by Tim Waggoner
His thoughts broke off as a huge explosion occurred near the summit, the vibrations from the blast shaking the ground beneath his feet, the sound echoing across the mountain like thunder. He knew the visitor center—and the lab beneath it—had just been destroyed. He was too late.
As Eggsy watched black smoke billow into the sky, a helicopter emerged from the dark cloud.
300 feet above Mont Blanc and rising
As the helicopter soared above the smoke, Charlie slipped on a pair of headphones. He gave a thumbs up to the pilot, and the man patched him into the comms system.
“Poppy? It’s done. Evacuation successful, everything destroyed.”
Clara sat behind Charlie, and she tugged on his elbow, biting her lower lip nervously.
“I’m sorry, Charlie! I’m sorry! Please… don’t tell Poppy it was me they followed.”
His message delivered, Charlie slipped off the headphones and turned to Clara. He smiled, but his eyes were cold.
“Don’t worry, darling. What happens in Italy… stays in Italy.”
* * *
Eggsy stood in the hut’s doorway, watching as the helicopter gained altitude, frustration gnawing at his insides.
Merlin’s image appeared on Eggsy’s glasses. “What was that?”
Eggsy sighed and turned back into the hut. “The sound of plans changing. Poppy must have more antidote somewhere else. We’ll follow Clara’s GPS and hope that’s where Charlie’s headed.”
The cabin’s roof suddenly collapsed inward with a loud crash, and Clara hit the floor in front of Eggsy’s feet with a nauseating thud. Her arms and legs were bent at unnatural angles, and her head was twisted one hundred and eighty degrees.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Merlin?”
Before Merlin could reply, Harry snatched Eggsy’s glasses off his face, snapped them in half, and tossed the broken pieces to the floor. He’d already disposed of his own glasses.
He looked at Eggsy, his expression grim.
“I said, we’re going dark.”
Singapore
Eggsy and Harry walked down a busy sidewalk in the Central Area, which surrounded the Singapore River and Marina Bay. Harry wore his suit and carried a Kingsman suit bag while Eggsy was dressed in civilian clothes. It was nighttime, but everywhere you looked there were ultra-modern high-rises lit from inside, making it seem almost like day. The sidewalks were less crowded than during the daylight hours, or so Harry had said, but there were still plenty of people out and about. A fair amount of street traffic too: cars, taxis, buses… Seeing the cabs made him think of Pete, the Kingsman driver who’d died when Charlie had first attempted to kill Eggsy. There were times when being a spy was an adrenaline-fueled rush more intense than any drug could possibly give. And then there were times when it well and truly sucked sweaty donkey balls. This was definitely one of the latter.
He’d gone along with Harry’s demand that they go dark only so he could keep watch on him. Eggsy knew Harry would do it whether he agreed to join him or not, and as angry as he had been at his mentor, he knew none of it was Harry’s fault. The man had been shot in the fucking head, for Christ’s sake, and while his recovery had been a bonafide medical miracle, it was sheer idiocy to believe his mind could return to normal functioning within the space of a few days. Eggsy now regretted talking Champ into sending Harry on the mission to Mont Blanc, and he was determined to get his friend back to Ginger’s lab where she could see to his recovery properly. But that meant convincing Harry that he needed help, and so far Eggsy hadn’t had any luck on that score.
Then again, Harry had managed to get them from Italy to Singapore without alerting Statesman, so obviously some of his skills and knowledge remained intact. The problem was the man was delusional, and nothing Eggsy said had been able to dispel his paranoid imaginings.
Harry motioned for Eggsy to stop, and he pointed toward a balconied apartment building further down the street. Two men in dark suits and sunglasses stood outside the entrance, motionless, looking bored, but Eggsy knew that behind those glasses, their eyes were taking in everything around them, checking people out and scanning for threats.
“Only two guards,” Harry said. “Good.”
Eggsy decided he had to try to get through to Harry one more time before he got them in even more trouble than they already were.
“You’re not listening to me, Harry. You shot an ally! You’re seeing fucking invisible butterflies! You need help. And more to the point, so do we.”
