“If it’s so secret, then why couldn’t we just have used my computer?” She glanced around. “Then we wouldn’t need to be sneaking around doing it here.”
“Because if it’s illegal you can buy it there. You can buy everything from young girls to uranium. You can hire a hit. You can buy and sell everything from counterfeit driver’s licenses and passports to security passes for nuclear sites.
“Anonymity makes it a thriving underworld of illegal activity. More and more it’s becoming a meeting place for hackers to join forces. It’s the originating source of sophisticated hacking attacks against everything from banks to military installations to infrastructure to insulin pumps.”
“And KDEX, the place where I work,” Kate said. “We’re under continual attack from hackers.”
Jack nodded as he glanced around. “The thing is, because there is so much illegal activity taking place on the darknet, the government and law enforcement agencies obviously want to know who is using it and why.
“All of this makes the activity on the darknet a national-security threat. Tor is considered a major tool of subversive, criminal, and terrorist activity, so the NSA has packet collection and inspection systems at every level of the regular internet. Simply using a normal search engine to look up information about the darknet, or using keywords in emails or texts, triggers tripwires at the NSA and they grab all of the data associated with you. They grab everything—mobile phone GPS tracking data, your cloud data, your travel, instant messages, emails, photos, the content of social media. All of it. Programs sift through that massive volume of material to come up with a threat analysis based on your patterns of activity.
“From that they generate a smaller list of suspicious activity for more focused investigation. Auditors review all of that material, including listening to recordings of all your phone calls, reviewing your text messages, and reading all your emails. If they find evidence of any kind of criminal activity they share it with other agencies—DEA, ATF, police departments.
“You don’t want to get caught up in that net.
“A lot of very bad players also want to know who is using the darknet. Beyond the ability to scam people out of their money—say, people wanting to buy illegal guns—imagine the blackmail potential.”
Kate lifted her hands in frustration. “So then it’s not so safe.”
“Well, the problem is, by using your own computer, they know who you are and they know that you’re going on the darknet, but they don’t know where you go or what you do there.”
Kate ran her fingers back into her hair. “This is so confusing. They know you’re going there, but yet they don’t?”
“I know that it’s a lot to take in all at once, but for a start I need to you understand the big picture.”
“I’m trying,” she muttered.
“Think of it this way. Imagine that there is a really big office building. That’s the darknet. In that building you could go to a room to conduct top-secret government business; or into a room to have a political discussion with dissidents about overthrowing the government of Iran; or a chat room on racist topics; or a room to launder money; or a room to buy child porn; or a room to buy drugs, or guns, or to hire an assassin.
“The government wants very much to know about those illegal activities going on in some of those rooms, but they can’t see where you went in that building and they don’t know who’s running the rooms. What their packet-collection software does do is to act kind of like an FBI stakeout sitting in a car across the street, watching the building with binoculars.”
“What good does that do?”
“It sends up a red flag. They knew you went in there. Is it a threat to national security? Knowing when you go onto the darknet—those FBI agents on stakeout watching you go into the building—becomes one element in the three-dimensional software that I mentioned before used to analyze everything electronic in your life.”
Kate took a quick look around. “So they would know that you’re logged in here, going onto the darknet right now?”
“Yes, but because of the kind of operating system and software I’m using, and the fact that I’m using that software on a machine in a store, not my own computer, it makes determining who we are extremely difficult. We’re adding layer upon layer to hide ourselves from their tracking systems. It would be unprecedented investigative work and gobs of resources just to determine that it’s Jack Raines standing here in this store going onto the darknet. And they still wouldn’t know what we’re doing.
“Not even recordings on the store’s cameras will tell them anything other than that two rather fuzzy figures were looking at computers on sale. When we leave, the computers will still be sitting here. As soon as I pull out this thumb drive, everything is gone off of it. If they followed us and came in here and went through this computer, there would be nothing on it to find. Some stores use desktop auditing software that captures screen images of what customers are doing, but we would have to be running the computer’s regular operating system. Because we booted into this thumb drive, using Tails, those tools aren’t running.”
“Jeez, Jack, you are one sneaky character.”
“That’s why I’m still alive. You need to understand that government agencies that would be tracking you would be doing so to try to protect national security, and while that’s all well and good and you’re not actually doing anything wrong, law enforcement agencies don’t know that and wouldn’t understand your ability. It might as well be voodoo. They wouldn’t want to believe you, so they wouldn’t try. They would think you were only making up excuses to hide something dangerous.”
“What is there for them not to believe?”
“Well, for instance that you and I killed two men last night in self-defense. Yes, we might be able to prove it, but how many years would that take? We would have to prove your ability, prove everything that’s happening, get everyone to believe that there is an entire hidden layer of super-predators hunting people like you. Do you think they would believe that? Why would they want to? There are plenty of officials and prosecutors who are only interested in a conviction. You could easily become an innocent person sent to prison for murder.”
