Chapter 30

THE ARMORY OPENS

Ross had anticipated a lot of different scenarios for the Silk Road, but not this. In his mind, years earlier, he had envisioned a free market where anyone could buy or sell anything without being traced by the government. There would be no bureaucrats telling people what they could sniff, swallow, or inject. It would be completely free and open. And that was exactly what the site had become.

Yet to some of the buyers and sellers on there, this freedom was a problem. The mellow people who bought and sold weed on the site didn’t want to be associated with the speedy people who bought and sold cocaine. Some of the hard drug dealers didn’t want to be in the company of the right-wing crazies who hawked guns. And some of the gun guys didn’t want to be in the same shopping cart as the scummy heroin dealers. Round and round it went.

Even though all these people were dealing in illicit activities, they each had a moral sense that their particular outlawed product was more just than another.

Variety Jones was preternaturally aware of these hidden dynamics. He had been warning his boss about this for some time, pressing Dread to at least get the guns off the site so he didn’t lose the weed sellers. This would also help mainstream customers feel more comfortable shopping in the drug aisles. “So grandma can come here for her cheap Canadian pharma meds,” VJ wrote, “and not trip over a Glock 9mm” handgun on the way to the cash register.

Ross saw things differently. The ability to accept anyone was in many ways Ross’s superpower. He had practiced this philosophy from high school to the Silk Road. So he found it perplexing that others couldn’t just go about their business and enjoy the free world he had created.

Because of his unflinching acceptance, there were now more than two thousand different types of drugs for sale on the site, as well as lab supplies to make your own drugs and products to store and sell those drugs. There were digital goods, including key loggers, spy software, and other similar tools to hack into someone’s e-mail or webcam. People could buy forged documents, including passports, fake IDs, and even counterfeit cash that was indistinguishable from real money. And then there was the most contentious section of the site, labeled “weapons,” which had grown so much that you could buy everything from handguns to AR-15 automatic weapons. You could pick up bullets, grenades, and even a rocket launcher if need be.

But if Ross wanted to keep growing his flourishing business, he needed to appease the more conventional customers, libertarian or not.

“Guns will scare off a lot of mainstream clients,” Variety Jones had said.

So Ross was going to have to make some changes. If he really wanted to make drugs legal, which was his ultimate quest, he was going to have to solve the gun issue. While he wouldn’t bar them—he wouldn’t bar anything—he instead decided to create a gun-only Web site.

When he explored the idea with VJ, they had together come up with the name the Armory. (At first it was going to be called “Silk Armory,” sticking with the Silk Road branding, but they both decided it sounded too bizarre. Or, as VJ pointed out, “Silk Armory sounds like they sell Hello Kitty AK-47’s.”)

Thankfully, it hadn’t been too difficult to build the Armory; it wasn’t like creating an entirely new site. Ross simply siphoned the code from the Silk Road, slapped on a new logo—a big, rugged A with wings—and changed some design elements.

But the Armory failed to solve a number of existing problems with weapons sales. Ross had hoped that people would be able to use the site to buy guns with the same ease as picking up a .22 at a local Walmart. But it turned out that shipping guns in the mail was a lot more complicated than placing a few sheets of acid (which looked like blotter paper) in an envelope. Ross needed to ensure that the people buying and selling the weapons from the Armory would be able to get them to one another without someone from ATF showing up at their door and escorting them to jail.

But he kept asking himself how.

It wasn’t like he could call his local post office on Park Drive in Austin and say, “Hey, I want to send some guns to a friend. What’s the best way to do this?” So he did what most people his age do when they don’t know something: he went to social media. Plodding over to his personal Facebook and Google+ accounts, Ross posted an update asking, “Anyone know someone that works for UPS, FedEx or DHL?” When a friend asked why he wanted a contact at one of these mail companies, Ross replied, “Well, I have a startup idea in the shipping sector, but I have zero experience there.”

There was another issue that came with the guns Web site. It meant that more law enforcement would be looking not just for the generals who ran the Silk Road but also the people behind the Armory. (Not to mention the bulk drug Masters of the Silk Road site, which would bring more global attention and the interest of more governments when it eventually opened for business.)

The scrutiny the site was now receiving from the press, and the inevitable added attention that would slam upon it with the opening of the Armory, made it clear that the stakes were rising. All of these terrifying prospects led Variety Jones, who was now being dubbed the site’s security chief, to decide that it was time for him to move further underground.

The best place he knew to do that was Thailand, where he had hidden once before and where, he told DPR, he had a few cops on the payroll. But going back to Thailand meant he would have to leave his lady behind in London.

“I’m getting her out of the crossfire,” VJ wrote to DPR. “I need the world to think we’ve split. If I end up in Guantanamo, I don’t want her in the next cell.”

“That’s tough.”

“She knows I’m changing the world, and that it’s dangerous for her,” VJ replied. “But I’m not safe to be around.”

With all of this added attention Ross knew that he was going to need to move again too. Going back overseas didn’t make sense right now, and staying in Texas, near his family, wasn’t an option either. The lies and the possibility of being found out were just too risky. What he needed was a place where he could be on his laptop for eighteen hours a day and no one would question why he was being antisocial or what he was working on.

Which meant he had to go to San Francisco.

As he opened the doors of the Armory Web site, he began plotting his move out west, reaching out to friends who lived there and figuring out where he would stay and what his cover would be once he arrived.

But before Ross could go anywhere, he had one last loose end to tie up. He opened his Web browser, navigated to Julia’s Facebook page, and sent her a message asking if they could meet.