Harry looked at him skeptically. “Help from the people who held me prisoner? Who tried to scupper our mission?”
Eggsy was starting to feel desperate. He stopped walking. “You weren’t a prisoner! They were trying to—It doesn’t matter. Millions are gonna die! We’ve got no resources, no backup; we’re down to a single shitty lead.”
“It’s a fine lead,” Harry said. “How many people do you think there are in Singapore called Boris Batko? I found a photo of him, his address, and financial records which plainly suggest that he’s Poppy’s man in Southeast Asia.”
“So? We might get nothing from him.”
Harry smiled. “I suggest we find out.”
* * *
Harry and Eggsy approached the apartment entrance. The heads of the two guards swiveled toward them as they drew near, but otherwise, neither man moved a muscle. Their expressions remained impassive, and their eyes were unreadable through their dark glasses.
“I’m from Kingsman Tailors in London,” Harry said in flawless Cantonese. “I have Mr Batko’s new suit.” He raised the suit bag several inches as if offering the guards proof.
The guard on the left spoke in a neutral tone that still somehow managed to convey a sense of menace.
“I’ll give it to him.”
The guard reached for the suit bag, but Harry stepped back, moving the bag out of the man’s reach.
“No, he needs to try it on,” Harry said.
The guard looked at Harry for a moment before turning the spotlight of his attention on Eggsy, who did his best to look like he didn’t give a fuck about what was happening. It was a look he’d perfected as a teen growing up on the streets of London, and it served him well now. The guard dismissed him. He removed a walkie-talkie from his belt and lifted it to his face.
He thumbed the talk button and spoke in English. “You expecting a tailor?”
A moment later a man appeared on a balcony high above them. He peered over, looked at them for a moment, and then shouted down in a British accent.
“No. Tell him to fuck off!”
He then went back inside.
Eggsy sighed. So much for Harry’s plan. Time for plan B. He looked down the street to see what traffic was approaching. A bike, followed by a car, then a van, a truck, and lastly a bus. He did some quick mental calculations and thought to himself, That’ll work.
When the bike was almost even with him, Eggsy ran forward, jumped, put a foot on the bike handles—to the astonishment of the man riding it—and launched himself into the air. He landed on the hood of the car, ran onto the roof and jumped again. With perfect coordination, he continued in the same way, leaping from the car to the van to the truck to the bus, gaining height each time, until he was level with the lowest balcony. He jumped off the bus and landed gracefully on the balcony with a grin. Now that was a hell of a lot more fun than standing around trying to con a couple of bone-headed guards to allow them inside.
Speaking of the guards, the two men had watched Eggsy’s parkour performance with disbelief, but now they sprang to action, drew a pair of Berettas and began firing. Eggsy kept moving upward, leaping from balcony to balcony as bullets pinged off the metal railings, barely missing him. When he reached Boris’s balcony, he ducked down to protect himself from the gunfire. The guards fired several more shots, but realizing they weren’t able to hit Eggsy, the men ran inside the building, leaving Harry standing there, holding the suit bag, forgotten.
Eggsy poked his head over the b
alcony.
“Harry! Come on!” he called.
Harry smiled. “I’ll take the lift, thanks, old boy.”
He walked casually through the now unguarded entrance.
* * *
Ginger’s lab, Statesman headquarters
Merlin stood next to Ginger as she monitored Jack. The Statesman agent rested on a gurney inside the Alpha Wave Stimulator, just as Harry had before him. From what Merlin understood, the man’s prognosis was much better than Harry’s. Someone—presumably one of the Kingsman agents—had applied alpha gel almost immediately after Jack had sustained his wound, and Ginger expected the man to make a full recovery. But events became much less clear after that. Instead of bringing Jack back to America, Harry and Eggsy had vanished without any word where they were going. And another mystery: when he’d examined the bullet that Ginger removed from Jack’s head, he’d determined it had been fired from a Kingsman gun. But whether the round had come from Harry’s weapon or Eggsy’s, he couldn’t say. He’d kept this tidbit of information to himself, though. He didn’t want Champ and the others to think Harry and Eggsy had turned rogue, although privately that was precisely what he feared. He wanted to believe that the pair had a good reason for shooting Jack and then going dark, and normally he would’ve had every faith in the men. But with Harry’s precarious mental condition… well, who was to say what might have happened?
