.

athlete. There’s little chance I’d be able to fight back. I do have a few techniques I’ve been anxious to apply on an actual subject in the field, as it were, but still—I saw what you did to that poor lad from Dire Vale, and believe me, I have a full and deep understanding of just who qualifies as big and strong in this... well... kitchen.” He looked around the space and said, “My gracious, man, do you never—”

      “Who the hell are you?” Danny said in a burst of anxiety and panic and frustration.

      The man laughed. “Ah, yes. How rude of me. I’ve been terrible.” He shoved his hand across the table, and said, “Danny Hooper, late of East Southwich Albion Association Football Club, you may call me...Three.”

      Danny relaxed for a moment in the face of this preposterous announcement, relieved at the thought that he could either be dreaming or have been transported to some alternate reality that would soon cease to be, and he would soon be back on the training ground at the Auld Moors, rolling his eyes at something that had just escaped Aldy Taylor’s mouth or trying to decipher an instruction from Mumble McCray.

      “I see,” Danny said. “Your name is... Three.” Danny walked to the sink, refilled his water glass and took a sip from it. “Go on, then, Three. Explain.”

      Three attempted a smile, but it came unnaturally and only made Danny more certain that he was a weaselly character, an untrustworthy annoyance. “I reckon you’ve opened your mind to the many reasons I may be here in your flat, and you have yet to demonstrate a commitment to physically attacking me. This is a relief for obvious reasons, but it also paves the way for us to come to an agreement upon the circumstances which will hold when I leave your residence, my dear man.”

      “Maybe I will attack you. If you keep on talking like that. I’m a dangerous and unstable person. I’ve proved that much, haven’t I?”

      “You may be all of that, but I don’t believe you’ll attack me. Not in my heart do I believe such a thing.” He placed his hand across his breast.

      “Explain yourself... now,” Danny uttered, clenching his fists.

      “Of course, of course. All business.” Three waved his cigarette again. “Let us indeed cut the pleasantries just a bit short. I, Danny, am in possession of your plane ticket to America.”

      Danny winced as if he’d been hit. “What? Who the hell are you?”

      “Yes, yes! Now I have you! Very good, Danny! Everyone comes around in time, in time. And you’re a quick one! Well, I’m hardly surprised. Most of the athletes are quick, in one way or another. Very good. Now then, Danny, I have arrived at the point in the proceedings where I explain that I work for the Queen. The Queeeeeen, Danny. I do love saying it. Her Majesty. Her Royal Highness. The Crown. I work for England, laddie. Actually, I work for the United Kingdom—the whole bloody thing. Grrrrrrrreat Brrrrrrritain.” He rolled his r’s. “I am, in point of fact, here this very day on your behalf, to protect you, Danny, and those many millions like you.”

      “Listen—” Danny ventured, but found himself cut off.

      “And here’s where you come in, dear boy. You are going to help us protect the great British we—the greatest empire the world has ever known—from some genuinely bad doings. And the Americans too. You’ll be protecting them as well. And the Western world, really.”

      It occurred to Danny that this man was mad. And then he really thought it through, and right at that moment, he realized that the fringe benefit of Three’s bothersome presence and inability to shut his piehole was that Danny, for the first time in his post–East Southwich Albion existence, cared about something other than the reality of being an ex-member of East Southwich Albion. For this Danny was grateful. He leaned toward Three, put an elbow on the table, formed his hand into the obvious sign for give me a cigarette, and Three smiled. Soon, they were both smoking.

      “Now,” Three said, “football in America—soccer... I can barely even say the word—awful, awful word—is as foreign as passable curry and decent ska. Yes, all right, it has slight followings here and there, in the ethnic pockets, but mostly, Danny, people over there hate it. Simply hate it. They think it’s a Commie sport. Collectivist, you know. All that passing. And all those short shorts and high stockings and strange names and no hands. The Americans, most of them anyway, just don’t trust it. And draws... tied games... they just hate ties. They’ve banished them, actually, the Yanks have. Did you know that? Ah, but you’ll see, you’ll see. In any event, football—soccer—isn’t at all American and they don’t bloody like it.”

      Danny smoked and waited.

      “Well, Danny, do you know what abhors a vacuum, other than nature, of course?”

      Danny gave Three the same look he’d given that Dire Vale winger right before he probably ended his career.

      Three said, “All right then, I’ll tell you: Communism.”

      Communism? Danny thought. This is about Communism? Communism abhors a vacuum? Since bloody when?

      “That’s right, Danny. Communism. While almost all of America, including its government, the CIA, the FBI, and every home-on-the-plains sheriff with a nice big gun, has been ignoring the world’s game, even as the world’s game carries on right under their noses, would you like to hazard a guess who hasn’t?”

      Danny scarcely followed. “Who hasn’t what?”

      “Who hasn’t been ignoring the American All-Star Soccer Association? The bloody Communists, Danny! The Red Menace! The whole league is a den of Marxist iniquity.”

      “All right then,” Danny burst out. “That’s it! That is bloody it.” Danny stood abruptly and reached for Three’s collar. “Time to go back to whatever hospital you’ve escaped from.”

      Three ducked—calmly, as if he’d done this kind of thing many times before—and reached for a satchel on the floor by the table. “Calm yourself, lad.” He removed a manila envelope inscribed with Danny’s name and handed it over. “Inside you’ll find your plane tickets, a Rose City Revolution match programme, and a little stipend.”

      Danny stood holding the envelope, still in a position to take a lunge at Three, and Three still looked at Danny as if an attack might be forthcoming. But Danny took a few breaths, reminded himself what happened last time he let rage guide his actions, and sat back down.

      “The Russians are using the AASSA as a Cold War communication channel, my son,” Three said as Danny reviewed the contents of the manila envelope. “They’ve loaded up all these teams with Hungarians, Bulgarians, Croats—the Chicago team used to be called the Ukrainians, for Christ’s sake. The Chicago Ukrainians. There’s a team called Red Star Toronto that’s as Serbian as they sound, and the Colorado Cowhands are a front for a Romanian organization that pretends to be raising funds for orphanages—the rot really has set in, Danny. They pass if off as cultural exchange if anyone notices at all. Red Star Toronto. Honestly. It’s like they’re not even trying to conceal themselves. Of course that’s Canada, but still and all. And don’t even ask about the Cubans in Miami. Cubans in Miami. Do you know how much Cubans care about football?”

      Danny had taken Three’s question as rhetorical, but Three lingered for an answer. “Do you know?”

      Danny had never heard of any Cuban footballing achievement or even of a Cuban league, so he ventured a timid, “Well, let me hazard a guess, Three. Not very much?”

      “Not very much? How about not at all? Castro almost played for the New York bloody Yankees, Danny—all he cares about is baseball. I’d lay money your East Southwich boys could beat the Cuban national team nine times out of ten. But you run out a team of Gonzalezes, Garcias, and Hernandezes with ‘Florida’ on their kit and Americans think they’re watching Latin football. The few that care,