Snakehead - لی لی بوک
A N T H O N Y H O R O W I T ZP H I L O M E LB O O K S
PHILOMEL BOOKSA division of Penguin Young Readers Group.Published by The Penguin Group.Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.).Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd).Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd).Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India.Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745, Auckland, New Zealand(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.).Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,Johannesburg 2196, South Africa.Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.Copyright 2007 by Anthony Horowitz. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may notbe reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, Philomel Books,a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.Philomel Books, Reg. U.S. Pat & Tm. Off. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this bookvia the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal andpunishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate inor encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights isappreciated. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assumeany responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.Design by Katrina Damkoehler.Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataHorowitz, Anthony, 1955Snakehead / Anthony Horowitz. - 1st American ed.p. cm.Summary: While working with the Australian Secret Service on a dangerous mission,teenaged spy Alex Rider uncovers information about his parents.[1. Spies-Fiction. 2. Orphans-Fiction. 3. Adventure and adventurers-Fiction.] I. Title.PZ7.H7875Sn 2007[Fic]-dc22ISBN: 1-4295-7113-62007020505
To B&CD.
CONTENTS1DOWN TO EARTH12“DEATH IS NOT THE END”73VISA PROBLEMS244NO PICNIC375ON THE ROCKS566CITY OF ANGELS?737FATHER AND SON868FIRST CONTACT1009ONCE BITTEN . . .12110WAT HO13511ARMED AND DANGEROUS15112THE SILENT STREETS16713UNWIN TOYS196
14THE LIBERIAN STAR22015HIDE-AND-SEEK23816MADE IN BRITAIN26317SPARE PARTS28518DEAD OF NIGHT30019WHITE WATER31320BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED32721ATTACK FORCE33822DRAGON NINE34923DINNER FOR THREE375
ALSO BY ANTHONY HOROWITZTHE ALEX RIDER ADVENTURES:StormbreakerPoint BlankSkeleton KeyEagle StrikeScorpiaArk AngelTHE DIAMOND BROTHERS MYSTERIES:The Falcon’s MalteserPublic Enemy Number TwoThree of DiamondsSouth by SoutheastHorowitz HorrorMore Horowitz HorrorThe Devil and His Boy
1DOWN TO EARTHSPLASHDOWN.Alex Rider would never forget the moment of impact,the first shock as the parachute opened and the second—more jolting still—as the module that had carried himback from outer space crashed into the sea. Was it hisimagination, or was there steam rising up all around him?Maybe it was sea spray. It didn’t matter. He was back.That was all he cared about. He had made it. He wasstill alive.He was still lying on his back, crammed into the tinyspace with his knees tucked into his chest. Half closing hiseyes, Alex experienced a moment of extraordinary stillness. He was completely still. His fists were clenched. Hewasn’t breathing. Was it really true? Already he found itimpossible to believe that the events that had led to hisjourney into outer space had really taken place. He triedto imagine himself hurtling around the earth at seventeenand a half thousand miles an hour. It couldn’t have happened. It had surely all been part of some incredibledream.Slowly he forced himself to unwind. He lifted an arm.It rose normally. He could feel the muscle connecting.Just minutes before he had been in zero gravity. But as he
2S N A K E H E A Drested, trying to collect his thoughts, he realized that onceagain his body belonged to him.Alex wasn’t sure how long he was left on his own,floating on the water somewhere . . . it could have beenanywhere in the world. But when things happened, theydid so very quickly. First there was the hammering of helicopter blades. Then the whoop of some sort of siren. Hecould see very little out the window—just the rise andfall of the ocean—but suddenly a man was there, a scubadiver, a palm slamming against the glass. A few secondslater, the capsule was opened from outside. Fresh aircame rushing in, and to Alex it smelled delicious. At thesame time, a man loomed over him, his body wrapped inneoprene, his eyes behind a mask.“Are you okay?”Alex could hardly make out the words, there was somuch noise outside. Did the diver have an American accent? “I’m fine,” he managed to shout back. But it wasn’ttrue. He was beginning to feel sick. There was a shootingpain behind his eyes.“Don’t worry! We’ll soon have you out of there . . .”It took them a while. Alex had only been in space ashort time, but he’d never had any physical training for it,and now his muscles were turning against him, reluctantto start pulling their own weight. He had to be manhandled out of the capsule, into the blinding sun of a Pacificafternoon. Everything was chaotic. There was a helicop-
