Football Frenzy (9 page)

Seven against two. I’ve seen better odds
...

Granny and Yoshida spun into the room like acrobats, ducking and parrying each other’s blows so smoothly they looked as if they were performing a complex dance routine.

Eight against three. Not much better
... Granny hit one of the men in black in the back of the neck, and he crumpled at once.
Except one of our three is Granny! That’s seven
to three
...

“Fight!” Granny commanded, between spinning kicks. “We must get out of here! Head for the exit. I will follow.”

The twins ran for the door. But the Chinese brutes blocked their way. One of them threw a punch at Josh, missing by millimetres. He dropped to the floor and crawled under the table, leaving the
bouncer grabbing at thin air. There was a crash as the table was overturned, but he kept crawling, trying to pick his spot to come back up. He saw Jessica’s feet dancing between the chairs,
trying to kick them out of her way – and then he saw the shiny leather shoes and trousers of a Yakuza approaching her. Had she seen him?

Josh leaped, rising from under the tables like a shark erupting from the sea. The Yakuza paused, the gleaming silver blade raised in one hand and ready to strike towards Jessica. Josh aimed a
hard chop to the man’s wrist and the knife spun away.

The Yakuza let out a scream of frustration. “You little rat!”

He tried to headbutt Josh, but Josh ducked and got him on the ankle with a low kick. The Yakuza’s legs buckled and he went down.

“
Nana, it’s time
,” Josh heard Granny say, her voice coming clear over his earphones, though she was on the other side of the room in the middle of a whirling tempest of
spinning kicks.

“Hai,
I’m putting in the call
,” said Nana’s voice.

Josh didn’t have time to ask what the call was. The other two Yakuza were upon him. He tried to back away but a fallen chair caught his legs and tripped him up. He scrambled to his feet
again just in time to see Jessica thrown hard against a slot machine, making it rattle and whir.

“
Obaasan
?” Josh called. He looked around for Granny. She was still fighting Yoshida, her style efficient and calm. Between flying roundhouse kicks, low blocks and backflips,
she was making her way over to the door. She threw a fierce side kick and knocked one of the bouncers into the wall, head first.

“
Use
your surroundings, Josh!” Granny shouted over the thug’s yell of pain. “Agility, speed – go!”

Jessica jumped up on top of the slot machine. Josh looked back at the upset tables, understanding flooding through him.

Those aren’t obstacles – they’re weapons!
He climbed up onto the nearest one. It wobbled under him.
Woah... Okay, I can use that too
. He threw his weight
forward and used the unstable tabletop like a springboard, leaping across the room towards Jessica.

One of the bouncers grabbed for Josh’s ankles as he landed on another table, but he jumped again and the brute’s hands closed on thin air. Josh brought his feet down hard on his
attacker’s shoulders. The bouncer moaned, crumpled and hit the ground in a shower of teacups and mah-jong tiles.

“Let’s get out of here,” yelled Jessica. She ran along the tops of the slot machines and grabbed hold of a light fitting, swinging herself across the scattered tables like
Tarzan till she got to the empty doorway.

Josh scanned the room, planning his route over the tabletops to the doorway. He jumped, dancing his way across the rickety tables that folded underneath him. He flipped onto his hands on the
soft felt of a card table and pushed off again, landing on his feet on a mah-jong board near the exit.

“C’mon, Josh!” Jessica called. But Josh didn’t get down. He turned and waited for just a few more seconds, until the Yakuza were closer...

Just a little closer
...

Then he drew his right foot back and swung it like he was taking a penalty kick in extra time, sending the contents of the table flying into the faces of the Yakuza – teacups, a teapot and
the boiling tea inside it, and a small rainstorm of hard, ceramic tiles. The young Yakuza screamed and fell back, covering their faces.

