Scorpia

Chapter 1: 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!”
    “I am serious. You’ve still got quite a bit of holiday left. And you can start right now.”
    “I don’t want a tutor—” Alex started to protest.
    “I’m not giving you any choice, Alex. I don’t care what gadgets you’ve got or what smart moves you might try

    —this time there’s no escape!”
    Alex wanted to argue with her but in his heart he knew she was right. MI6 always provided him with a doctor’s note to explain his long absences from school, but the teachers were more or less giving up on him. His last report had said it all: Alex continues to spend more time out of school than in it, and if this carries on, he might as well forget his GCSEs. Although he cannot be blamed for what seems to be a catalogue of medical problems, if he falls any further behind, I fear he may disappear altogether.
    So that was it. Alex had stopped an insane, multimillionaire pop singer from destroying half the world—and what had he got for it? Extra work!
    He started with ill grace—particularly when he discovered that the tutor Jack had found actually taught at Brookland, his own school. Alex wasn’t in his class, but even so it was an embarrassment and he hoped nobody would find out. However, he had to admit that Mr Grey was good at his job. Charlie Grey was young and easy-going, arriving on a bicycle with a saddlebag crammed with books. He taught humanities but seemed to know his way round the entire syllabus.
    “We’ve only got a few weeks,” he announced. “That may not seem very much, but you’d be surprised how much you can achieve one to one. I’m going to work you seven hours a day, and on top of that I’m going to leave you with homework. By the end of the holidays you’ll probably hate me. But at least you’ll start the new school year on a more or less even keel.”
    Alex didn’t hate Charlie Grey. They worked quietly and quickly, moving through the day from maths to history to science and so on. Every weekend, the teacher left behind exam papers, and gradually Alex saw his percentages improve. And then Mr Grey sprang his surprise.
    “You’ve done really well, Alex. I wasn’t going to mention this to you, but how would you like to come with me on the school trip?”
    “Where are you going?”

    “Well, last year it was Paris; the year