• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Mert was lying in bed sipping some coffee. He had never received visitors here in Alès and was not expecting them. Throwing on his dressing gown, he shuffled towards the door and opened it to two men who were carrying backpacks. ‘Hello, Mert! How are you?’ said the first one in Turkish. In return, Mert muttered feebly, ‘Je ne comprends pas …’ ‘Come on, Mert,’ said the second man in English, ‘we know who you are. It would be in your interest to invite us in.’

As they sat with mugs of coffee around the kitchen table, one of the men pulled out a folder and put it on the table. Mert had the first man down as a second-generation immigrant to America from Turkey because he spoke colloquial Turkish, but with an accent and occasional grammatical errors. The second guy, who did most of the talking, was American.

Mert was presented with alternatives: ‘Either you help us unconditionally or we are giving this folder to the Sécurité.’ Mert flicked through the pages of French credit cards, which he and Sadun had skimmed after they had wormed their way into the innards of the Akbank’s computer system. The two men reminded him that in France he could receive up to eight years for just one credit-card fraud.

This was Hobson’s choice, but before he consented, Mert demanded to know who the two men represented. American law enforcement came the reply. ‘And what,’ Mert continued, ‘do you want from me?’

‘Go on, Mert, have a wild guess!’

Mert, irritated and frightened, shook his head.

‘We want you to give us Cha0.’

33

RETURN TO HADES

As the three men discussed Cha0 and his possible whereabouts, Mert could tell from their questions and comments that they knew neither Cha0’s identity nor Lord Cyric’s. The two agents told Mert that he would have to return to Turkey, re-establish himself on DarkMarket and flush out Cha0 and his colleagues. They surprised him even more by telling him that one of their people controlled the DarkMarket server. Thus they could easily help to get him back on the boards.

As far as Mert could ascertain, the FBI now wanted to move in on all the remaining central players on DarkMarket: Cha0, Lord Cyric, Master Splyntr, Shtirlitz and Grendel. They had not told him how exactly, but he was evidently supposed to be instrumental in all this. It was not a prospect he relished, but then neither was a spell inside one of France’s prisons, which were rumoured to be among the most unforgiving in Western Europe.

The American agents offered Mert some vague promises and armed him with a phone number and email address for Lucy Hoover, the Assistant Legal Attaché at the US Embassy in Istanbul. He was also given an email account, sadinsider@gmail.com (Mert chose the name), through which he could leave messages for her.

Mert’s sojourn in the Languedoc is the second episode from his dream world that is not verifiable. But he did establish contact with Lucy Hoover of the FBI, who was in Turkey at the time.

Mert had been away for two months when he arrived back on 2nd March 2008. The first thing he had to do was devise a plan of action. He decided to approach the news organisation and TV station, Haber 7, offering them an interview in which he promised to reveal the secrets of the carding world and DarkMarket. His aim, perhaps unwisely, was to put the frighteners on Cha0, to let him know that information about his operation was leaking out and that the police might well be investigating him.

In his innocence – which, despite everything, was still an integral part of his character – Mert assumed that Cha0 would not be able to establish who this mystery hacker offering interviews to the press actually was. But Mert had not reckoned with Haber 7 taking a sneaky photograph of him at the McDonald’s in Kadiköy where he and their journalist met. Once that was published, Cha0 knew who had been blabbing. Mert was firmly in the big man’s sights.

With a warrant out for his arrest and Sadun under lock and key, Cha0, Lord Cyric et al. would have known that Mert was vulnerable