D o w nt oE a r t h3ter overhead, the blades beating at the ocean, formingpatterns that rippled and vibrated. Alex turned his headand saw—impossibly—an aircraft carrier, as big as amountain, looming out of the water less than a quarter ofa mile away. It was flying the Stars and Stripes. So he hadbeen right about the diver. He must have landed somewhere off the coast of America.There were two more divers in the water, bobbing upand down next to the capsule, and Alex could see a thirdman leaning out of the helicopter directly above him. Heknew what was going to happen, and he didn’t resist.First a loop of cable was passed around his chest and connected. He felt it tighten under his arms. And then hewas rising into the air, still in his space suit, dangling likea silver puppet as he was winched up.And already they knew. He had glimpsed it in the eyesof the diver who had spoken to him. The disbelief. Thesemen—the helicopter, the aircraft carrier—had beenrushed out to rendezvous with a module that had justreentered the earth’s atmosphere. And inside, they hadfound a boy. A fourteen-year-old had just plummeted ahundred miles from outer space. These men would besworn to secrecy, of course. MI6 would see to that. Theywould never talk about what had happened. Nor wouldthey forget it.There was a medical officer waiting for him on boardthe USS Kitty Hawk—which was the name of the ship
4S N A K E H E A Dthat had been diverted to pick him up. His name was JoshCook, and he was forty years old, black with wire-frameglasses and a pleasant, soft-spoken manner. He helpedAlex out of the space suit and stayed in the room whenAlex finally did throw up. It turned out that he’d dealtwith astronauts before.“They’re all sick when they come down,” he explained.“It goes with the territory. Or maybe I should say terrafirma. That’s Latin for ‘down to earth.’ You’ll be fine bythe morning.”“Where am I?” Alex asked.“You’re about ninety miles off the coast of Australia.We were on a training exercise when we got a red alertthat you were on your way down.”“So what happens now?”“Now you have a shower and get some sleep. You’rein luck. We’ve got a mattress made out of memory foam.It was actually developed by NASA. It’ll give your musclesa chance to get used to being back in full gravity.”Alex had been given a private cabin in the medical department of the Kitty Hawk—in fact, a fully equipped“hospital at sea” with sixty-five beds, an operating room,a pharmacy, and everything else that 5,500 sailors mightneed. It wasn’t huge, but he suspected that nobody elseon the Kitty Hawk would have this much space. Cookwent over to the corner and pulled back a plastic curtainto reveal a shower cubicle.
D o w nt oE a r t h5“You may find it difficult to walk,” he explained.“You’re going to be unsteady on your feet for at leasttwenty-four hours. If you like, I can wait in the room untilyou’ve showered.”“I’ll be okay,” Alex said.“All right.” Cook smiled and opened the main door.But before he left, he looked back at Alex. “You know—every man and woman on this ship is talking about you,”he said. “There are a whole pile of questions I’d like to askyou, but I’m under strict orders from the captain to keepmy mouth shut. Even so, I want you to know that I’vebeen at sea for a long, long time and I’ve never encountered anything like this. A kid in outer space!” He noddedone last time. “I hope you have a good rest. There’s a callbutton beside the bed if there’s anything you need.”Cook left.It took Alex ten minutes to get into the shower. He hadcompletely lost his sense of balance, and the roll of theship didn’t help. He turned the temperature up as high ashe could bear and stood under the steaming water, enjoying the rush of it over his shoulders and through hishair. Then he dried himself and got into bed. The memory foam was only a couple of inches thick, but it seemedto mold itself to the shape of his body exactly. He fell almost instantly into a deep but troubled sleep.He didn’t dream about the Ark Angel space station orhis knife fight with Kaspar, the bald ecoterrorist who had
6S N A K E H E A Dbeen determined to kill him even though it was clear thatall was lost. Nor did he dream about Nikolei Drevin, thebillionaire who had been behind it all.But it did seem to him that, sometime in the middle ofthe night, he heard the whisper of voices that he didn’trecognize but that, somehow, he still knew. Old friends.Or old enemies. It didn’t matter which because hecouldn’t make out what they were saying, and anyway, amoment later they were swept away down the dark riverof his sleep.Perhaps it was a premonition.Because three weeks before, seven men had met in aroom in London to discuss an operation that would makethem many millions of dollars and would change theshape of the world. And although Alex had never met anyof them, he certainly knew them.Scorpia was back again.
