Scorpia Rising recap

Scorpia takes a contract to force the British government to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece, and plans to do it by seizing the children of diplomats at an international school in Cairo. Because the same boy has ruined two of its operations, the organisation makes a second objective of destroying Alex Rider, and to that end it retrieves Julius Grief, the surviving clone surgically made to be Alex's double, from the institution where he has been held since Point Blanc. MI6 send Alex to Cairo to identify the inside man at the school, and Jack Starbright goes with him. Both are taken to the desert compound of Razim, the Scorpia operative running the job, who studies pain as a science. To measure Alex's reaction, Razim has Jack driven away in a rigged jeep and killed in front of him. Alex breaks free, Razim is killed, and the kidnapping is stopped; Julius Grief dies in the final confrontation. Scorpia is destroyed, Blunt is forced out, and Alex leaves to live with the Pleasures in San Francisco.

Previously: Alex Rider was recruited by MI6 at fourteen after his uncle Ian's murder, and has run assignment after assignment for Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones. He stopped Herod Sayle, Dr Hugo Grief's cloning operation at Point Blanc, General Alexei Sarov and Damian Cray. The dying assassin Yassen Gregorovich sent him to Venice, where Scorpia's Julia Rothman recruited him with the lie that his father had been one of their assassins; when Alex learned that the organisation intended to kill thousands of London schoolchildren he destroyed its weapon, and Scorpia answered by having him shot in the chest. MI6 then admitted that John Rider had been their own officer inside Scorpia under the codename Hunter, and that Alex's parents died when a bomb brought down their plane. Alex has since diverted a space station away from Washington, broken a people-smuggling network in Asia and learned that his godfather betrayed his parents, and stopped a manufactured famine in Kenya. He lives in London with the housekeeper Jack Starbright; his closest friend, Sabina Pleasure, is in America.

Scorpia's executive board takes a new commission. A very rich client wants the Elgin Marbles returned from London to Athens, and is willing to pay for a humiliation that leaves the British government no choice. Zeljan Kurst, who runs the organisation, also has an internal problem to solve: twice a fifteen-year-old boy has ruined Scorpia operations, and a firm whose entire value is its record of never failing cannot leave that standing. Both objectives are handed to Razim, an Egyptian operative working from a compound in the western desert, who accepts on condition that Alex Rider is delivered to him personally. Razim spends his private hours on a study of pain, which he believes can be measured and graded like any other quantity, and he has never had a subject who interested him as much.

The operation is built in two halves. In Cairo, Erik Gunter, a decorated British soldier crippled in action and convinced that his country discarded him, is now head of security at an international school full of the children of diplomats and important families; he is Scorpia's man inside. And in South Africa, Scorpia retrieves Julius Grief from the secure institution where he has been held since Point Blanc. Julius is the last of Dr Grief's clones, the one surgically remade into Alex Rider's exact double, and years of confinement have reduced him to a single ambition. He is given Alex's history, Alex's mannerisms and his own place in the plan.

MI6 come to Alex again. The department has intelligence that something is being prepared against the Cairo school and a suspicion about the security chief there, but no way to put an adult near him without being seen; a new pupil, on the other hand, would be invisible. Blunt and Mrs Jones present it as a short job with no violence in it. Alex agrees, on one condition that he does not have to argue for: Jack Starbright comes too. Smithers fits him out. The department does not know, because Scorpia has arranged that it should not, that the whole request rests on bait laid specifically for him.

In Cairo, Alex and Jack settle into a rented apartment and Alex starts at the international school, where Erik Gunter runs security with a soldier's thoroughness and an obvious grievance against Britain. Alex watches him, follows him, and confirms that he is meeting people he should not be meeting. What he cannot yet see is the shape of what is being prepared, or why an operation of this size should be aimed at a school. He reports back to London and is told to keep going. Meanwhile his double is in the city, learning to be him.

The plan comes into focus: Scorpia intends to seize the school's pupils, the children of ambassadors and ministers from a dozen countries, and hold them until the British government hands the Elgin Marbles back, an act of surrender that would be filmed and remembered. Alex gets close enough to be certain and is caught doing it. He is not killed, because being caught was always the point. He is taken out of Cairo and into the desert, to Razim's compound, and Jack is taken with him.

At the compound Razim is unhurried and almost friendly. He explains his research to his prisoner in detail, because the work requires a subject who understands what is being done and why, and he has designed an experiment specifically for Alex. Julius Grief is there too, free to say everything he has spent years preparing to say to the face he was given. Alex is held, watched, and made to wait, and every part of the arrangement is built to make the waiting worse. Jack Starbright is being held in the same compound.

Jack Starbright is put into a jeep and driven away across the desert, and Alex is made to watch as the vehicle is destroyed with her inside it. She is killed in front of him, for a measurement. Razim records what he came for. Alex, who has been used by his own government since he was fourteen and has lost his uncle, his parents' memory and his godfather to the same world, loses the last person who belonged to him, and stops being anything Scorpia can use or bargain with.

Alex breaks out of the compound; Razim is killed and his experiment ends with him. The kidnapping in Cairo is stopped before the children can be taken, the contract fails, and the government is never asked for anything. Julius Grief, still wearing Alex's face, follows him to the end and is stopped in a final confrontation that he does not survive. Three failed contracts destroy Scorpia's only real asset, its reputation, and the organisation is broken up and hunted down. At MI6 there is a reckoning of sorts: Alan Blunt is forced out and Mrs Jones takes over Special Operations. None of it brings Jack back. With no family and nothing left for him in London, Alex leaves Britain to live in San Francisco with Sabina Pleasure and her parents.

Alex gets out of the desert and the kidnapping is stopped: the children are not taken, no government is ransomed, and the contract fails. Razim is killed, and Julius Grief, who has spent the operation wearing Alex's face, is stopped in a final confrontation and does not survive it. The failure destroys Scorpia. Having lost three contracts to the same boy, the organisation loses the only asset it ever really sold, which was certainty, and it is broken up and hunted down by the services that had tolerated it. Inside MI6 the reckoning is smaller but real: Alan Blunt is forced out of Special Operations and Mrs Jones takes his place. None of it returns Jack Starbright, who is dead, and with her gone Alex has no family and no home in London worth the name. He leaves Britain to live in San Francisco with Sabina Pleasure and her parents, out of the department's reach at last, having paid for it with the one person who was always waiting for him to come back.