Who Cut the Cheese?

by Jo Nesbo

  “He shouted that his name was Petter, and that he’d lost all his money playing poker in Klæbu, and that he longed to go back home to his house and all his hang gliders.”

  So the king had driven Petter home, and after Petter had served the king some hot chocolate and beat him at Chinese checkers four times (each time shouting “I’m the one and only Petter and a heck of a Petter I am!”), he’d rowed the king across the river and told him to follow the high-voltage lines and he’d make it into Norway unseen. So the king had followed some footprints in the snow, and they’d led to a red house where an old man lived who said he was a border smuggler and also a healer who cured people by the laying on of hands.

  “And he was the one who sold me this motorcycle,” the king said.

  “Sold?” Doctor Proctor exclaimed. “He sold you my motorcycle?”

  “Yup. For one thousand one hundred and eleven dollars. Plus the laying on of hands. He cured me of arthritis of the liver and rectal bronchitis, actually. Clever chap. I wasn’t even aware I had them!”

  They zoomed through the forest, and after a couple of intersections, they emerged onto a slightly wider road with fewer trees. Little by little they started seeing a few more cars. And then a few more. And then finally they saw a sign that read:

  OSLO 7 MILES

  WHEN THE CLOCK on the tower on Oslo City Hall struck three, the motorcycle was parked outside Syvertsen’s Pastries. And after the woman whose name wasn’t Marete poured them more tea and Mrs. Strobe’s teeth had stopped chattering and Nilly had eaten two and a half breakfasts, Doctor Proctor cleared his throat and said:

  “So, what we know is that if we’re going to rescue Gregory, the country, and the world for that matter, we have to act fast. Unfortunately, what we don’t know is where Gregory is or what Yodolf’s plans for attacking Denmark are. And without that information, it may be hard for us to save anyone or anything at all.”

  “Too bad you don’t know Morse code,” Lisa told the king. “Then you could’ve told us what Butler Åke was saying.”

  “All I remember was that I was trying to sneak out of the cabin in time to the clicking from the device,” the king sighed, his mouth full of waffle. “It was like ‘clickety’ and ‘click-click-click-click’ something-or-other.”

  “Well, that would be a T and then an H,” Lisa said. “But that’s not much help.”

  “You know Morse code?” the king asked, clearly impressed.

  Lisa nodded. “Don’t you remember even the tiniest bit more?”

  “Let me rack my brains,” the king said, and started making faces.

  “Hiccup-hiccup-hiccup hic-hic-hic!”

  “That’s an O and an S,” Lisa said.

  “I didn’t say anything,” the king protested, giving up on his brain racking with a moan.

  “Hic. Hiccup-hic hic-hic hiccup-hic hiccup-hic-hiccup-hic hiccup-hiccup-hiccup hiccup-hiccup.”

  Five pairs of pupils were all trained on Nilly. And Nilly’s two pupils were directed upward, trying to see the top of his own head, where Perry was sitting, hiccuping away:

  “Hic-hiccup-hiccup-hic hiccup-hiccup-hiccup hiccup-hiccup-hiccup hic-hiccup-hiccup-hic hic-hic-hic.”

  “E,” Lisa said. “And NINCOMPOOPS.”

  “THOSE NINCOMPOOPS!” Nilly shouted eagerly. “Perry remembers the Morse code! Do you have any more, Perry?”

  And Perry did have more. Eventually Lisa had to get out a pen to keep the letters straight. And when Perry finally finished, she read what she’d written on her napkin:

  “Those nincompoops are coming to Oslo to rescue that crazy frog.”

  Mrs. Strobe blew her nose into a big handkerchief. “Wescue dat cwazy fwog?” she sputtered, severely congested and raising her hand in the air for clarification.

  “There’s more,” Lisa said. “This is obviously the response from Oslo: The nincompoops will be too late, ha ha. Because we’ve got him locked up in the palace’s tower dungeon and we will be cooking him for breakfast first thing tomorrow. We’re playing BABA music to keep him subdued. Looking forward to a nice waffle breakfast before we invade Denmark. Keep an eye on the King Dope.”

  “King Dope?!” scoffed the king, raising his hand as well.

  “We have to save Mr. Galvanius before they turn him into waffles,” Nilly said.

  “They figured out that listening to BABA music saps his strength,” Lisa said.

