“I’m really worried DPR is going to find me,” she said. There were, after all, rumors floating around the Dark Web that the merciless Dread Pirate Roberts had recently had some people killed. The last thing the woman from Texas wanted was to get a knock on her door and . . . Well, the thought terrified her.
Jared assured her that she had nothing to worry about and said he was available day and night if anything happened. “Most of the people on this site are just nerds,” he said. “They’re not ruthless drug lords.” From all of his investigations, it seemed that the Silk Road was less like The Godfather and more like Lord of the Flies. Were these people capable of ruthless acts? Yes, absolutely. But with a caveat: many of them were capable only from behind the safety of a keyboard. “My advice,” he said to her, “is to just get off the grid for a while. Don’t go on social media. Don’t go to the site. Just lay low.”
The people on the Silk Road would still see her online under her pseudonym, Cirrus. Only a handful of people in the federal government would know that Cirrus was really Jared, undercover.
DPR had asked Cirrus to provide a driver’s license if she wanted to work for him, so Jared had the undercover team at HSI put together a fake license with a photograph of a female agent, which he sent to Dread.
“Hey I’m willing to do anything you need me to do on the site,” Jared told the Dread Pirate Roberts in his first interaction with the man he had been hunting for two years. “I’m here to help.”
DPR responded with a list of mundane tasks to complete and told Cirrus to get to work. There would be no small talk here.
Maybe this puzzle would be solvable after all, Jared reasoned.
As he dropped the woman from Texas back off at O’Hare, Jared was invigorated by the fact that he was no longer just an employee with the Department of Homeland Security; he was now also undercover as a worker for the Silk Road. And his boss wasn’t just any underling on the site, but rather the most ruthless pirate of them all.
Chapter 55
JULIA IS SAVED! HALLELUJAH!
Jesus told me I need to pray for you,” the Spanish lady said as she placed her coffee cup on the table next to a slew of images of mostly naked women. “So I’ve been praying for you—just as Jesus told me to.”
Julia looked back at the lady and began to weep. A stream of black mascara flowed down her cheeks as she buried her face in her hands.
To anyone who hadn’t seen her in a while, Julia appeared much thinner than usual, and her eyes were welted with worry. Life hadn’t been easy over the past year. First there was the depression, and the alcohol. Then came the older man with money who could protect her. He liked skinny girls, so Julia became skinnier, developing an eating disorder to placate her new boyfriend. Then it became apparent that the protector had a drinking problem. Before long he threw her against a wall in one of his drunken rages.
Soon afterward a Spanish woman stopped by Julia’s studio to pick up some books, then explained why she was really there. “Jesus told me I need to pray for you.”
Julia wept.
Her life goals were not that far-fetched. Julia hadn’t wanted to change the world; she had just wanted her world to be changed. Was it so difficult to find a good man to marry, who would give her a child or two, a white picket fence, and, most important, see that those children grew up differently from how she had? There was a dream in her mind where that good man was Ross Ulbricht, and it ended with them both living happily ever after.
Sadly, that fairy tale had never materialized.
After the Spanish woman who knew Jesus arrived at her studio, the kind lady invited Julia to church.
Later that morning Julia sat at the back of the congregation and heard angels in her ears. She was mesmerized by the place. The rays of light streaming in through the windows, the answers everyone else seemed to have. The pews in the church were filled with Bibles, and the people who read them sang hymns about the Lord. As she listened to the messages from the church’s preacher, Julia felt like this could be her white picket fence, that Jesus could be that good man she had always been looking for. That afternoon she canceled her client meetings and went back to the church again.
But this time things were different. Unlike in the morning, when Julia had arrived at the chapel sad and gloomy, she was now glowing. The pews were packed that afternoon, brimming with more than 150 churchgoers. As she stood listening to the sermon, and as people waved their hands in the air and screamed to the heavens, “Praise the Lord!” and “Amen! Jesus!” a group approached Julia and asked, “Have you been baptized?”
No. But can I? Will you? Jesus recently told someone to pray for me.
The group gently led Julia to a tub in the middle of the chapel. They wrapped her in a black robe, and the entire congregation started to chant. “You pass through death and into life!” But then something went wrong. The tub in the middle of the church was broken and there was no holy water to fill it. Everyone continued chanting as they stood there, trying to figure out what to do. Out of the crowd someone cried out that they should take the unbaptized girl to a nearby apartment and baptize her in a bathtub.
The congregation streamed out of the wide front door, leading Julia through Austin’s streets, the chants growing louder as Julia, in the black robe, was summoned into a small apartment nearby.
“In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, you will live forever!” they yelled in unison as they walked with her through a dark and dingy living room into an even smaller bathroom.
The bath was filled with water, and Julia wandered past the two dozen chanting churchgoers who now surrounded her inside a bathroom that was big enough for one. They placed young Julia in the tub as the water continued to rise like an ocean tide.
“In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ . . .”
They pushed her backward, her head sinking under the water as the liquid surrounded her face and muffled the sound of the sermon.
“. . . you will live forever!”
When a hand lifted Julia’s head out of the water, she was saved. She felt a sense of relief that she had never experienced before. A hope of a future that was different from the past. She was elated.
And then, as Julia wandered outside, she looked up at the open and tranquil sky and wondered if she would ever have the opportunity to see Ross again in person. And if so, was there a chance that he could be saved too?
Chapter 56
THE FAKE IDS, PART TWO
The gray Jeep Commander drove along California Street in San Francisco, weaving in and out of traffic. Inside the big SUV one man steered the vehicle while the other studied the map on his smartphone, offering instructions to go left here and right there.