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Chapter 54
JARED BECOMES CIRRUS
When Jared Der-Yeghiayan was a freshman in high school, his math teacher would walk into
class each day with a Rubik’s Cube in hand. Young Jared would watch as the teacher
passed the colored square cube around the room, instructing every student to jumble it as much as
possible. “If I can solve this Rubik’s Cube in under a minute, you all get homework,” the teacher said
to the class each day. “If I can’t, you don’t get any homework.” Sure enough, every single class ended
with students trudging home with a complicated math assignment.
After witnessing this spectacle several times, Jared was plagued by a desire to figure out how
his teacher could always solve the riddle of the cube. He ran out and picked up his own Rubik’s Cube
and spent weeks trying to solve the puzzle. With a lot of tenacity and a smidgen of help from the
teacher, he was finally able to do the same thing. Over the years, Jared had collected dozens of
different Rubik’s Cubes, now scattered all over his home and office. They hung from key chains and
fell unexpectedly out of backpacks. To this day Jared had never met a cube he couldn’t solve in less
than a minute.
The Silk Road case had proved to be an altogether different challenge, and it had become
apparent to Jared that he wasn’t going to figure this one out alone. But he had no idea who he could
collaborate with. Thankfully, after the deconfliction meeting in Washington, DC, that was about to
change rapidly. The presentation Jared had given, showing all the work he had done so far on the
case, had impressed the top lawyers at the Department of Justice so much that the New York FBI
agents said they wanted to work with him in their quest to find the Dread Pirate Roberts. (This in
itself was compliment enough, as the FBI didn’t like to work with anyone whose last name was not
“of the FBI.”)
Jared had flown back to Chicago, stopped in to see his wife and son, and, as usual, fallen asleep
while watching Antiques Roadshow. Though now when he passed out on the couch, his son, Tyrus,
would curl up next to him. It had been difficult for Tyrus to be away from his dad so much, but Jared
had explained that this was all temporary, and the travel was important because “I’m trying to catch a
pirate who is doing bad things.” (Tyrus, hearing this, accepted his father’s quest. Pirates, after all,
were bad characters in the storybooks he read, and needed to be caught.) But Tyrus had one request,
that Jared Skype with him each night before bed.