Good grief. This situation just seems to get worse and worse! I thought Alex was going to be in trouble after reading the last chapter, but that's nothing, nothing compared with this chapter! But I'm getting ahead of myself: let's start at the very beginning (a very good place to start...)
We now come to the first Scorpia meeting we've had in this book. I'm actually getting to enjoy this stint of spying on Scorpia, I think it's very intriguing and informative, and of course it's nice to have a change in the structure of these books. What particularly surprised me though was the fact that we learn pretty much exactly what Scorpia are up to: usually we get teased a small amount of information and it's up to us and Alex to work out what's happening - either that or Alex gets told later on in the book, victim to the classic case of 'bad guy conveniently tells all his plans to hero who subsequently escapes' sydrome. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that we were going to be given all the information - at first: I then was filled with such a deep sense of despair that I wondered whether I would have preferred not to know!
Razim, that evil, twisted genius, has unfortunately got it all worked out. He says that in order to successfully get the British government to hand over the Elgin Marbles, Scorpia must threaten them with something that will make every other country look at Britain with disgust, something that will cripple the government and break the country. At first I wasn't particularly worried: Razim said that given that option the government would return the Marbles in an instant, and I thought I agreed with him. However I just couldn't see what threat there really was to the country - they manage to escape global humiliation and in return give Greece back these ancient sculptures. What exactly are they losing out on? Brtain isn't famous for having them, they don't get that many tourists coming just to see them, they're not even going to endanger the security of the country. Its not like in Book 5 when America was being forced to disarm. Nothing bad can come of returning the Marbles to Greece, can it?
I just didn't understand why they would take such drastic measures just to retrieve old stone. Even though now I know the full horrors of Razim's plan I can't help but wonder whether its motivations don't seem a little weak? Is this really all Horowitz could come up with? Maybe I'm missing out on something, maybe they're detrimental to the relationship between Britain and Greece, maybe there'll be something revealed about them later. Until then I can't see what the fuss is about.
I can, however, see that Alex is once again in grave danger. Of course Scorpia know about him: he's beaten them twice and they're not going to forget that in a hurry. Razim points out that if it was known that Alex had been used time and time again for missions, forced to fight and be nearly killed for his country, a fourteen year old boy, people are going to be disgusted and the government would crumble.
But, of course, he doesn't stop there. What if Alex Rider got sent on one more mission, a mission that got him killed. There could be a public outcry and that would be it for the government and MI6. Unless they hand over the Marbles.
So that's it. That's the plan. Make sure Alex gets sent on another mission, one they plan to set up themselves, and make sure he is killed.
I think "oh dear" is an understatement of the century here.
Razim did say something very interesting though. He said that Blunt and Jones have been in power for too long. He said they've shown patterns of behaviour, made the same mistakes and fallen into habits, making it easy to work out how to manipulate them into getting Alex back one last time. This again brings back what the Prime Minister said at the end of Crocodile Tears about sacking Blunt, and I'm starting to think that this will be a recurring theme throughout this book. Initially I was hesitant - would someone be able to do as good a job? Now it looks as though a change might be a good idea, and I'm actually surprised that Blunt, ever safety-conscious, didn't think about this before.
The final bit of this chapter confirmed by suspicions from the end of last chapter and made Alex's situation, if possible, ten thousand times worse. Razim says that before Alex is killed he wants a little time with him for "an experiment". We all know what that means...
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