Tinker, Tailor, Novelist

By Josh Tyrangiel/London

It's generally a bad sign when a book's author is more intriguing than its protagonist. But in the case of At Risk (Knopf; 367 pages) it really can't be helped. At Risk is a thriller about Liz Carlyle, a plucky young agent in MI5 (Britain's equivalent of the FBI) who spars with a roguish male sidekick while chasing a bomb-toting Islamic terrorist and his "invisible" (blond, British and female) co-conspirator. The book follows the standard spy-novel formula, though the formula works with surprising elegance--perhaps because its author, Stella Rimington, is a former director general of MI5 who spent 30 years foiling the plots of baddies from Russia, the Middle East and Northern Ireland. Rimington was the duty officer the night a Bulgarian emigre died of ricin poisoning after being stabbed with an umbrella tip by a Bulgarian secret agent while crossing London's Waterloo Bridge. Poor Liz Carlyle can't help but look like Matlock by comparison.

Ever since John Grisham left the courtroom for the best-seller list, publishers have been paying large sums for fictionalized legal and criminal expertise. January alone saw high-profile books from Linda Fairstein, a 25-year veteran prosecutor in Manhattan's sex-crimes unit, as well as Bill Bonanno, an ex-mobster, and Joe Pistone, a Mafia-infiltrating ex-FBI agent. But Rimington, 69, is the biggest name in law enforcement yet to give fiction a go. She began working for MI5 in 1965, when, as the wife of a British diplomat in New Delhi, she was hired as a local office clerk. Upon her return to London, she started spying on Soviet spies in Britain--and keeping her profession a strict secret. "Back then," says Rimington, "people tended to say they worked for the ministry of defense, but that invited questions like 'What do you do there?' So I had a variety of covers"--from military bootmaker to cosmetics-firm consultant--"and as I got older and more experienced, I'd have fun with it. I'd embroider--lots!"

Rimington remained anonymous until 1992, when she was appointed MI5's first female director general. Previously the position was so sub-rosa that the agency didn't even acknowledge it existed, but in an attempt at post--cold war openness and, Rimington suspects, a fit of self-congratulatory pride at hiring a woman, Rimington was outed by her own government. "People were astonished," she says, laughing. "Particularly my neighbors who just thought I was a quiet old lady." Being the first public face of a counterespionage agency made her a high-value target for terrorists--the I.R.A. was very active at the time and Rimington had to move frequently--but generally she speaks of her life at MI5 with unexpected ebullience. "I have been criticized for saying that I found my profession fun, but it's true," she says. "It can be extremely distressing, but you enjoy what you think you're doing to prevent some horrible thing happening, and you enjoy working with the people you're working with."

After retiring in 1996, Rimington wrote Open Secret, a tell-little autobiography that gave her the confidence to try her hand at fiction. "I'm an addicted reader of John le Carre," she says, "so I figured, Why not?" She holed up for long stretches at her beach home in Norfolk, East Anglia, where much of At Risk is set, and leaned heavily on the assistance of novelist Luke Jennings. "I'm quite good at thinking up plots and characters, but I needed help with pacing," she explains.

At Risk is certainly not flawless. Early on, the reader is privy to more details of the terrorist plot than Liz, and things move slowly until she catches up. Liz also has a convenient habit of asking herself bushels of expository questions ("What business could Eastman have been doing with Germans and Arabs and Pakistanis? Who had been killed? And most vitally of all, was there a terror connection?"). But these are quibbles. In a thriller, plot is all and once it gets going, At Risk is never less than compelling. The book was vetted--as was Rimington's first--by MI5, but they didn't strip out all the inside dope, which arrives in fascinating little flashes as Liz identifies obscure Russian ammunition, jokes about the macho idiots in MI6 (Britain's CIA) and delicately recruits a young Muslim agent. Most striking, though, is that with the terrorist threat mounting and untold lives at stake, Liz seems to be enjoying herself. "Well," says Rimington, "she is loosely autobiographical." o