Skeleton Key (Alex Rider)

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Known board members include the acting chairman Zeljan Kurst, Major Winston Yu (deceased), Julia Rothman (killed), Max Grendel (murdered), Levi Kroll (murdered), a Frenchman called Jean Picoq, a Chinese man called Dr. Three who is the world's foremost expert on pain and torture, having written books about it, a Japanese man named Hideo Mikato (it is said in Scorpia that he has a diamond set in his teeth and in Snakehead that he has yakuza tattoos all over his body), and an Australian man named Brendan Chase, who abandoned his job as paymaster of the ASIS when he stole four hundred thousand dollars from them in a drunken haze (he was previously known as #5, as he never used his real name). Three other board members were mentioned to have died before the audience is introduced to the organisation; two of them were murdered and the third died of cancer. Two board members were killed over the course of the fifth novel. The first, Max Grendel, a former German spy and the oldest member at the time at seventy-three, decides to have no part in the operation Invisible Sword and attempts to retire, but is immediately killed by a suitcase of scorpions given to him by Julia Rothman. Rothman herself is then killed when Invisible Sword is foiled by Alex Rider and she is crushed to death by her terahertz transmitter. Major Winston Yu dies in the book Snakehead, having made the same mistake as Rothman by underestimating Rider, thus leaving the current roster at exactly half of what it was at its inception. Alex Rider is originally stated as being "tall for his age" in Stormbreaker. Snakehead, however, claims him to be 5'7" and short for his age. [12] [13] However, in the novel Crocodile Tears (novel), once again he is described as getting noticeably taller. [24]

When John Rider, Alex's father, came to work for Scorpia, Julia fell in love with him, but after he was discovered to be a double agent, Julia plans to kill him. She assigned Ash to kill his friend to prove that he is ready to join Scorpia. Mr. Grin (real name Sean Green) is a secondary antagonist in both the novel and film adaption of Stormbreaker. He is Herod Sayle's right-hand man and butler. Grin was formerly a circus performer, throwing knives into the air and catching them in his mouth. However, when Grin's mother came to see his act one day, he was distracted by her and his knives cut off most of his tongue, and left him with a Glasgow Smile. It was after this accident he changed his name to Grin. Following his parent's demise, Alex’s paternal uncle Ian Rider adopted Alex and raised him in his house in Chelsea, London. Ian and Alex had a close relationship, doing practically everything together when Ian was home, which was not often as Ian was also secretly a secret agent who worked for the Special Operations Division of MI6.

Skeleton Key

Graham Adair • Smithers • Mark Kellner • George Adair • Tom Harris • Jerry Harris • Harold Liebermann Alex once shot a worker at Sayle Enterprises. It is unknown exactly who he murdered, because they don't mention this in the novel Stormbreaker or show this happening in the movie. [13] The first is in Point Blanc, where he activates a distress signal but MI6 ignores him and he ends up escaping from the academy of his own accord.

He was shot and killed by his then-employer Damian Cray after he refused to kill Alex and Sabina, claiming that he did not kill children (though evidence in the last book would suggest it had more to do with his reluctance to kill Alex). However he lived long enough to tell Alex to find Scorpia in Venice. Tamara Knight is introduced in the novel Ark Angel as Nikolei Drevin's personal assistant. At first, she is cold towards Alex and she doesn't seem to like him at all. However, it was later revealed that she was working for the CIA when she saved Alex's life from drowning when he went scuba diving. Tamara softened towards him and they joined forces to stop Drevin's plans to destroy his Ark Angel space hotel. They were captured by Magnus Payne and the Force Three "freedom fighters", in fact mercenaries working for Drevin. Tamara was injured and was imprisoned. She was later rescued by Ed Shulsky and a CIA task force. She was the one who convinced Alex to go into space and stop Payne from setting off the bomb that would destroy Ark Angel. Alex Rider first meets him in Snakehead when he wanders into a minefield. Ash tells him not to move and leaves, claiming he will get help. This was later found to be a test, to see how Alex would react. Alex discovers that Ash is his godfather after meeting with Ethan Brooke, head of Covert Action for ASIS. The prospect of learning more about his past lures Alex into working for ASIS, alongside Ash, investigating the ruthless Snakehead. They are sent on a mission together to infiltrate the Snakehead by posing as Afghan refugees trying to gain the Snakehead's help in illegally immigrating to Australia. However Major Yu is on to them from the start, so both are captured in Darwin. Alex is sent to a surgery where his organs will be illegally harvested, whilst Ash vanishes along with the Major. In Scorpia Rising, there is an unnamed assassin in the prison that also contained Julius Grief. This was rumoured to be the Gentleman, although in Nightshade he was revealed to be a Caribbean hitman known as Mr Someone.

