There had also been the mortar attack on Number 10 Downing Street. The Gulf War had been at its height, and the target had been the War Cabinet meeting at ten a.m. on February 7—an audacious attack, and the missiles had landed in the garden, just narrowly missing the house. It bore all the hallmarks of a classic IRA operation, although nobody ever claimed responsibility for the attack. In Belfast, meanwhile, the war of the bomb continued remorselessly, and in spite of all the politicians could do, sectarian violence plowed on, people butchering each other in the name of religion, the British Army inured by twenty-two years to the Irish Troubles as a way of life. For Giles Roper, scientific interest in the field of weaponry and explosives had drawn him in even during his training days as an officer cadet at Sandhurst, and on graduation, it had led to an immediate posting to the Ordnance Corps. In ’ninety-one, he was entering his third year as a disposal officer, a captain in rank and several hundred explosive devices of one kind or another behind him.