“Woo! What a move!” Jessica yelled. “Come on, let’s— Urk!” Josh spun round, nearly losing his footing and falling. More guys had appeared in the doorway
– four Yakuza in shiny suits and a whole bunch of hulking goons. One of them had grabbed Jessica, and had his arm around her throat; she was clawing for air, her face going red. Josh froze.
The bad guys spread out through the room, cutting off all possible escape routes.

“Now,” said the brute with his arm over Jessica’s neck. “We don’t want any—”

Suddenly, the man’s arm dropped from her throat and he fell to his knees, twitching. Josh just had time to see the sparking wires from a taser gun retracting from the man’s back
before there was a flash, a huge bang, and thick yellow smoke flooded into the room. Within seconds, Josh could barely see a thing.

What’s going on?
he thought desperately.

A voice boomed into the room, in deafeningly loud Japanese. Josh couldn’t fully understand what the voice said, but it was something like, “Police! Do not attempt to resist. We have
all exits covered.”

Josh heard the Yakuza coughing and panicking. He held his breath and clapped his sleeve over his mouth, trying to breathe slowly.

Granny seized his hand and pulled him down from the table. He saw the silhouette of Jessica standing beside her.

“Quick and quiet,” Granny whispered.

They stepped over the still-twitching thug in the doorway, and climbed the stairs to street level.

What just happened?” Josh gasped.

“Yoshida called for reinforcements,” said Granny sternly, “and so did we. Now, come on, I want you two out of here.”

Police officers passed them on the stairs, running down to the gambling room with gas masks and handcuffs. None of them gave the old lady and her two grandchildren a second glance until they
reached the very top. A man in a particularly shiny uniform nodded to Granny as they reached the doors.

“Are you all right,
obaa-sama
?”

“
Hai
,” Granny said. “Good work, officer.” The policeman opened the door and bowed politely to Granny and the twins. Josh bowed back, and then they stepped out into
the neon glare of Shinjuku.

Josh rotated his shoulders, which were aching and stiff, and glanced at the livid bruise on Jessica’s neck.

“Yoshida saw me, and he saw the children.” Granny frowned into her teacup. “So he knows that we are on to him. And he and the Minister escaped. There must have been a secret
exit in case of police raids.”

“On a positive note,” Mr. Yamamoto said, with a cheery smile and a wink at Josh, “the Omajinai will be shut down – no more filthy gambling Yakuza on that block, eh,
Mimi-san?”

“Now, Yamamoto-san, it’s not nice to tease your team leader,” Sachiko said, just as if she was telling off a naughty little boy.

“Nana-san, any change in Kobayashi’s status?” Granny asked, with a firmly-changing-the-subject tilt of her head towards the control banks.

“No change,” Nana said. “I haven’t picked him up on any airport cameras, but if I were him, I would have fled the country by now. Leave Yoshida to do his own dirty
work.”

“I agree,” said Granny. She walked up behind Nana’s seat and stared at the still photographs of Yoshida, Kobayashi and Shini on the large screens. “Kobayashi was a smart
choice for blackmail. The Minister for Culture won’t be out of place at this kind of event and he has no criminal history. We will make sure the regular police track him down, but I think
Yoshida will have cut him loose. I know how he thinks – Kobayashi was just a pawn, and one that’s outlived its usefulness. Our task now is to stop one of the most dangerous criminals in
the country from committing severe assault, maybe murder, to get Shini to throw the game on Saturday.”

“And here’s why,” said Nana, tapping a few buttons. The screen went blank, then filled with lines of code on a white background. Nana highlighted part of it. “There. See
the entry for Thursday, 11.43 a.m.? Just this morning, someone named Hana Nishimura placed a bet on England to win the football game. A
large
bet.”

“Who’s Hana Nishimura?” Jessica asked.

“Probably an alias, a fake bank account,” said Granny. “Or maybe some hapless fool Yoshida has tricked into being his go-between.” Granny raised her eyebrows. “When
I was listening in at the gambling den, I heard Kobayashi say something about moving a large amount of...I didn’t get the last part.”

