flashlights toward where Charlie saw the yellow eyes. But there’s nothing to see, just a trembling rat standing on its hind legs, pressing its back against the wall.

  “Rats!” whispers Betty.

  “We got what we came for,” says Alfie, putting on his bowler hat. “Pack it in. Let’s go.”

  And as we follow the drop of water farther down the sewer pipe toward the treatment plant and the Oslo Fjord, we hear Alfie, Betty, and Charlie packing their equipment back into the machine and starting it up.

  But the last thing we hear is . . . ?

  You guessed it.

  Sssnake hisssssing.

  The Secret Guard Takes the Case

  AT PRECISELY EIGHT o’clock in the morning, the governor of Norway’s central bank, the
Bank of Norway, did what he usually did every morning when he got to work. He walked downstairs to the deepest basement in Norway. He walked past the royal mint where they stamp pictures of the king onto the coins, on down past the presses where they print pictures of famous dead Norwegians—mostly with mustaches—onto the bills, and all the way on down to where people keep their safety-deposit boxes. From there, the bank governor and the deputy governor unlocked and entered all three of the steel doors until they were finally standing in front of the vault containing the entire gold reserves of the nation of Norway.

  The bank governor issued his usual command: “Unlock it!”

  “Uh, you’ve got the key, Tor,” the deputy governor responded as usual, and then yawned.

  “Oh yeah, that’s right,” the bank governor said as usual, and unlocked the door.

  Then they entered the vault.

  At exactly four minutes and thirteen seconds after eight, a heartbroken wail was heard from the deepest basement in Norway. And it was exactly four minutes and fifteen seconds after eight when the bank governor whispered to the deputy governor, “Not a word of this to anyone, understand? We mustn’t panic now.”

  “But—but the gold reserve is scheduled to be inspected next Monday!” came the deputy governor’s despairing response. “What’s going to happen to us? What’s going to happen to Norway?”

  “Just leave it to me,” Bank Governor Tor said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Bank Governor Tor thought for a bit and replied, “Panic.”

  Then they both screamed.

  IT WAS NINE o’clock in the morning, and the king was lying in bed as usual, watching the sports news on TV. On the screen the reporter pushed his glasses into place and reported there were rumors that the fabulously wealthy Maximus Rublov, owner of England’s Chelchester City soccer team, was going to try to buy Ibranaldovez, the world’s most expensive, best, and most spoiled soccer player, right before the World Cup finals. But of course he couldn’t afford Ibranaldovez. Sure, Rublov was the richest man in the world, richer than Billion Gates, Michael Bloombucks, and Wampum Buffett combined. And Rublov did own Finland, New Zealand, eighteen factories puffing out thick smoke and skinny child laborers, twenty-four politicians, Chelchester Stadium, four taxicab permits, and a stolen bike with twenty-four gears. But that didn’t help, because everyone knew that no one had enough money to buy Ibranaldovez. The last people to try had offered nineteen hundred million pounds sterling, a silver spoon, Tajikistan, three aircraft carriers, a freshly washed skyscraper, and two gently used propeller planes. When they got a no, they upped their offer to include the Dominican Republic, a stretch of prime real estate in downtown Oslo, three fat traveler’s checks, and Queen Maud Land. Without even asking Queen Maud first. And they still got a resounding “No!”

  “Your Highness,” said the servant in the doorway. “The governor of the central bank is here, and—”

  “Send him in,” the king of Norway said, without looking up from the screen.

  “Isn’t it terrible?” the bank governor gasped, storming into the room.

  “Yeah,” said the king. “Can you believe it? All that money.”

  “So you’ve already heard?” the bank governor asked, startled, staring at the king in amazement.

  “Of course. It’s on TV right now,” the king said. “Rublov doesn’t even need to buy Ibranaldovez to beat Rotten Ham. After all, they’re just a cut-rate soccer team from the dregs at the bottom of the fourth division.”

  “No, I’m talking about the robbery!” Bank Governor Tor said.

  “What robbery?” the king asked.

  “Someone made off with our entire gold reserve last night!”

  “What are you talking about, Tor? Someone stole our entire gold— But wait, we only had the one gold bar, right? Aren’t we insured against theft?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “The deductible’s not too high, I hope?” the king asked.

  “No, but—”

  “Then I think you ought to be reporting this to the police instead of bothering me in the middle of the sports news,” the king scolded.

  “No, no, we can’t do that. It’ll cause panic,” the bank governor said.

  “What kind of panic?”

  “A financial panic,” the bank governor said.

  “Hmm,” the king said, thoughtfully resting an index finger against his chin. “I do believe I was out sick with a cold the day we covered economics in king school.”

