Scorpia (novel)

After the events of Eagle Strike, Alex Rider goes on a school trip to Venice, Italy in order to investigate Scorpia, having been told to do so by Yassen Gregorovich if he wished to learn about his father, John Rider. With the help of his best friend Tom Harris, Alex manages to sneak into a party hosted by Julia Rothman, whom he believes to have a link to Scorpia, and discovers evidence linking the organization to a pharmaceutical company called Consanto Enterprises. Before Alex can learn more, he is confronted by a Scorpia agent named Nile, who suffers from vitiligo, overpowers him and locks him in a room that will flood as the Venice tide increases, drowning him. Alex manages to escape into the Grand Canal. He then managed to board a train with Tom, as Consanto happens to be near Naples, where Tom's brother, Jerry, is staying.

With the help of Jerry, Alex BASE jumps into Consanto Enterprises, and is eventually confronted by Dr. Harold Liebermann, the head of the organization. Nile shows up, but much to Alex's surprise, he kills Liebermann and takes Alex to see Rothman after blowing up the factory. While having dinner with her, Alex is told about Scorpia, an organization that carries out acts of terrorism for money, that his father was a Scorpia agent, and was not killed in a plane crash as MI6 claimed, but was in fact murdered by them while being exchanged for one of Scorpia's hostages (the son of a senior British civil servant), at the command of Mrs Jones. After hearing this, Alex decides to join Scorpia and begins his training at Scorpia's "institute" on Malagosto, an island near Venice. He becomes a top student, but his instructors become concerned upon learning his unwillingness to kill. On Rothman's suggestion, the headmaster, Professor Oliver d'Arc, sends Alex to kill Mrs Jones, Deputy Head of MI6 Special Operations, in hopes that it will overcome his psychological barrier.

Meanwhile, Scorpia mail a list of political demands for the American Government to the British Government, such as complete military disarmament and withdrawal from every country on the planet, one hundred billion dollars to be paid to the World Bank, and the resignation of the President, warning them that if the demands are not followed through by 48 hours from issue, Scorpia will use a weapon codenamed "Invisible Sword" to carry out a massacre of children in London. As a demonstration, Scorpia use the weapon on the England national football team reserves as they return from a tournament in Nigeria. Despite the high security put in place at the airport, the team are all killed inexplicably. Elsewhere, disguised as a pizza delivery boy, Alex infiltrates Mrs Jones' apartment where he attempts to carry out his operation, thanks to gadgets supplied by Scorpia (including a latex prosthetic face mask, thickening motorcycle leathers, a phony lift control disguised as a pizza promotional card, a blowgun with a drugged dart disguised as a drinking straw, door lock-destroying thermite charges disguised as pizza olives (with the detonator concealed in the carrier bag), and a pistol with one bullet in a specially modified large bottle of Coke). Though Alex finally fires at Mrs Jones, the bullet hits an invisible pane of bulletproof glass, and he is captured by MI6. Alex later learns that he actually turned the gun away at the last moment.

Alan Blunt convinces Alex to help provide some information to a meeting of the United Kingdom's emergency COBRA committee. Based on Alex's observations, COBRA deduces that Scorpia, through the use of nanoshells, has secretly added a lethal amount of cyanide to a number of vaccines at Consanto Enterprises, including the yellow fever vaccines given to the football team and the BCG injections recently received by London schoolchildren. They also figure out that Scorpia can activate the poison at will using beams of terahertz radiation. A search of the city for the dishes that will transmit the terahertz beams begins, but Jones and Blunt suspect that there is more to Scorpia's plan that meets the eye. They fake Alex's escape from MI6 custody to enable him to rejoin Rothman and learn the true location of the terahertz dishes, by having Smithers outfit Alex with a locator beacon disguised as a dental brace. Alex secretly deduces that Scorpia has always wanted to kill him, as he recalls being injected when undergoing a medical examination earlier at Malagosto.

Rothman and Nile bring Alex along to witness the launch of a hot air balloon which will lift the dishes into position, keeping them out of sight until Scorpia's deadline. Rothman reveals Scorpia's plan to destroy the "Special Relationship" between Britain and America; the demands to the Americans were deliberately made unreasonable to them. Once Invisible Sword has been used in London, Scorpia will threaten the Americans with the same weapon while making more lenient demands, intending to expose them as unwilling to help their allies and turn them into an international pariah. Alex alerts MI6 to the launch site's location with the tracking device, but gives himself away when he reveals his knowledge that children will be the primary target of the attack. An SAS force sent to follow Alex assaults the launch site, and Alex uses the distraction to climb onto the balloon, closely followed by Nile. They both manage to reach the top, where Nile's fear of heights becomes apparent, allowing Alex to cut one of the gas pipes feeding the burner, causing an explosion on the platform, and Nile falling to his death. Alex survives by clinging onto the balloon while the platform with the terahertz equipment falls away. Rothman attempts to flee, disguised as a tramp, and slips past the MI6 and SAS men, but she is crushed and killed by the falling terahertz equipment.

A week later, Alex is briefed by MI6 and learns that John Rider was in fact an MI6 double agent within Scorpia, and that his death at the hostage exchange had been faked, in order to both get him out of Scorpia and allow him to retire from the spy world; he even meets the hostage, James Adair, now a university lecturer, whose father, Sir Graham Adair, is Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet Office, and whom Alex met at COBRA. James reveals that he met John Rider afterwards, and reveals that he and his wife named their oldest son after John. Alex's parents had indeed been killed in a plane crash shortly after his birth, arranged by Rothman once she learned of John's betrayal. As Alex leaves MI6's headquarters, he is shot by a Scorpia assassin in retaliation for his actions, and the story ends with Alex lying on the street seeing visions of his parents.

The official review from Amazon Canada said, "Fans of the Alex Rider Adventures will not be disappointed by the slam-bang action in this fifth book in the spy thriller series, although the ending may leave them feeling a bit dismayed".[1] The book won many awards including "The Children's Book of the Year" award at the Galaxy British Book Awards, and the BAA and Expedia Book Awards.

• Official website of the books
• Scorpia at Walker Books