Snakehead characters

Appears from the start

Fourteen, and pulled out of the sea off the Australian coast after falling back to Earth from orbit. He is exhausted, a long way from home and, for once, in the hands of a service that has no file on him and no claim over him. That does not last.

First appears in chapter 3

A senior officer of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, direct and persuasive, who has been trying for years to get somebody inside the people-smuggling networks that run through Southeast Asia. He knows precisely who Alex is by the time they meet, and he has a proposal ready.

First appears in chapter 4

A former MI6 officer, now with the Australian service, who turns out to be Alex's godfather. He worked alongside John and Helen Rider, was there the night Alex's life changed, and carries a bad old wound in his stomach from it. He is the first person Alex has met who knew his parents as people rather than as files, and he is to travel with Alex as his minder.

First appears in chapter 15

The head of a snakehead operating out of Bangkok, half English and half Chinese, educated at an English public school and impeccably polite about it. He suffers from a bone disease that makes his skeleton brittle, so he moves carefully and is never without protection, and he runs a business that moves human beings as freight and sells whatever is left of them.

First appears in chapter 18

The MI6 agent Alex first met under the codename Fox during Special Air Service selection training. Young, capable and one of the few people in the service who treats Alex as a colleague, he arrives as part of the operation's back-up.

First appears in chapter 23

The deputy head of MI6 Special Operations, who knows more about what happened to Alex's parents than she has ever been willing to say.