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was more serious and
fundamental.   Kilmara was a threat not
just to the minister's professional ambitions but, if ever the soldier put
certain information together, the politician's very life.
    To put it
simply, Delaney was a traitor.   He had
passed information about the plans and activities of Irish troops in the Congo
to a connection in exchange for considerable sums of money, which had resulted
in the frustration of some of the Airborne Rangers battalion's operations — and
in the death and wounding of a number of men.
    The minister
had not set out to be a traitor.   He had
merely put his ambitions before his integrity, and circumstances had done the
rest.   The minister was convinced that
Kilmara suspected what he had done — thought, ironically, he was wrong.   Kilmara's undisguised contempt for him was
based on no more than the typical soldier's dislike of a corrupt and
opportunistic political master.
    After his
resignation from the Irish Army in the mid-sixties, Kilmara should have
vanished from Irish official circles for good.   But then, in the seventies, the specter of terrorism began to make
itself felt.   It had been largely
confined to British-occupied
Northern
Ireland
and to Continental Europe, but
violence, unless checked, has a habit of spreading, and borders are notoriously
leaky.
    The Irish
government was concerned and worried, but it was the assassination of
Ambassador Ewart Biggs, ex-member of
Britain
's
Secret Intelligence Service, writer of thrillers — all of them banned by the
Irish censors — and wearer of a black-tinted monocle, was appointed British
ambassador to the
Republic
of
Ireland
.   It was a controversial choice at best, and it
was to end in tragedy.
    On the morning
of July 21, Ewart Biggs seated himself on the left-hand side of the backseat of
his chauffeur-driven 4.2 liter Jaguar.   He was to be driven from his residence in the
Dublin
suburb of Sandyford to the British
Embassy near Ballsbridge.   Behind the
Jaguar drove an escort vehicle of the Irish Special Branch containing armed
detectives.
    A few hundred
meters from the residence, the ambassador's car passed over a culvert stuffed
with one hundred kilograms of commercial gelignite.   The culvert bomb was detonated by command
wire from a hundred meters away.   The
Jaguar was blasted up into the air and crashed back into the smoking
crater.   Ambassador Ewart Biggs and his
secretary, Judith Cooke, were crushed to death.
    The killings
sent a cold shudder through the Irish political establishment.   Whom might the terrorists kill next?   Would the British start revenge bombings, and
who might their targets be?   It wasn't a
cheerful scenario.
    The Irish
cabinet went into emergency session, and a special committee was set up to
overhaul Irish internal security.   It was
decided to appoint a special security adviser to the Taoiseach.   It was an obvious prerequisite that such an
adviser be familiar with counterinsurgency on both an international and a
national basis.
    Discreet
inquiries were made throughout Europe, the
United States
, and places much
further afield.   The replies were
virtually unanimous.   In the intervening
decade, working with many of the West's most effective security and
counterterrorist forces, Kilmara had consolidated his already formidable
reputation.   His contempt for most bureaucrats
and politicians was well known.   The cabinet
committee was unhappy with the appointment, but having Kilmara around was
preferable to being shredded by a terrorist mine.   Just about.
    Kilmara drove
a hard bargain.   It included an ironclad
contract and a substantial — by Irish standards — budget.   Ninety days after his appointment, as
stipulated in his contract, Kilmara set up an elite special antiterrorist
unit.   He named it “the Rangers” after
his now-disbanded airborne battalion.   The entire unit numbered only sixty members.   Some were drawn from the ranks of the army
and the police.