“Still no word from the Galahads?” Ginger asked, speaking loudly to be heard over the machine’s din. Merlin shook his head and she continued. “Something doesn’t feel right. The pilot said they dropped Jack at the jet and ran. Never said their comms were down. Nothing.”
Merlin had tried to contact them dozens of times, had checked various secure email accounts and message threads that he’d set up especially for agents to get in contact when they had no other means of communication. He’d tried checking numbers, stations and obscure radio frequencies… He’d even gone old school and checked newspaper personal columns. Not a single message.
“They may be under surveillance,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll hear something soon.”
After several moments, Ginger said, “Do you ever want to do more than this?” She made a sweeping gesture to take in the entire lab.
“This?” Merlin said. “This is vital. Without us, they’d be lost.”
“I know. But you know what I mean. Out in the field is where all the action is.”
“Have you ever asked—” Merlin began.
“I have. But every time an agent position has come up, Whiskey has voted against me.”
Merlin felt a surge of anger at Whiskey. Ginger was one of the most intelligent, capable people he’d ever met. How could Whiskey vote against her?
The Alpha Wave Stimulator quieted as it finished its work, and Merlin and Ginger went to Jack’s side. Merlin rolled the gurney out of the machine. Jack had sensors attached to his head, and as he sat up he pulled them off. He looked at Ginger and gave her a million-dollar smile.
“Howdy, angel,” he drawled, and then winked at Ginger.
She smiled with delight. She’d done it! Jack was fully recovered.
“I’m Jack,” he said, his smile taking on a lascivious edge. “What’s your name?”
Ginger’s smile vanished.
Jack, dressed in a hospital gown, swung his bare legs over the gurney’s side.
“How about you ditch baldy here and ride home on a real cowboy? I got a six pack of cold ones on ice, and my roomie is out all night, so you can scream my name as loud as you need to, sugar.”
Jack hopped off the gurney and grabbed Ginger’s waist. He started to sway his hips, as if he wanted to dance with her—or do something else. Disgusted, she pried his hands off her. Merlin frowned at Jack.
“Retrograde memory loss,” Merlin said. “Regression to early life. Just like Harry.”
Jack didn’t appear to be discouraged by Ginger’s rejection. He started humming to himself and dancing around, as if he were in a bar and listening to jukebox music that only he could hear.
Ginger made a face. “Yeah, but one collected butterflies and the other collected STDs.” She shot Jack with a tranquilizer dart and he blacked out. “Harry was more my type.”
Merlin was stung by Ginger’s words, but he did his best to mask his reaction.
“Well, he’s single,” Merlin said evenly.
Ginger smiled. “I meant… before he became Galahad again.” She stepped closer to Merlin and raised her eyebrows in a suggestive manner. “I like ’em geeky.”
* * *
Eggsy drew his pistol and aimed it at Boris’s back, but the man spun around, Beretta in hand, and pointed his gun at Eggsy. An instant later the two guards burst in and trained their weapons on Eggsy, and they were followed by Harry, who had his gun out. One of the guards turned to aim his weapon at Harry, and Harry aimed his right back. The five of them stood there, gripping their weapons, tension building in the air. But none of them fired. It was a stalemate.
“Who the fuck are you?” Boris demanded.
Eggsy’s gun hand didn’t waver as he answered. “Let’s just say I know this business. And I’m here because I think we could both benefit from having a little chat. So put the gun down. If I wanted you dead, I’d have killed you already.”
Boris’s eyes narrowed, and Eggsy had the sense the man was sizing him up. Finally, he sighed. “If we get blood on this carpet, my missus will kill us all.” He lowered his gun. “So let’s not be the last casualties of this war.”
The apartment was a mix of British and Asian-inspired décor. One wall was covered with cricket bats, beneath them a leather couch with throw pillows emblazoned with the Union Jack. Another wall had framed photos of famous footballers, and beneath them was a glass-covered table displaying balls signed by players. Korean lanterns hung from the ceiling, and a third wall contained Japanese watercolor paintings of blossoms and flowing streams. Beneath them was a table displaying various-sized sculptures of Buddha. The rug Boris was so concerned about—and rightly so—was a huge antique, the design an intricately woven map of ancient China.
