How the spy was 'spotted'

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, SEPT. 10. Behind the closed gates of the British High Commission in New Delhi, a small event in the summer of 1967 changed the life of a diplomat's wife and even today she remembers how it exactly happened. Dame Stella Rimington who rose to become the first woman chief of Britain's secret service, MI5, and is currently at the centre of a controversy over her memoirs which the British Government did not want her to publish, began her career in India and this is how ``they'' spotted her:

``One day in the summer of 1967, as I was walking through the British High Commission compound in Delhi, someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was one of the first secretaries in the high commission, and although I knew he did something secret, I didn't know exactly what, as one was not encouraged to enquire about these things.

He was a baronet who lived a comfortable life in one of the more spacious high commission houses and was best known for his excellent Sunday curry lunches and for driving around in a snazzy old Jaguar. The baronet asked me whether, if I had a little spare time on my hands, I might consider helping him out at the office.

``I went in the next day and he told me that he was the MI5 representative in India. Would I be interested in working for him on a temporary basis? I wrote home: they have offered me a job working in the secret part of the high commission for five pounds a week, which I think I will take...I later learned that references had been taken up and that my headmistress, obviously somewhat dubious about these prospective employers, had written: she is the kind of girl who does not shirk unpleasant jobs. She is reliable and discreet, or at least as reliable and discreet as most young ladies of her age...''

In her memoirs, ``Open Secret'', she does not give details of the nature of her job in New Delhi and says it ``did not turn out to be particularly exciting.'' But clearly her appetite had been whetted because when she returned to England in 1969 she sought out her ``baronet friend'' in order to get a permanent job with MI5. And they must have been sufficiently impressed by whatever she did in New Delhi. For they did offer her a job - and then there was no looking back.

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Section  : International
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