Ark Angel recap

Recovering in a London hospital from the bullet Scorpia put in him, Alex is mistaken for Paul Drevin, the son of a Russian billionaire in the next room, and abducted by an environmental group calling itself Force Three. He escapes, and the incident brings him into the Drevins' orbit and, inevitably, into MI6's plans. Nikolai Drevin is building Ark Angel, the first hotel in space, and Force Three has been attacking the project; Alex goes with Paul to the family's Caribbean island, where the launch site is. There he finds that the project is bankrupt, that Drevin is under criminal investigation, and that Force Three was created and funded by Drevin himself as cover. Drevin's plan is to bring Ark Angel out of orbit onto Washington, DC, destroying the case against him along with a large part of the city. Alex is launched into space, reaches the station, and diverts it so that it breaks up over open ocean. Drevin is killed, and Alex falls back to Earth and comes down in the sea off Australia.

Previously: Alex Rider, fourteen, was drawn into MI6 after the murder of his uncle Ian, and has been used repeatedly by Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones of Special Operations. He stopped Herod Sayle's poisoned school computers, broke Dr Hugo Grief's cloning operation at Point Blanc, survived General Alexei Sarov's attempt to make him his son, and prevented Damian Cray from launching stolen American missiles. Following the dying words of the assassin Yassen Gregorovich, he went to Venice and found Scorpia, whose executive Julia Rothman told him his father had been one of the organisation's assassins and showed him film of MI6 executing him. Alex trained with them before discovering that Scorpia meant to kill thousands of London schoolchildren, and turned on the organisation. MI6 then told him the truth: John Rider had been their own officer, working inside Scorpia under the name Hunter, and the execution was staged to extract him. Alex destroyed Scorpia's weapon, and Scorpia answered by having him shot in the chest by a sniper. He lives in London with the housekeeper Jack Starbright.

Alex is in a private London hospital, weeks into a slow recovery from the sniper's bullet and forbidden any exertion at all. In the room along the corridor is Paul Drevin, the son of the Russian-born billionaire Nikolai Drevin, kept there under guard because his family has been threatened. When kidnappers get into the building they take the wrong boy, and Alex, still convalescent, finds himself bundled out of the hospital by men who believe they have Paul. He escapes them across a half-built tower block at considerable cost to his healing chest. The kidnappers were from Force Three, an environmental group that has declared war on Drevin's business.

Drevin, grateful and intrigued, invites Alex into his household, and MI6 encourage him to accept. Blunt and Mrs Jones want somebody near the man: Drevin is one of the richest people alive, made his money in the chaotic years after the Soviet collapse, owns an English football club, and is now building Ark Angel, the first hotel in orbit, a project that has consumed more money than anyone can account for. Alex becomes a friend to Paul, who has no others, and Smithers equips him for a trip to the family's Caribbean island. What MI6 do not say is how much of their interest is in the American investigation quietly circling Drevin's finances.

On Flamingo Bay, Alex finds a private island with its own launch complex and a workforce that does not discuss its employer. Among the staff is Tamara Knight, a young woman who takes an unexplained interest in him. Force Three strikes at the island, and Alex meets its leader, Kaspar, whose head and face are covered in tattooed foliage and who talks about the planet in the language of a man for whom individual deaths do not count. The attacks are savage and the security response is oddly calm. Alex begins to notice that Force Three appears exactly where it is most useful, and that Drevin's disasters are always insured.

The pieces fit together and give Alex a different picture. Ark Angel has bankrupted its owner; Drevin's fortune was built on money and methods that will not survive examination; and the authorities are closing on him. Force Three is not his enemy but his creation, funded and directed by him to provide a public villain and a reason for everything that has gone wrong. Kaspar is a paid man who does not fully understand whose plan he is serving. Alex works out that Drevin has one move left that would solve the problem permanently, and that it involves the station currently in orbit above them.

Drevin intends to bring Ark Angel down out of orbit onto Washington, DC, destroying the buildings that hold the case against him and a great part of the city with them, and leaving the catastrophe to be blamed on the terrorists he has spent a year inventing. It cannot be stopped from the ground once it is set running. Alex is put aboard a launch bound for the station, and Tamara Knight goes with him; she is a CIA officer who has been working inside Drevin's organisation, and Alex is no longer working alone. Neither of them has flown before, the station is unmanned, and the de-orbit sequence is already loaded.

Aboard Ark Angel, Alex and Tamara Knight change the station's course so that it comes down over open ocean and breaks up there instead of over Washington; the city is never hit and the scheme is destroyed with the station. Drevin is killed, Kaspar does not survive, and his fraud and his invented terrorists are both exposed, leaving Paul orphaned and his father's name ruined. Alex is left with the problem of getting home from orbit, and solves it by falling: he comes down through the atmosphere and into the sea off the Australian coast, where he is found alive. He has been shot, told to rest for months, kidnapped, and put into space, and MI6 have still not given any indication that they are finished with him.

Alex is launched into orbit and reaches Ark Angel with Tamara Knight, and aboard the station he changes what Drevin has set in motion. Instead of coming down on Washington, the station is put on a course that breaks it up over open ocean, and the city is never hit. Drevin's scheme collapses with it, and he is killed. Getting home is the last problem: Alex leaves the station and falls back through the atmosphere, coming down in the sea off the coast of Australia, where he is picked up alive. Force Three is finished, Kaspar dead, and Drevin's empire and his fraud both exposed. Paul Drevin is left orphaned and disgraced by association with a father he never suspected of anything. Alex, having been shot months earlier and told to rest, has now been in space and back, and MI6 have again used him with no intention of stopping.