2“DEATH IS NOT THE END”I T WA S T H E SO RT of building you could walk past without noticing: three stories high, painted white with ivy,perfectly trimmed, climbing up to the roof. It stood abouthalfway down Sloane Street in Belgravia, just around thecorner from Harrods, surrounded by some of the mostexpensive real estate in London. On one side there was ajewelry shop and on the other an Italian fashionboutique—but the customers who came here would nolonger be needing either. A single step led up to a doorpainted black, and there was a window that contained anurn, a vase of fresh flowers, and nothing else. The nameof the place was written in discreet gold letters. It read:Reed and Kelly, Funeral Directors. And beneath that, abrief motto: Death is not the End.At ten thirty on a bright October morning, exactlythree weeks before Alex landed in the Pacific Ocean, ablack Lexus LS 430 four-door sedan drew up outside thefront door. The car had been chosen carefully. It was aluxury model, but there was nothing too special about it,nothing to attract the eye. The arrival had also beenexactly timed. In the past fifteen minutes, three othervehicles and a taxi had briefly pulled up and their passengers, either singly or in pairs, had exited, crossed the
8S N A K E H E A Dpavement, and entered the parlor. If anyone had beenwatching, they would have assumed that a large familyhad gathered to make the final arrangements for someonewho had recently departed.The last person to arrive was a powerfully built manwith massive shoulders and a shaved head. There wassomething quite brutal about his face: the small,squashed-up nose, thick lips, and muddy brown eyes. Buthis clothes were immaculate. He wore a tailored silk shirt,a dark suit, and a cashmere coat, hanging loose. Therewas a large platinum ring on his fourth finger. He hadbeen smoking a cigar, but as he stepped from the car, hedropped it and ground it out with a brilliantly polishedshoe. Without looking left or right, he crossed the pavement and entered the building. An old-fashioned bell ona spring jangled as the door opened and closed.He found himself in a wood-paneled reception roomwhere an elderly, gray-haired man, also wearing a suit, satwith his hands folded behind a narrow desk. He looked atthe new arrival with a mixture of sympathy and politeness.“Good morning,” he said. “How can we be ofservice?”“I have come about a death,” the visitor replied.“Someone close to you?”“My brother. But I hadn’t seen him for some years.”“You have my condolences.”The same words had been spoken seven times that
“ D e a t hI sN o tt h eE n d ”9morning. If even one syllable had been changed, the baldman would have turned around and left. But he knewnow that the building was secure. He hadn’t been followed. The meeting that had been arranged just twentyfour hours earlier could go ahead.The older man leaned forward and pressed a buttonconcealed underneath the desk. At once, a section of thewooden paneling clicked open to reveal a staircase, leading up to the second floor.Reed and Kelly was a real business. There once hadbeen a Jonathan Reed and a Sebastian Kelly, and for morethan fifty years they had arranged funerals and cremationsuntil, at last, the time had come to arrange their own.After that, the undertaker’s had been purchased by a perfectly legitimate company and registered in Zurich, and ithad continued to provide a first-class service for anyonewho lived—or rather, had lived—in the area. But thatwas no longer the only purpose of the building in SloaneStreet. It had also become the London headquarters ofthe international criminal organization that went by thename of Scorpia.The name stood for “sabotage, corruption, intelligence,and assassination,” which were its four main activities.The organization had been formed some thirty yearsbefore in Paris, its members being spies from different intelligence networks around the world who had decided togo into business for themselves. There had been twelve of
10S N A K E H E A Dthem at first. Then one had died of illness and two hadbeen killed in the field. The other nine had congratulatedthemselves on surviving so long with so few casualties.But quite recently, things had taken a turn for theworse. The oldest member of the organization had madethe foolish and inexplicable decision to retire, which had,of course, led to his being murdered immediately. Soon afterward, his successor, a woman called Julia Rothman,had also been killed. That had been at the end of anoperation—Invisible Sword—that had gone catastrophically wrong. In many ways this was the lowest point inScorpia’s history, and there were many who thought thatthe organization would never recover. After all, the agentwho had beaten them, destroyed the operation, and causedthe death of Mrs. Rothman had been fourteen years old.However, Scorpia had not given in. They had takenswift revenge on the boy and gone straight back to work.Invisible Sword was just one of many projects needingtheir attention, for they were in constant demand fromgovernments, terrorist groups, big business . . . in fact,anyone who could pay. And now they were active onceagain. They had come to this address in London to discuss a relatively small assignment but one that would netthem ten million dollars, to be paid in uncut diamonds . . .easier to carry and harder to trace than banknotes.The stairs led to a short corridor on the first floor witha single door at the end. One television camera hadwatched the bald man on his way up. A second followed
