Kingsman: The Golden Circle Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Kingsman

  THE GOLDEN CIRCLE

  THE

  Official Movie

  NOVELIZATION

  Kingsman

  THE GOLDEN CIRCLE

  THE

  Official Movie

  NOVELIZATION

  By Tim Waggoner

  Based on the screenplay written by

  Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn

  Based on the comic book The Secret Service by

  Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons

  Directed by

  Matthew Vaughn

  TITAN BOOKS

  Kingsman: The Golden Circle – The Official Movie Novelization

  Print edition ISBN: 9781785657320

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781785657337

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: September 2017

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  © 2017 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  This one’s for Sean Connery, Patrick Macnee, Diana Rigg, Dean Martin, James Coburn, Don Adams, Barbara Feldon, Robert Vaughn, David McCallum, Patrick McGoohan, and Roger Moore—the spies of my youth.

  Chapter One

  Savile Row, London. Night

  Eggsy Unwin, looking dapper in a navy double-breasted pinstripe suit, woven-silk tie, and black leather Oxford shoes, exited the Kingsman tailor shop. The establishment was exactly what it appeared to be from the outside: a sophisticated clothing boutique where well-to-do customers were able to obtain the finest bespoke suits money could buy. But that’s not all it was, of course. Nor was Eggsy a mere tailor.

  A black sedan was parked in front of the shop, the driver waiting patiently for him. Eggsy had already turned off all the lights inside the building and activated one of the deadliest security systems on the planet. Now all he had to do was lock up, and he’d be off—and glad of it, too. Working as an operative for an elite intelligence organization could be a real kick, but sometimes it was as interesting as watching paint that had only just started to think about getting round to drying.

  Today had been one of those days. He’d just gotten back from a mission in Australia, where he’d been investigating a group that called itself rEvolution. They presented themselves to the world as a Scientology-like religion, but in truth they were an organization of renegade scientists who conducted all manner of bizarre—not to mention highly illegal—experiments on unwitting church members. Eggsy had managed to infiltrate one of their facilities located in Perth and “take it off the board,” which was Kingsman-speak for “blow it the fuck up”—after rescuing the scientists’ human guinea pigs, of course. All quite satisfying. But as with any mission, it was the subsequent debriefing session, along with the attendant reports he had to write, which came near to driving him as mad as one of rEvolution’s scientists. He’d spent most of the day tending to these tedious duties, dragging his heels so badly that it had taken him forever to finish. In fact, he was the last one out of the shop tonight. But after this, he was due for a few days off, and he was looking forward to going home and getting out of this suit and into something more comfortable.

  Grinning, he put a key into the front door’s lock, turned it, and was rewarded with a soft click, along with a nearly inaudible hum that told him the security system was online and functioning properly. The shop served as Kingsman’s London headquarters, but it was also an access point for the underground shuttle system that led to the organization’s country house training facility, and it wouldn’t do to have someone break in and stumble across secrets that had remained secret since World War One. Kingsman was an independent international intelligence organization, with ties to no government. The world was utterly unaware Kingsman existed, and that’s just the way its agents liked it. And they hadn’t kept their secrets all these years by not being thorough.

  Eggsy reached up and touched the side of his square-framed eyeglasses. Like all Kingsman equipment, these glasses had several hi-tech modifications, chief among them being augmented-reality displays on the inside lenses. A simple touch activated the glasses, and Eggsy directed his gaze first at the door and then at the shop’s front window. His lenses revealed red lines of crisscrossing energy covering both, and once he’d confirmed the security system was doing its job, he touched the glasses again to deactivate the sensor readout. Now that all was right with the world, Eggsy turned, descended the steps to the sidewalk, and headed for the Kingsman taxi that awaited him.

  On my way, babe, he thought.

  He was about to pull open one of the taxi’s rear doors and slide inside when he heard someone behind him say, “Eggy.”

  The word took him by surprise for two reasons. One, it was spoken in the cold tones of an electronic speech-generating device, and two, there was only one person on Earth who had ever called him Eggy, and that sonofabitch was dead.

  Eggsy spun around, but before he could do anything, he felt the hard metal of a gun muzzle press against his chest. A pistol, he guessed, 9mm most likely. But having a weapon jammed against his body didn’t bother him all that much. Occupational hazard, really. No, what disturbed him was who was doing the jamming. He found himself looking at a man with a buzz cut, wearing a dark hoodie, jeans, and sneakers, someone who by all rights should’ve been a long-moldering corpse by now, and a headless one at that.

  “Mind if I share your cab?” Charlie Hesketh said in his synthesized voice.

