Tarbell paced in front of a coffee shop on Diamond Street, staring down at his phone, trying desperately to figure out what to do. He had gone to the local FBI offices and made his case that they shouldn’t use a SWAT team, but the supervisor in charge of the local Bureau had issued a flat-out “no.” The supervisor said he wasn’t going to risk losing an agent over an open laptop. Clearly he didn’t know how important that computer was. Tarbell called everyone he knew in government, trying to persuade them not to go into Ross’s house with a battering ram and guns drawn, but all he could get out of the local FBI office was an agreement to delay the SWAT team raid by one day.
Jared, Thom, and Brophy stood in front of the café near Ross’s house, listening to Tarbell explain this, unsure what they were going to do. They knew that Ross was at home on his laptop because the FBI had an undercover SUV circling his block and monitoring his Wi-Fi traffic. The system they were using would check the signal strength of the Wi-Fi on his computer and then, by triangulating that data from three different points they had captured as they drove around the block, they were able to figure out Ross’s exact location, which at this very moment was his bedroom, on the third floor of his Monterey Boulevard apartment.
As the agents stood outside the café discussing their conundrum, Jared looked at his computer to check his battery level, now in the red and quickly falling past 18 percent. In that moment he noticed that the icon next to the Dread Pirate Roberts vanished from the chat window. “DPR just logged off,” Jared said. “I’m going to go into Bello Coffee and charge my shit and get a coffee.”
Thom followed him, leaving Brophy and Tarbell outside.
The coffee shop was bustling and every seat was occupied by a laptop-toting patron. A few moms sipped tea with a hand on their strollers, and others stared at their phones. Jared found a single free power outlet along the wall, plugged in his computer, and ordered a coffee.
After two years of slogging up a mountain of shit, they were so close to DPR they could practically hear him breathing, and yet they had lost. The SWAT team was going in. They wouldn’t capture the open laptop; they wouldn’t get Ross Ulbricht logged in to the site.
2:46 p.m.
Ross grabbed his laptop, stuffed it into his shoulder bag, and headed down the stairs and onto Monterey Boulevard. The air was unusually warm, with just a slight chill from the San Francisco breeze.
He had been in the house all day and needed to change locations. Plus he wanted to find a fast Wi-Fi connection so he could download an interview with the creator of the show Breaking Bad. The show’s final episode, “FeLiNa,” had aired the night before and had left the protagonist, Walter White, and his alter ego, Heisenberg, dead.
Ross wouldn’t be out long. Maybe just a couple of hours to mooch Wi-Fi from a nearby coffee shop, download the show, and do some work on the Silk Road.
2:50 p.m.
Tarbell was watching the street when his phone vibrated with a message from the undercover FBI agents who had been monitoring Ross. “He’s on the move,” they wrote.
Tarbell quickly ducked into the coffee shop to alert Jared and Thom.
“Our friend is coming down the street!” Tarbell said aggressively to Jared. His voice was gruff and to the point. Jared looked back at him, exhausted and confused by what Tarbell was saying. “Which friend?” Jared asked, thinking this could be another Tarbell joke.
“Our. Friend,” Tarbell said firmly, “Is. Coming.” He couldn’t exactly blurt out “Ross Ulbricht” or “Dread Pirate Roberts” or “the criminal mastermind you’ve been after for two fucking years.”
And then it hit Jared. Holy shit! Our friend!
He grabbed his coffee and laptop, came rushing outside, and ran across the street to a park bench with Thom, where they tried their best to blend in with the world around them.
2:51 p.m.
Tarbell exited the coffee shop. “Description and Direction?” he wrote on his BlackBerry to the undercover agents. Everyone in Tarbell’s crew scattered. Brophy cut right to hide in the library a few doors down. He had seen Thom rush across the street, taking a seat on a bench in front of a pizza place. Jared was not far behind him. Tarbell turned in the only direction left and started walking south along Diamond Street, right into the path of Ross Ulbricht.
Tarbell knew that the undercover FBI agents would be following Ross, but he wanted to get a glimpse of him firsthand.
Cars and people flowed by in all directions as Tarbell approached the crosswalk. The world was moving at a perfectly normal pace. Yet for Tarbell it was operating so much slower; his heart hammered in his chest, as he knew he was about to come face-to-face with the Dread Pirate Roberts.
And then he did.
As Tarbell crossed the street, as if he were doing so in slow motion, he noticed every detail of his surroundings: the birds flapping through the air, the colors of the cars on the road, the chipped paint of the yellow crosswalk, and the man now walking into his path, who was wearing blue jeans and a long-sleeved red T-shirt and had a brown laptop bag over his shoulder. Tarbell took another step forward into the median of the road and looked directly into his eyes as Ross looked back.
3:02 p.m.
Ross continued along the crosswalk and walked up to Bello Coffee. The coffee shop was bustling. Every seat was taken by someone with an open laptop or a mother with a stroller. He had told his employees the importance of being safe in a coffee shop, once offering Inigo this advice: “Take your laptop and find a spot in a cafe where your screen won’t be visible to anyone. Get a large coffee, sit down, and don’t get up except to stretch.” Given that there was nowhere for Ross to sit that adhered to that protocol, he turned around and walked back outside.
He had a lot on his mind, as always. He had made plans with Julia to video chat that evening.
“Can we skype tonight?” she had asked over e-mail.
“Sure, what time?”
“Is 8 my time good?”
“Sure, see you then,” he wrote, following up with a “:)” as he knew exactly what kind of Skyping they’d be doing.
The air was calm as Ross contemplated where to go next. He needed Wi-Fi but didn’t have many options at 3:00 p.m. in this sleepy corner of the city. He looked to his left, in the direction he had just come from, and knew Cup Coffee Bar had closed an hour earlier. Straight ahead of him cars streamed by, a woman walked with her daughter, and two men sat on a wooden park bench, one staring at his laptop, the other looking at his phone. Ross continued to scan the street, his eyes sliding past the burrito shop, then past the local pub, until he turned to his right, staring up at the Glen Park Public Library.
3:03 p.m.
Jared and Thom sat on the bench, gazing straight ahead as if they were in a staring contest with the coffee shop. Jared’s laptop was open, and Thom had his smartphone in his hand. They could see Ross walk out of the café, holding on to his bag. Ross was peering around, and then he looked directly in the direction of Jared and Thom as they both quickly looked away, trying to seem inconspicuous.
“I bet he’s looking for Wi-Fi,” Jared whispered under his breath to Thom. They watched out of the corners of their eyes as Ross walked to his right, toward the public library.
At almost that exact moment Tarbell appeared, his phone in his hand as he read updates from the undercover agents trailing Ross.