“Also, this is only one bookmaker,” Mimasu said, slipping on a pair of reading spectacles and leaning in to scan the screen. “If I were Yoshida, I would have placed bets with
everyone going. With the odds the way they are, if Shini lets England win, he will make back five hundred times what he has put in. And he has put a
lot
in.” Josh stared at the figure
on screen. He couldn’t convert yen to pounds in his head, but he knew it was a very,
very
big number.

“The question is,” Granny stroked her wrinkled chin thoughtfully, “will Shini do it?”

“No!” Josh burst out. Immediately he felt his face start to go red. Team O all stopped sipping their tea or tapping at their control panels, and looked at him. Granny turned and
crooked an eyebrow. Josh looked at his sister. “Back me up, Jess, Shini would never do something like that, right?”

“I don’t think so,” Jessica said. Her voice was firm, but quiet. Josh frowned.

“Josh-kun,” said Mr. Nakamura, “your faith in your friend is to be admired. But the truth is that we just do not know what Shini is going to do. He may not feel he has a
choice. Yoshida may be applying pressure in all sorts of ways.”

“We must work on the basis that he will do it,” interrupted Granny. “Yoshida must be confident of success, to have placed these bets already. If Shini doesn’t do it,
Yoshida’s funds will be hit, and badly. He must, therefore, have some information we do not.”

Josh gritted his teeth. “I...suppose that makes sense,” he admitted.

To his surprise, Granny put a hand on his shoulder. “And yet, we do not know what that information is. There is only one way to find out. It’s time to talk to Shinichiro. And the
best person to do that...is you.”

“We’re here to see Mickey Mouse,” Granny said to the hotel receptionist.

“I believe Mouse-san is in the gym at the moment,” said the receptionist, with a totally straight face.

The twins had asked Kiki for Shini’s secret code name. Lots of celebrities used them, to stop any old journalist walking into hotels and pretending to know them. Kiki told them that Shini
was using Mickey Mouse – Kiki often called herself Minnie.

“I can send a message to him that you are here,” the receptionist went on. “Or if you like you can visit him in the gym.”

“Oh, okay,” said Jessica. “We’ll go and talk to him there.”

Granny nodded her approval. Josh could guess what she was thinking – the gym wouldn’t be private, but it’d be better than the busy hotel lobby.

The gym was in the basement, and the lift doors swished open onto a gleaming corridor full of mother-of-pearl and chrome with swan motifs painted on the walls. Doors to male and female changing
rooms, a sauna, a spa and a swimming pool were marked in symbols: English and kanji. Through a wall of glass panels, Josh saw a huge white space full of mirrors, high-tech gym machines and neatly
stacked, colour-coded weights. It was the biggest, swankiest gym Josh had ever seen, and that included the secret government agency where Team O trained.

A tanned gym assistant with bulging muscles raised his eyebrows at the two children and the little old lady, but when they asked for Mickey Mouse he waved them through with a low bow.

They were in luck – Shini was the only person using the gym. He was running on one of the treadmills, facing a wall of mirrors, with a monitor strapped to his arm that trailed wires from
his forehead all the way down to his ankle. In front of him, a flat-screen television hung from the ceiling, showing a Japanese football pundit having an argument with an English presenter. Words
in both English and kanji scrolled along the bottom of the screen:
BIG GAME TOMORROW! WILL TAKESHI RECOVER IN TIME? IS GALLAGHER’S CALF MUSCLE AT RISK?

What would they say if they knew the really urgent question – will the match be fixed?
Josh wondered.

Shini looked up as Josh, Jessica and Granny walked in. He tilted his head in puzzled greeting, but he didn’t slow down his run.

“Why don’t you two join him?” Granny said under her breath, smiling and waving at Shini. “With one of you on either side, and me at his back, he will not try to
flee.”

Josh swallowed. He hadn’t even thought that was a possibility. But if Shini was, for some reason, thinking of doing what Yoshida asked...he had to admit it made sense.