“Oh,” she said with sudden realization.
“Modern forensics are incredibly good. Your safety depends on making sure no one has any reason to look at you in the first place. Getting on the radar of any agency or police force would only result in your life becoming tangled in all kinds of complications. They can turn your life into a living hell.
“Cops are the good guys—just look at AJ. But even AJ was smart enough not to tell her department about what she was doing with John, or what she knew about you. She was protecting you. She had very sound reasons for doing that.”
“I think I’m starting to see what you mean.”
“Good, because if for some reason you get on the radar of law enforcement, or are connected to anything from last night or what we’re doing right now, while you’re being questioned, interviewed, hiring lawyers, trying to get yourself out on bond, and having everything in your life turned upside down and picked apart, the predators who don’t follow the rules will be hunting you from the shadows, waiting to catch you.
“In the darknet, digital information about everyone is a commodity. All law enforcement agencies have already been hacked and all of their data is for sale, here on the darknet, for these super-predators to buy.
“Your digital life is naked here, in the darknet.”
“That’s a pretty scary thought,” she said.
“It is,” he said. “But that’s today’s reality. It’s worse for you because you are not like ordinary people. Your safety depends on you staying as invisible as possible—including from the police—in order to stay invisible to those hunting you.
“I realize that you didn’t bring this on yourself, but that doesn’t matter. There is only living or dying. Those hunting you don’t follow civilized rules. To survive, you are going to
have to avoid a lot of the rules you’ve lived by up until now. You need to learn how to stay alive. That’s all that matters.
“There are no rules for you from now on except not to harm innocent people and to stay alive yourself.”
Kate ran the fingers of both hands back into her hair. “My god, Jack, I don’t know how I can live like that.”
He put a reassuring hand on the back of her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Kate. This is what I meant about the people I find not wanting to believe me. They can’t accept the truth. They can’t deal with it.
“There are only so many people I can help, so I have to focus my efforts on those who are willing to face reality. It’s not easy, and it may not be right, or fair, but it’s the only way I know of that you are going to be able to stay alive.
“I needed you to understand how this darknet underworld functions so that you can use it as a tool to help you stay alive. The advantage is that the bad guys don’t know that I found their room in that building. They don’t know that we can watch them.”
“The hunters become the hunted?”
“That’s part of how you stay alive. You have to become the huntress.”
Kate regarded him for a moment with a sidelong look. “You mean I’m going to have to kill them before they can kill me.”
Jack shrugged. “You may have to. You need to know how this works so that you have an advantage.
“I’ll eventually give you a thumb drive like this one so that one day when I’m no longer around you can do this on your own to find out what they know. It won’t tell you everything, of course, because only some of them know about this site. By nature they tend to be loners, but it will still be a useful tool. Maybe it could even help you to find others like yourself so you can help each other.”
Kate suddenly felt a flush of panic at the thought of Jack not being there to help her in this alien world she found herself in. The thought made her feel vulnerable and alone in defending herself against things she couldn’t yet understand and or even imagine. How was she going to defend herself against these predators by herself? How was she going to be able to live her life and stay one step ahead of unseen killers who were out there hunting her?
But Kate couldn’t help thinking, too, about all those reviews saying Jack Raines was a fraud.
Was she getting caught up in what were elaborate delusions? Was this all just Jack’s crazy paranoia, him imagining conspiracies where there were none? Or even seeing things just because he wanted to be in a cloak-and-dagger world? Was the night before simply a series of weird, chance events that were only sucking her deeper into his grand illusions?
Some of it was obviously true, but was she being gullible to believe all the things he was saying?
A lot of the professionals who had posted reviews of his book had cautioned against falling for his phony “expertise,” saying that he didn’t really know what he was talking about. They said that he gave the real experts a bad name.
But on the other hand she desperately wanted to believe him, not because she wanted it all to be real, because she didn’t, but because she wanted Jack to be real. She had never met anyone like him, and she wanted more than anything for him to be everything he seemed to be, everything she wanted to believe a man could be.
Kate took another deep breath. “So what are we doing in Onionland? What’s hiding down in the basement? What is it, exactly, that you want me to know?”
“It was a lot of trouble to find this place,” Jack said.
Kate caught the look in his eyes. “Are you saying that you killed people for this information?”
He lowered his voice as he leaned down a little closer. “I’m trying to keep innocent people like you alive.”
She got the point.
“So what’s this place you found?” Kate finally asked, suddenly hesitant about what he was going to show her.
Jack typed in a web address. It was alphanumeric, rather than a name.
“Do you have a good memory?”
“Pretty good,” she said. “I’m good with facts and figures. It’s part of why I’m effective at my job.”
