Reverend Desmond McCain is the main antagonist in the Alex Rider book Crocodile Tears.
Biography[]
Early life and boxing career[]
Reverend Desmond McCain began life with nothing: he had no known parents, no family, and nothing. He was found abandoned as a baby, in a shopping trolley, wrapped in a plastic bag of McCain's Oven Chips, a name which would stay with him for his life. But he was given good fortune. He was admitted to a foster family in London and although he appreciated their goodness, he became aware that do-gooders needed victims, otherwise they couldn't do good.
McCain was educated in London; however, due to his skin colour, his classmates bullied him and made it difficult for him to get qualifications like them; at the age of thirteen, he realised that money would be the answer to all his problems. Though education was made difficult for him, McCain showed talent as a boxer, throwing himself into his training at a gym in Limehouse. Even here, he showed violent tendencies, admitting that he "loved the sight of blood", and believing that he had once killed a man with a single punch, and was satisfied rather than horrified.
McCain did very well as a boxer, winning the Lightweight World Championship belt twice. However, during the 1983 finals in Madison Square Gardens, he lost his match against fellow boxer Buddy Sangster; Sangster not only cost McCain the dreams of winning the third belt in a row, but left McCain permanently scarred, with a broken jaw, making it impossible for him to eat properly, only being able to consume liquid food. McCain had his revenge, by arranging for Sangster's death at the hands of reputed assassin The Gentleman, who pushed Sangster in front of a train, and left a calling card by sending a hundred black tulips to the dead boxer's memorial.
Sangster was not the only problem that McCain faced as a boxer. After the fight, his manager referred him to a plastic surgeon, albeit one who was not good, operating out of a clinic located above a casino in Las Vegas. The surgeon botched the job, and left McCain still in a state of damage. Again, he had The Gentleman kill the offender. But still, his boxing career was over, and he was left with no choice but to return to his foster parents.
Business and political careers[]
Although the foster parents saw McCain now as a man who they thought did not need their help, his foster father helped him to get a job as an estate agent. McCain returned to power, to the public eye. The press followed him, and he enjoyed his job, being in the company of estate agents, and developing a successful business. People wanted to be seen to be his friend; as McCain himself admitted, he stood out as a successful black businessman at the time.
Eventually, he became friends with politicians, and it was suggested that McCain become a Member of Parliament; he joined the Conservative Party and was elected as the first Conservative MP for a constituency which had voted for the Labour Party since time immemorial. His rise continued; he became a junior minister in the Department for Sport (now the Department for Sport, Media, Digital and Culture), and he became popular amongst MPs. McCain invited the entire Cabinet of the United Kingdom to his Christmas parties, which became famous for vintage wine and pasta. He often found himself drinking outside Downing Street with senior figures. It was even suggested that he could one day become the UK's first black Prime Minister.
However, McCain's business career was not doing well. One of his towers that he had constructed was overdrawn, and he couldn't pay; he was risking bankruptcy, something which cannot happen to MPs. To recoup his losses, McCain decided to torch the building in question, to claim on the insurance. The plan worked at first, but then the insurance company questioned why several features had not been used at the time, such as letting the guards leave early. They smelled a rat, which was confirmed when a homeless man (who had been sleeping in the car park of the building) revealed that he had seen McCain drive in with six gallons of petrol and a cigarette lighter.
The damage was done: McCain was arrested, tried and found guilty of fraud, imprisoned for nine years, lost his seat in Parliament, thrown out of the Conservative Party, and became a pariah in the press. McCain would later say that prison was the worst point of his life, being bullied by the prisoners who were every bit as bad as his old classmates, bullied so often that a bed in the prison was reserved for him, and that he nearly went suicidal.
Conversion[]
Whilst in prison, McCain converted to Christianity because people like redeemed sinners. He studied the Bible, to the extent that he could insert convenient quotes from it into conversation. He also claims to have spent hours talking to the prison chaplain, who he describes as "a pompous fool who couldn't see past the end of his own dog collar". He studied an internet course, and was ordained as a priest in an obscure church.
