One day about two years ago, he had decided to reach out to them. He began by composing a draft communication to the leaders of terrorist factions explaining what he could do for them. He offered to obliterate the Los Angeles Police Department’s Bomb Squad. He explained that he was a businessman, not a person with religious or political motives of his own. He simply wanted ten million dollars. He figured that his frankness would keep everything simple and unambiguous.
He used Tor to get into the dark web and began his search. He spent a long time exploring the dark web on his home computer. By definition, the invisible web was all of the sites that search engines didn’t detect, so he had to manage without search engines. He found bulletin boards and sites and communications for a great many groups, and for individuals who claimed to have connections or colleagues or followers. He found killers for hire, people selling themselves or others for sex, offers of drugs of every kind and quantity, and guns. He had no way of knowing who or what was real, so he searched for bits of information he could verify by reading neutral sources, and made lists of contacts he could revisit to check for consistency. Whenever he found a new one, he wasn’t sure if it was a criminal enterprise or a police agency from an unknown country searching for criminals. When a group disappeared, he didn’t know if the members had been caught or if the group had detected a trap and moved on.
Most people on the dark web had or wanted bitcoins. He wanted cash. After a few months he had made contact with thirty-nine groups who declared themselves enemies of the United States and who he believed were real, or had channels to real groups.
After he made contact a few began to try to recruit him. The tone of his responses was tentative and cautious. He was patient, and eventually some of the groups began to send him literature, announcements of meetings, and other information that indicated they weren’t imaginary. Others disappeared.
He waited months before the first serious and relevant query reached him. It was from a person who called himself the Messenger. It seemed to him a name like that hinted at a Middle Eastern group, but there was no telling. The Messenger offered to send emissaries to discuss his offer. They would meet with the bomb maker in Canada. When the Messenger specified the exact time and place of the meeting, the bomb maker bought his plane ticket.
The bomb maker met the pair of emissaries at a restaurant in Niagara Falls, Ontario, on a terrace overlooking the cataract. It was a fair, warm, sunny day in July, and they took a table far from any other. The emissaries were a pair of men who seemed to be enjoying their visit to the falls. Both wore what looked like golf clothes—T-shirts, one yellow, one blue, pressed khaki pants—and low-heeled Italian driving shoes and aviator sunglasses. They talked about the water hurling itself off the cliff into the gorge and watched the tourists from many countries who were spending the afternoon swarming the steps and paths above the falls and taking pictures. He tried to start a conversation about business twice, but each time one of the men would put a hand on his forearm and shake his head.
At some point he realized they were not alone. There were at least three similarly dressed men standing at various points where they could watch the bomb maker and his companions outside the restaurant. One of them wore a backpack, and he wondered what was in it.
When they finished eating, the two men asked for the check, paid, and stood up. They took a terse leave of the bomber and then walked off in the direction of the parking lots a distance from the river. Two other men, including the one with the backpack, arrived and conducted him to a viewing area close to the crest of the falls. They could barely hear each other over the roar of the rushing water. At that point he realized the expected order of things was reversed. The first two men had been security specialists evaluating him. They had probably screened him for insanity or fraud, checked him for weapons with a magnetic device, and given any opposition forces a chance to move in.
One of the two men who took him close to the water handed him a business card. It had a phone number written on it. He said, “When you’re ready to begin, call the number. The one who answers will arrange your payment.”
“I want the money delivered to me.”
The man shrugged. “All right, then tell him that and give him the location when it’s time.”
The five men he saw all had dark hair and dark eyes, but they spoke with no accents. They never introduced themselves. They made no reference to any country, religion, organization, or government. A couple of times they spoke to each other, but the roar of the rushing water was so loud and they had their faces so close together that he heard nothing. They could have been speaking any European language, or Farsi or Hindi or Pashtun, or Tagalog, or anything else.
The only questions they asked were practical. How far was he in his plan to eliminate the Bomb Squad? Did he want some of his payment in merchandise? Drugs or diamonds? How much money did he need right away for supplies? Would one hundred thousand dollars be enough?
He said he wanted nothing to do with drugs or diamonds. Money for expenses would speed things up, but he could still do his work without it. Yes, a hundred thousand would be a big help.
The other man took off the backpack he was wearing and set it down. They talked for a few more seconds, and then the first man said, “We’d better be going. Call the number when it’s time.” The two men turned and walked away.
The bomb maker felt his heart beating with excitement, and his mouth was dry. He stood still until they were out of sight, then picked up the backpack and put it on. When he went to his rental car to leave for the American side of the river he was agitated. He decided to sit in his car for a few minutes and wait for his breathing to return to normal before he started the engine.
He was tempted to open the pack, but he knew what was inside. It would be a hundred thousand dollars, because these guys were the real thing. They were emissaries from the leader of a powerful faction. But then he remembered he had to drive back across the border. He unzipped the pack and confirmed what he already knew. Inside was a stack of bundled American money. At the bottom was a cell phone in its box, the protective cellophane gone, but the phone clearly new.
This car had rear seats that could be tipped forward to extend the trunk by a few feet for carrying long loads. He tipped them forward and hid the money in the spaces in the back under the rear seats, then restored them to the upright position. He folded his jacket and stuffed it into the backpack to replace the money, then set the pack on the passenger seat. He knew the customs officials at the border would not be unaware of the places for hiding contraband, but they would have no reason to suspect him of anything.
He thought about the men who had given him the money. He assumed they were genuine terrorists. Everything the men had done made him respect them more. He was in an alliance with them, but at this moment he had no idea who they were or where they were from. All they had needed to accomplish their purpose was to give him a business card with a phone number, but they had gone much further. They had staked his work.
The number on the business card was an American phone number. There was no country code, and the area code was 213. That was Los Angeles. As he drove back toward the bridge that arced over the river, he thought about the implications. They had people in the United States already. They were ready, waiting for his call.