“Where’s he at?” Tarbell asked. Jared motioned toward the library.
At that moment Tarbell, who had gone by the book his entire life, had to decide what to do. He had studied and practiced for every single moment of his life, no matter how small. Yet now, he didn’t know if he should follow the rules or break them. He was fully aware that the local FBI office would be apoplectic if they knew he was contemplating trying to arrest Ross Ulbricht without the SWAT team present. But he had no choice if he wanted to catch the Dread Pirate Roberts on the laptop. He looked down at Jared, then over to Thom, then to the library, and a thought rang out in his head: Fuck it.
“Go to the library and get in position,” he told Thom. Do nothing, say nothing, just blend in.
As Tarbell looked down at his phone, he was fully aware that a few miles south of where he stood, at that very moment, dozens of SWAT team members were shuffling into a conference room at the local Bureau office, preparing to run through a drill for how they would apprehend Ross Ulbricht, guns drawn, the following day. He tapped out another e-mail to let his crew know the plan, that they were going into the library to try to capture Ross Ulbricht. This meant that the men in that SWAT team meeting would see the message too, and in a few minutes they would be running toward their cruisers, sirens blaring and lights flashing, racing north along the 101 freeway past the San Francisco airport in the direction of placid Glen Park, toward the little library.
3:06 p.m.
To the right of the library stacks, a couple of children sat at a small table with small chairs, quietly flipping the pages of small storybooks. A few other patrons milled about between the stacks. It was a diminutive library, reminiscent of the Good Wagon Books warehouse, where most of the sections were composed of only one or two bookshelves.
Ross walked toward a round beige table nestled between the science fiction section and the romance novels. He sat down, pulled his laptop out of his bag, and watched as the computer came to life.
3:08 p.m.
In the corner of the room, Brophy reached for his BlackBerry and sent a note out to the other FBI agents: “Seated NW corner.”
At the park bench in front of the library, Tarbell was pacing. DPR still wasn’t online. Jared looked up at Tarbell, then back to his laptop, the battery indicator now at 20 percent.
“Give me a chance to chat with him,” Jared said.
Tarbell typed an e-mail to the group, his palms sweaty. “Has NOT signed in yet,” he wrote, and then noted that the undercover agent on Silk Road (Jared) would need to lure the Dread Pirate Roberts into the site’s marketplace, ensuring he was caught with digital drugs and virtual money in his hand. If they didn’t get him with his laptop open and logged in to the site, and Ross managed to close the lid or press a key that encrypted the hard drive, the case could go poof! Finally Tarbell reminded everyone that when he gave the go-ahead, “PULL the laptop away, then get arrest.”
When Jared saw “dread” appear in his chat window, the thought that popped into his head was Oh fuck! This is it. Any adrenaline that had been pumping through him a moment earlier went quiet as he focused on the task in front of him. Everything, he realized, came down to this very moment. An envoy of FBI agents was racing up the freeway; Tarbell stood nearby watching; and agents from the DEA, HSI, CBP, DOJ, IRS, ATF, and U.S. Attorney’s Office, as well as senators, governors, and even the president of the United States, were waiting to hear that this moment had happened without a hitch.
Jared began typing into the Silk Road chat window on his computer. “Hey,” he wrote. But there was no reply. A minute went by and Jared typed “Hey” again. This time, though, he added a request for DPR: “Can you check out one of the flagged messages for me?”
Jared knew that asking him this would prompt DPR to log in to the administrator section of the site, and if the man now sitting in the library a hundred feet away was really the Dread Pirate Roberts, that same man would be logged in to that section of the site if they grabbed his laptop. After what felt like an eternity, a ding finally sounded from Jared’s computer as a reply appeared on the screen.
“Sure,” DPR wrote. “Let me log in.” And then he followed up with a strange question. “You did bitcoin exchange before you worked for me,” Dread wrote. “Right?”
For some reason DPR was testing him. Jared’s mind started to swirl with worry. Did DPR know something was up? Jared scanned his mind trying to remember the right answer.
3:13 p.m.
A young Asian woman wandered through the library plucking books from the shelves. After a while she came around the corner of the stacks, standing in front of the science fiction and romance section, and pulled up a chair at the round beige table where Ross sat. His backpack rested next to him; his laptop glowed as he typed away. He peered over his computer screen at the young woman. She had a fair complexion and was perusing the pile of books in front of her. She seemed safe enough, so Ross looked back to his computer, his fingers methodically moving up and down on the keyboard as he typed.
3:14 p.m.
Jared thought, trying to remember what the woman from Texas had told him in August when he had taken over her account. Had she done Bitcoin exchange? Or had she not? He took a deep breath and took a chance, replying, “Yes, but just for a little bit.”
“Not any more than that,” DPR replied, still fishing for an answer. A test indeed.
“No,” Jared wrote back, “I stopped because of reporting requirements.”
What he said must have worked, because Dread soon asked, “Ok, which post?” He was now definitively logged in to all three administrative areas of the Silk Road. Jared looked up at Tarbell and began swirling his finger in the air like a helicopter about to take flight. “Go, go, go,” he said swiftly. “Go!”
Tarbell’s thumbs hammered down on his phone as he typed as fast as he could. “He is logged in,” he wrote, followed by “PULL LAPTOP—GO.” He scrambled across the street and into the library.
Jared came running up behind Tarbell. It was pure adrenaline now. They both hurried up the library steps until Tarbell came to a swift standstill midstride and swung his arm out to stop Jared. “Let them do their thing,” Tarbell whispered.
For ten seconds Jared and Tarbell didn’t say a word. They just stood there, frozen on the concrete steps of the library. And then they heard it. The yelling and commotion that had just erupted inside the quiet library on Diamond Street.
Chapter 65
ARRESTED
3:15 p.m.