Eggsy gave the man a nod and lowered his gun. Boris nodded to his guards and they—very reluctantly, Eggsy thought—lowered their weapons. Harry followed suit.
“What do you want?” Boris asked, no longer demanding but sounding curious.
From Boris’s accent, Eggsy could tell he wasn’t a product of the upper classes, and he decided to use that.
“For us not to be the last casualties of this war,” Eggsy said. “How did you get into this game in the first place? Something tells me it wasn’t your sparkling résumé. I’m pretty sure that if we’d got a decent education, it ain’t what we’d have picked at the job fair.”
Boris frowned. “What’s your point?”
“We didn’t have a choice. And the day this business becomes kosher, our last option goes too.”
Harry stepped over to join Eggsy.
“You know he’s right,” Harry said. “They’ll open a Drugs-R-Us on every corner and replace people like you with smarmy suits and MBAs who’ll look good in the IPO brochure.”
“Exactly,” Eggsy said. “There’s no room for people like us in Poppy’s new world. We’ll be out on our arses.”
Boris looked thoughtful, perhaps even a little worried, and his guards wore similar expressions.
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not. You don’t know.”
“Then let us tell you what we do know,” Harry said. “The president is faking. He’s going to let the deadline pass. Make it look like Poppy failed to deliver the antidote. Back out on the deal.”
“In simple terms,” Eggsy said, “all your customers are gonna die, Mr Batko.”
“We share a common aim,” Harry pressed. “Keeping them alive.”
Boris’s eyes narrowed as he considered their words. After several moments, he said, “I’m listening.”
“Give us Poppy’s location,” Eggsy said. “We take her out and rel
ease the antidote. This whole thing’s over.”
“The Golden Circle loses its queen,” Harry said, “and you step in.”
Boris slowly grinned. “As king,” he said.
* * *
Merlin and Ginger crouched in the dark, wearing night-vision goggles. Jack sat on the back of a bull—the same one Harry had been forced to ride several days earlier—and both of them were sleeping deeply. Like Harry, Jack was lashed to the bull.
Ginger removed two hypodermics from her pockets and gave one to Merlin.
“Merlin, you would tell me, wouldn’t you?” she asked. “If you’d heard from them?”
He turned away, unable to meet her eyes. Which was, of course, a more powerful response than any words he could’ve spoken.
“Then I pray you got a good reason,” Ginger said. “Because if I’ve got you wrong, I want you to know… I’m gonna blame myself. Not you. Me. For being dumb enough to let my feelings cloud my judgment.”
She plunged her hypo into Jack’s thigh, and he immediately began to stir.
Merlin faced her once again. “Feeling’s mutual. Trust me.”
He jammed his hypo into the bull’s haunch. The animal woke up faster than Jack. It rose to its feet, snorted, and ran toward the door of the pen. It lowered its head, crashed through the door, and charged out into the arena, carrying a suddenly awake and extremely bewildered Jack. Neither Merlin nor Ginger paid any attention to the bull or the agent.
Ginger looked into Merlin’s eyes for a long moment, as if considering, and then she smiled.
“Elizabeth,” she said. “My name is Elizabeth.”
Merlin smiled. “Hamish.”
He leaned toward her, she leaned toward him, and they met in the middle and kissed.
Meanwhile, Jack was screaming in terror as the bull bucked and kicked, flinging him about. But then his scream cut off. Merlin and Ginger broke apart and hurried to the pen’s open doorway. They saw Jack—obviously himself once again—loop the rope around the bull’s neck and draw it tight. The bull continued bucking for a few seconds, but his exertions lessened, and then his eyes closed and he began to topple over. As the animal fell, Jack pulled completely free of the rope and jumped off the animal’s back. He landed on his feet the same instant as the unconscious bull thudded onto its side. Jack removed the rope from the bull’s neck, and then he headed toward Merlin and Ginger, features contorted with anger.