  Even after everything Eggsy had experienced since joining Kingsman—and he’d come across some astoundingly weird shit in his brief tenure as a spy—he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Charlie had been recruited to try out for Kingsman the same time as Eggsy, but when Charlie had failed to make the grade, primarily due to his being a self-centered coward and a complete bastard, he’d thrown in his lot with Richmond Valentine as one of the chosen few the megalomaniacal billionaire had selected to survive his self-engineered apocalyps
e. When Eggsy, Merlin, and Roxy preempted Valentine’s doomsday, those “chosen ones” had quite literally lost their heads when the small electronic devices Valentine had implanted in their necks—designed to protect them from the tech he used to initiate the end of the world—had been used against them, resulting in a series of impressive, not to mention extremely messy, explosions.

  But here was Charlie, head and all. Although it seemed he hadn’t gotten away entirely unscathed, if his voice was any indication.

  Charlie looked him up and down.

  “Ironic, isn’t it? You look like a gentleman, and I look like a pleb. My parents and mentor would be turning in their graves—which you put them in.”

  Charlie’s lips formed a cruel, smug smile. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy, Eggsy supposed, but when he smiled like that, he looked like a mean little kid who couldn’t wait to catch and torture the first small, defenseless animal unlucky enough to cross his path.

  Seeing Charlie risen from the dead had knocked Eggsy off balance, but his training kicked in, and he quickly recovered.

  “What’s with the voice? You gonna shoot me or tell me your new theory on black holes?”

  “Very funny. Just open the door… Unless you want a black hole in your gut.”

  Charlie nodded toward a trio of gold-colored SUVs approaching fast from the far end of the street. His message was clear: I’m not working alone, escape isn’t possible, and you have no choice but to do as I command.

  Who was Eggsy to argue with logic like that?

  He gripped the door handle, the built-in biometric reader scanned his prints, and the door opened. But instead of trying to get away from Charlie, Eggsy grabbed hold of the fucker and shoved him into the taxi. Charlie was so surprised that he didn’t resist, and Eggsy climbed in after him and yanked the door closed. Before Charlie could recover his wits, Eggsy grabbed hold of his former rival’s gun hand by the wrist and pressed it down against the brown leather seat. He saw Charlie was indeed holding a 9mm—a Glock to be specific—and he didn’t intend to give him a chance to use it.

  The front and rear seats of the taxi were separated by a glass partition, and through it Eggsy caught the driver’s gaze in the rearview mirror. The man looked worried, but he was a Kingsman driver, trained to remain calm in the most stressful situations, and he wouldn’t react until given an order by a superior. So Eggsy gave one.

  “Drive! Lose them!”

  Without hesitation, the man hit the ignition and the sedan’s engine roared to life. He stomped on the gas pedal and the vehicle shot away from the curb, tires squealing in protest. Eggsy glanced out the back window and saw the three SUVs had caught up to them and were following close behind.

  Charlie wasn’t about to simply lie there, though. With his free hand, he punched Eggsy in the ribs, driving the breath out of his lungs. Eggsy returned the favor by head-butting Charlie, who followed up by kneeing Eggsy in the stomach. Eggsy used his free hand to give Charlie three quick blows to the jaw. But all this was really just a warm-up, and soon the two men began fighting in earnest, hurling rapid punches and throwing each other around the taxi’s back seat. As they fought, one of them struck the stereo controls, and Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” blasted from the sound system, providing a soundtrack to accompany their battle. At one point, Charlie’s Glock fired and the shot ricocheted around the taxi’s interior for a few heart-stopping seconds before striking the glass partition and shattering it. The driver flinched, but he didn’t slow down. If anything, he increased their speed.

  Pete, Eggsy suddenly thought. The man’s name was Pete… something. Gallagher! That was it! And he’d been driving for Kingsman for seventeen, no, eighteen years. The better part of Eggsy’s life. He was an experienced driver, one of the agency’s best, and Eggsy knew he could count on him.

  Eggsy kicked Charlie in the chest, knocking him back against the passenger door. The impact caused the door to open, and Charlie fell out, but he caught hold of the door frame with one hand before he could tumble to the pavement. His free hand hit the road and created a shower of sparks as it was dragged along.

  What the fuck? Eggsy thought.

  In the confusion, he hadn’t gotten a good look at Charlie’s hand up to this point, but he did now, and he saw that the man’s flesh-and-blood arm had been replaced by a robotic one.

  Eggsy pressed a control on top of the back seat, and a panel opened to reveal a Kingsman pistol. He grabbed hold of it and spun toward Charlie, intending to empty the clip into the bastard. But before Eggsy could fire, Charlie pulled himself back into the cab, grabbed hold of Eggsy’s gun hand with his robotic appendage and twisted. Charlie’s fingers were cold and hard, and they squeezed Eggsy’s hand like a vice. He grimaced in pain and fought to get a shot off, but Charlie had angled the gun away from him, and Eggsy knew that even if he managed to pull the trigger, the round would miss.

