The book opens with Zeljan Kurst, the member leading this operation, walking to Yannis Ariston Xenopollos waiting for him in the British Museum. Yannis has a job for Scorpia. He wants them to steal the Elgin Marbles. Mr. Xenopollos is a rich and devoted man, he always gets what he wants, and he has nothing to loose. ☺ He has nothing to loose because he is dying and will not live long: “Kurst had once been the head of the Yugoslav police force, and he had always been interested in the way the prisoners had looked at him just before he executed them. He could see the same things right here. The Greek had …show more content…
After escaping Scorpia from an MI6 safe house, he goes back to his apartment and finds a note. The note says that his Jack, his nanny/guardian, was taken. That is when the classic oh-no-what-do-I-do moment set in ☺: “Then Alex saw the letter pinned on the bedroom door. A white envelope with his name written on it. His first thought was that it wasn’t Jacks handwriting” (Horowitz 279). He has to go to a tomb in the City of the Dead to save Jack. He is then kidnapped. He is taken to the house of a man named Razim in the Sahara Desert. Razim then proceeds to torture Alex. He attaches sensors to Alex to measure his pain. Jack was also taken to the house to torture Alex. Razim let Jack “escape” in a Land Rover. Jack does not know that the vehicle is filled with dynamite. Razim proceeds to blow up the Land Rover to collect data on