Snakehead by Anthony Horowitz 2nd Post

'But that was no longer the only purpose of the building in Sloane Street. It had also become the London headquarters of the international crime organization that went by the name of Scorpia. The name stood for "sabotage, corruption, intelligence, and assassination," which were its four main activities. The organization had been formed some thirty before in Paris, its members being spies from different intelligence networks around the world who had decided to go into business for themselves. There had been twelve of them at first. Then one had died of illness and two had been killed in the field. The other nine had congratulated themselves on surviving so long with so few casualties. But quite recently, things had taken a turn for the worse. The oldest member of the organization had made the foolish and inexplicable decision to retire, which had, of course, led to his being murdered immediately. Soon afterward, his successor, a woman named Julia Rothman, had also been killed. That had been at the end of an operation-- Invisible Sword-- that had gone catastrophically wrong. In many ways this was the lowest point in Scorpia's history, and there were many who thought that the organization would never recover'(Horowitz 9).

One of the reasons why I chose the passage is because it answers my previous question of the funeral home described earlier fits into the rest of the story. Another reason why I chose this passage is because it gives the reader a lot of insight into the organization known as Scorpia, which gives me the impression that it is going to play a major role throughout the story. The passage also makes me wonder why the author chose to describe the failures of Scorpia in great detail, while not even mentioning some of its other achievements. The story also makes me wonder why the author seems to linger on the fact that the organization is in bad shape.
Some questions I have about the text are: What exactly happened during operation Invisible Sword?
Why did they murder one of their own when he retired?
What makes Scorpia different from other terrorist organizations?