Mrs. Jones

Lale Jones, also known as Mrs. Tulip Jones and Mrs. Jones, is one of the major protagonists in the Alex Rider series. She is the deputy head of MI6, and Alan Blunt's personal assistant; she eventually succeeds him as head of MI6 when Blunt is forced to retire at the end of Scorpia Rising.
She was played in the 2006 film adaptation of Stormbreaker by Sophie Okonedo, and by Vicky McClure in the TV series.
==Origins==
Despite the disaster of the early mission, Mrs. Jones got promoted. She became Alan Blunt's secretary and was in head department in the Liverpool Street offices.
Mrs. Jones lived in the Clerkenwell flats, and she had a load of protective gadgets, from security receptionists to a thick glass pane protecting her in her living quarters. These worked to astonishing effect.
Lale Jones was born to a diplomat father, and she travelled the world with her father, including India and Turkey. Her parents were keen gardeners, and named her Lale, which means "Tulip" in Turkish; she was supposedly named after her favourite flower. She was educated at a private school, owned by the Diplomatic Service, in Cheltenham; after that, she attended Cambridge University, graduating with a first in Politics and Arabic Studies. She had no idea that she would end up joining the Secret Service; instead, she wanted to be a relief worker, helping people escape natural disasters.
After graduating, Tula wanted to write a doctorate, on climate change and its effects on developing nations, but a professor at the university quizzed her on political views, her private life, and gave her an interesting job offer, for the Secret Service. She was taken to MI6 HQ, formerly at Lambeth, offered a job and accepted, wanting to protect her country.
Lale was never a field agent, instead working in Operations, in a rather boring job, examining foreign publications, letters, phone calls and emails. She did well, and ascended the ranks. She fell in love with a handsome German expatriate political and economic writer called Hans Meyer. They met at a party and they seemed to be almost identical. After eighteen months, they married, but Mrs Jones kept her maiden name. They had two children, a boy called William and a girl called Sofia.
Some time later, Mrs Jones was approached by Alan Blunt, to work for Special Operations as his deputy. She worried about what others would think of her, as a spy. Hans seemed like a dream, taking care of the children while she worked. The family was happy, loving each other, until the truth dawned.
Blunt knew that "Hans Meyer" was in fact a Russian deep cover agent, deliberately introduced to Mrs Jones. Mrs Jones knew things the Russians wanted to know, and Special Operations had become aware of a security leak, with the Russians stealing secrets from Mrs Jones. Although she accepted his reality, Mrs Jones refused to accept that he hadn't loved her. Blunt would not hold her responsible, but Hans would disappear, and be imprisoned, or possibly executed. Unable to bear losing her husband, Mrs Jones phoned Hans and told him that MI6 knew who he was, and told him.
However, silently, Hans disappeared, taking William and Sofia with him from their primary school. The head teacher told Mrs Jones that, within an hour of her phoning him, Hans said there was an emergency, and took his and Mrs Jones' children away. Even when a general alert was put out across the country, it seemed that Hans, William and Sofia had disappeared altogether from the face of the earth, possibly murdered by the Russians, and that she would never see them again.
After this, Mrs. Jones headed the faked death operation of John Rider, Alex's father, and pretended that she was going to cold-bloodedly shoot John in the back, when in actuality she had arranged with him to fake his death, so that the criminal group SCORPIA would believe John was being killed for betraying his country. The plan was to send John, his wife Helen and their infant son Alex to start a new life in France. However, Mrs. Jones' plan to protect John failed, when the treacherous former agent Anthony Sean 'Ash' Howell, betrayed John's survival to SCORPIA; they put a bomb on John's plane, which Ash detonated, killing him and his wife. This was just after Alex was born, and set the infant boy on his future.
==Biography==
===Stormbreaker===
Mrs. Jones first meets Alex after John Crawley calls Alex in a faintly threatening manner to discuss possible careers. Mrs. Jones sets a test with Blunt for Alex's reflexes and nature, and Mrs. Jones reluctantly takes part, remarking that Alex is quite mad for wanting to jump out onto the flagpole and onto his uncle's office windowsill opposite. Mrs. Jones says that Blunt is cold for sitting back and risking Alex's life, but the worry is groundless as Alex breaks in successfully.