His theory about people liking the repentant worked, as the parole board released him from prison early. When asked, McCain said that he was guilty about his past actions, but they were all behind him and that he wanted to give it back. Out of prison, McCain founded a charity, appropriately named First Aid, because of its reputation for being the first on the scene to any major disaster in the world. Many people believed First Aid was a good charity because they seemed to be efficient and get everything done. For example, the explosion of a coolant pump and near-meltdown of Jowada Nuclear Power Plant in India could have gone haywire, and could have killed everyone in the city. But thanks to First Aid, it was stopped.
What the authorities didn't know was that Reverend McCain hadn't redeemed himself at all - he was still pure evil. He was using his redemption as a cover. He himself had caused the Jowada explosion, by bribing an engineer, Ravi Chandra, to put a ten-kilo bomb on one of the pumps. The bomb was put, but it killed Chandra before he could get his money. McCain, through his agents, had falsely promised Chandra that the bomb had a ten-minute fuse, to provide enough time to get out of the city, to reunite with his wife and two young sons.
Reverend McCain wasn't happy about the explosion; it didn't have the catastrophic effect that was projected. But he made off with most of the money that people donated to his charity, despite paying for advertising and buying large quantities of an anti-radiation drug. He hoarded the money he saved from the disasters he created over the years, and planned to use the money to make himself a new identity in the future; he envisioned himself as a slightly mysterious businessman, living in South America.
Scotland[]
McCain hosted a New Years' party, to raise funds for his charity, at Loch Arkaig in Scotland; he invited journalist Edward Pleasure to interview him, and he brought with him his daughter, Sabina, and her boyfriend, Alex Rider. To Alex's annoyance, the party was a formal black-tie event. Reverend McCain met Alex, and invited the teenager to play poker with him, and appeared rather friendly. But he became darker and more arrogant as the game went on, finally culminating in his apparent victory. But Alex had hidden all his aces, and he showed them to a horrified McCain, who saw that Alex had won all the money in the game, but Alex gave it all to First Aid. Reverend McCain got an enmity to Alex from that brief encounter, and planned to kill him.
Reverend McCain saw Alex talking to Edward Pleasure about genetically modified crops. Reverend McCain got alarmed, and hurried downstairs to interrupt, but Edward relaxed on seeing his host. Soon, Edward, Sabina and Alex left the party, bored. On the way home, Reverend McCain's fiancee Myra Bennett shot out Edward's tires, and this caused Edward's second-near death when his car crashed into the Loch and he almost drowned, but Alex and an Indian agent, Rahim, saved them.
Kidnapping Alex[]
Alex returned to London and then found a journalist chasing him. He went to MI6 for protection, and they wanted him to investigate Greenfields, a chemistry and bio-organism center outside Salisbury, in return for discouraging this journalist. Unfortunately, to Alex's horror, Reverend McCain was there, having spied both the reverend and Greenfields' director, Leonard Straik, in the latter's office, and recognising him from the poker game.
Reverend McCain asked if the "shipment" was ready and spoke about the shipment being somewhat alive. When Straik noted an intruder, McCain was amused rather than worried. When Straik's men had searched the whole plant for an intruder and found Alex, McCain noticed Alex amongst the schoolchildren in the picture the CCTV had taken. McCain vowed revenge on Alex, saying it was twice he had crossed him both with humiliating results.
Reverend McCain met with the journalist Bulman, who revealed the truth about Alex's involvement with MI6. After killing Bulman to silence him, McCain had a fake delivery team kidnap Alex outside his home, complete with a false policeman. Alex was bundled out of the country with the help of Reverend McCain's partner, Dr Myra Bennett, who humiliated Alex by dressing him in a mental patient's clothes, cutting his hair really short, and injecting him with a drug that paralysed him. Dr Bennett used the prejudices of passengers to avoid attention, which worked.
Dr Bennett took Alex to Africa, to Kenya, to a disused former five-star river camp which McCain now owned. She made him fly a jet on McCain's orders, unwittingly spraying a field with mushroom fertiliser. The fertiliser was what Alex had stolen from Greenfields during his visit. Greenfields had been supplying African nations with genetically modified wheat seeds, which would produce the poison ricin. The fertiliser would be the trigger to cause the wheat to turn poisonous. The people and animals who consumed the wheat would die, thereby creating another appeal for McCain to steal people's money.
