MI5
MI5 – keeping our country safe
Thames House is the headquarters of MI5, an imposing eight storey high edifice a few hundred yards from the Palace of Westminster.
Stella Rimington joined MI5 in 1965 and during her career worked in counter-subversion, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism, directing all three branches in turn. She was appointed Director-General of the whole of MI5 in 1992, the first woman ever to hold the post, and was awarded the prestigious Dame Commander of the Order of Bath in the 1996 New Year Honours.
In 2004 she published her debut novel with the principal character based on herself: At Risk.
Liz Carlyle is an agent-runner in the counter-terrorism group based at Thames House, ten years into her term of service, anxiety her constant companion; to be effective she must herself be placed at risk. Her life is dominated by her work; unpredictable, stressful and shrouded in secrecy. By nature and inclination she is totally suited to the task.
… her quiet sage-green gaze masked an unflinching determination. A hunger for the fierce, close-focused engagement of the chase.
She dresses in nondescript clothes calculated to be non-memorable in any environment, always low profile even in success. It’s a lonely path, work-intensive, below the radar, the lives and security of all her agents and contacts in her hands, national security her daily preoccupation.
As soon as relationships become demanding or complex, she must end them.
She had found herself unable to compromise her independence in order to accommodate the emotional needs of a lover.
That this cycle led to her denying her own emotional needs she was well aware. Each parting was an excision, a scalpel’s downstroke, for which the only cure was immersion in work.
And now she has ‘an invisible’ on her patch; the ultimate intelligence nightmare – a terrorist who, because he or she is an ethnic native of the target country, can cross its borderds unchecked, move around that country unquestioned, and infiltrate its institutions with ease. As soon as we know that, each new character becomes an instant suspect.
Painstakingly Liz and her colleagues piece together a picture of two people who have traumatic experiences in their past that have precipitated them into fanaticism and vengeance. Both have had training in weapons and killing. Both have managed to travel to the UK and close to their ultimate target. But along the way they have killed innocent people, and the combined skill and weight of all the relevant services responsible for counter-terrorism and law and order is being amassed. It’s a race against time to outwit this deadly pair; time marked by a fast-approaching sinister anniversary. Curiosity, tension and dread keep the pages turning, and I for one didn’t anticipate the twist at the end which challenged me to consider how I would react in these circumstances, just how robust my own moral code would be.
It’s chilling to absorb the cold dispassion of trained suicide bombers and assasins; sobering to feel the weight of responsibility MI5 and MI6 and the police force carry to keep us safe; awe-inspiring to see how they sift and search and second guess and deduce to stay a step ahead of the most devious and devilish minds and prevent the most heinous massacres; scary to see how personal agendas and self-interest can pervert even the most disciplined. Stella Rimington has done us all a service by giving us insights into this secret world in such a rivetting and accessible form.
The Bullet that Missed
As you know, I don’t like to judge an author on one book – especially perhaps one that has catapulted into the bestselling lists. So, I bought two of Richard Osman‘s novels and have just finished reading the second one.
The Bullet that Missed (clever title, by the way) features The Thursday Murder Club (TTMC) again. Once a week this gang of four pensioners in a retirement village, meet to look over old police files and try to solve murders, although their remit is decidedly elastic. This time they’re together investigating the unsolved Bethany Waites case: a brilliant young reporter who vanished while investigating a massive VAT fraud relating to the import and export of mobile phones. What is already known?
She was murdered almost ten years ago
She had got too close to the secrets of the fraudsters.
Her car plunged off of Shakespeare’s Cliff near Dover, late at night.
Someone had been in the car with her just beforehand.
There were ambiguous messages on her phone.
She left a note for a fellow reporter: I don’t say this often enough, but thank you.
Well … the police may deem it murder, but Elizabeth Best of THMC knows you should never trust a murder without a corpse. And she should know: she has faked a few deaths of her own over the years as an MI5 agent. And Bethany’s body has never been found.