David Friend • Smithers • James Sprintz • Michael J. Roscoe • Wolf • John Crawley • Fiona Friend • Julius Grief Royce first appears at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in a meeting with Mrs Jones. He has discovered that she has used Alex on numerous occasions, and tells her to never use him again. After brief training with the K-Unit at the SAS training camp, Brecon Beacons, Alex is sent to Cornwall to investigate the Middle-Eastern billionaire Herod Sayle. Posing as a competition winner Felix Lester, Alex gathers as much information as he can before his cover is blown. He learns of Sayle’s plan to kill the children of Britain with a modified smallpox virus hidden inside the Stormbreaker computers he was creating and distributing to the school's of England for free. After escaping from captivity and narrowly avoiding death at the tentacles of a Portuguese Man-O-War jellyfish, Alex manages to stop the launch and by action, the virus from being released. Alan Blunt and Mrs Jones both congratulate Alex on his bravery but, Alex becomes angry when the only reward is the peppermint offered to him by Mrs Jones, which he refused. After his meeting with the heads of MI6 Special Operations, Alex is kidnapped by Sayle because he ruined his plans. Sayle takes Alex to a helipad on the top of a skyscraper and tells Alex of his plans to escape by helicopter. Just as he is about to shoot Alex, the pilot, who is Yassen Gregorovich, shoots Herod Sayle. [12] Point Blanc

He's too good at what he does… too good at his job. And it's in his blood. It's rather odd. Most schoolboys dream of being spies. With Alex, we have a spy who dreams of being a schoolboy. In the Alex Rider TV series, Joe Byrne is reimagined as a woman and the Deputy CIA Jo Bryne, played by Rakie Ayola. Anan Sukit is a minor antagonist in the novel Snakehead. He is the head of the Bangkok Snakehead, owned by Major Winston Yu. After spending two months of a twenty-year sentence in HMP Doncaster, for possession of drugs with intent to supply (worsened by the fact that the drugs were impure, dangerous and possibly lethal), Skoda (whose real name is revealed to be Brian Smith [Jake Edwards in the American Version]) plots to kill Alex Rider and to escape. He does this by self-harming in the exercise yard and being taken to the prison hospital wing for night, put in the same room as terminally ill fellow inmate Harry Baker (known as 'Spider' because of the huge, self-made tattoo of a tarantula on his face), who is serving a life sentence for killing a policeman in a bank robbery. Skoda suffocates Spider to death with a pillow, then takes the body's place by switching beds and drawing a copy of Spider's tattoo on his own face with a marker pen; when the paramedics arrive, they carry Skoda off to Doncaster Royal Infirmary. Eventually, The Salesman discovers Turner's real identity and attempts to kill him. However, Alex sneaks onto the boat and sets it on fire. This causes a distraction, allowing Alex to save Turner by shooting The Salesman with a stun-dart (commenting, "He got the wrong number."). After Alex and Turner jump overboard, the Salesman tries to ram them with his boat, but Sarov's assistant, Conrad, had set a bomb on the boat, which is detonated, killing the Salesman and his crew, as well as sinking the boat.

Other recaps for this series:

The second is in Snakehead, where the watch Smithers provides him is deactivated by Ash and he eventually escapes using an exploding coin. Bulman is referenced again in Scorpia Rising, where Razim is mentioned as having obtained Bulman's notes. A couple of years later, Alex meets Sahara Sands again, where she reveals her father was working in the office of the American Secretary of Defense, and that his laptop hard drive contained classified information on the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. da Silva had presumably been hired to steal the laptop and leak the data, which would have resulted in a huge embarrassment for the US government.