Mrs. Jones and Blunt send up men to tranquilize Alex, bring him to a countryside training facility, and then they explain they are in fact MI6 agents who were recruiting his uncle. Mrs. Jones is first mistaken for Blunt's wife by Alex. He soon learns who she really is. She doesn't sound very sorry to have lost Ian Rider, Alex's uncle, a bit, despite saying so.
Once Alex accepts, reluctantly and under blackmail from Blunt, Mrs. Jones oversees his training and she tries to cheer him up by bringing him gadgets from Derek Smithers, the gadgeteer. Mrs. Jones says she wants Alex to look after himself, and she tells Alex that a man named Yassen Gregorovich killed his uncle. She says that if Alex meets Yassen, he should tell Mrs. Jones and they'll pull him out. Alex does meet Yassen but keeps it a secret, instead sending a coordinate found on the top of the four-poster bed Ian Rider slept in in Herod Sayle's mansion.
Mrs. Jones says that this is possibly a map reference, but cannot source it. Later, Mrs. Jones congratulates Alex when his mission is finally over.
===Point Blanc===
In this mission, Alex gets in accidental trouble with the police for overriding a crane and depositing a canal boat in the police carpark. The boat owners were really drug dealers and big time criminals but all Alex wanted to do was surprise the cops by landing the boat neatly in the carpark but the crane power got switched off by the anxious ground control. Mrs. Jones meets Alex in the MI6 headquarters after sending Crawley to get him.
Mrs. Jones is hostile with Alex for some reason, acting like Alex deserves to be locked up. She even says the police wanted to interview him and she could always return him. She blackmails Alex into agreeing to go on another mission. She is probably at her most cruel in the opening, yet she softens slightly later. But as Alex thinks, even snakes have mothers.
When Alex agrees to go to Yorkshire, thence to France, to Point Blanc Academy, run by the mad Dr Hugo Grief, Mrs. Jones, once again, sends Smithers to supply Alex with gadgets just before his departure for France. Mrs. Jones also gets worried when Alex sends his distress call, after finding evidence that Grief is a madman, and Mrs. Jones openly wants to pull Alex out, but Blunt refuses. He says to just put an SAS unit on standby and practically do nothing. Blunt makes it clear he doesn't care about Alex's life, but Mrs. Jones disagrees and puts the SAS trooper known only as 'Wolf' and other agents on standby in the Alps, where they find Alex after he escapes from being dissected by Grief. She then meets an injured Alex and takes him to hospital. She stages a fake funeral to fool Dr Grief into thinking he is dead and Mrs. Jones is such a good actor she fools even Eva Stellenbosch, the evil henchwoman of Grief, who sneers that "The little swine is gone" when Mrs. Jones pretends to look shocked at the apparent tragedy.
Mrs. Jones knows Alex doesn't want to return, but she sends him up again with the SAS, because only he knows the place. When the battle is over and Grief is dead, and his mad clones are imprisoned, Mrs. Jones is worried about Alex and his slight sociopathic behaviour. He says that Mrs. Jones is as bad as Dr Grief, maybe wakening her up to her true nature.
=== Alex in Afghanistan ===
===Skeleton Key===
Mrs. Jones returns in this novel when Alex is being hunted by the Triads after he discovers and sabotages their plans to rig the Wimbledon tennis tournament, and she recommends Alex go to the Caribbean for protection. She can be quite vindictive here, saying Alex asked for it by punching the Triad man in the nose, never mind the fact the agent was trying to kill Alex and that Alex acted in self defence.
Also, Mrs. Jones gets word of Alex's distress in Edinburgh from the officials who alert MI6 of the bomb threat General Sarov has to destroy Europe. Mrs. Jones alerts the Russian army, and, to her delight, they act quickly. They storm the place and Alex disarms the bomb. Sarov ends up killing himself and the threat is over.
Mrs. Jones is now extremely worried about Alex, saying he is becoming dangerous and they should never recruit him again, because he is mentally scarred from seeing Sarov kill himself right in front of him, since he lived with the man for about a month.
