34856893457934

“Of course,” Jared replied as they both curled up on the couch and fell asleep.
The next morning Jared woke up and left for work again. As he pulled his car into the parking lot
of the HSI offices in Chicago and it chugged to a stop, his phone rang with a New York phone number.
“Agent Der-Yeghiayan here.”
“Hey, Jared,” a voice said, “this is Serrin Turner with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern
District of New York, and I have Chris Tarbell, the lead investigator for the FBI on the Silk Road
case.”
Jared immediately sat up in his seat, greeting the two men with respect.
“We really appreciated your honesty yesterday at the meeting,” a voice, clearly Chris Tarbell’s,
said into the phone. He then explained that the FBI had so much evidence—Tarbell referred to the
server as “the holy grail”—and given that the Bureau hadn’t been on the case long, agents were not
sure where to begin. “We’d really love to get you out here to work with us.”
Jared was flattered and joked, “I’m on my way!” Then, in a more serious tone, he explained that
he was wrapping up a new important part of his case and that he would arrange to fly out to New
York City within a week.
They exchanged a few cordial comments and hung up. Jared sat there elated. The kid with no
college degree who couldn’t get a job at the FBI years earlier was now being asked to work with
what many considered the top men in law enforcement on one of the most important cybercrime cases
of his generation.
But first Jared needed to deal with that “new important part of his case” he had mentioned to
Tarbell on the phone. Though Jared didn’t know yet how important it would be.
A few days after the call, Jared drove the Pervert Car to Chicago O’Hare International Airport,
as he had done ten thousand times before. But this time he wasn’t retrieving mail with drugs inside; he
was picking up a passenger who was landing on a flight from Texas.
“Excuse me,” Jared said as he brushed by people at the airport, holding his Homeland Security
badge in the air. As he approached the jet bridge, there, waiting for him, was a young, timid woman
from Texas with dark hair, whom Jared had held at gunpoint a few weeks earlier. The woman worked
as a volunteer moderator for the Silk Road, and over the past few weeks Jared had managed to
befriend her on the site, and had tracked her down by saying he wanted to send her a gift in the mail.
This led to a guns-drawn knock on her door in Texas (with some agents from Baltimore), where Jared
gave her a choice to work with him or have to deal with someone else in government who wouldn’t
be as nice.
Since that encounter they had spoken on the phone, and the woman from Texas had agreed to help
Jared take over her account on the Silk Road. At around the same time, she explained to him that the
Dread Pirate Roberts had contacted her, asking if she wanted a paid gig moderating the site’s forums
and being a sort-of assistant doing trivial tasks for DPR. The pay would be $1,000 a week. Now the
hope was that Jared would assume her identity and take the job as her.
He drove her to the hotel, apologizing the entire time for how messy his car was, and explained
that in the morning they would meet at the HSI offices to get to work. “Don’t forget your computer,”
he joked.
The conference room at HSI headquarters in Chicago was as drab as Jared’s personal office.
There were no windows, the carpet was old and gritty, and the plants in the room were all made of