Ends of the Earth (2 page)

Eyes wide, Addison backpedaled away from the melee. It appeared as though the spies hadn't noticed him yet.

“Oi!” Max called, stepping into the street. “Over here!”

The teen glanced his way, and Max beckoned.

“I, er…” Addison frowned, hesitating. He looked as befuddled as a mongoose on ice.

Really? The kid couldn't choose between being captured by bad guys and fleeing with a fellow student? Some genius.

“Run!” cried Max. He hustled across the street, toward a narrow alleyway between two houses, and gestured again.

At last, Addison recognized his predicament. He lurched into action, galumphing across the street to join Max. “What—?” he called.

“This way!” said Max, pulling at the other boy's sleeve. “We've got to ditch them.”

Then LOTUS's Swiss-watch plan blew a ratchet wheel.

With the wail of a siren, a blue-and-yellow-checked police car rounded the corner and squealed to a stop, blocking the first Mercedes. Two constables jumped out and leveled their Tasers over the
top of their doors.

“Freeze!” cried the larger cop.

Addison wheeled around and took a halting step toward the police car. Max grimaced. The plan was falling apart!

Relief and worry warred in Max's mind. Worry won. He caught Addison's arm and spun him back. “No!”

“Why not?” said the boy genius. “They're—”

“They could be in on it,” Max improvised.

Addison's lip curled. “You're dead from the neck up,” he scoffed.

“What, um, better way to separate you from your bodyguard? Everyone trusts cops.” Only with great effort did Max keep from wincing at his own words. It was one of the flimsiest
explanations he'd ever concocted, and he'd concocted quite a few.

The teen wavered. The boom of gunshots decided him.

“Right, then. Follow me!” said Addison, trying to make it seem as though he was in charge.

Max rolled his eyes and trailed the older boy down the alley.

The brick walls rose beside them, and the pair splashed through puddles left by last night's rain. In short order, Max could tell the boy genius was more accustomed to exercising his mind
than his body. The teen's pace grew as ragged as a pair of hand-me-down jeans. Just halfway along the passage, Addison slowed and glanced back at Max.

“Do I…know you?” he panted.

“Seen you around,” said Max. He glanced behind them. “Let's keep moving.”

After a few more staggering paces, the teen slowed and turned back again. “Why are you…helping me?” he asked.

Max suppressed a surge of irritation and kept his expression open and concerned. “We go to the same school, don't we? Can't let some blokes kidnap a fellow Badger.”

Addison frowned. “But our mascot's the hedgehog.”

“Right,” said Max. “I always get those two confused. Now come on.” He hooked Addison's elbow and hurried him along.

But the older boy wasn't finished with question time. His steps dragged even more. “Where are you taking me?”

“Someplace safe,” said Max, “where we can hide out and call the real cops.”

“But why—?”

“Let's
go
!” Max snapped. “They could be right behind us.”

This thought spurred Addison back into action. Chalk-faced, he kept shooting glances behind them, as Max half dragged him down the alley.

“I don't get…much exercise,” panted the boy genius.

“Really?” Max managed with a straight face. “Wouldn't have guessed.”

At last, the end of the narrow passage appeared, but instead of a cross street, the boys glimpsed a ramp leading up to a shadowy doorway.

“Oh, no.” Addison faltered. “A dead end?”

“A safe hideout,” said Max, tugging the older boy up the ramp. The door was unlocked and swung open to his touch. The interior was dim.

Right on the threshold, Addison balked, a belated warning firing from his reptilian brain.

“Now see here,” he blustered. “I—”

Max had had enough. Planting his palms on Addison's back, he shoved hard. “In you go!”

A massive, shadowy form seized the boy genius. A hypodermic syringe glinted in a stray beam of light.

“And down you go,” rumbled Mr. Ebelskeever.