  Charlie increased the pressure until Eggsy was forced to let go of the gun, and it fell to the floor of the cab. The cab door was still open, and Charlie pressed his metal hand against Eggsy’s face and pushed him. Eggsy grabbed hold of the door frame to prevent Charlie from shoving him out of the cab, but Charlie continued pressing Eggsy downward until his face was mere inches from the pavement rushing by. Eggsy saw a car approaching fast in the other lane, and he knew he had to do something fast if he wanted to avoid being decapitated. He drew back his leg and kicked Charlie hard in the chest. The blow knocked Charlie backward, and once his hand was removed from Eggsy’s face, Eggsy swiftly pulled himself up, caught hold of the door frame, and hauled himself onto the roof just as the approaching vehicle roared past. He flattened himself against the roof, arms spread wide, fingers gripping the roof’s edges in a desperate attempt to hold on. There was a loud whump and Eggsy felt the roof shudder beneath him. A fist-sized section of metal bulged upward only a few inches from his head, and Eggsy realized Charlie was striking the inside of the roof with his robotic hand. Eggsy rolled to one side and then the other as Charlie repeatedly punched the roof, trying to hit Eggsy and dislodge him. He knew it would only be a matter of time until Charlie succeeded, so he slid toward the edge of the roof, and swung in upside down, holding onto the open door to steady himself. He grabbed a decanter of scotch from the back seat’s mini-bar and smashed it against the side of Charlie’s head. But before he could swing all the way inside and attack Charlie anew, the door gave way and Eggsy fell to the street.

  He managed to land on top of the door, and he stood up in a half-crouch, gripping the door frame with his right hand and riding the metal panel like it was a makeshift surfboard, sparks trailing behind.

  He was done mucking about. He abandoned the detached door and pulled himself back into the cab. Charlie immediately came at him, but before the fucker could lay a hand on him, Eggsy jammed his signet ring against the side of Charlie’s neck and released an electric charge into the man’s body.

  Charlie grinned, unaffected.

  “That shit won’t work this time,” he said. “I had a circuit breaker fitted.”

  Eggsy threw a wild haymaker at Charlie, putting all the strength he had behind the punch with the intent to put the asshole down for the count. Once the sonofabitch was unconscious, Eggsy could concentrate on escaping the pursuing SUVs, and then he could get to work figuring out just how the hell Charlie had managed to keep his head when the rest of Valentine’s friends had lost theirs.

  But Charlie managed to move before the punch could land, and he took the blow on his shoulder. The impact didn’t come close to knocking him out, but it jolted him enough so that Eggsy could snatch the Kingsman pistol from the floor. He pointed it at Charlie and fired, emptying the clip. But Charlie’s robotic hand moved lightning-quick and blocked the rounds.

  As fast as Charlie had moved his robot arm, Eggsy knew that he had been toying with him up to this point. The fucker wanted revenge, sure, but he intended to take his time and enjoy it.

  “Another upgrade I owe to you,” Charlie said.
“Dunno if I should thank you or kill you.” He paused. “Actually, I do.”

  Eggsy dropped the useless pistol.

  “Pity they didn’t upgrade your tiny balls,” he said.

  He grabbed hold of Charlie’s crotch and squeezed as hard as he could. He might not have a tricked-out robot arm, but he didn’t need the aid of biomechanical technology to accomplish this job. Charlie screamed and pushed his robotic hand forward. The impact sent Eggsy tumbling out of the speeding cab. As he fell he reached out and managed to grab hold of the door frame, and he held on for dear life. His feet slid across asphalt, and while the special material of the Kingsman shoes provided some protection from the friction, the heat still hurt like hell.

  Seeing Eggsy helpless, Charlie lunged forward, but Eggsy wasn’t about to give up that easily. He released his grip on the door frame and, keeping his hand pressed against the side of the cab to steady himself, slipped backward until he was holding onto the vehicle’s back bumper and foot-surfing asphalt. The SUVs were still close behind, and one of the drivers gunned his engine and surged forward, clearly intending to smash Eggsy between the two vehicles.

  He quickly raised his watch to his mouth, pressed one of the controls against his teeth, and sent an electronic signal that opened the boot, climbing in a split second before the SUVs smashed into the rear of the cab. Shaken but unharmed, he clicked his heels together and a poison-coated blade jutted from his right shoe. He used the blade to slice an opening in the back seat, and as he climbed through, he saw that Charlie had leaned his head out the open doorway, no doubt looking to see what had happened to Eggsy.

  Once he was all the way inside, Eggsy lashed out with his foot, intending to slash Charlie and allow the fast-acting poison to take the fucker out once and for all. But Charlie managed to bring up his robotic arm in time to block the strike. The blade broke and flew toward the back of Pete’s head. It buried itself at the base of his skull, and the poison did its work. The man died instantly, but his hands continued gripping the sedan’s steering wheel, and when his body started to slump to the side, the wheel was yanked to the right, sending the sedan off course and careening toward a post box on the street corner.