The Magical Fruit Read online

  He stood up, but his foot was still asleep and was like limp spaghetti under him, so he had to sit back down. He looked at his watch again. 2:43. He had exactly seventeen minutes until the appointed time. He pulled a little bottle out of his pocket: DOCTOR PROCTOR’S FROST FLUID. He opened the bottle and downed the contents. Then he made a face and reminded himself to ask the professor to add a little more sugar next time.

  Then he stood up again, and this time his foot held him, if only just barely.

  He turned right down the hallway the way they’d planned, and sure enough: The hallway turned twice to the left and then once to the right, just like in the diagram. He heard a whirring noise that was steadily getting louder, and he realized he was getting closer. And there—at the end of the hallway—he saw something on the wall that looked like a normal light switch. But he knew it wasn’t. Nilly stopped suddenly. Even though he couldn’t see anything, just an empty hallway, he knew that there, right in front of him, lurked an invisible threat. Nilly took out the cigar he’d gotten from Alfie Crunch, lit it with the lighter he’d gotten from Doctor Proctor, and steeled himself. Then he inhaled the smoke and exhaled quickly and vigorously, straight in front of him.

  And then he could see them.

  The laser beams.

  He inhaled and exhaled several more times, until the space in front of him was full of smoke and he could see the whole pattern the beams made. They were coming from the walls, the floor, and the ceiling and formed a thorny thicket so thick and dense that it would be impossible for even the smallest boy anyone had ever seen to make it through without touching one of the beams. He could only just barely see the switch on the other side through the web of laser beams.

  But there was a tiny little opening there.

  Nilly checked his watch. Fourteen minutes left. He plunged his hand down into his other pants pocket and pulled up the blue aiming mitten and the three darts, put on the mitten, and aimed through the opening.

  He threw.

  THUNK!

  The dart made it through the thicket but missed the switch by half an inch.

  Nilly grabbed dart number two.

  It was not particularly warm in the bank basement, and yet he felt sweat trickling down his back. The dart was trembling in his hand.

  “Come on, Nilly,” he whispered to himself, and threw.

  THUNK!

  The dart was stuck in the wall a hairbreadth from the switch, vibrating. But it had bumped the first dart as it went in, and Nilly could see the yellow end of that first dart slowly starting to sag.

  It was going to fall out of the wall! And if it did that, it would hit one of the laser beams, which ran right under the switch!

  Nilly grabbed the third and final black dart and didn’t even have time to aim. He just threw it as fast as he could. The yellow dart came loose from the wall right then. Nilly followed it with his eyes. It felt like it was falling in slow motion. Toward the beam below.

  And it hit the beam.

  At least, it hit where the laser beam used to be.

  Then it hit the floor.

  Nilly stood there staring straight ahead.

  The laser beams were gone.

  And the black dart was stuck in the middle of the switch, quivering.

  Nilly wiped a hand across his sweaty forehead and looked at the clock. Thirteen minutes. Then he started running again.

  THIS IS SO exciting it must seem like complete idiocy to end the chapter here, but that’s exactly what I was planning on doing.

  The Great Escape

  BACK SO SOON?

  Okay, so Nilly made it past the laser beams, which he had managed to turn off, and ran into the room in front of the world’s most secure vault with the door made of authentic Uddevalla steel and a lock with a combination that was thirteen numbers and four letters long.

  And as he entered the room, he noticed a clock on the wall that had already begun to count down. He knew that the motion detectors had detected him and that if he didn’t open the steel door within thirty seconds, the system would decide he was a burglar—which would actually be a completely correct assumption. Then the alarm would go off. In twenty-seven more seconds. Twenty-six . . .

  Nilly knew there was no way he could correctly guess thirteen numbers and four letters. So instead he unbuttoned his pants and aimed at the lock on the steel door. According to Doctor Proctor, the ice-blue frost fluid took only three minutes to blend with your stomach acid and pass through your liver, spleen, kidneys, and other innards before it was ready to be peed out. Nilly strained, trying to start the flow.

  Twenty seconds.

  “Come on,” he mumbled.

  Sixteen seconds.

  He pushed harder, groaned. But it’s not always so easy to pee when you know that you have to.

  Nilly had heard that it helps to think about running water when you’re pee shy. So he thought about a trickling faucet, rainwater burbling out of a downspout, a babbling spring stream. But nothing came.

  Twelve seconds.

  An average-sized river. A big river. A waterfall. Nine seconds. Niagara, Vøringsfossen, and Victoria Falls all in one.

  Seven seconds. Something had to happen. ASAP.

  “Okay, reverse psychology,” Nilly muttered to himself, closing his eyes and thinking as hard as he could about how he absolutely couldn’t pee, not here in a public place, not inside the Bank of the Very Rich.

  Four seconds.

  What a scandal that would be! He would be the laughingstock in the newspapers. Headline: BOY PEES ON WORLD’S MOST SECURE STEEL DOOR. MAYOR OF UDDEVALLA FURIOUS!

