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And do yourself a fucking favour. Until we know who the undercover cop is, don’t buy from any of those guys.

Because you were so damn clever, to tell the FBI we are on to them, they may hit earlier! Delete any info on your homecomputer, even if it is fucking encrypted, and use only internet shops.

Matrix went into denial and ignored it. He put it down to another game being played, similar to those he remembered from the Iceman affair. But the cops went berserk. This time the surveillance that had been placed on Detlef Hartmann’s computer connection picked up the email when he opened it. Frank Eissmann (who was confusingly understood to be ‘iceman’ by the mysterious auto496064) could not believe that somebody appeared to be monitoring all DarkMarket communications. The fear spread among officers that the entire DarkMarket investigation had been hacked, and that the bad guys knew everything about the case that the police did.

Mularski, too, was shocked. He did spot one important anomaly, though – the writer of the anonymous email may have had totally fluent English, but he wasn’t American because he spelled favour with a ‘u’. So who was he?

23

MATRIX SQUARED

29th May 2007. People were starting their Tuesday in Eislingen. One of Germany’s countless anonymous communities where a broken traffic light or a stray cow may be the biggest news story for many months, Eislingen has a routine that is rarely disrupted. Life in Germany gets going an hour or two earlier than it does in Britain or America. By six-thirty in the morning there is already a steady stream of people on their way to work, dropping in at the local Tchibo café. Here they exchange what little gossip there is over coffee, topped unappealingly with condensed milk, but compensated for by creamy cakes or a smoked-ham weggle (a bread roll in Swabia’s all-but-incomprehensible dialect).

Yet today was destined to be a special day in Eislingen, for the twenty-first century was about to arrive. Halfway down H. Street, Detlef Hartmann hauled himself out of bed, dimly aware that he had something important on his mind. With the mist still clearing from his brain, he checked his hushmail account for any encrypted messages and scanned his website to see if it required any maintenance. He found nothing untoward.

Then he remembered. His parents were returning from their holiday over the border in Austria. Action stations. He and his brother had just a day to clear up. Desiccated spaghetti stuck like industrial cement to the plates; ashtrays supporting small mountains of cigarette butts lay higgledy-piggledy among the beer cans, bottles and indeterminate items of clothing – a typical monument built by teenage boys when left to their own devices. Detlef decided to take a quick bath before clearing up and was just drying himself when the doorbell rang. He shouted down to his brother to open it.

Detlef’s irritation at being disturbed just after nine-thirty in the morning increased a notch when his brother shouted something about a delivery for which he had to sign. Striding downstairs, Detlef prepared to remonstrate with the postman for having got the wrong address. ‘Come on,’ said his brother impatiently, shivering a little in the draught as Detlef made his way down the hall.

‘That vehicle is illegally parked,’ thought Detlef with his characteristic eye for precision when he saw a black van on the street outside. Standing in front of it was a postwoman. She was dressed in a uniform that Detlef could only describe as ceremonial. Her tie had a small, tightly drawn knot, while on her head she wore a stiff peaked cap. She looked very earnest.

The postwoman almost bowed as she presented Detlef with an A4 envelope in one hand and a pen in the other. As he reached out for the pen, she stepped back theatrically. ‘What the hell is going on …?’ But before Detlef could finish the thought, four men had jumped on him and he was lying on the ground with his arms behind his back. ‘You’re under arrest,