The Great Gold Robbery (18 page)

Today they were practicing scoring goals.

“No, no, no!” Rotten Ham’s coach, Eggy Losern, yelled at his players, stomping his rain boots in the grass. “The goal is right there! Do you see it? All
righty?”

Eggy Losern came from a long line of tugboat pilots, but when he had gone to sea, it was as a krill fisherman. While he was on the Antarctic Ocean, he figured out how to lure the krill into the
nets using an ingenious zone defense tactic. The goal was to bore them so thoroughly that they ended up falling asleep and swimming right into his seine net like zombies. He was sure this
“boring” technique could be used on the soccer field as well, so he resigned his berth on the ship and went ashore. He asked for a chance to coach the worst team in England, Rotten Ham.
And since no one else wanted to coach them, he got the job the very same day.

Egg’d been enormously successful. Rotten Ham had gone from being the very worst team in England to being just fourth worst in only two years. And this peculiar krill fisherman, who still
dressed like a fisherman in his yellow sou’wester hat and long rubber boots, had gained respect and earned the nickname Krillo. And this year, Krillo and Stinking Toes had stumbled their way
all the way to the World Cup finals with a combination of stubbornness, unbelievable luck, and such utterly boring soccer that their opponents had just stood there yawning, and didn’t even
realize it when Rotten Ham managed to bump the ball into the goal.

But Krillo knew that unfortunately this wouldn’t work against the Chelchester City team. Rublov had made that clear. He had seen through Rotten Ham’s tactics and was planning to give
all his own players two cups of strong coffee before the game started so they would remain wide awake. And besides that, Chelchester City had bought Ibranaldovez, so they would score a goal no
matter how zoned Rotten Ham’s defense was. Krillo knew that his players were going to have to score more than one goal this time. But how? How?

Krillo lined his players up on the halfway line for the drill and watched them as they each maneuvered a ball to the eighteen-yard box and kicked it. The ball, that is. Or the eighteen-yard box.
Not that it mattered what their feet hit, since the balls didn’t go into the goal either way.

“You guys, I even took out the goalie!” Krillo grumbled, yanking off his sou’wester. “Look! The goal box is as empty as a lobster pot!”

“It’s not
that
easy!” captain Nero Longhands cried, flinging his alarmingly long hands up in the air in despair.

Krillo heard a clear
thunk
behind him. Then a loud whistling sound as some kind of projectile whizzed past him. Then a
whoosh
as the projectile hit the middle of the goal and
slid down the net. The projectile bounced a couple of times before coming to rest.

It was a soccer ball.

Krillo slowly turned around.

And saw something very odd.

A tiny little redheaded guy wearing a tweed coat, a weird, pointy hat made of the same material, and two mismatched shoes, one of them apparently some kind of hand-stitched leather boot. The guy
was standing there with his arms at his side and a self-satisfied smile on his lips. Behind him there was a tall, thin, lanky man wearing a penguin suit and what Krillo was willing to bet were swim
goggles. The only one of the three who looked more or less normal was standing next to him: a girl with braids, a serious expression, and a soccer ball under her arm.

“Who did that?” Krillo asked.

“Sherl,” the man with the swim goggles said, pointing to the little redhead. “Full name Beckadona Hamarooney Sherl, also called ‘the Boot of Norway.’ And I am his
agent, Hamish MacKaroni.”

“Get off my practice field!” Krillo ordered, pointing to the exit.

“Ockolmes!” the MacKaroni guy said, and the little girl rolled the ball she was holding to this Beckadona Hamarooney Sherl, who squinted up one eye, like he was aiming at the goal,
and raised the tiny foot wearing the hand-stitched boot as if he were going to shoot. From a hundred feet away without even a running start? Ha! Krillo scoffed and then turned back to his
players.

“All righty, now move your balls even closer to the goal, and let’s see if—”

Thunk!

Whistle!

Whoosh!

Krillo stared at the ball, which bounced a couple of times inside the goal net, next to the first one. He turned around again.

The redhead was sitting in the grass, blowing on the toe of his hand-stitched boot.

“Well?” MacKaroni said. “Look like a player you could use, eh?”

“How much?” Krillo asked.

“What can you offer?” the player’s strange Scottish agent asked.

“Forty-eight pounds and a pair of almost-free cleats.”

“As you see, the boy already has his own cleats.”

“All righty. Forty-eight pounds plus shoe polish, then.”

“You can have them both for that price.”

“Both?” Krillo asked, confused.

“Yup.” MacKaroni pointed to the girl with the braids. “Sherl and Ockolmes.”

“A little girl? Can she play?”

“Not at all,” the girl said. “I can’t stand the game.”

“Shh, Lisa!” the MacKaroni fellow said, and then adjusted his swim goggles. “If I sell Sherl, the girl
has
to be allowed to sit on the reserve bench during the cup
finale on Saturday. Sherl gets hot flashes, epilepsy, and bandicoot carbuncles if she and I aren’t close by.”

“
You’re
going to sit on the bench too?”

“Do you have a ball boy?” MacKaroni asked.

“Rotten Ham can’t afford things like that,” Krillo said with a laugh.

“No problem. I’ll be your ball boy,” the guy calling himself MacKaroni said, and then pulled a rolled-up sheet of paper out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket.
“Here’s our contract.”

Krillo put on the glasses that were hanging around his neck on a string and read it.

“Well, what do you say?” MacKaroni asked.