  A yellow beam, straight as a laser beam, squirted forth, hitting the steel door and the lock.

  Nilly didn’t dare look up at the clock; he just peed as fast as he could. The beam stopped, and he raised the foot with the wood-chopping shoe and kicked the lock.

  It sounded like falling icicles crashing onto a sidewalk, the tinkling, singing, crashing, crushing sound of something shattering into a thousand pieces.

  Nilly grabbed the handle on the iron door and pulled it toward himself.

  It had to open!

  It did open.

  Nilly glanced up at the clock on the wall. It had stopped at 0.5 seconds.

  He shuddered and pulled the door open wide.

  He saw exactly what he’d been hoping to see.

  The vault contained a pile of gold bars glittering dimly in the light from the doorway. And there was a gigantic diamond the size of a soccer ball on top of the pile, sparkling like a disco ball.

  Nilly looked at his watch. He had eleven minutes to find the Bank of Norway’s gold bar and get out of there.

  He hurried into the vault and was about to move the diamond when he remembered that he couldn’t touch anything, that that would trigger the alarm right away. So instead he squatted down and read what it said on the gold bars that he could see in the pile.

  Banco Central do Brasil. Banco Central do Brasil. Banco Central do Brasil. Banco Central do . . . What if the gold bar from the Bank of Norway was somewhere in the middle of the pile and he couldn’t find it? Should he just grab one of Brazil’s gold bars instead? Nilly listened to the voices inside his head. His mother’s voice said, “What difference would it make? Gold is gold, and Brazil obviously has plenty.” And Lisa’s said, “No, Nilly! Taking from others is stealing, no matter how desperate you are!”

  Nilly looked at his watch again. Six minutes to three. He hated clocks!

  But then he saw something! It was partially hidden in the pile, but some of the letters were visible. —NK OF N— something. The next letter looked curvy. Probably an O. He wanted to fling aside the gold bars that were in the way, but he knew the guards would be there a few seconds after the alarm went off, so he had to be completely sure he had the right bar first. —NK OF NO— That couldn’t be anything other than the Bank of Norway. Or could it?

  Nilly started rattling off countries as fast as he could. However, the only “NO” poss
ibilities were Northern Cyprus, North Korea, Norfolk Island, Northern Marianas, or Norway. And of those, only North Korea and Norway had their own currencies. Which meant his chances were quite good that it said BANK OF NORWAY on it.

  He stood up. It was two and a half minutes to three. He had an appointment at three o’clock, and if Doctor Proctor hadn’t made any mistakes when he estimated how long it would take Nilly from here, now was the perfect time for him to get going!

  As Nilly pushed the first gold bar aside, he heard the alarm start screeching. Yowzers, gold was really heavy! He knocked two gold bars off and picked up the one he’d seen. And let out a little “Yippee!” because, sure enough: It said BANK OF NORWAY on the side. Nilly stuffed the gold bar down into the little sack he had on his back and ran out of the vault. He ran back the same way he’d come, but when he passed the room with the safety-deposit boxes and the three steel doors, he turned left instead of right and came to a door that wasn’t made of steel, but of normal wood. It said CLOCK TOWER. Nilly could hear shouts and boots running, clattering and rattling down the stairs from the bank offices up above.

  Nilly raised the wood-chopping shoe and kicked fast and furiously so that the door was quickly a pile of shavings and bits of wood. Then he started running up the stairs as fast as those tiny legs could carry the little boy with the heavy gold bar.

  Three hundred thirty-four steps, Doctor Proctor had said. It hadn’t sounded like all that many when they’d discussed it in the hotel room, but if he was going to make it, he needed to cover at least two steps a second! His thighs were burning and the stairs seemed like they would never end, but Nilly didn’t give up. Upward, upward, around in circles, ever higher.

  And when the steps did finally end, he found himself on a landing with a bunch of gears of all possible sizes, which were whirring and spinning and ticking and tocking. Nilly found the little hatch in the wall he was looking for, opened it, and leaned out.

  The wind hit his face.

  “Ho, ho!” he said with a smile.

  Because when he looked down, he saw little ants running back and forth and gesturing and screaming down below. And when he looked across at the other side of the Thames, he saw the sun gleaming in a window that he knew was the window of the hotel room where Doctor Proctor and Lisa, elegantly dressed in a penguin jacket and faux mink stole, were watching him through the binoculars. Then he looked up at the blue sky, where the contraption that had flown almost to Denmark would soon come to snatch him up, right under the snouts of Rublov’s dogs. Come fly away with the world’s best, bravest, most brazen, and most attractive bank robber! Nilly looked down. He hoped the news that the Bank of the Very Rich was being robbed had spread and that the TV cameras would be in place quickly enough to witness the Great Escape.

  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?

  A Cow, a Mirage, and the Great Interrogation

  “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.

&n
bsp; “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.