It is mentioned that the school secretary, Jane Bedfordshire, has always had a soft spot for Alex. [12] [18] Involvement with MI6 Razim's Men are secondary independent antagonists in Never Say Die. They are six Berbers and former employees of Abdul-Aziz Al-Rahim (and possibly SCORPIA) who fell into financial difficulty after Razim was killed in Scorpia Rising. Alex first sees three of them at a coffee bar while he gets a coke and his taxi driver, Yusuf, asks them directions to Razim's fort. During this conversation, the men tell Yusuf to abandon Alex at the fort (presumably for money). Alan Blunt was the head of MI6 Special Operations until Scorpia Rising. He is an aloof, impassive, and ruthless man. Throughout the series he is known for wearing a grey suit and grey glasses and being driven around in a Rolls-Royce. From the book Point Blanc, it is said that he had graduated with a First-Class Honours degree in mathematics from Cambridge University. Blunt is dedicated to his job and has a very analytical mind. After the events of the book Scorpia Rising and Scorpia's demise, Alan Blunt retires from his role at MI6, supposedly forced to by pressure from higher-ups. His assistant Lâle "Tulip" Jones, known better as Mrs. Jones, takes over from the end of Scorpia Rising onwards. It is stated in the same book that he receives knighthood following his retirement. Nightshade is a freelance terror unit posing as a cult, specialising in capturing the children of families connected to the military, intelligence and other areas, and indoctrinating them to be the perfect child soldier, utterly obedient to the will of the "Teachers", who are the executive committee of Nightshade. The four Teachers, all Americans, are: In Kenya when Alex escapes McCain sends Njenga after Alex. Njenga chases Alex until the dam. Alex makes the dam explode and Njenga falls to his death and his body is washed away.

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 After each and every mission, Alex is severely traumatized. By the end of Scorpia Rising, he's profoundly emotionally damaged. Losing his housekeeper, the only adult who really cared about him, was a major blow, but shooting Julius was also a contributing factor. Not only did he kill another human being, he killed a person who looked just like him. Essentially, he killed himself. Because of this, he is mostly quiet and brooding after it's all over. The head of CIA, Joe Bryne compared it to "As if he had aged ten years." [16] However, Edward Pleasure is hopeful and determined to help Alex recover and heal. Alex is described as strikingly good looking with an athletic build, dark brown eyes said to be “too serious for his face” and fair hair. Herod Sayle (named Darrius Sayle in the film adaption of Stormbreaker) is the main antagonist in Stormbreaker. In the original UK edition, Sayle was born in the gutters of Beirut, Lebanon; the US edition changed his nationality to Egyptian. He was one of 13 children (nine boys and four girls). His father was a failed hairdresser (oral hygienist in the US version) and his mother took in washing. At age seven, he saved two rich American tourists from being crushed by a falling piano, who rewarded him by sending him to school in Britain. He was at first delighted at this prospect, but he was severely bullied because he was seen as a foreigner, with the worst bully being the future Prime Minister. Although he did very well in school, achieving nine 'O' levels, he came to hate British schoolchildren, claiming it took "only days" for him to hate the Union Flag. [4]General Alexei Igorevich Sarov is the main antagonist of Skeleton Key. He is a former Russian general who still longs for the old days of communist Russia, of the Soviet Union, and of Stalin. Alex's official year of birth is stated as being 1987, with Alex stating in Point Blanc that he was two years old in 1989. [18] However, in Snakehead Alex remembers the Boxing Day Tsunami (2004). [13] Then in the US version of Crocodile Tears, it mentions Obama as being the President of the United States. [24] Considering these events, his birth year would more reliably be February 13, 1996. Major Winston Yu is one of the members of the executive board of Scorpia, and the main antagonist of the novel Snakehead. He was asked by Zeljan Kurst, another board member of Scorpia, to command operation "Reef Encounter". This involved generating an artificial tsunami to destroy Reef Island and the west coast of Australia by detonating a stolen bomb named "Royal Blue" between two underwater tectonic plates when they are most vulnerable. He was the superior of Anan Sukit, but apparently inherits control of the Bangkok Snakehead when Ben "Fox" Daniels kills Sukit. Yu suffers from brittle bone disease, which makes his skeleton highly unstable. His mother named him after Winston Churchill. At the end of the book, after debriefing with Mrs. Jones and Alan Blunt, Alex takes a taxi home, only to discover that the driver is Sayle. Sayle takes Alex at gunpoint to the top of a building. He is about to shoot Alex but Yassen Gregorovich climbs out of a helicopter and shoots Sayle, killing him, as Sayle had become "an embarrassment" to SCORPIA. Surprisingly, Gregorovich lets Alex live (he claims there were no instructions for him in regard to Alex) and flies the helicopter away. Straik supplies various countries in Africa, including Kenya and Uganda, with his own genetically engineered seeds that will, when activated by a strange "mushroom soup" substance, make the crops poisonous. Alex is sent to Greenfields by MI6 under the guise of a school trip to obtain data on Straik's computer. It is in the act of stealing this information that he discovers Straik's association with McCain. Alex considers Straik to be something of a sadist, especially after seeing the greenhouse marked Poison Dome, which is filled with the most dangerous creatures, plants, and natural chemicals on the planet. It also acts as his method of killing people who may inform the authorities of his work, such as the whistle-blower Philip Masters.

