Covers have been drawn over the vintage cars that once sparkled in the driveway of Abdul Qadeer Khan's Islamabad house. It seems overt wealth is not the image the 'father' of the Islamic bomb would like to portray at the moment.
The vintage cars, along with his big, black Mercedes, won't be much use now that Dr Khan is under house arrest, unable to leave one of Pakistan's most exclusive addresses after admitting to one of the worst acts of nuclear proliferation in history.
Last week, the shocked nation sat transfixed as Dr Khan appeared on state television, looking drawn and defeated, and said that he had instigated leaks of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. He reportedly only deviated once from the script he was forced to read in a last ditch attempt to salvage an image that had taken a lifetime to build. A.Q, as he is called in Pakistan, added the words that it had all been done 'in good faith'. He failed to mention that he'd pocketed tens of millions of dollars along the way.
'I used to visit his home quite regularly during the 1980s to take tea and discuss scientific problems, and the bomb,' said Islamabad physicist Dr A.H. Nayyer.
'Even then, when the programme was supposedly secret, he would boast about what he'd achieved and how close they were to an explosion. He has always meticulously cultivated this image that he, and he alone, delivered the bomb. The facts are that his scientific achievements are actually quite minor.'
If Dr Khan's knowledge of nuclear science was limited, his acumen in trading nuclear materials was far more capable.