“ D e a t hI sN o tt h eE n d ”11him as he stepped onto a strange metal platform in frontof the door and looked into a glass panel set in the wall.Behind the glass, there was a biometric scanner that tookan instant image of the unique pattern of blood vessels onthe retina behind his eye and matched them against acomputer at the reception desk below. If an enemy agenthad tried to gain access to the room, he would have triggered a ten-thousand-volt electric charge through themetal floor plate, incinerating him instantly. But this wasno enemy. The man’s name was Zeljan Kurst, and he hadbeen with Scorpia almost from the beginning. The doorslid open, and he went in.He found himself in a long, narrow room with threewindows covered by blinds and plain, white walls with nodecoration of any kind. There was a glass table surrounded by leather chairs and no sign of any pens, paper,or printed documents. Nothing was ever written down atthese meetings. Nor was anything recorded. Six men werewaiting for him as he took his place at the head of thetable. Following the disaster of Invisible Sword, now justthe seven of them were left.“Good morning, gentlemen,” Kurst began. He spokewith a strange, mid-European accent. The last word hadsounded like “chintlemen.” All the men at the table wereequal partners, but he was currently the acting head. Anew chief executive was chosen as fresh projects arrived.Nobody replied. These people were not friends. Theyhad nothing to say to each other outside the work at hand.
12S N A K E H E A D“We have been given a most interesting and challenging assignment,” Kurst went on. “I need hardly remindyou that our reputation was quite seriously damaged earlier this year. In addition to providing us with a muchneeded financial injection following the heavy losses wesustained on ‘Invisible Sword,’ this new project will put usback on the map. Our task is this. We are to assassinateeight extremely wealthy and influential people exactly onemonth from now. They will all be in one place at one time,which provides us with the ideal opportunity. It has beenleft to us to decide on the method.”Zeljan Kurst had been the head of the police force inYugoslavia during the 1980s and had been famous for hislove of classical music—particularly Mozart—and extreme violence. It was said that he would interrogateprisoners with either an opera or a symphony playing inthe background and that those who survived the ordealwould never be able to listen to that piece of music again.But he had seen the breakup of his country on the horizon and had decided to quit before he was out of a job.And so he had changed sides. He had no family, nofriends, and nowhere he could call home. He neededwork, and he knew that Scorpia would pay him extremely well.His eyes flickered around the table, waiting for a response. “You will have read in the newspapers,” he continued, “that the G8 summit is taking place in Rome thisNovember. This is a meeting of the eight most powerful
“ D e a t hI sN o tt h eE n d ”13heads of government, and as usual they will talk a greatdeal, have their photographs taken, consume a lot of expensive food and wine . . . and do absolutely nothing.They are of no interest to us. They are, in effect,irrelevant.“However, at the same time, another meeting will betaking place on the other side of the world. It has beenarranged in direct competition with the G8 summit, andyou might say that the timing is something of a publicitystunt. Nonetheless, it has already attracted much moreattention than G8. Indeed, the politicians have almostbeen forgotten. Instead, the eyes of the world are on ReefIsland, just off the coast of northwest Australia in theTimor Sea.“The press have given this alternative summit a name:Reef Encounter. A group of eight people will be comingtogether, and their names will be known to you. One ofthem is a pop singer named Rob Goldman. He has apparently raised millions for charity with concerts
Scorpia Ark Angel THE DIAMOND BROTHERS MYSTERIES: Three of Diamonds South by Southeast Horowitz Horror More Horowitz Horror Stormbreaker Point Blank Skeleton Key Eagle Strike The Falcon’s Malteser Public Enemy Number Two The Devil and His Boy . 1 DOWN TO EARTH . SPLA SHDOWN.
