Skeleton Key recap

A summer job as a ball boy at Wimbledon turns into an MI6 errand when Alex uncovers a scheme to rig the tournament, and blows his cover badly enough that a Chinese criminal syndicate marks him. To get him out of London, MI6 lend him to the CIA, who need a child to complete a family cover: two agents pose as his parents on holiday near the island of Skeleton Key, off Cuba, where the retired Russian general Alexei Sarov has bought stolen nuclear material. The Americans are caught and killed, leaving Alex alone on the island. Sarov, who lost his own son in Afghanistan, takes Alex in and becomes fixed on the idea of making him a replacement. He is planning to detonate the bomb at a Russian naval base during a presidential visit, kill the president, and use the outrage to seize power and rebuild the Soviet Union. Alex is taken to Russia with him and stops the detonation. Confronted with failure and with Alex's refusal to become his son, Sarov shoots himself.

Previously: Alex Rider, fourteen, was raised by his uncle Ian in London and discovered after Ian's murder that his uncle had been an MI6 officer and that his own unusual childhood had been a training programme. Blackmailed into finishing his uncle's last assignment, he exposed the businessman Herod Sayle, who had loaded a computer donated to every school in Britain with a modified smallpox virus. Sayle was shot dead by Yassen Gregorovich, the Russian assassin who had also killed Ian Rider and who let Alex live. MI6 used Alex a second time at the Point Blanc Academy in the Alps, where the fugitive scientist Dr Hugo Grief was replacing the sons of the world's richest men with surgically altered clones of himself; Alex escaped down the mountain, the academy was destroyed and Grief was killed, though a duplicate of Alex himself came within a fight of taking over his life. Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones of Special Operations keep promising his American housekeeper, Jack Starbright, that they are finished with him.

Alex is working as a ball boy at Wimbledon, a summer job arranged for him by MI6, who suspect that something is being arranged inside the grounds to fix the outcome of matches. It is meant to be an assignment with no real risk. Alex notices men where they should not be, follows the trail further than he was asked to, and finds the operation, but he is seen doing it. He gets out alive; his cover does not survive, and the people running the scheme are connected to a Chinese criminal syndicate with a long memory and a presence in London.

With a contract effectively out on him, Alex cannot safely stay in the country, and Blunt solves two problems at once by lending him to the Central Intelligence Agency. The Americans want to look at Skeleton Key, an island off the Cuban coast owned by a retired Russian general, Alexei Sarov, who they believe has bought stolen weapons-grade nuclear material. What they need is an innocuous family group that can sit on a nearby beach without attracting attention. Two agents, Tom Turner and Belinda Troy, are to be Alex's parents for a fortnight; Smithers equips him for the tropics. Alex is told, plainly, that he is scenery and nothing more.

On the island the surveillance goes wrong. Turner and Troy are captured and killed, leaving Alex alone with no cover story, no back-up and no way off. He is picked up by Sarov's security chief Conrad, a man rebuilt after a terrible injury, and brought to the general himself. Sarov is courteous, disciplined and unhurried, and treats his prisoner as a guest. He has also encountered Alex before, in a sense: the Russian assassin Yassen Gregorovich is on the island in Sarov's employ, and knows exactly who the boy is. Rather than have Alex killed, Sarov begins to take an unnerving interest in him.

Sarov's interest turns out to have a cause. He lost his only son in the Afghan war and has never accepted it; in Alex he has decided he has found a replacement, and he says so as though the matter were settled. He speaks about the collapse of the Soviet Union as the destruction of something great by weak men, and about the country's present leadership with open contempt. Alex, kept under guard and unable to get a message out, works out that the nuclear material on the island is not being stored for sale. Sarov has a device, a plan and a date, and he intends to take Alex with him.

Alex is flown out with Sarov to Russia, to a naval installation in the far north where the general's preparations are complete. The plan is a single act of destruction: detonate the bomb at the base during a visit by the Russian president, kill him along with everyone there, and let the catastrophe be blamed on the country's enemies. In the chaos, Sarov and the hard-line officers behind him will take power and put the Soviet Union back together. He tells Alex all of it because he expects him to be grateful, and to stand beside him afterwards as his son.

At the base Alex breaks away, reaches the device and stops the detonation, and Russian troops arrive before it can be used. The bomb never goes off and the president survives. Sarov, watching his life's plan collapse, makes Alex one final offer, to leave with him and be his son. Alex refuses. Sarov turns his pistol on himself and shoots himself dead in front of him. Conrad does not survive the operation either. Alex is brought home to London, two American agents are dead, and both the CIA and MI6 record the affair as a success. Neither service shows any sign of concluding that a fourteen-year-old should be left out of the next one.

Alex prevents the detonation at the naval base, and Russian forces reach the site before the device can be used; the bomb never goes off and the president is not killed. Sarov, with his life's plan destroyed in front of him, makes Alex a last offer: come with him, be his son, and start again. Alex refuses. Rather than accept that refusal or be taken alive, Sarov puts his pistol to his own head and shoots himself in front of Alex, an image Alex cannot afterwards get rid of. Conrad, Sarov's security chief, does not survive the operation either. Alex is retrieved and brought home. Two CIA officers are dead, and both the Americans and MI6 treat the outcome as an intelligence success rather than as anything that happened to a fourteen-year-old. Nobody in either service seriously suggests leaving him alone in future, and Alex goes back to London knowing that being useful is now the most dangerous fact about him.