The last day of Ross’s life as a free man began just like any other. He woke up in his Monterey Boulevard apartment and slipped on his blue jeans and long-sleeved red T-shirt. Then he got to work on the Silk Road, unaware that by 3:16 p.m. that day, he would be sitting in the back of a police car in handcuffs.
He had been blue for the past few days, as things had not been going his way. First one of his government informants, who went by the moniker “French Maid,” told him that the Feds had a new name to add to the list of people who could potentially be the Dread Pirate Roberts, and French Maid (who had said her real name was Carla Sophia) would happily share the name in exchange for $100,000. So DPR had paid and was still waiting for a response. Then another employee, to whom he had loaned $500,000, had disappeared. To top it all off, his poison oak rash hadn’t gone away.
But there were things to be grateful for.
Ross was soon going to Austin, where he would see Julia. She had told him in an e-mail she would pick him up from the airport, and he could stay with her. Just like old times. They had been having romantic Skype sessions a lot too and sending long, dirty e-mails back and forth about what they would do to each other in person. Ross had also had an epiphany over the weekend. After the bonfire and the fireworks on Ocean Beach, he had written in his diary (alongside his travails on the Silk Road and an explanation for how he got the poison oak rash) that he needed to “eat well, get good sleep, and meditate so I can stay positive.”
12:15 p.m.
The houses along Monterey Boulevard were mostly two- and three-story wood frames. They were painted all different colors, some white, others blue or green. The apartment where Ross Ulbricht now lived was in a three-story beige building in the middle of the block. Every once in a while a large Suburban SUV with dark tinted windows would drive by. The SUV would make a right down Baden Street, then another right and another, until it found itself back in front of the beige building on Monterey Boulevard.
Even if anyone had noticed the SUV as it swirled around the blocks that morning, no one would have guessed what was inside the vehicle.
2:42 p.m.
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.
“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.