Leonard "Leo" Straik is a secondary antagonist in the novel Crocodile Tears. He runs the company Greenfields that Alex takes a school trip to. He is also a close friend of Desmond McCain, the chief antagonist of the novel, and is known to be the inventor of the gene gun that is demonstrated at Greenfields. His role in the series has been compared to that of Alec Trevelyan (aka Agent 006/ Janus) from the James Bond movie GoldenEye. R. V. Weinberg is an antagonist in Snakehead. He is an American reality TV producer from Miami who has gone blind, due to a serious condition, and Dr. Tanner has decided to give him Alex's eyes. Yassen Gregorovich is a recurring villain in the series, appearing in Stormbreaker, Eagle Strike, and Russian Roulette. He is also mentioned in Scorpia and Snakehead. In the end of Stormbreaker he saves the life of Alex Rider by shooting Herod Sayle on a helicopter pad. He was a Russian-born contract killer, trained by, and apparently working for, the clandestine terrorist organisation Scorpia. A superb assassin, Yassen was believed to be one of the world's best.It is mentioned in Snakehead that he was reminded of Nikolei Drevin by Winston Yu, both of whom seemed to have transported their houses from one country to another. Skeleton Key - He was sent to "work" for the CIA, originally meant to watch from the sidelines until his "family" finished their work. Despite being a doctor and surgeon, Tanner has several vices, including alcohol, cigarettes and gambling. He also does not present the image of a doctor, dressing only in open shirts and jeans, without a white coat on.

It is stated in the afterword of Point Blanc that Rothman was inspired by Catherine Zeta-Jones. Sofia Helin is set to portray Rothman in the series. Henryk does not contribute much to the novel, his only major appearances occurring towards the end of the story, when Alex and Sabina are forced to have afternoon tea with Cray, Henryk and Yassen, where Cray explains his plans to the two teenagers, to rid the world of drugs by firing twenty-five American nuclear missiles at various drug-running countries around the world, destroying those countries and their populations in the process. After Cray's men secure Air Force One for the takeover and missile launching, Henryk prepares the plane for take-off, with the destination implied to be Russia.

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Alex is described as being a strikingly good looking 15 year old boy, with fair hair (as said in Stormbreaker) or light brown hair (as said in Crocodile Tears and Scorpia Rising) and a handsome slender face that would “attract plenty of girls.” He also has serious brown eyes and a slightly hard, narrow mouth. McCain mentions later on in the novel that he had killed Straik by shoving a poisonous Cone snail from the Poison Dome down his throat, as he did not want to share the money with anyone. ALEX RIDER SERIES SKELETON KEY There were two handles, one on either side of the container. The two men carried it between them, walking awkwardly, bending over their load. It took them a long time to reach the jeep. But at last they were there. For a second time, they set the box down. Carlo straightened up, rubbing his palms on the side of his jeans. “Good evening, General,” he said. He was speaking in English. This was not his native language. Nor was it the general‟s. But it was the only language they had in common. “Good evening.” The general did not bother with names that he knew would be false anyway. “You had no trouble getting here?” “No trouble at all, General.” “You have it?” “One kilogram of weapons grade uranium. Sufficient to build a bomb powerful enough to destroy a city. I would be interested to know which city you have in mind.” General Alexei Sarov took a step forward and the lights from the runway illuminated him. He was not a big man, yet there was something about him that radiated power and control. He still carried with him his years in the army. They could be seen in his close-cut, iron grey hair, his watchful pale blue eyes, his almost emotionless face. They were there in the very way he carried himself. He was perfectly poised; relaxed and wary at the same time. General Sarov was sixty-two years old but looked twenty years younger. He was dressed in a dark suit, a white The Gentleman is one of the two antagonists that have not heard of or met Alex Rider, the other being Ravi Chandra of Crocodile Tears.