Reverend McCain himself appeared that night, and showed Alex his plan, both online (using a fake charity appeal video he had filmed at a disused studio) and personally. McCain expressed his desire to move out to South America or somewhere with Dr Myra Bennett, marry her and become billionaires and live a luxurious life, finally fulfilling his dreams of being rich, as well as getting decent plastic surgery to fix his face. The reverend also revealed his greed, by revealing that he had met Bulman and killed him, as well as killing Straik, presumably to allow him to keep all the money for himself.
Reverend McCain had Alex tortured the following morning, using a gruesome method: having Alex hang for a couple of minutes over a river of hungry, sinister, and carnivorous crocodiles, which were eager to get Alex. Reverend McCain had done this many times with many people and he knew how to make it as slow as possible. He made it a nightmare for Alex and he expressed his belief that Alex had been a total thorn in his side.
Eventually, Reverend McCain got the truth from Alex that although MI6 had indeed told him to visit Greenfields, he wasn't working for them, and that he was studying genetically-modified food at school, explaining his talk with Edward Pleasure at the castle. Despite getting the truth, Reverend McCain left Alex to die at the jaws of the crocodiles for being so meddlesome (although he may well have killed Alex anyway). He walked away and told Dr Bennett to have pictures of Alex's death ready.
Soon, McCain's guards reported that Bennett herself had been eaten by the crocodiles and, impossibly, Alex had escaped.
Final downfall and death[]
McCain sent all his men out to get Alex, but even this failed when Alex got to the Simba Dam (which watered the wheat fields) ahead of the men, and using a bomb supplied by Rahim (an Indian agent sent to kill McCain in revenge for his actions at Jowada), he blew up the dam, destroying Reverend McCain's poisoned wheat field and preventing his plague from spreading - thus eliminating the Prime Minster's (implied to be Gordon Brown) risk of fighter jets which, Alan Blunt said, would increase the risk of contamination.
His plague and dreams destroyed, Reverend Desmond McCain flew to Laikipia airfield, and he shot Rahim dead, and marched roaring over to Alex for the final showdown. McCain bellowed that he would have Alex beg and act like a child for once, and aimed his pistol, firing at Alex, but Alex ducked. McCain knelt on an oil drum, and aimed at Alex, saying Alex was on his way to Hell. Alex said "Let me know what it's like there." Alex had attached a magnetic explosive disguised as a black gel pen to Reverend Desmond McCain's oil drum; at that point, it exploded, igniting the drum and burning the evil priest to death.
Personality[]
Having lived a life of poverty, McCain greatly overvalued the importance of money. He has described it as a world power and even a God, arguing that people look with almost reverence at "greasy, semi-literate football players and self-satisfied pop stars" simply because they are rich and not because they might be talented. Also, he is thoroughly greedy and immoral in obtaining it. He had no quarrel over creating multiple world disasters, killing thousands of people and having people donate to his charity, which he would squander on himself. McCain was also completely sadistic, merciless, and undemonstrative, perfectly show as he spectated Alex Rider's torture by almost feeding him to ravenous and carnivorous crocodiles. His cynical worldview was presumably brought on by the racism he endured throughout his childhood.
McCain was also exceptionally blasphemous and disrespectful for Christianity, he memorized multiple Bible verses but had absolutely no faith in the religion itself and used his born-again façade to help his public alter-ego.
Despite his cool-headed and dispassionate nature, McCain was capable of expressing emotion. After being beaten at cards by Alex Rider, he was clearly angry, obnoxious, and argumentative, and hot-tempered; however, he only showed it in his eyes. He also shed a tear when he discovered that his fiancé Myra Bennett had been eaten by crocodiles, courtesy of Rahim.
Appearance[]
McCain, having been a boxer, is a huge man, muscular, and capable of dominating the room. Showing his supposed conversion to Christianity, he wears a silver earring in his left ear, shaped like a Cross. He has grey eyes.
Due to his boxing injury and the botched surgery that followed, McCain's face is said to resemble two halves of a broken mirror, not quite matching, with one half out of sync with his skull. This also leaves him with something of a lisp, as he can only pronounce the letters L and W as R.
[]
 Villains
| ||
|
Criminal Organizations Nightshade Point Blanc Academy Sayle Enterprises Drevin's Organization McCain's Organization/First Aid Secret Services | ||