=== Spy Trap ===
===Eagle Strike===
Here, Mrs. Jones is perhaps at her cruellest. She watches Sabina Pleasure dump Alex in the street and she then berates Alex for being an arrogant show off. Mrs. Jones seemingly refuses to believe Sir Damian Cray is hiring Yassen Gregorovich to kill people and she tries to prove Cray's goodness by showing the news where Cray does environmentalist speeches about saving the world and meets the American president George Bush. "So what earthly reason," she says "Could Cray have to blow up a house and possibly kill a whole family?"
However, when Alex storms out, Mrs. Jones takes another look, remembering how Herod Sayle appeared to be just like Cray. Mrs. Jones follows Alex's route through France and hears of a chase through Amsterdam involving Alex. She also follows Alex to Heathrow, where the final battle happens on Air Force One and Cray is killed in the engines while trying to kill Alex and Sabina.
After this, Mrs. Jones meets Alex in London, congratulating him and apologizing for not believing him before, saying that Cray did seem like he was honest. Mrs. Jones then says that did Yassen speak to him before he died and Alex lies and says no, knowing that this proves his father was a killer.
===Scorpia===
In this book, an apparent evil side to Mrs. Jones is "revealed" as Julia Rothman, a SCORPIA director, shows Alex that Mrs. Jones apparently killed Alex's father John by shooting him in the back and betraying him. Out of bitterness and anger, Alex joins SCORPIA, and undergoes all training apart from weapons, on their island base in Malagosto. Alex says he can't kill anyone, so Principal Oliver D'Arc says that Alex should kill Mrs. Jones, because of her supposed role in John's death. Out of apparent vengeance for John and Alex, they send Alex to London while arranging a demonstration of Invisible Sword, the nanoshell satellite dish weapon. They kill England's national football reserve team when Alex comes through, and use this as a distraction because Blunt has ordered all agents to watch for Alex to protect Mrs. Jones.
However, the protection is unnecessary, because Mrs. Jones has a glass pane all round her room and this saves her from being killed by an angry Alex who broke in under the guise of a pizza man. Mrs. Jones seizes Alex and has him dragged away and when Blunt interviews him he tells him of SCORPIA's threat to kill kids in London. All the kids are infected with nanoshells, as Tony Blair explains in COBRA. And Alex himself is too. So Alex is sent back to SCORPIA and told to alert MI6. Rothman is furious that Mrs. Jones is still alive and that Alex didn't obey her. So she tries to kill Alex but is herself crushed to death by a falling satellite dish when Alex chops through the nanoshell dishes. Now with the operation over, Mrs. Jones tells Alex the truth - that she never killed his father, and everything Julia Rothman thought she knew about John Rider was a lie.
When leaving MI6, SCORPIA shoot Alex in the heart and almost kill him. As he is bleeding to death on the street, Alex calls for Mrs. Jones, but she appears almost too late. Fortunately, Alex survives and Alex is taken to hospital.
===Ark Angel===
Joe Byrne tells Mrs. Jones of Nikolai Drevin's evils, but she refuses to believe it. Mrs. Jones doesn't appear here, she is monitoring Force Three, a group of terrorists who say they are trying to help the planet but have no respect for humanity.
===Snakehead===
Here, Mrs. Jones only appears twice - at the Thai MI6 headquarters in Bangkok, where Alex follows Ben Daniels, an SAS agent, to the offices, and meets Mrs. Jones. Despite the disguise of an Afghan peasant, Mrs. Jones recognizes Alex and she is pleased to see him up and about and alive and well. Mrs. Jones is more humane than before and she assigns Alex an incredibly dangerous mission of tracking down and finding Royal Blue, an English bomb used in the Vietnam War, which was stolen by SCORPIA.
However, Mrs. Jones does not send Alex unprepared - she has him meet Derek Smithers again who arms Alex with gadgets.
She also reappears at the end, and apologizes for Ash's treachery, saying maybe it was their fault all along.
===Crocodile Tears===
Again, Mrs. Jones appears twice in the book when she meets Alex after threatening to kick him out if Jack Starbright also visits with him. However, once they are alone, Mrs. Jones is more relaxed. Curiously she knows that Alex went to Scotland for New Years. Alex is disturbed by this, and decides to test her knowledge saying he made an "in depth" visit of Loch Arkaig, but Mrs. Jones doesn't even flinch.
