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Years later, when Carl decided to become Nob, he reasoned that this was a different kind of
undercover job. He was safe from the temptations of the underworld because he was behind a
computer. And yet, just as in his old days with the drug cartel, Carl found himself increasingly drawn
into the world of the Dread Pirate Roberts. After a day in the DEA offices, Carl would go home,
straight into the spare room of his old Colonial house in Baltimore and onto the computer to converse
with the man he was supposed to be hunting.
The room where Carl sat typing away wasn’t much to look at, with a single bed and a bookcase
that had once belonged to his grandfather. Here Carl would sit in an old brown and white lounge
chair, his legs stretched out on the ottoman, as his online personality, Nob, chatted with DPR about
everything and anything, and Pablo, the family’s mentally deranged cat, which hated being touched,
watched from the bed.
At times they talked about family, with Carl saying prayers for Dread and his loved ones. During
other occasions, they talked about their health.
“Tell me about your diet,” Carl asked.
“Minimize carbs,” DPR replied, “no bread, no pasta, no cereal, no soda. I eat lots of hard boiled
eggs.”
One reason Carl was able to chat with DPR for so long was because it was apparent to him that
Dread was lonely. All that time behind a mask must have taken its toll on the leader of the Silk Road,
and DPR evidently sought solace from the people he was connecting with online. Carl astutely
reasoned that he could use this to his advantage, coaxing the leader of the site to share more, and
enticing him to be Nob’s friend. A little manipulation here, some deceit there, and the Dread Pirate
Roberts would be eating out of Carl’s hand in no time at all.
Yet the attempt was backfiring, not because Carl wasn’t getting close to DPR, but rather because
he was getting too close to him. They would talk for hours about relationships, music, and the future
of the drug trade.
For Carl, who had been fighting the war on drugs for more than a decade and getting nowhere,
arresting one dealer only to see another take his or her place had gnawed at his purpose in the world.
Now the arguments the Dread Pirate Roberts was making about the war on drugs were actually
starting to make a little sense. Maybe the answer to all this violence and waste of government
resources and the hundreds of thousands of people rotting away in jails was to legalize drugs. Maybe
Carl was on the wrong side of the war.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Somewhere along the way of those maybes, Carl started to become enamored with Dread. He
started greeting DPR with affectionate salutations. “Hello my friend,” he would write. “Is all well?”
At other times he offered, “Stay safe,” and each night that they spoke, he told DPR to “sleep good.”
There were compliments: “You are the most interesting man in the world, stay thirsty my friend!” And
Carl even joked once, “I love you.” To which DPR replied, “Yer making me blush :).” Soon after that
exchange, Carl started to sign his letters to DPR with an affectionate “Love Nob.”
Sure, part of this was Carl being undercover, but part of it wasn’t.
As the relationship progressed, in addition to trying to draw out the leader of the notorious drug
and arms Web site, Carl started antithetically offering advice on how DPR could camouflage himself
even more. “You can do one of two things,” he wrote to Dread. “Move to another country where you