The Great Gold Robbery by Jo Nesbø

supposed to. But these guards are using them down in the
sewers to listen to see if anyone is trying to dig their way into the vault from below.”
    “Yup,” Lisa said, pointing the binoculars up toward the sky. “And they have floodlights lighting up the airspace over the roof in case anyone tries to break in from
above.”
    “In other words,” Doctor Proctor said tiredly, pointing back at the floor plan diagrams to illustrate to Nilly just how impossible it was, “
even if
we were to make it
through all three locked, steel-reinforced doors, we still have to get through a room full of laser beams darting back and forth as close together as the strings in a shrimping trawler’s
nets. And if you break one single beam, then the alarm goes off.”
    But Nilly wouldn’t give in. “You said there’s a light switch that turns off the lasers?”



“Yes, but listen to me, Nilly!” Doctor Proctor said, exhausted, rubbing a hand over his face. “The light switch is
here
, on the wall
behind
all the
lasers.” He pointed. “You can’t get to it without triggering the alarm. They’ve thought of everything!”
    “Hmm,” Nilly said, scratching his left sideburn with his right hand. “So if we do make it through there, what’s next?”
    Doctor Proctor rolled his eyes. “Then you’re in the room where the door of the vault is. And motion sensors will detect that you’re there and give you thirty seconds to open
the door before the alarm goes off.”
    “Why did they do it like that?” Nilly asked.
    “If someone is in there for thirty seconds without being able to open the vault door, then they’re probably not supposed to be in there. In other words, a burglar. Right?”
    “Clever. And the door and the lock?”
    “The door is made of the thickest steel there is, Uddevalla steel. And the combination lock has thirteen numbers and four letters, and the combination changes automatically every
hour.”
    “I see,” Nilly said. “But that doesn’t sound so hard, does it?”
    Doctor Proctor just closed his eyes in response, tilted his head back, and moaned aloud.
    “Come on, Doctor, there’s a way around everything!” Nilly said. “At least when you’re a genius. And you are. Think about it and come up with the perfect bank
robbery. Now!”
    “If I had four months, maybe. But this has to happen in the next two days if we’re going to get the gold back home to Norway in time for the World Bank inspection on Monday! And even
if we could pull all that off, which is already impossible, not to mention getting into the vault somehow . . .”
    “Yes!” Nilly said. “Great! We’re in the vault! What happens then?”
    Doctor Proctor blinked. For a second it looked like he was about to cry. But instead he started laughing like a man who’d finally lost it.
    “Don’t you remember what Hyde and Jekyll said?” Doctor Proctor finally responded. “The alarm will go off the second the gold or the diamond is moved. And as you can see
from the diagrams, there’s only one way out. And it leads straight into the arms of Rublov’s guards. And where do you suppose the road leads from there?”
    “The Crunch Brothers,” Lisa said gloomily. “Blood knuckles. Shredded Parmesan cheese.”
    Nilly didn’t look like he was listening. He pointed at the floor plan. “What about this way over here?”
    Doctor Proctor leaned over the diagram again. “Sorry, that’s just the staircase up into the tower, Nilly. Three hundred and thirty-four steps leading up to the clock. It’s just
there so the clockmaker can set Big Ben.”
    “Hmm,” Nilly said, scratching his right sideburn with his left hand. “I think I have an idea.”
    “Oh yes?” Doctor Proctor said.
    “Oh no,” Lisa said.
    “Oh yeah,” Nilly said, hopping down off the chair and running over to the hotel window. “We won’t make our escape through the front entrance, you see. We’ll go up.
Up there.”
    Nilly pointed to the clock face on Big Ben,