ESPIONAGE LITERATURE IS currently in the doldrums. The best intelligence stories of the Second World War and the Cold War have been told. The great era of gripping revelations about spooks by the likes of Nigel West, Phillip Knightley and Tom Bower has passed. At the same time hardly any inroads have been made into the secret history of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.Writers about spies are left to explore niche areas, as Antony Beevor did in his recent biography o Chekhova, the German film star who may have been a Russian agent. Or they can retell well- known stories, fleshing out the details with new material and