  “I see,” the bank governor said. “So, it’s like this. People have to believe that they can exchange all the paper bills we print for actual gold that we have in the Bank of Norway’s vault. If they find out that we don’t have any gold there, everyone will panic. There will be a run on the bank, with everyone trying to cash in their bills for gold, and—swoosh!—all of a sudden Norwegian currency will be worthless, and we’ll be dirt poor.”

  “That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?” the king said. “How poor are we talking?”

  “What do you mean, Your Highness?”

  “Well, being as poor as Sweden wouldn’t be so bad,” the king said. “We’re not talking about being as poor as East Austria, are we?”

  “East Austria?” the bank governor asked.

  “Sure. Of course things are going great in West Austria, but I hear that in the hardest-hit parts of East Austria, there are a lot of families who can’t afford a second car or a vacation home in the mountains. And a lot of people have to work at least eight hours a day just to be able to afford to vacation in Thailand.”

  “I’m afraid we’re talking even poorer than that, Your Highness,” the bank governor said.

  “What? Give me an idea of exactly how poor.”

  Frustrated, the bank governor contemplated various ways of explaining the delicate economic situation to the king, but they all required some mention of, well, economics and were therefore pointless. Then he glanced up at the sports news and had a flash of inspiration. There was a soccer team, the team from North Central London, an area with one of the UK’s highest unemployment and poverty rates. Surely that would convey the seriousness of the situation to the king. Bank Governor Tor cleared his throat and said, “Um . . . Rotten Ham poor?”

  “Good God, man!” The king flung his blanket aside, leaped out of bed, and stuck his feet into his sable slippers. “Immediate action! Call the army! Raise interest rates! Enact a curfew! What can we do?”

  “We could . . . uh, find the gold bar. We have until next Monday. That’s when the World Bank is coming to do their annual inspection. If the gold bar isn’t in the vault then, the news will get out and we’ll be done for.”

  The king marched over to the door, opened it, and yelled, “Call up the secret service!”

  “Do we have a secret service?” the bank governor cautiously asked from behind the king.

  “Unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to answer that, Tor,” the king said, walking over to the window and looking out over Oslo. He determined that people were walking around as usual on the streets below, and that it didn’t seem like anyone knew anything yet. “If we have secret service, I would call them in and you would explain the situation to them. Understood? Good Lord, as poor as the Rotten Ham soccer team and the entire nation of East Austria . . .”

  AT SIX MINUTES to eleven that morning, two men were standing stiffly at attention in the king’s office. They were both dressed in long gray coats with sinister-looking, upturned collars and dark sunglasses, which made them look extremely secretive. So secretive that if you’d seen them on the street, you probably would have thought, Hmm, these two look like the kind of people you could safely ask to do something secret. Perhaps because you could see a little bit of the white stripes on the sides of their trouser legs where they stuck out under their coats, but especially because they were both wearing the black hats with the big, lopsided, floppy ostrich-feather tassels of the Norwegian Royal Guard. Which of course could mean onl
y one thing: They must be in the Royal Guard’s secret service.

  “You can stop standing at attention,” Bank Governor Tor said. “The king won’t be here until he finishes his breakfast.”

  The two guardsmen immediately relaxed and started tugging on their mustaches.

  “I assume you guys are with the Royal Guard’s secret service,” Tor said.

  “And just what makes you say that?” the one with the handlebar mustache said, scowling with suspicion.

  “Because of your hats with the floppy horse-tail thingies . . . uh, sorry, tassels.”

  “I think we’d better keep an extra-close eye on this wise guy here. Don’t you, Helge?” Mr. Handlebar said.

  “I think you’re right, Hallgeir,” said the other one, tugging on his Fu Manchu mustache. “Besides, it’s not called the Royal Guard’s secret service anymore,” Mr. Fu Manchu continued. “Some tagger changed the sign to read the Secret Gourd. Then the organic farming activists painted a big gourd on there. . . . Sorry, where was I? Well, anyway, we had a secret meeting and decided to keep those changes. They could only help with the secrecy, right? So let me just put it this way: If the secret service did exist, it would be called the Secret Gourd.”

  “Exactly,” said Mr. Handlebar. “But that’s a secret, so don’t tell anyone. And remember that we haven’t said a single word about the fact that we’re in the Secret Gourd. Have we, Helge?”

  “Not a single word that I’ve heard, Hallgeir,” Fu Manchu answered. “Because that’s the first rule of the Secret Gourd. We don’t say a word about our working there. Whoops, allow me to make a correction: They don’t say a single word about their working there. But that’s secret too. Got it?”

  “Got it, Helge.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you, Hallgeir. I was talking to the civilian.”

  “Got it,” said Bank Governor Tor. “So, have you two heard what happened?”

  “It’s a secret,” Helge said. “Both the thing that happened, and whether we know about it.”