 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
At Risk
By Stella Rimington
Hutchinson $29.95
 Formerly head of MI5, Britain's internal security organisation, Stella Rimington penned a convincing and timely debut novel about the planned assassination of a senior Airforce officer by a ruthless Islamic terrorist.
In the way of first-time authors, the hero of the piece is her thinly-veiled alter ego, Liz Carlyle, an intelligence analyst brought into a multi-agency team that is about to launch a search for an 'invisible' believed to have been deployed on British soil.
The term is 'CIA-speak' for a 'terrorist who, because he or she is an ethnic native of the target country, can cross its borders unchecked, move around that country unquestioned, and infiltrate its institutions with ease.'
The invisible in question arrives by train from Paris, dressed plainly, acting discreetly and using a false passport to rent a nondescript car from Avis that she steers slowly into the traffic stream, bound for her appointment with one of central Asia's deadliest assassins.
In sharp contrast, Faraj Mansoor, an Afghan from the mountain region bordering Pakistan, enters England by boat with a group of illegal Muslim migrants seeking a better life in a new land.
Mansoor's goal is to take life, not make a new one, and to this end he has a neat piece of killing technology called the SP-4 that fires armour-piercing ammunition. The weapon will be used too soon after his arrival on English soil, for when Mansoor is jumped at a truck-stop toilet by one of the louts hired to run the people-smuggling operation, he reaches for his small backpack: 'The detonation was no louder than the snapping of a stick,' but the mess made of his opponent's head gives the security service plenty to contemplate.
The weapon is an armour piercing yet silent handgun developed by the KGB: 'It's got the lowest sound signature of any existing firearm. You could fire it through a coat pocket and the person standing next to you wouldn't hear a thing.'
So begins the pursuit of the gun's owner and his 'invisible' helper, a disillusioned young student who converted to Islam, combat trained with the Taliban and now helps Mansoor track his unwitting quarry, an officer who ordered a devastating air-strike on Mansoor's relatives while they were celebrating a village wedding.
Rimington's gripping tale makes the terrorists' motives understandable and the authorities' counter-measures fascinating, while Liz Carlyle, coolly professional yet vulnerable, is a character who deservedly lives to fight another day.
- Thanks to Book Warehouse, Keen Street, Lismore for supporting this column.
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