going in and seeing lines and lines of numbers." Never a discipline problem at home, Le Roux increasingly seemed to lump his family in with the ignorant people he perceived around him.

When he was sixteen, in an incident he would later recount to employees, the local police raided the Le Roux home and arrested young Paul for selling pornography. The family was scandalized, but managed to keep the story private. "He thought it was the fun- niest thing," the relative said. "He said quite openly that he'd found a gap to make money. He argued that if he was selling Bi- bles, curtaining, or study books no one would give a damn. It was a moneymaking business and he didn't care what the commodity was. That's where it all started."

By then, Le Roux had lost interest in any conventional path: graduation, college. He dropped out of high school to follow his interest in computers, and took a programming course at a local college. He completed a year's worth of course material in eight weeks and picked up programming certificates from three separate training courses over a single year.

What eventually propelled an eighteen-year-old Le Roux out of his parents' home, Mathew recalled, was a family trip to the United States—a Disney theme park, the whole works. He was enamored of the everyday technology he saw in the America of 1990: the big TVs, the ATMs, the ubiquitous personal computers. South Africa suddenly felt provincial, stifling. Besides, the nation's white-ruled apartheid system was entering its final death throes. Le Roux faced compulsory military service in a country he cared little about, at a time when large-scale societal violence seemed an increasing pos- sibility. When they landed back at home, he told his family he was leaving.

Eight months later, Le Roux bought a ticket to London. At the airport, Mathew recalled, his bags proved too heavy to check. He ditched his clothes and boarded the plane with a suitcase full of programming books.