She tells him of Desmond McCain and his treachery. She receives Alex's sample of mushroom soup from Greenfields plant, which is a terrorist organization used by McCain. The soup puzzles Mrs. Jones because it's actually edible and harmless and she wonders why a terrorist would use it.
Again, Mrs. Jones is seen with Blunt at the Mandarin club in London, eating lunch and discussing GM crops.
At the very end of the book, Mrs. Jones visits Alex again when he's in hospital, and expresses concern that Jack should keep Alex in school and away from them. She even says they could name the hospital ward after Alex, but Jack says he won't need the ward again because he won't be back in MI6.
===SCORPIA Rising===
However, this is not for long. Following Alan Blunt's dressing down by Tony Blair in Eagle Strike, for failing to recognize a threat to humanity, Mrs. Jones is set to be the new head of MI6. She is practically itching to take over and kick Blunt out of the building.
Mrs. Jones doesn't meet Alex at all in the adventure, only visiting him once before the mission, when Mrs. Jones actually comes to Alex's house, with Blunt. Mrs. Jones wants to tell Alex that SCORPIA are involved, but Blunt shuts her up. Also, Mrs. Jones knows SCORPIA were involved, because they killed Cairo College's head of security and they hired Erik Gunter, a war hero-turned-criminal. Mrs. Jones then says to send Smithers to Egypt, when Alex and Jack are there, as Smithers is the only friend Alex has in MI6.
In the end, Mrs. Jones is furious with Alan Blunt for arranging to have a sniper shoot at Alex Rider to make him think he's in danger from SCORPIA again. Mrs. Jones gives Blunt a dressing down when the mission is over and she mourns Jack Starbright's apparent murder, despite being rude to her in the past; however Blunt doesn't care about Jack's apparent demise. Mrs. Jones looks like she's about to punch Blunt, but then she decides to do nothing, and Blunt reminds Mrs. Jones of her arrogance saying he who fights monsters often becomes one. Mrs. Jones appears to have taken this onboard, but it is doubtful whether, in her arrogance, she listened at all.
Once Blunt goes on his holiday/forced retirement and Mrs. Jones is now head of MI6, she arranges for Edward Pleasure to adopt Alex Rider and take him to California, where things look better for him. Alex is now broken, utterly shattered by the death of his closest friend...
=== Never Say Die ===
In the series revival, Mrs. Jones is still new to being full head of MI6, and is annoyed to find herself in trouble. A Serbian mercenary kills two United States Air Force pilots, and steal the Super Stallion helicopter they were going to pilot, as the climatic piece for an air show in Suffolk; the helicopter disappears, seemingly without a trace, and she is embarrassed by this, especially following a meeting with the professional head of the Royal Air Force, the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Norman Clarke.
After Alex, in San Francisco, discovers that Jack may still be alive, he goes to Egypt, where her apparent demise took place. He is saved from death by Mrs Jones' Egyptian counterpart, Colonel Manzoor, who discovers a discrepancy about the footage of Jack's demise in a car bombing. The Colonel sends Alex to Saint-Tropez, to find a yacht owned by former Scorpia co-directors and Italian-American mobsters, identical twin brothers Giovanni and Eduardo Grimaldi. Mrs Jones, however, discovers what Alex is doing, and tells him to stop, fearing that he has developed an addiction to danger. She says that MI6 should never, ever, have used him, even at the beginning, with Herod Sayle.
Mrs. Jones returns, at MI6, when Alex has been saved from mafia-style death by her underling, Ben Daniels. After Alex reclaims his house in Chelsea, he is brought to her, where they discuss what Alex overheard from the Grimaldi twins. Initially, they believe that the Grimaldi twins, with help of their henchman, curator Derek Vosper, are going to steal Mesoamerican artefacts from the Ashmolean Museum, and Alex and Ben are sent in a modified MI6 car to stop their helicopter. Unfortunately, Alex realises, just too late, that the Grimaldi twins are not stealing from the museum, but are instead stealing children, from an expensive private school, and he is fired from an ejector seat to join the coach.
