The Great Gold Robbery (4 page)

“Not only will you receive a thirty percent discount and an extra set of tent poles so that you can also use the hang glider as a tent in the event that you’re forced to land in the
mountains,” Nilly said, now hopping up and down on top of the counter, “you’ll also receive a bag of charcoal!”

“Now you listen to me! My wife is afraid of heights, so we’re never going to—” the man continued to protest.

“And that’s not all!” Nilly yelled. “You’ll also receive a map of South Trøndelag, western Sweden, and half of eastern Norway!”

“No, no, no! Which way to the highway, boy?” the man yelled.

“If you buy one, just one, little hang glider, I’ll throw in a map that will show you how to get out of here and find your way to Gothenburg or northeastern
Blåfjella-Skjækerfjella all by yourselves. And since it’s such a beautiful day today, I’ve just decided to throw in one packet—no, not one, but
two
packets of
hot cocoa mix! So, what do you say?”

“No!” the man bellowed, slamming his fist down on the counter so hard that his anxious, acrophobic wife shuddered, causing her hat to slide to one side, where it hung at a funny
angle.

Nilly nodded. “I can see that you need a little time to consider my offer, my good man. Well, well, then it would be a pleasure for me to explain to you how to get out of here. It
shouldn’t be that hard. As you can see, everyone else has already figured out how to do it. No one’s here!”

Nilly continued, “I just wonder if I could be so bold as to ask you if you wouldn’t mind dropping this postcard in the mail for me once you reach civilization. It’s to my
friends, Lisa and Doctor Proctor.”

The woman nodded, pushed her hat back into place, and took the postcard while the boy spread out the map and started explaining to the man how to reach civilization. She read the postcard.

Nilly stood out in front of the store, waving as the old couple’s car disappeared down the country road, kicking up a cloud of dust behind it. The sound of its engine faded away, and all
that could be heard was cautious birdsong from the vast forests that surrounded the hangar, which bore a large banner that said
SALE
!
HANG GLIDERS 30% OFF
WHILE SUPPLIES LAST
!!!

But as Nilly stood there, he heard something else. A voice. It was coming from the air somewhere far above him.

“Heh-heh, Nilly! NILLY! Look!”

Nilly put his hand up to block the sun and peered up at the hang glider circling in the air above him. A person wearing a snug-fitting red bodysuit, which was extra tight over his potbelly, and
a pair of glasses with lenses so thick they looked like big marbles, dangled underneath the glider.

“Look at me! I’m Petter! I’m the one and only Petter! New record, Nilly! I flew almost to Denmark and back! Hurray for Petter!” the man in the red bodysuit—who it
appeared might be named Petter—sang and bragged, grinning down at Nilly, who was waving up at him frenetically.

“Great, Petter!” Nilly yelled back. “But watch out, don’t you see the—”

There was a crunch and an ominous creaking from the frame and wings of the hang glider as it crashed into the wall of the store, snapping the TV antenna and then tumbling to the ground.

Nilly ran over to Petter, who was already standing up amid the wreckage, brushing gravel and grass off his potbelly.

“Yikes, Petter, you’ve got to look where you’re going!” Nilly said.

“Why bother? It’s not like I can see anything anyway,” Petter said, breathing on his thick glasses and then rubbing them on his bodysuit. “I flew all the way to the
coast, Nilly! Soon I’ll make it all the way to Denmark. Then I can buy us some Danishes to go with our hot chocolate. Hmm, now that I mention hot chocolate . . .”

“I’ll go reheat the batch we made this morning,” Nilly said with a sigh.

Half an hour later they were sitting in the kitchen, each drinking from their mug as Petter stared at the Chinese checkers board in deep concentration.

“I’ve been thinking,” Petter said.

“Yes,” Nilly said. “You’ve been thinking for more than twenty minutes, and you haven’t even moved your first marble yet. Maybe it’s about time
you—”

“I wasn’t talking about the Chinese checkers,” Petter said. “I was thinking that you’ve been up here for a long time now. Not that I’m not enjoying having you
around, but . . .”

“I can’t go back home, Petter. Oh, the humiliation, the humiliation! My whole school, my whole family, they’re all laughing at me. All my friends . . .”

“All of them? How many friends do you—” Petter began.

“Well, okay, fine. Both of them . . . They warned me, said I should bite my tongue, not talk about how we saved the world from invisible baboon monsters from the moon. They said no one
would believe us anyway, but like the idiot I am, I—”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Nilly! You’re not an idiot!” Petter protested.

“Yes, I am!”

“No, no. You’re way smarter than . . . than me, for example,” Petter said.

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you definitely are, Nilly!”

“No.”

“Yes!”

“Okay, fine, so I am,” Nilly said, slurping his cocoa.