  “Poow, poow, poow dawing, dawing, sweet Gwegowy,” said Mrs. Strobe, drying a tear from her eye. The king looked at her in astonishment.

  “Your Royal Highness,” Doctor Proctor said. “You have to give a speech on TV. Now, right away! You have to use all your royal influence to get people to storm the Royal Palace before the waffles are made in the morning!”

  “Oh yeah?” asked the king, who was still staring at the sobbing Mrs. Strobe. His face had also taken on a greenish tint. “To save that poor, poor, darling, darling, SWEET guy? As if a king doesn’t have more important things to do?”

  “Oh, but Youw Woyal Highness,” sniffled Mrs. Strobe, taking the napkin that Lisa had been writing on. “You have to.”

  “I do, Rosemarie?” the king asked, crossing his arms. “And what if I don’t?”

  Rosemarie looked at the king for a long time. Then she inhaled. She sort of puffed herself up before putting the napkin under her long nose and releasing the air in a long elephant-trumpet of a blow that caused her nostrils to vibrate, the chandeliers to clink, and everyone in Syvertsen’s Pastries to look around their tables in fear. Then she aimed her Strobe Stare at the king.

  But the king shook his head decisively: “Just go right ahead with the brain boiling. I’m not saving any nincompoop of a guy I don’t even know, but who you’re obviously so head over heels in love with that you’re willing to do anything for.”

  Mrs. Strobe gaped and completely lost the Strobe Stare. “You think . . . you think that I’m in love with . . . ”

  “It’s obvious to all of us,” the king said. “And it wounds me, Rosemarie.” His voice was suddenly on the verge of tears. “It wounds me profoundly, I’ll have you know. I mean, I’m the king, aren’t I? And what’s he? A frog? I’m sorry, Rosemarie, but this is awfully humiliating. You’ll have to clean this mess up yourself.”

  Mrs. Strobe and the others stared dumbfounded at the king, who stood up, brushed the cake crumbs off his jacket, marched out, and slammed the door shut behind him so the little bell on it jerked and tinkled.

  “Well, that didn’t go very well, did it?” Doctor Proctor said.

  “What do we do now?” Lisa sighed.

  “Simple,” said Nilly and leaped up onto the table. “Now the Vincibles implement Plan B of course.”

  “Which is?”

  “Well, there’s is and then there’s is,” Nilly said. “Naturally we have to come up with the plan first. But it’ll be stupendous. Nilly’s Plan B. A delightful, small, freckly plan. Just as ingenious as it is elegant and simple. To put it briefly: a Plan B that is so good no one will believe it wasn’t our Plan A!”

  Doctor Proctor cleared his throat. “If you’re done advertising your plan, maybe we could get started coming up with it.”

  “Of course,” Nilly said, hopping back down off the table. “Anyone have any ideas?”

  It was quiet around the table for a long time.

  Finally Mrs. Strobe began: “What if we go up the dungeon towew, unlock the doow and . . . uh, welease Gwegowy?”

  “Well, that is certainly simple, Mrs. Strobe,” Nilly said. “But—with all due respect—maybe not that ingenious or elegant. Unless you have a strong desire to see yourself made into waffles, that is. That tower is more closely guarded than the Bank of Norway, and besides they know we’re on our way to rescue Gregory. We have to outwit them somehow. Any other suggestions?”

  It was quiet for so long that they could hear the second hand on the clock on the wall. The second hand was ticking toward what they knew was going to happen if they didn’t come up
with something ingenious and outwitful.

  “I think maybe I have something,” Lisa said.

  “What?” everyone else asked in unison.

  “Let’s go to a hotel,” Lisa said.

  The Hotel and the Great Escape Attempt

  IT WAS NIGHTTIME in Oslo, and the moon hung in a cloudless but star-packed sky like a yellowish-white paper lantern. It shone on the twenty-story-high Radisson Hotel next to Palace Park, on the not-quite-so-high dungeon tower at the Royal Palace, and also on the large, shiny device that sat just inside the gate, a device that bore an uncanny and frightening similarity to a waffle iron, only a hundred times bigger. And the moon shone on the gateway leading into the Royal Palace’s rear courtyard, which was guarded by two mustache-wearing men in black Royal Guard uniforms with lame hats with big, floppy tassels.

