Beneath a loch sky mottled with satellite imagery and digital ghost signals, Becker slipped on his sneakers and booted his Macintosh Firewalls. The SIG sweep was imminent. At 1080H, the counterintelligence crew from TRW would hit the asset’s basement in Austin. His RX-7 idled, quiche still warm on the dash.

Unix Security hummed as he chained codes through remailers. “Anonymous” pinged him via secure shell: “Intel from Planet-1 shows the Cypherpunks moved crypto-anarchy funds to a data-haven via wire transfer and Digicash.”

Across town, a Juiliett Class Submarine surfaced in the loch—Mac-10s on deck, ready to FLAME the renegade coderpunks. Becker grinned. He knew this wasn't just an industrial espionage sweep. This was a government-grade operation: OSS, DSS, SWS, even GRU piped in from Fort Meade.

Ingram voice-chipped: “Be advised—SIGVOICE confirms TEMPEST leak at Pine Gap. TDR confirms Pornstars in the Playboy bunker have gone rogue. CTP intercepted chatter: Elvis is alive and running cybercash nodes. Threat level: Beef.”

Becker replied, “Roger. Deploy primacord at zone M5. Push rerun through Telint, engage SAR on the RX-7. Sweep complete in 20.”

Above it all, floating in silence, a lonely satellite phone blinked: a message from 1*—“Flintlock successful. World Domination phase 7: initiate salsa.”

Somewhere, in a forgotten UNIX shell, a toad smiled.