“Shh,” said Petter, looking up. “What’s that sound?”

“Um, hello? It’s called slurping,” Nilly said.

“No, not that sound,
that
sound!” Petter said, pointing to the ceiling.

Nilly listened and sure enough, there was a
floppety-floppety-flop
sound that was getting louder.

Nilly peered out the kitchen window. A sudden gust of wind caused the pine trees to sway, dust to kick up from the country road, and the grass to lie down. The sound just got louder and louder,
and a shadow settled over the lawn.

And as Nilly and Petter sat drinking their hot chocolate, a vehicle suspended in thin air slowly touched down, stopping right outside the kitchen window as tufts of grass, chickens, and
pinecones all blew away.

“What do you suppose that is?” Petter said, taking a sip of his cocoa.

“Looks like a helicopter,” Nilly said.

The banner saying
SALE
!
HANG GLIDERS 30% OFF WHILE SUPPLIES LAST
!!! came loose and blew away.

“I can see that, but who are those guys inside it?”

“Based on their sunglasses and hats, I’d say they’re from the secret service.”

“Well, well, I guess we’d better make some more cocoa, then.”

“NO,” NILLY SAID.

“No what?” said Hallgeir, adjusting his hat. He slurped his hot chocolate and looked around at the kitchen.

“No, I don’t want to take the assignment,” Nilly said.

“Why not?” asked Helge, wiping hot chocolate off his mustache. “The king is personally asking you to save Norway from financial ruin!”

“Thanks, but I already saved Norway one time, and look at what happened,” Nilly said.

“But . . . they stole the national gold reserves. Our people need you, Nilly!” Helge pleaded.

“Do they?” Nilly asked. “To laugh at, maybe.”

“Laugh? What do you mean?” Hallgeir said.

“Go home, my good men,” Nilly said, crossing his arms. “Go home and tell the king and the people of Norway that even though they’ve stolen my unusually good name and
sullied my reputation, I still have my pride.” Nilly’s voice quavered slightly. “Tell them this time they’re on their own, no Nilly is going to save them this time. Norway
is on its own! I’m heading for the hills!”

And with that Nilly stood up and marched out. Hallgeir and Helge looked at each other in confusion. And then they looked at Petter.

“I guess you guys haven’t seen it,” said Petter.

“Seen what?” Helge asked.

“Is it something secret?” Hallgeir asked eagerly, sounding excited.

“No, it’s something on YouTube,” Petter said.

“We only look at secret things,” Hallgeir said. “PBS and stuff like that.”

“It was on TV, too,” Petter said. “
Norway’s Biggest Liar
.”

“Oh, right. Nilly’s sister mentioned that show,” Helge said.

Two minutes later Petter had the computer on and was playing the YouTube clip. It showed a reporter standing on Cannon Avenue in front of the yellow house that Helge and Hallgeir had just been
to a few hours earlier. The reporter whispered, grinning at the camera, “On today’s episode of
Norway’s Biggest Liar
, we’re visiting the Oslo home of the person
rumored to be the biggest—and probably also the smallest—liar in all of Norway. As usual, we will be pretending that we’re a serious show and that we believe
everything
he says. Come on, let’s go in and meet his mother and sister. . . .”

The next scene showed two people on a sofa in a messy living room. One of them was the girl Helge and Hallgeir had spoken to at Nilly’s house; the other was a woman in a pink quilted
bathrobe.

“Nilly started out by just exaggerating a little,” the woman said, looking somberly into the camera. “Gradually the exaggerations got bigger and bigger. Ultimately he claimed
that he and his friends had saved the world and traveled through time in a bathtub.”

“Where do you think he got this compulsion to lie?” the reporter asked.

“Not from me, at any rate. I’m sure it’s from his father’s side. His grandfather wrote a book called
Animals You Wish Didn’t Exist
. Solid lies from
beginning to end,” Nilly’s mother told the reporter.

“From end to beginning,” Nilly’s sister added snidely.

The next scene showed Nilly on his way into a talk show studio, victoriously raising both arms as the audience cheered wildly for him.

“He has no idea they’re making fun of him,” Petter said with a sigh.

“Welcome to the set of
Norway’s Biggest
(cough!)
ar
,” said the reporter, now wearing a nice suit. “Is it really true that you traveled back in time to
the Battle of Waterloo?”

“Of course,” Nilly replied.

The audience responded by applauding, and Nilly turned to face them and bowed politely.

“So I suppose you met Napoléon, too, huh?” the reporter asked.

“Of course,” Nilly said with a patient smile, and then clasped his hands and put his fingertips together. “Yes, for a while I actually
was
Napoléon.
That’s how I managed to prevent the battle.”