  “Truly beautiful sky vee have here in Norway,” said the one with the handlebar mustache. “Don’t you agree, Gunnar?”

  “I would have to say that I agree, Rolf,” the one with the Fu Manchu mustache said. “No one has stars as beautiful as ours in Norway.”

  “Yes, just knowing that God shose to bless our specific country with sush a beautiful sky truly moves me, you know?”

  “Not surprising, really, that the Danes want to take a sky like that from us.”

  “From us, the Birthplace of Shampions, it’s an insult! I must say I’m looking forward to oblisterating them.”

  “I think that’s supposed to be ‘obliterating,’ Rolf.”

  “Yes, you’re quite right, Gunnar. And then, of course, I’m looking forward to the execution first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “I wonder what that froggy fellow is thinking right about now,” said Gunnar with the Fu Manchu.

  They both cast a quick glance up at the dungeon tower, which was silhouetted against the starry sky.

  “Strange,” Fu Manchu said, stamping his feet. “For a second I thought I saw a little boy hanging in the sky up there.”

  “Ho ho ho,” Handlebar said.

  NILLY STOOD STOCK-STILL and kept his balance. He had stopped suddenly when those two guards down below had looked up. Had they seen him? Hopefully not.

  He felt a slight vibration in the taut, almost invisible cobweb beneath the balancing shoes. He carefully turned the other way, to face the Radisson Hotel. More specifically room 1146, where the strand of cobweb disappeared into the window and was anchored around the minibar in the corner. And in the darkness, he could just make out the silhouettes of Lisa, Doctor Proctor, and Mrs. Strobe in the window. Then he turned back around to face forward again, toward the dungeon tower. There was always a lot more wind up at these heights than you would guess if you were standing on solid ground. But tonight the wind had helped him.

  It had been twenty minutes since all five of them had rushed into the hotel and asked for a room high up with a view of the Royal Palace. And luckily room 1146 had been available. So the front desk clerk gave them a key card, and they took the elevator up to the eleventh floor. From there they implemented Lisa’s plan. Lisa had read somewhere that when spiders wanted to cover long distances, they would just spin themselves a cobweb sail and use that to fly on the wind. And Mrs. Strobe had nodded and said that that was actually true. And that was precisely what Perry had done. While Doctor Proctor checked that the wind was blowing in more or less the right direction, the enterprising, clever spider had spun his own little hang glider, anchored it to the minibar, and jumped out the window. And instead of plummeting down into a puddle of spider jam on the pavement eleven stories below them, Perry had sailed off toward the Palace Park and disappeared into the nighttime darkness with a little hiccup.

  They had waited for almost ten minutes before they finally got the signal: three tugs on the thread, meaning that Perry had made it to the dungeon tower at the Royal Palace and secured the thread.

  Then it was Nilly’s turn. Because of course it would be Nilly’s job to go over, who else? This time the others gave up as soon as he pointed out that he was the only one of them they knew was light enough for Perry’s cobweb to hold and that maybe he would even be small enough to squeeze through the bars into Gregory’s cell.

  So Nilly strapped on the balancing shoes and cautiously stepped out onto the delicate strand of cobweb.

  “Here,” Doctor Proctor had said, passing him the pink Double Deaf Earmuffs and a small bottle labeled “Doctor Proctor’s Strength Tonic with Mexican Thunder Chili. Maximum Strength.”

  And then Nilly started walking. And kept walking until he saw the two guards at the gate suddenly look up. And then he stopped. And thus we’re back where we were, with Nilly standing stock-still on the thread and the guard with the handlebar mustache laughing at the guard with the Fu Manchu mustache because for a second Fu Manchu had thought he’d seen a little boy up there in midair.

  Nilly exhaled with relief when he realized that he hadn’t been detected after all, and then he continued his balancing act, making his way over to the dungeon tower.

  He heard music. And a familiar woman’s voice singing:

  “Pizzeria, have a slice to go

  Extra cheese, how can I refuse it . . . ”

  And there—in the darkness, through a narrow slit—he saw Perry’s eight black eyes twinkling.

  Nilly crept the last bit of the way, hopped up onto the balcony that ran around the top of the tower, and waited for Perry to crawl up on top of his hair before squeezing his head through the bars into the window opening.

