Industrialist-turned-anarchist Xavier Heimdahl arranges for his associate Jan Strook—a hacker known as "the Dutchman"—to create a wormhole program that would allow the owner to bypass all computer codes protecting the world's nuclear defense codes. The Dutchman panics and attempts to hand his secret over to CIA agent Bill Pope. Although Pope gets the Dutchman to a safe house and recovers the money to pay him for his services, he is caught by Heimdahl's men and tortured to death before he can tell anyone where he hid the Dutchman.