MAX DARTED
through the doorway and caught Addison under the arms as he slumped like a string-snipped marionette, unconscious. Ebelskeever stepped
around them and closed the false-front door. A second LOTUS agent snapped on a work light, and in its harsh illumination Max saw that they stood in the cargo compartment of a good-size truck with
its back end up against the partition.

Before he'd known Ebelskeever's name, Max had privately dubbed him Gorilla Man; now that he knew the agent better, he realized that name was unfair. Gorillas were gentle giants.
Ebelskeever, however, was a mass of murderous muscle—all brawny shoulders and killer instincts.

The big man hammered on the front wall of the cargo space. “Give us some room!” he boomed. The engine turned over and the truck rolled forward several feet, leaving a gap between the
rear bumper and the fake wall.

“Seems like an awful lot of trouble just to kidnap one lousy boy genius,” said Max. He braced himself against Addison's weight. The teen was heavier than he looked.

Ebelskeever barked a laugh. “And how else do you reckon we convince his parents to make us a new headpiece for the brain-control thingie? Ask 'em pretty please?”

“Well, I—”

“After you so carelessly took the bloody thing for a dip in the river?” Ebelskeever's black eyes flashed under his heavy brow and his lips pressed flat. Did he know Max was a
double agent?

The other agent, a bronze-skinned woman with pale green eyes, slipped her arms under Addison's armpits and relieved Max of his burden.

“Get his feet,” she snapped.

“I didn't mean to wreck it,” Max muttered to Ebelskeever as he and Green Eyes carried the unconscious teen over to a gurney and strapped him down. In a way, that was
true—Max hadn't intentionally destroyed that critical part of the invention; he had merely wanted to keep it away from LOTUS.

And now LOTUS had sorted out a way to obtain a replacement headset and make their brain-control device operational. Just a little friendly kidnapping, some gunplay on a suburban street, and
then—hey, presto!—a new headpiece.

Next stop: world domination.

The massive man pounded twice on the truck cab's inner wall. “Switch!” he bellowed. Max heard the truck's cab door open. “Come on, Segredo. You're riding up
front with me, where I can keep an eye on you.”

Max and Ebelskeever hopped out of the rear of the cargo compartment. After a third LOTUS agent stepped around the side of the truck and joined Green Eyes in the back, he and the big man pulled
the truck's rear panel down and secured it.

“We're leaving this fake wall and door?” asked Max, jerking his head at the barrier behind them.

“Yup.”

“Won't someone be suspicious?”

“Not our problem,” said Ebelskeever. “Let's go.”

When Max opened the truck's passenger-side door, he froze in his tracks.

“Hi, Max.”

A lithe blond girl with toffee-brown eyes sat in the middle of the bench seat, her hands in her lap.

“Vespa,” Max croaked. His throat tightened and conflicting emotions ricocheted around his belly like a Ping-Pong ball in an Olympic finals match. Until he met Vespa da Costa, Max
hadn't known it was possible to like and loathe someone at the same time. “What are
you
doing here?” he choked out. Even gazing at her lovely face pained him, because
each time he saw it, her betrayal sprang to mind.

“My aunt.” Vespa glanced over at him with a mixture of guilt and something else he couldn't read. “She wanted me to observe.”

Her aunt being Mrs. Frost, the ruthless old woman who ran LOTUS's British division. The one to whom Vespa had spilled all of S.P.I.E.S.'s secrets.

“Oh,” said Max.

Ebelskeever slammed the driver-side door and growled, “Hop in, Romeo. Unless you fancy explaining yourself to the coppers.”

Shoulders tensed, Max slowly climbed into the cab. Before he'd even fastened his safety belt, the vehicle ground into gear, bumping out of the alley and onto a street. Shifted by momentum,
Vespa's warm weight pressed against his side for a second. The scent of tropical flowers teased his nose, and her eyes flicked over to him and then away as she righted herself.

Max set his jaw, deciding to say nothing. He'd mostly been able to avoid her during his few days at LOTUS's headquarters in the capital. No reason that practice shouldn't
continue.

