Black Hat Blues (44 page)

rallied the other three, putting them to work packing up their stuff

in the Baltimore squat and arranging transportation—new vehicles,

because none of the old ones were safe any more—to get to New York.

Twelve hours later they were in a ten year old Honda and an eight year

old Chevy van (both bought for cash off Craig’s List), traveling back

roads instead of highways as they worked their way to the big city.

They found a motel in New Jersey that took cash and didn’t look too

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close at their fake ID, and settled in as best they could. Exhaustion had

overcome panic, at least for the time being.

Now Paul and Bee were in the van, which had no air conditioning or

radio and practically bald tires, giving c1sman a little pep talk.

“These are you friends,” Bee said. “Your hacker peoples.”

“I don’t even know them, really,” c1sman protested. “They’re just

people I’ve met at cons.”

“That’s better,” Bee said. “They’ll leave you alone. Just stick to the

story and keep an eye out. Keep looking around whenever anyone new

comes in, but otherwise keep your head down, right?”

“I know, I know. Right.”

“Remember, even Isaiah doesn’t know about you. All you need to

do is watch.”

C1sman bit his lower lip and bobbed his head up and down six or

seven times, rocking forward and back as he did. “OK, OK, OK.”

Bee gave him a kiss and sent him on his way. Then she and Paul

watched the video feed from the hidden camera in c1sman’s glasses as

he crossed the Brooklyn street and entered the four story, run down

building down the block. They could hear through the hidden micro-

phone in his MP3 player attached to his belt and could talk directly to

him when he put the earphones in. Everything he said or saw they’d

catch as well.

According to c1sman and its own website, HackNY was a relatively

new hacker space modeled on what worked best in similar hacker spaces

in the U.S. and Germany. Members each paid $65 a month in dues,

which went towards rent and utilities. In exchange they got access to the

hacker space and could participate in the various classes and activities

that the space sponsored. HackNY was on the third floor and occu-

pied a large loft space. It had its own high speed internet connection

of course, along with a network to support it and a variety of tools for

common use. Not only computer hackers, but hardware hackers, mak-

ers, artists, and general tech enthusiasts used the space as a combination

social club, workshop, and office. There were people coming in and

out at all hours, and with over a hundred members, there was always

someone there.

C1sman had an appointment to meet Ray Poole, one of the founders,

who he knew from the convention scene. His cover story was that he

was in New York doing a contract job, but that he didn’t like work-

ing out of the client’s office because the client was way too pushy and

annoying. He needed a place to work out of for a few weeks, some place

where he could relax and think. Ray was fine with that, especially since

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237

c1sman offered to sign up for a full year’s membership, claiming, “I’m

going to be in and out of NY for the next eight months with this client.”

C1sman paid cash up front, Ray gave him the grand tour, and then

left him to settle in at a corner table with his laptop to do some work.

Outside, Paul and Bee settled in to wait.

C1sman, wearing glasses with a hidden video camera that broad-

cast to the van, stayed in the space for twelve or thirteen hours at a

time for the next three days, working on coding some personal project

of his the entire time. As nervous as he might have been, he at least

had the ability to lose himself in his work. Whichever shift was on

van duty at any given moment, was left with nothing but a couple

of Nintendo DS’s, a portable radio, and a really unpleasant smell-

ing bottle. Halfway into day three, and Paul was starting to feel the

slightest inkling of panic. Paul was about ready to put up some really

incriminating information about Isaiah on the honey pot, details

about what he’d done in South Florida, when a man walked in that

he recognized.

He sat up straight and fumbled with the microphone so he could talk

into c1sman’s ear. “Who just came in?” C1sman whispered something

back that Paul couldn’t understand, but he started looking around the

room. “There!” said Paul. “Hold on that guy.”

He was African-American, early to mid-twenties, wearing a

Transformers t-shirt and jeans. He unfolded a Mac at the big table

in the center of the room and started powering up. Paul was sure he

knew him from somewhere. “I need a closer look,” he said. “Go to the

bathroom and walk by him, OK?”

C1sman nodded, making the camera shake up and down. He stood

up and walked across the room, looking at and then away from and then

back at the newcomer. The closer he got, the more certain Paul became.

“I swear that’s one of Isaiah’s people. I recognize him from Key West.

Bee, take a look.”

C1sman was in the bathroom now, staring at himself in the mirror.

The low-quality image combined with the fluorescent lighting made

him look almost corpse-like. Bee rewound the live feed they were

recording to look at the man. “I don’t recognize him,” she said. “But I

wasn’t with you and Chloe when you met Isaiah’s crew.”

“I swear that’s one of them. And that makes sense, right? It’s not

like we thought Isaiah would come here himself. He’d use one of his

crew members. C1s, when you come out, just ignore the guy, don’t

show any interest, but be ready to leave as soon as he does. We want

to follow him.”

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“OK,” said c1sman, still whispering, but at least loud enough for

Paul to hear him. Paul watched as c1sman flushed the toilet, washed

his hands, and walked back out into the main room. Without looking

at the target once, he took his seat and resumed working. Paul and Bee

sat and waited an agonizing three and a half hours while both men sat

at their computers and did whatever it was they were doing. Finally,

c1sman got up. “He’s leaving.”

“Great, let him get ahead and then be ready to follow him. We’ll be

watching outside and tell you which way he went.”

A couple minutes later, the target came out the front door of the

building and headed to his left. Paul let Bee out to start following

him at a safe distance. C1sman came down a couple minutes later,

but instead of following the target, he came running down the block

towards the van, tearing off his glasses as he did so. He banged on the

side of the van once before Paul slid open the door.