  It was a dark cell with bare stone walls. But there—in the gleaming moonlight and the flickering light of a candle—he saw Gregory Galvanius. He was tied up on the wall with iron shackles around his wrists and ankles. Aside from a pair of long johns that was white—or at least pretty white—he was naked. His skinny upper body was the same bluish-white color as milk, and his already sad face looked even sadder with the blondish-brown stubble and the blue-black bags under his eyes.

  “Mr. Galvanius,” Nilly whispered.

  No response.

  “Gregory! We’re here to rescue you.”

  Poor Gregory lifted his face extremely slowly and stared at Nilly blankly at first. Then—as if it slowly dawned on him that this really was Nilly and not just a dream—his face lit up.

  Nilly squeezed through the bars and—shloop—he was in.

  “Lookie here,” he said, holding up the pink earmuffs. “We’ll put these on you and then you won’t hear the music. And then you take a swig of this . . . ” He screwed the top off the bottle of strength tonic. “Maximum strength. Enough that you’ll be able to break open both the iron shackles and the door out of here. But we have to hurry; the others are waiting.”

  He was about to put the earmuffs on Gregory when he noticed a sudden change in Gregory’s expression. Or more like a transformation. Because there, before Nilly’s very eyes, Gregory Galvanius’s face suddenly got smaller. And rounder. And then the stubble and the bags under his eyes disappeared, and the face was suddenly freckled, with a turned-up nose. And finally: hair so red it could only belong to one single boy Nilly knew of.

  Himself.

  Nilly stood there staring at his own mirror image. And then his mirror image started laughing. It opened its mouth, sharp teeth came into view, and a pink tongue flapped around in there as laughter forced its way out, drowning out Agnes’s singing. And when Nilly looked down, he spotted two pairs of holey socks with curved black toenails poking through them. And a long, gray-haired tail swishing back and forth just above the stone floor.

  “Aaaaah!” Nilly screamed.

  “Hiccup!” Perry said.

  “Double aaaaah!” Nilly screamed.

  “Hiccup hiccup!” they heard from somewhere else.

  The chortling, betailed mirror image of Nilly stepped aside and there he hung, the real Gregory. His eyes were half closed, as if he had half fainted.

  “I’ve been waiting and longing for this visit,” Nilly’s mirror image said, and Nilly recognized the voice fr
om the Royal Palace. It was the boss himself: Yodolf Staler. And then the face and body of the creature changed. And turned into Hallvard Tenorsen, who then assumed an apologetic expression: “But I’m also a little sad, because our acquaintance is going to be so short-lived. Unfortunately, you’re both going to be made into waffles tomorrow.”

  Just then the door opened, and in bounded four moon baboons. It happened so fast that Nilly wouldn’t even have had a chance to say “cake,” if he’d felt like doing that. Well, that’s an exaggeration; he would have been able to say “cake.” But maybe not “layer cake.” Or certainly not “frosted layer cake.” Because before he would have had a chance to say “frosted layer cake”—if he had wanted to say that—the baboons had picked Nilly up and shackled him to the wall next to Gregory. So now they were dangling there like wallflowers, the two of them.

  Yodolf walked over to Nilly, cocked his head, and peered at him as if he were wondering what kind of strange creature this could be. Then he plucked Perry out of Nilly’s hair, held the spider between his thumb and index finger and looked like he was considering crushing the seven-legged thingamajig. But he changed his mind and instead dumped the strength tonic out of Doctor Proctor’s bottle, put the spider into the bottle, screwed the lid back on, and set the bottle on the window ledge.

  “Now you can watch as your friend slowly suffocates in there,” Yodolf said.

  Then he stretched his hand out through the bars, grabbed hold of the cobweb thread, and pulled it toward him. “Hm,” he said thoughtfully. “Tandoora, can you run out and see where this cobweb originates? If my guess is right, I bet the rest of the accomplices will be at the other end.”

  “I’ll run and check right away, Yodolf,” the smallest moon baboon said, and then disappeared, shuffling quickly away.

  Yodolf bit through the strand of cobweb with an obvious “snap!” and let it fall out the window. Then he put on the pink earmuffs and listened to the silence, but apparently decided that silence is boring, because he took them off again and tossed them over to one of the other baboons, who tried them on. Yodolf stretched in satisfaction, his arms thrust into the air, and yawned, revealing jaws so large that they could have easily accommodated a watermelon.