The American Connection

But this discovery shook him up, slapped him in the face, made him realise he was exposed.

What would the Secret Service do to him when they found out? Hand him another little traffic ticket titled '502C'? No way. Let him tell the jury at his trial everything he knew? Let the newspapers print it? Not a snowball's chance in hell.

This was the era of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, of space defence initiatives, of huge defence budgets and very paranoid military commanders who viewed the world as one giant battlefield with the evil empire of the Soviet Union.

Would the US government just lock him up and throw away the key? Would it want to risk him talking to other prisoners – hardened criminals who knew how to make a dollar from that sort of information? Definitely not.

That left just one option. Elimination.

It was not a pretty thought. But to the seventeen-year-old hacker it was a very plausible one. Par considered what he could do and came up with what seemed to be the only solution.

Run.