As they settled in for a night of revelry, it was Tarbell who was the star of the show. After all, he was the one responsible for recently taking down an infamous hacker group, called LulzSec, that the media and security experts had asserted could never be stopped. What made LulzSec so special was that, unlike hackers of the past who would break into an institution for financial gain, this nefarious crew had spent the past year ransacking the Internet for the “lulz,” a neologism that essentially meant “a good laugh.” Part of their comedic hacking had included knocking the CIA Web site off-line, breaking into Sony Pictures servers, and defacing the Web sites of the British newspapers the Times and the Sun by posting a fake news story that Rupert Murdoch had died. All just for fun.
But after months of undercover work, Chris Tarbell and his FBI team had systematically arrested the people behind LulzSec all across the world—in Chicago, Ireland, and New York City. Which is why the gang was celebrating at the Whiskey Tavern.
In the back of the bar, Meg reappeared with a dirty black tray crowded with twenty shot glasses, half of them filled with cheap whiskey, the other half with green pickle juice. She dropped the concoction, known as the Pickle Back, a bar specialty, on the table.
“Whose turn is it to drink the tray?” Tarbell bellowed to the group of men around him, all of whom responded with another wince.
Years earlier Tarbell had invented this ritual—known as the “drinking of the tray”—wherein someone was expected to drink the slushy potion of pickle juice, whiskey, and any other liquid that had been sloshing on the tray before the drinks were served. If no one else had the guts to do it, Tarbell was always up for the sickening challenge.
At thirty-one years old, Tarbell had already made a big name for himself as one of the top cybercrime agents in the FBI, if not the world. Sure, he’d landed the LulzSec case by chance when a tip came in through a hotline and Tarbell was the lucky one to pick up the phone. But it was what he did with that information that separated him from the other agents—turning the top hacker of LulzSec, a man who was known as Sabu, and then using him to bring down the entire organization. Because of Tarbell’s ability to find people online, the media would soon bestow on him the nickname “the Eliot Ness of cyberspace,” after the renowned American Prohibition agent.
It was no accident that Tarbell had ended up where he was, rising through the ranks of the FBI. He had planned it this way, just as he planned everything. Tarbell had worked hard to earn his master’s degree in computer science, then became a cop. After more than a decade of eighteen-hour days, he had made his way up through the FBI to become a special agent. And he didn’t stop there. When he wasn’t with his wife and kids, he continued to study computer forensics for any technology platform imaginable.
He endured this because, more than anything, he desired to be the absolute best at anything he put his mind to. If his gym buddy was able to bench-press 400 pounds, Tarbell would spend months of his life lifting weights until he could bench-press 450 pounds (which he could actually do).
Over time he learned that the way to have a leg up on everyone else was to anticipate something before it happened and then have the answer to it. He prepped for everything. The night before he took his SATs in high school he did a practice drive to the test site to ensure he arrived on time. He did this the day before his physical test for the FBI. During his first few weeks at the Bureau he created a meticulous map of the entire office, labeling who everyone was and what he needed to know about them.
This obsessive planning came home with him. He told his wife, Sabrina, that the couple needed a code word they could use in case anything ever went wrong. “‘Quicksand,’” he told her. “That’s the word we use with each other if we’re ever in trouble: ‘quicksand.’” And when the cybercrime boys went out drinking, Tarbell texted ahead to let freckled Meg know how many people to expect. Nothing like planning a party at a dive bar.
On this particular night as many as fifty government employees were at the Whiskey Tavern to celebrate the capture of the LulzSec crew. As Tarbell sat there licking the taste of pickles and whiskey off his lips, Tom Brown, the assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. who would end up prosecuting the LulzSec hackers, wandered over.
“So, Tarbell,” Tom said, preparing to ask a question that had been plaguing him all day. “What’s next? Who are we going after next?”
Tarbell looked back, annoyed. He had just spent the past few months of his life working twenty-hour days trying to take down LulzSec, and Tom was already badgering him about the next target. “Come on,” Tarbell said. “We just fucking finished a case. Can’t we just celebrate first?”
“Of course you can,” Tom replied glacially, taking a short sip from his drink, “but I just wanted to see what we were going to do after that.”
Tom was clearly baiting Tarbell and already knew the answer. “There is a target no one has been able to crack,” Tom said, explaining that “no one” included the DEA, HSI, and a handful of government agencies from around the globe. The cybercrime FBI agents sipped from their champag-nay as they listened to what Tom was saying. “I think,” he said, “we should start looking at the Silk Road next.”
Chapter 33
ROSS ARRIVES IN SAN FRANCISCO
The Alamo Square neighborhood of San Francisco has long been considered one of the city’s most beautiful. The few blocks that make up the modest district sit snugly near the center of the city, framed by the past and with views of the future. The square is lined with bright “painted lady” Victorian homes built in the late 1800s, thanks in part to money from the Gold Rush years earlier. To the east, across gritty Market Street, modern glass skyscrapers are erected almost daily to house the fortunes being minted by the new gold rush—a wave of handsomely funded private companies, many of them valued at more than $1 billion, so-called unicorns. After the bubble had popped years earlier, there had been a resurrection of start-ups returning to the city, and billions of dollars ready to fund them.
On a bright and chilly afternoon in the summer of 2012, in the park in the middle of Alamo Square, a group of children giggled as they bounced through the playground, and unleashed dogs barked as they chased one another on the hilltop. And there, amid this happiness, Ross Ulbricht lay on the grass, inhaling his new city.
Ross fell in love with the Bay Area from almost the moment his feet touched the ground in San Francisco. Everything looked so magical and new. The flat, prairielike avenues of Texas were replaced by streets that seemed to undulate like a never-ending roller coaster. The billboards along the freeway didn’t talk about NASCAR, Jesus, or the best rib-eye steak in town but rather advertised mystical search engines, social networks, and even new digital currencies.