An attempt 20 years ago to measure the internal temperature of a sand-diving lizard, Meroles anchietae, an inhabitant of the Namib Desert, by a novel microwave technique first used as an espionage device, and its subsequent thwarting by an international arms embargo, is described. A problem that had long confronted zoologists (and physiologists too) was how a quite remarkable lizard (Meroles anchietae, previously in the genus Aporosaura) survived when its usual habitat underwent daily variations in temperature in excess of 40°C. Its propensity for burrowing into the Namibian desert sands, where it stayed submerged for lengthy periods, seemingly held the key but quite how one measured its body temperature to verify this conjecture posed its own problems. Strange as it may seem, it was the Cold War - an apt though inverted name  in the circumstances - that provided a possible solution. It was to be found amongst the myriad electronic devices devoted to subterfuge and subversion that were used by the 'superpowers' as they held each other at bay by the threat of mutual annihilation. Such technology, however, was often classified Top Secret and beyond. To make life just that little bit more difficult, South Africa at that time was itself severely restricted in its machinations by an arms embargo imposed by the United Nations in 1977. That such things should also constrain honest scientific endeavour whose objectives were, at least to us innocents at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), so benign, was certainly not foreseen when the problem was first posed to the author in 1981. But constrain it they certainly did and Aporosaura anchietae, as we knew it then, was seen in some quarters as just another of those crafty code words for what was clearly South African subterfuge aimed at disguising military matters of much greater moment. This brief account recalls a fascinating interlude in the early 1980s when a device code-named SATYR by British Intelligence formed the basis for a temperature telemetry system intended for implanting into a lizard that lives and thrives in the Namib Desert.