“What’re you doing?”

“I can’t do this!” said c1sman, in a panic.

“You have to! Come on, Sandee needs your help. You have to.”

“I can’t,” he repeated, trying to climb back into the van, but Paul

wouldn’t let him. “He’ll see me.”

“We need all three of us following. Bee has him now, so you stay

back. Then we’ll switch off. If he gets on a subway you need to follow,

if he gets in a car, I’ll follow him in the van. If he stays on foot, Bee

will follow him. Come on!”

C1sman sucked in both his lips and flared his nostrils. “OK,” he said.

“I get it.” He turned and headed off down the road after Bee.

Paul directed them both from the van, driving a couple blocks behind.

When Bee said he was going into a subway station, Paul told c1sman to

hurry up and join the two of them on the platform. The plan was for

c1sman to stay back and get on the same train as the target and Bee.

Bee would watch the target and stay on when he got off, but would tell

c1sman, who would be in another car, to exit the train. Paul would do

his best to keep up with them on the surface streets. Fortunately this

part of Brooklyn had elevated trains, so he was able to keep in contact

with them, at least until the train went underground.

Bee reported in as the target ascended the steps to the train station.

Paul found a place to illegally park in a loading dock a block away and

listened as Bee narrated events. The target was standing idle, waiting for

the train. C1sman arrived five minutes later, and spent his time looking

at the subway map. The train arrived, headed towards Manhattan. Bee

got on in the same car as the target. C1sman kept looking at the map.

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239

C1sman wasn’t moving towards the train. C1sman waved goodbye to

her as the train roared away. What the fuck?

Paul told Bee to keep following the guy, and he jumped out of the

van and ran over towards the station. He went ahead and jumped the

turnstile and ran up onto the platform, but a second train had already

come and gone by the time he got up there. C1sman was nowhere to

be seen.

He raced back to the van and tried to catch up with Bee’s train, but

it soon went underground and Paul got caught up in traffic trying to

get across the river into Manhattan. He was still in Brooklyn when Bee

came back into contact. The target had gotten off in the Lower East Side

and she’d followed him to an apartment building where he went inside.

She was waiting and worried about what had happened to c1sman. Paul

called in Chloe and Sacco to give them the heads up, and then all four

of them converged around the apartment building Bee had staked out.

While Sacco watched the door, Chloe, Bee, and Paul huddled around

the laptop to review c1sman’s footage from the hacker space.

“I don’t recognize him,” Chloe said.

“Think back to that time in Key West, when we were with Isaiah and

his whole Crew.”

“Oh, I remember the event, but I’m telling you, I don’t think this

guy was there.”

“I was sure I recognized him.”

“I’m sorry Paul, but I’m positive I don’t.”

“Really? Fucking hell.”

“Are you sure you recognize him?”

“Not anymore I’m not,” Paul said, cursing to himself.

They spent the next day confirming the target’s identity and con-

cluding that this freelance web site designer and part-time NYU stu-

dent was probably not connected to Isaiah in any way, especially given

how easily Sacco hacked his wireless network and his e-mail accounts.

They’d wasted four days on this wild goose chase, and then there was

fucking c1sman.

Bee got an e-mail from him the next day, but by then they knew what

had happened. Using his own name and his own credit cards he’d gone

straight to JFK, bought an airline ticket and flown back to Atlanta. The

e-mail was short and simple, “This isn’t for me. I can’t do this. Sorry.”

Paul had thought Bee would be upset, but she was just pissed at him,

calling him a coward and a turncoat. Paul didn’t think that was quite

fair—they really had demanded more of c1sman than he’d ever wanted

to give. He did what any sane person would have done in his position.

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Not that Paul was going to tell Bee that right now; she was much more

productive when angry than when depressed. The big issue was, they

were down another man and had got exactly nowhere with trying to

find Isaiah.

“We need to think about alternative plans,” Sacco said.

“Like what?” asked Chloe. “What else is there?”

“Chasing Isaiah sure as hell isn’t working, is it?”

“I should never have taken you to meet him. If I’d known you’d

develop this huge man crush on him, I wouldn’t have.”

“What, I have a man-crush and am behaving like some sort of fuck-

ing fanboy just because I don’t want to screw a good man over?”

“Hey!” said Paul interrupting them. They’d been bickering like this

all week. “Hey, let’s just think here OK. Either we find Isaiah and turn

him over to Marsh or we warn him that she’s after him. Or, I guess, we

do both. But all of that depends on talking to him, right?”

“Yeah,” said Sacco, Chloe nodding in agreement.

“So let’s just reach out to him. Send him a message through the one

channel we have left.”

“That will take days,” said Chloe. “We don’t have days. Marsh is

going to pull the trigger on us soon.”

“Then we need to make it not take days. Either that or make Marsh

give us more time.”

“And how’re we going to do that?” asked Sacco.

“Give me an hour,” said Paul. “I think I’ve got a plan.”

Chloe walked down the street in Bethesda, looking for a quiet place

to make her phone call. The rest of the Crew was back in the Bal-

timore squat, but she needed to be in an entirely different metropolitan

area before she was going to talk to Marsh. She had to assume that

the phone call would be traced. She found an office building with an

empty lobby and some chairs that were far enough away from the front

desk that she wouldn’t be overheard. Plopping down in the surprisingly

comfy chair, she slipped the battery into her cell phone and dialed

Marsh’s number from memory. She got the receptionist, who put her

on hold. That would be them tracing me, thought Chloe, although she