“Then memorize the address I just typed in.”
Finally, after a long delay as the request skipped from relay to relay all around the globe, a black page with white lettering came up.
It said Welcome to SCAVENGER HUNT.
CHAPTER
FORTY
“Scavenger hunt? Scavenger hunt for what?” Kate asked.
Jack clicked to enter the site. It opened to a rather crude page with a list of names on the right side. The name John Allen Bishop immediately seized her attention. There was a check mark after his name, and underneath it said, “50 bitcoins.”
Kate intuitively grasped why John’s name was listed there. “How much is fifty bitcoins?”
“At today’s exchange rate? Roughly twenty, twenty-five thousand dollars. Somewhere in there.”
Kate glanced over at Jack. “That guy, the one with my photos in his pocket, had two rolls of hundreds. You said it looked like it was about ten or twelve thousand in each roll.”
Jack nodded as he clicked on John’s name. “I hate to do this to you, Kate, but you need to see what’s going on here.”
When the new page for John opened, the first thing she saw was a photograph of a mutilated human eyeball lying on a hardwood floor. Below that picture, she saw a photograph of John crumpled on his side in a pool of blood in his living room.
Kate stared in horror. The reality of the photo was worse than she had imagined. It made her worst fears real.
Under the photos, it said, “Scavenger hunt successful. The item has been removed from competition. The lucky winner has been paid.”
Kate glanced around to make sure no one was looking at the screen.
“What is this site?” she growled in a low voice.
“It’s a site frequented by killers who know about it. It’s an information source for predators interested in the project—a scavenger hunt—aimed at eliminating those with your kind of ability. The fewer of your kind there are, the less the risk to them, the easier it is to prey on others at will.”
“You mean, like what you did in Israel made it harder for terrorists to slaughter people, so they would want to kill people with my kind of vision that you were able to find?”
“Exactly. Because they are obsessed with killing, some serial killers manage to find this site. Not all the killers who come here know anything at all about people with your ability—only those super-predators who can recognize it in your eyes do—but the competition of this kind of scavenger hunt appeals to them. It makes them feel like they’re part of an exclusive club.”
“In other words, take part in a hunt to murder people.”
“That’s right. Some want to prove they’re better than any of the others who come here by being the one to claim a victim.”
“Who is paying to have people like John murdered?”
Jack exhaled unhappily. “I don’t know. I wish I did because then maybe I could end this sick scavenger hunt. It wouldn’t end what is happening or save the world, but it would help some of the people like you stay alive.”
“Why would anyone create a site like this? How in the world can this even exist? Why would anyone go to this kind of place?”
“Those are questions born of your nature, your perspective on right and wrong. These people don’t think that way.
“Evil, mental illness, belligerent passion, lethal anger, combative personality—whatever you wish to call it—exists in the nature of mankind. It’s a part of mankind most people don’t see—or don’t want to see. This kind of person often idolizes evil, revels in it, seeks it out. It’s a mistake to ignore this kind of thing because it’s so offensive or because you don’t want to believe that there are people like this.
“Any number of serial killers study other serial killers, as if they were role models, heroes to emulate. Most psychopaths don’t experience anxiety. They have
little to no fear of getting caught. With that deadened sensitivity, killing provides excitement they can’t otherwise achieve.”
“In other words, they get off on it,” Kate said.
“Exactly. Killers want to be killers. They take pleasure in acts of torture and murder. They are obsessed with it. They are frequently sexually aroused by the things they do to victims.
“This site is a place where they not only share their tastes, but where they sometimes share information. There’s a chat room deeper into this site, for example, where they discuss sex acts with the corpses of their victims.”
“My god,” Kate whispered, half to herself. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Unfortunately, I’m not. This is a glimpse under the façade of civilization at the darkening nature of mankind. It’s a peek at the cancer within mankind. It reveals a true, inner hunger for violence against anyone and everyone.”
“But that’s just criminals.”
“You think so? While the darknet helps facilitate all of this, just think of how the internet—the internet you ordinarily see—is filled with hatred. The internet is awash with hostility for a particular politician, actors, famous personalities, or even another girl in school.
“And that’s the regular internet. The darknet is an order of magnitude darker. It’s like looking into the mind-set of what it means to be human beings.”
“Not all of them,” Kate said. “Not everyone.”
“Not everyone,” he agreed. “But more than you realize.”
Kate wasn’t willing to concede the point. “There are a lot of wonderful people out here in the world who go onto the internet to express sympathy and support for others. There’s places devoted to helping others in need. There isn’t only darkness, there’s a lot of light as well.”
Jack nodded. “It all makes up the nature of mankind. It’s all part of the struggle for what we will be.”
Kate watched a couple of teenage boys busily discussing a gaming platform walk past before returning to what she needed to know. “So what’s this business with bitcoins?”