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SCORPIA
Alex Rider Book 5
ANTHONY HOROWITZ
First published 2004 by Walker Books Ltd 87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ
2468 10 97531
Text © 2004 Anthony Horowitz
Cover illustration © 2004 Phil Schramm
Alex Rider Icon™ © 2004 Walker Books Ltd
ISBN 0-7445-8323-3
Table of Contents
EXTRA WORK
THE WIDOW’S PALACE
INVISIBLE SWORD
BY INVITATION ONLY
FLOOD TIDE
THOUGHTS ON A TRAIN
CONSANTO
DESIGNER LABELS
ALBERT BRIDGE
HOW TO KILL
THE BELL TOWER
DEAR PRIME MINISTER…
PIZZA DELIVERY
COBRA
REMOTE CONTROL
DECISION TIME
THE CHURCH OF FORGOTTEN SAINTS
HIGH RESOLUTION
DEEP COVER
A MOTHER’S TOUCH
EXTRA WORK
^ »
For the two thieves on the 200cc Vespa scooter, it was a case of the wrong victim, in the wrong place, on the wrong Sunday morning in September.
It seemed that all Life had gathered in the Piazza Esmeralda, a few miles outside Venice. Church had just finished and families were strolling together in the brilliant sunlight: grandmothers in black, boys and girls in their best suits and communion dresses. The coffee bars and ice-cream shops were open, their customers spilling onto the pavements and out into the street. A huge fountain—all naked gods and serpents—gushed jets of ice-cold water. And there was a market. Stalls had been set up selling kites, dried flowers, old postcards, clockwork birds and sacks of seed for the hundreds of pigeons that strutted around.
In the middle of all this were a dozen English schoolchildren. It was bad luck for the two thieves that one of them was Alex Rider.
It was the beginning of September. Less than a month had passed since Alex’s final confrontation with Damian Cray on Air Force One—the American presidential plane. It had been the end of an adventure that had taken him to Paris and Amsterdam, and finally to the main runway at Heathrow Airport even as twenty-five nuclear missiles had been fired at targets all around the world. Alex had managed to destroy these missiles. He had been there when Cray died. And at last he had gone home with the usual collection of bruises and scratches only to find a grim-faced and determined Jack Starbright waiting for him. Jack was his housekeeper but she was also his friend, and, as always, she was worried about him.
“You can’t keep this up, Alex,” she said. “You’re never at school. You missed half the summer term when you were at Skeleton Key and loads of the spring term when you were in Cornwall and then at that awful academy Point Blanc. If you keep this up, you’ll flunk all your exams and then what will you do?”
“It’s not my fault—” Alex began.
“I know it’s not your fault. But it’s my job to do something about it, and I’ve decided to hire a tutor for what’s left of the summer.”
“You’re not serious!”