Fast forward ten years and Elizabeth is suddenly being bombarded with threatening texts in her present real life. She’s wary, but then, uncharacteristically, makes a big mistake: she goes for a walk with her husband at the same time along the same route every day, giving her enemy an open invitation to strike her down and abduct her. And that someone wants her to go on a deadly mission: to kill a man she knew years ago, or her best friend Joyce Meadowcroft’s life will be forfeit. Elizabeth’s husband Stephen, abducted with her, is suffering from dementia, and at the stage of being aware something isn’t right but not sure what it is. He has flashes of perceptiveness however, and now, rare and expensive books in the library where his abductor took them, jog his memory and help him to identify Elizabeth’s tormentor. She links up with an old ally, a former KGB colonel, Viktor, the very man she was instructed to kill, and they combine skills to attempt to outwit their common foe, a money-laundering Swede nicknamed The Viking. He is closing in but hasn’t bargained on their disarming friendliness or cunning.
Joyce Meadowcroft meanwhile, unaware that her life is in Elizabeth’s hands, is beavering away at the cold case and involves her lawyer daughter to dig deeper into the facts relating to the murder of Bethany Waites. A gathering collection of anomalies move thinking on. Then one of the the key players in the case is murdered in prison. A fellow inmate, a notorious drug baron, manipulates the elderly sleuths and plots to kill one of them (Ron) and his associate once she is released. The past and present become inextricably tangled.
The introduction of new characters such as the KGB colonel is definitely a brilliant move in the machinations of TTMC. Convoluted layers of intrigue unravel, revealing different facets of the truth or lies according to the differing perspectives. Master-crooks get involved, enemies become allies, confessions become red herrings, bodies keep turning up, big money creates temptations, cryptocurrency offers new opportunities, careers are made and broken in an instant. Osman is setting things up to weave ever more complex stories. And therein lies the test for a writer – keeping all the threads perfectly woven and unbroken, maintaining the tension without unduly repeating the detail or pattern. Methinks this mighty mind will be well up to the challenge.
Overall assessment after two books? Much more depth and complexity than I first thought. Rather like the deceptively simple four main elderly characters in TTMC. Still not books I would just have to hang on to, and I’m not racing to get the others in the series, but I’m looking for a good outlet for these two – someone looking for light-hearted easy-read diversion from life’s stresses.
Expecting the unexpected
While my current novel is still open to change I’m on the alert for anything that will improve it. And especially how to ratchet up the tension and suspense.
To that end I watched the British-made BBC drama, Killing Eve, billed as breaking with convention and putting warm heart into psychopathy. Twice!! Ahah. Some alternative angles on psychological themes then? Could be useful.
The story basically features a rather bored desk-bound MI5 security officer, Eve Polanski, (Sandra Oh) commissioned to bring a talented psychopathic assassin, Villanelle, (Jodi Comer) to justice. The chase covers continents and time-frames and languages and widely disparate settings at breathtaking speed, leaving a trail of death, destruction and confusion in its wake, constantly surprising and subverting expectation. The two women become obsessed with/by each other. Both principal actors are brilliant in their parts, and are well supported by the rest of the talented cast. Almost everyone seems to be suspect at some point or other, nothing is what it appears to be … as you might expect in a spy thriller.
Being in critical mode, I kept thinking how improbable various points were, how implausible. Incongruities, unfulfilled story-lines, questionable details … but you know what? It didn’t matter! I’m not one of those anachronism watchdogs who whinge about detail, and I’m not about to assassinate this hugely successful programme on the basis of trivial criticisms. Instead, I’m lost in admiration of the skills (at all levels, in all aspects of film-making) that went into creating it, holding me enthralled episode after episode. The eighth and final-to-date installment (8) ends with Villanelle, seriously wounded by Eve, escaping yet again. There has to be another series, and indeed one is promised. And I’m already awaiting it with bated breath.
Lesson learned? Get the big picture right, provide the compelling story, and you can be forgiven much. So … back to employment laws and grievances and settlements and …. Research can be fascinating in its own right.