Alex Rider [7] Horowitz, Anthony Walker Books Ltd (2008) Rating: Product Description Alex Rider bites back. Splashing down off the coast of Australia, Alex is soon working undercover - this time for ASIS, the Australian Secret Service - on a mission to infiltrate the criminal underworld of South-East Asia: the ruthless world of the Snakehead. Faced with an old enemy and .
Instant porridge with substitution of snakehead flour and pumpkin flour were expected to be the high protein and betacarotene instant porridge complementary feeding. Objective: To analyze the effect of snakehead fish flour and pumpkin flour substitution to nutrition content and hedonic test of instant porridge complementary feeding.
VALUE CHAIN OF CULTURED SNAKEHEAD FISH IN THE MEKONG DELTA 184 Le Xuan Sinh*, Robert S. Pomeroy & Do Minh Chung . 5 5 USE OF GONADOTROPIN RELEASING HORMONE ANALOGS ON THE INDUCED 187 REPRODUCTION OF CHAME Dormitator latifrons Gustavo A. Rodriguez M. de O.*, Eva A. Medina H., Jeniffer Velazquez S., V. Lopez L., C. Roman R., K. Dabrowski, E .
Grade 2 Home Learning Packet The contents of this packet contains 10 days of activities in paper copy. Students should be completing this packet, along with completing lessons on their math/reading online programs daily. If we surpass the 10 days without school, students should continue using their online math and reading programs for 45 minutes per day per program unless otherwise specified .
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OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL ILLUSTRATORS & SURVEYORS LSS OCCASIONAL PAPER No. 3 AAI&S TECHNICAL PAPER No. 9 1988. THE ILLUSTRATION OF LITHIC ARTEFACTS: A GUIDE TO DRAWING STONE TOOLS FOR SPECIALIST REPORTS by Hazel Martingell and Alan Saville ASSOCIATION OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL ILLUSTRATORS & SURVEYORS THE LITHIC STUDIES SOCIETY NORTHAMPTON 1988 ISBN 0 9513246 0 8 ISSN 0950-9208. 1 Introduction This booklet .
Civil Engineering Technology Mechanical Engineering Technology (BSc/BS) (Revised 2016) HIGHER EDUCATION COMMISSION ISLAMABAD-PAKISTAN . 2 CURRICULUM DIVISION, HEC Prof. Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Chairman, HEC Prof. Dr. Arshad Ali Executive Director, HEC Mr. Muhammad Raza Chohan Director General (Acad) Ms. Ghayyur Fatima Director (Curriculum) Mr. Riaz-ul-Haque Assistant Director (Curr) 3 PREFACE The .
The Bribery Act 2010 – Guidance. 2. Foreword. Bribery blights lives. Its immediate victims include firms that lose out unfairly. The wider victims are government and society, undermined by a weakened rule of law and damaged social and economic development. At stake is the principle of free and fair