“I don’t really know . . . ,” Krillo said hesitantly.

“What’s there to think about?” the little redhead yelled. “Not only do you get three people for the price of one, but also an extra set of tent poles and a bag of
charcoal! And that’s not all. Since it’s such a nice day today, I just decided that I’ll throw in a pack—no, not one,
two
packs—of hot chocolate! Now what do
you say?”

Krillo stared at the boy. “I say . . . all righty!”

“Yippee!” yelled the normal-looking little girl.

“Yippee!” yelled the abnormal-looking player’s agent, Rotten Ham’s new ball boy.

“Yippee!” yelled the redheaded Boot of Norway with the baby face.

“No reason to celebrate yet,” Krillo said. “Go get your practice gear on, because we’re down to the wire now. There’s not much time. Saturday is . . . well,
now.”

IT WAS A beautiful Saturday in May, and the time was exactly 6:28 in the morning. According to all the approved, government-sanctioned almanacs, that was when the sun was
supposed to rise and shine on the Greenwich Observatory and London. But the sun was already a fair ways up into the sky. Because it knew, as all of London’s inhabitants did, that today was
the day of the final World Cup game, which meant you had to be early to make sure you got a good seat.

So by the time people were pouring into the enormous Wobbley Stadium, the sun had positioned itself so that it could see both goals, and it had no intention of moving until the game was over.
Both the long sides and almost both of the short sides were filled with people in blue shirts, blue hats, and blue scarves, and carrying blue banners. They were eating hot dogs and drinking beer
and singing songs about how good Chelchester City was. The only place that wasn’t completely blue was the very bottom of the stands, behind the one goal. There was a small group wearing white
there. Those were the people singing about how Rotten Ham wasn’t actually so bad. At least not on a good day. A guy named Tony was leading their singing. He was not wearing a shirt. He was
the local tattoo artist on Rotten Ham Road and had the team’s club logo—a piece of rotten ham—tattooed across his whole chest, along with the team’s name:
ROTTEN HAM FOREVER
. Unfortunately, the letters were left-right reversed, since Tony had tattooed them on himself using a mirror.

Tony and the others sang:

“Toes, my Toes, you’re not exactly England’s rose

But the game hasn’t started yet, and who knows

We may not lose this time, let’s see how it goes

So don’t give up, cheer up, my mighty Toes!”

Krillo was sitting in front of his players in the locker room under the stands, listening to the song. They could hear all the blue-clad fans laughing themselves silly at the fairly uninspired
lyrics. The Rotten Ham players were sitting with their heads in their hands, staring at the floor. Some of them were quaking like aspen leaves, because they’d never played in front of such a
large audience before. And the game was going to be broadcast live on TV around the world! Yikes!

“All righty,” Krillo said, adjusting his sou’wester and rubbing his hands together. “It’s almost time for the kickoff. Are we ready, Toes?”

No response.

“Are we ready, Toes?” Krillo repeated. “Nero? Answer me!”

“Uh . . . ,” Nero began, pushing up his captain’s armband, which had slid down his long, skinny arm yet again. “Very ready. I think.”

“That’s how it should be!” Krillo yelled. “That’s the attitude I want to see! Any of you not looking forward to this, anyone scared to go out onto that crummy
little field?”

All the players—except the tiny redheaded one— nodded.

“I think you guys misunderstood my question,” Krillo said. “Let me put it more clearly. Do any of you wish we hadn’t made it this far, to the finals?”

“Yes,” all the players responded, apart from . . . well, you know which one.

“Really?” Krillo said, irritated. “You’d rather we just went home and forgot the whole thing instead of going out there and taking a pounding from the best team in all of
England and the most expensive player in the world?”

“Yes!” all the players cried in unison, even the tiny redhead, although just because he’d gotten carried away by their conviction.

Krillo’s head sank into his hands in despair. “Fools!” he yelled, outraged. “The correct answer is ‘no!’ That’s three out of three you got wrong! All
righty, let’s give it one more try. . . .”

“No!” all the players yelled.

Krillo rolled his eyes. “I haven’t even asked the question yet! All righty, let’s forget the questions. Here comes your pep talk now, so pay close attention and imagine
inspirational music, rising to a crescendo like in a Hollywood movie, all righty?”

Krillo stood up, cleared his throat, and closed his eyes in concentration. “Let’s see. Yes, here’s how it goes: We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight in the
air, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall—”

“Excuse me?” Nero Longhands asked.

“Yes?” Krillo said.

“In the schedule it says our game is at Wobbley. What’s all this about oceans and beaches? Are we in the wrong stadium?”

“Fool!” Krillo said, stomping to express his anger, although his rubber fisherman’s boot didn’t make much noise.

The door opened, and there stood a middle-aged man with thinning hair, wearing shorts that flapped loosely around a pair of unbelievably skinny thighs.

“Get out!” Krillo growled. “I’m giving my players a pep talk here!”

“And I’m here to tell you that if you’re not out on the field in ten seconds, the match is going to start without you,” the man said.

Krillo glared at him and said, “You’re what?”

“Everyone’s waiting for you guys,” the man with the thinning hair and thin thighs said.

“I think that’s the referee,” the girl with the braids said.

Krillo glanced suspiciously at his watch. Tapped it. Put it up to his ear. “Hmm, looks like my watch stopped. All righty, I’ll have to give you your pep talk after the game, boys.
And . . . uh, girl. Let’s start trouncing them, Toes!”