Nile

Nile Griffen
Biographical Information
Name	Nile Griffen
Alias	--
Title	--
Date of birth	Unknown
Age	Unknown
Physical Information
Status	Deceased (set aflame, falls to his death)
Nationality	Unknown
Gender	Male
Hair	black
Skin	Black with vitiligo
Relationship Information
Family	Unknwon
Affiliations	SCORPIA
Series Information
First Appearance	Scorpia
Last Appearance	[Alex Rider Mission Files (novel)]
Mentioned	--

“	Julia Rothman: Nile was a star student there; he's a perfect killer - or he would be. Unfortunately he was one rather irritating weakness Alex Rider: You mean his disease? Julia Rothman: No it's rather more annoying than that	”
—Julia Rothman and Alex Rider discussing Nile's one incapacitating weakness

Nile is the secondary antagonist appearing in the novel Scorpia.

Career

Nile is an assassin for the criminal organization SCORPIA and is exceptionally skilled with martial arts; he is also Julia Rothman's personal henchman, bodyguard, representative, assassin and second-in-command to SCORPIA. He was successful on missions worldwide and was a very dangerous opponent due to his experience and remarkable talent in martial arts.

Appearance

"He suffers from vitilogo. I'm sure you've heard of it. It's a skin disorder. His skin is lacking pigment cells or something."

-Rothman explains Nile's condition to Alex Rider

He is a black man who has vitiligo, a disease which causes half of the pigment in his skin to disappear, thus leaving white blotches on his body. He is described to emanate self-confidence and extreme intelligence and cunning. He is in perfect physical condition, extremely fit and displaying peak reflexes and flexibility.

Scorpia

At first, he tries to kill Alex Rider for trespassing in the Widow's Palace in Venice by drowning him in a flooding room. However, when Alex joins SCORPIA, Nile teams up with him and helps him carry out certain assignments. Eventually though, during Operation Invisible Sword, Alex accidentally humiliates Nile in front of his boss, Julia Rothman. Nile tries again to kill Alex using samurai swords atop a hot air balloon, flying over London as part of the plan for Invisible Sword. During an intense confrontation, Alex uses one of the swords to slice open the balloon's gas canister which ignites itself after touching the burner, and it spits fire at Nile. The assassin is set alight and falls off the balloon, then plummets to his death a long way below.

Talents

"Nile was one of our best students. Since his time here, he has risen up the ranks of Scorpia with successful assignments in London, Bangkok, Sydney - all over the world, in fact. He has kindly agreed to show you a few of his techniques. I'm sure you'll all learn something from him."

-Oliver d'Arc explains Nile's accomplishments

A natural fighter, Nile is an exceptionally skilful and accomplished master of all forms of unarmed combat and is an expert swordsman. Nile displayed his hand-to-hand skills against Alex by quickly and effortlessly knocking the boy out during their first encounter. He displays what Alex Rider described as a display of skill and experience he would never forget. Nile was a skilled acrobat, in peak physical condition and has superb reflexes.

He was extremely skilled with a Samurai sword.

He was also an excellent marksman, especially with Samurai swords and shurikens. He was intelligent enough to judge the distance, trajectory and precision required to strike down Harold Liebermann in a few split seconds. He is shockingly fast and specialises in dodging attacks before moving in for a fatal strike.

Weakness

"That look. He had seen it before. He remembered Wolf, the SAS soldier he had trained with. And suddenly everything made sense. The secret weakness that Mrs Rothman had mentioned. The reason why Nile had come second, not first, at Malagosto. He thought back to their meeting in the bell tower over the monastery. Nile had lingered at the door, unwilling to come forward, holding onto the frame in just the same way that he was holding onto the railing now. No wonder Nile had been so slow climbing up to the balloon. Nile was afraid of heights."

Despite being a master in almost every form of combat and being highly intelligent, Julia Rothman claims that he could never be SCORPIA's top assassin because he has a particular weakness - a fear of heights. By exploiting this, Alex was able to defeat him. Julia Rothman also joked that Nile always acted first and thought second.

Personality

Nile was a puppet of Scorpia. He was one of their best assassin's, second to Yassen Gregorovitch, and had several successful assassinations worldwide. He was also very self-confident and highly intelligent, being an intellectually agile individual. He was arrogant and cruel as well, often jumping to almost horrendous conclusions. His one moment of carelessness was when he immediately obeyed Julia Rothman and chased Alex Rider up a hot air balloon, forgetting his weakness of fear of heights. He was rather psychopathic and sadistic; he enjoyed causing pain. He was extremely self-controlled, although nowhere near the standards of the professional assassin Yassen Gregorovitch.