At MI6, Mrs. Jones is annoyed for not working out the real target, when she receives a message. The Grimaldi brothers have taken the children, and are holding them to a ransom, for tens of millions of pounds. They want the money sent to their foreign bank account in two days' time, or all the children will be killed. They will also be killed if any rescue attempt is made.
After Alex and Jack (who is revealed to indeed be still alive, having been captured by the Grimaldi twins before the car in Egypt exploded) rescue the children and receive a five-million-pound reward from the school parents, Mrs. Jones says that if there is a 'next time' for him working for MI6, it will be his choice, and he can accept or decline. However, after they leave, she opens a file on Nightshade and their teenage assassin, Frederick Gray, and resolves to get Alex involved in the case.
=== Nightshade ===
Mrs. Jones is summoned to see Dominic Royce, the Permanent Secretary of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and her effective supervisor. He reprimands her for using Alex, and tells her never to use him again. 
Mrs. Jones is then seen meeting her Chief of Staff, John Crawley, and her Chief Scientific Officer, Samantha Redwing, as well as Royce. Royce is installing his sycophantic staffer, Owen Andrews, in their ranks, to observe them, when they uncover a new enemy organisation, Nightshade, which has recently acquired the most powerful and dangerous chemical weapon in the world, VX. Crawley is later told, by Mrs. Jones, to summon Alex.
Alex sees two men at school after him, and tries to make them leave him alone. When that fails, Mrs. Jones appears at Alex's house, and explains the truth: an MI6 agent under Crawley's watch was killed in Rio de Janeiro, by two young assassins using a radio-controlled model Spitfire with a knife on its wing. One of the assassins, Frederick Gray, has been captured by the British and is detained at the gaol of HM Secure Unit Gibraltar; the other assassin, a girl, escaped but was photographed by Crawley's men, and has been positively identified, as Mrs. Jones' long-lost daughter, Sofia.
Mrs. Jones wants Alex to pretend to be his late clone, Julius Grief, infiltrate the gaol, befriend Frederick and find out what he knows about Nightshade, if he has any idea about their attack. Reluctantly, Alex agrees. Even after he is sent to the gaol, Mrs. Jones worries about him.
Mrs. Jones is next seen, trying to explain what had happened to Alex, after he and Frederick break out of the gaol and are eventually smuggled to Tangier, thence to Crete, Nightshade's base of operations. Unfortunately, Royce, Andrews and the Metropolitan Police storm Liverpool Street, and Royce orders MI6 to be closed down, effective at once, supposedly for using Alex again, thanks to Andrews' snooping. Mrs. Jones herself and Crawley are put under house arrest, but this does not last long, as Alex thwarts Nightshade's plan (to kill all of Parliament at the memorial service to the late politician James, Lord Clifford, who was poisoned and killed by Nightshade to lure Parliament into the open), and Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet Office Sir Graham Adair orders everything to be put back the way it was, including reinstating Mrs. Jones and Crawley at MI6.
Mrs. Jones confronts Royce, who she knows to be Nightshade's paymaster, "The Doctor", and reveals what Nightshade had done: captured twenty-five children from powerful, well-connected families, and indoctrinated them into a religion which says that the acts of terror and destruction they commit is making the world a better place, as well as operating on them and giving them radios in their heads that allowed Nightshade's commanders, the four so-called "Teachers", to communicate with them, even from far away. She says that they are evil, and must be stopped, before arranging for Royce to be imprisoned at HM Secure Unit Gibraltar.
In the final scene of the book, Mrs. Jones is attending a clinic, where her daughter, Sofia, and Frederick are being held, to be deprogrammed.
==Nature==
Mrs. Jones was sometimes a cold blooded, well, bitch, there's no other name for her character, but then at times she could be very humane and likeable. She had a strong sense of humour with Alex, and showed her maternal side. Alex actually bought out Mrs. Jones' humane and maternal side. Maybe Julius Grief was the side of Alex that was like Mrs. Jone's emotionless, arrogant, vindictive side reflected on Alex.
Unlike Blunt, Mrs. Jones was reliable, and always sent men to get Alex in time while Blunt always hanged around til the last minute.
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