But Vespa had other ideas.

“Max, we need to talk,” she said.

“Actually,” he said, “we don't.”

She shifted on the seat to face him. “You can't just keep avoiding me.”

“Watch me.”

Vespa's eyes were huge and shiny. “Please?”

A hot spike of anger flared in Max's gut. “Really? You want to do this right here and now?” His gaze took in Ebelskeever's bulk on Vespa's other side.

The burly spy chuckled. “Don't mind me, lovebirds. I couldn't care less about your little spat.”

He stopped the truck at an intersection. Looking past him, Max could see the spot where the snatch had taken place. Now two police constables had a LOTUS agent cuffed and leaning up against the
gray Mercedes. There was no sign of the other LOTUS car, or of the other agents.

“Pity about old Desmond,” said Ebelskeever with a wry headshake. “He always was a bit slow off the mark.”

The truck wheeled away and jounced down the road with its kidnapped cargo in the back. Ebelskeever's musky odor (like a wolverine in heat mixed with a men's locker room) filled the
cab, smothering Vespa's distracting floral scent. Max wasn't sure whether this was an improvement. He fixed his gaze out the windshield and clamped his lips together. But he could feel
Vespa's eyes boring into the side of his head.

The silence stretched.

“Fine,” he snapped. “Say it and be done.”

“I'm sorry,” said Vespa. “I am so, so sorry. My aunt forced me to go undercover in your orphanage—I had no choice.”

Max kept staring straight ahead.

“At first,” Vespa continued, “it was no problem. I did what she told me, passing tips about your operations. But then, later…” She trailed off.

“Later you passed her even more information,” said Max. He didn't try to hide his resentment.

“But it was tearing me up,” said Vespa, with a catch in her husky voice. “I mean, Hantai Annie welcomed me, made a place for me. And you—you were so
kind—”

“—that you told your aunt all about our safe house and gave her what she needed to destroy S.P.I.E.S.,” Max interrupted hotly.

She bit her lip. Her eyes radiated hurt.

Belatedly recalling his undercover situation, Max sucked in a deep breath and switched tack. “But I'm not bitter. We're on the same side now, so everything's all
tickety-boo. You did what you had to do.” His words rang falser than a grade-schooler's fake ID.

Vespa made a strangled sound and plunged her face into her hands. Max sneaked a glimpse, but her tousled blond mane covered everything.

Ebelskeever snorted. “You've got a real way with the ladies, sonny-me-lad.”

Max's answering quip died on his lips. He stared out the side window. This game was all too real, its stakes all too high. This was no time for jokes.

 

A half hour later, the gates rolled open and the truck eased down a driveway onto the grounds of LOTUS's headquarters. The house was hidden behind a high brick wall and a
fringe of elm trees, although calling it a house would be like calling the Great Wall of China a fence—true as far as it went, but it didn't go nearly far enough.

The sixty-five-room redbrick mansion sprawled arrogantly amid green parkland like a rich, obnoxious guest who couldn't be bothered to leave the party. It boasted a host of bedrooms, enough
gables and chimneys for five houses, a tennis court and gym, a dojo, a lab, an underground pistol range, a snake pit, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and a home theater. Max hadn't yet watched
a film there, but he supposed that LOTUS screened old James Bond movies and took notes on where the villains went wrong.

The truck pulled up close to the side of the mansion, away from prying eyes. As it stopped, two bulky men hustled out of the house and around the rear of the vehicle. One of them was Albert
Styx, formerly of S.P.I.E.S., now with LOTUS—the man who had shot Max's favorite teacher, Mr. Stones. Fortunately, Stones had survived, and was now recovering.

When Styx accidentally caught Max's eye, he nodded curtly. “Segredo.”

“Styx,” said Max. This was the longest conversation they'd had since he had arrived at the mansion, and that was fine by Max.