In Scorpia Rising, Smithers reveals that in reality, he was always privately opposed to involving Alex in MI6 in the first place; he believes that the world of spying is dangerous and dirty, and people like Ian Rider, who saw it as one big adventure, could easily get themselves killed.
Smithers was portrayed by Stephen Fry in the Stormbreaker film, where his jovial nature and position were significantly downplayed, and Nyasha Hatendi in the Alex Rider TV series, where he is more involved in the day-to-day actions of the Department, serving as Mrs Jones' de facto deputy alongside John Crawley.
At the end of Snakehead, when Major Yu's oil rig is attacked by a joint British/Australian taskforce, Ash is shot by Ben Daniels, and is then revealed to have been working for SCORPIA since Malta, and had blown Alex's cover before their mission had even started.
However, Drake's line of work soon sharpened his interest in terrorism, thinking that the West was utterly responsible for the destruction that he had photographed, until he vanished two years before the events of Alex in Afghanistan, becoming a terrorist and founding his own group, known simply as "the Awakening".
Operating from the Falcon's Edge citadel in the Herat mountains, close to the Afghanistan-Iran border, which had been variously used by Alexander the Great, the British in the nineteenth century and the Soviets, Drake plans to unite all terrorist groups and freedom fighters in the Middle East into the Awakening, in order to drive the West out of the region forever.
Mrs Jones and John Crawley approach Alex (who has no school for a time following the fire caused by his clone), and convince him to go to Falcon's Edge, supposedly to photograph a calutron left over from the Soviet era, over fears that Drake is trying to activate it to supply terrorists with nuclear weapons.
However, Feng lets slip several inconsistencies, such as not knowing who Alan Blunt (the head of MI6 Special Operations) is, and saying that the car Alex was in hit a traffic light, when his underling, Wendy McDarling, saying the crash happened on a motorway.
Desperately in need of money in order to sustain their luxurious lifestyle, as well as to begin a new SCORPIA, the twins hatch a scheme named Operation Steel Claw, involving the hijacking of an extremely large and expensive helicopter (a Super Stallion) from the United States Air Force with a strong electromagnet attached, with which they pick up a school bus filled with children from wealthy families, which would them be put on a moving Standard Class 5 steam locomotive called The Midnight Flyer that would transport the bus to a disused coke plant where the children will be held for a two hundred sixty million dollar ransom.
The only way they can be told apart is that they have different dominant hands: Giovanni is left-handed, whilst Eduardo is right-handed, which can add to the illusion that they are mirror images of one another, as shown in their first scene in Never Say Die where they eat breakfast by the swimming pool at their villa, sitting opposite one another, appearing like one man and his reflection.
After Kurst has his agents acquire Royal Blue, he puts the operation under the control of Winston Yu, who will have his snakehead, the most powerful criminal organisation in South East Asia, smuggle the bomb to the fault line.
Seeking revenge, Lucas infected the Eden Fall programming with malware allowing him to remotely manipulate the game, adding or removing hazards and obstacles which could lead players to their deaths in what would look like freak accidents.
McCain joined a partnership with GM scientist Leonard Straik and created a poisonous gene to be pumped into wheat crop fields in Kenya which would spread a horrible disease that could wipe out half of Africa.
At one time, she was married to Sandro Rothman, an elderly multimillionaire property developer, but he died two days after their wedding when he fell from his seventeen-story office building – though it is later mentioned in the Paperback edition of Snakehead that Julia pushed him to his death so she would inherit his fortune.
After John Crawley discovers that Nightshade are in possession of the VX nerve agent, Royce declares that MI6's incompetence requires him to put a spy of his own in their ranks, because of there being a leak in the intelligence community.
Jack is forcibly sent home, whilst Mrs Jones and Crawley are put under house arrest; Royce himself declares that the rest of the intelligence services, including MI5 and Special Branch, can handle the critical terror alert better than MI6.
When questioned, Royce reveals he asked Nightshade to assassinate the Cabinet, the Opposition and many other MPs in one place, out in the open, due to his dissatisfaction with them; he does, however, express regret over the potential deaths of innocents, such as choristers, priests and TV crewers.
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.
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.
Sykes gathered together a collection of Iraq veterans in similar situations to his own, feeling forgotten about by Britain in general, and planned an act of revenge that he called 'Operation London Down', allowing them all to get what they felt they deserved.
Despite drinking the coffee himself, Sykes is unaffected by the hallucinogen (possibly due to a higher metabolism) and comes close to strangling Alex, when Sir Frederick, disgusted by the scene and fearing for his own life, shoots him.
A freelance journalist who served in the Royal Marine Commandos before being dishonourably discharged for cowardice under fire, Bulman spent most of his time writing stories focusing on the secret services, and had discovered information about Alex's actions during his missions against Herod Sayle, Damian Cray and Winston Yu.
Legless, ruthless, paranoid, despotic, and determined to "Make American security Great Again", Garfield is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who famously treated his own amputated legs without medical attention and refuses to cooperate with any other agency or even take orders from the White House.
Kurst, who had been considering killing Kroll for some time, then had him shot with a sniper, and had his body thrown in the river Thames with several objects planted on it that would lead MI6 to suspect danger at the Cairo International College of Arts and Education.
Later at the fort, the men arrive in an old dump truck with various weapons to try to kill Alex, who gives them the nicknames "Bandage", "Skullcap", "Silver Cross", "Baseball Bat", "Ant", and "Dec" after their distinguishing features since he doesn't know their real names.
Physically speaking, Dragana Novak is short and overweight, with round shoulders, leathery skin, and dark red hair which is "cut so badly that it stood straight out on one side of her head and curled in on the other", as well as grey teeth, discoloured by her fondness for wine and cigarettes.
She also has a weakness for money and splashing the cash, as seen when she goes shopping in Saint-Tropez after stealing the helicopter, buying a nightdress that would have cost a twelfth of her annual Air Force pay, as well as drinking three bottles of wine and becoming intoxicated during lunch on the day she is shot by Stallone, in addition to fantasising about jewellery, fast cars and expensive chocolates.
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.
'Skunk' reappears at the Grimaldi twins' disused former coke plant in Wales, seen only towards the end of the novel, where he attempts to stop Alex and the hostages during their escape, briefly fighting their guard, Ted Philby, before shooting him to death.
Stallone reappears later on, at the twins' disused coke plant in Wales that serves as their base, as the head of security and being responsible for guarding the fifty-two schoolchildren who have been taken hostage for a three hundred million pound ransom.
Being deprived of his eyes, together with Weinberg's lack of heart, prompts Alex to escape by knocking out Quombi, drugging the security dog, blowing one of the seaplane's floats off and turning it into a canoe, and setting the clinic on fire.