DARKMARKET

frenetic high-tech environment familiar from TV programmes like CSI New York. One room that was tucked away was littered with the tools of computer forensics, machines that offer up the innermost secrets of any digital device. But this tech examination room was barely visible and was sealed to prevent the intrusion of any trojan or other malware from contaminating objects under investigation (as with their organic counterparts, computer viruses are sometimes airborne). That aside, the offices étaient quiet, orderly and unremarkable.

On that first morning, Keith showed Bilal the whiteboard in his office with the name 'Cha0' atop the pyramid of criminals connected to DarkMarket. Inside, the Turkish policeman felt a twinge of shame. With the support of colleagues in Britain and Germany, the Feds had taken down two of DarkMarket's most energetic administrators, JiLsi and Matrix, six months earlier. Arrests had already been made in Britain, Germany, Canada and France, and further arrests in the United States were being prepared. So the officer from Ankara felt it a stain on his national pride as well as on his personal reputation that his fellow Turk was now among the most-wanted cyber criminals in the world.

Turkish police, and particularly its organised-crime department, had come a long way in the previous decade, and Bilal was determined to prove that even with many fewer resources available to him than to his counterparts in Western Europe and America, the young Cyber Crime Unit based in the Turkish capital, Ankara, was capable of playing in the big league.

Police officers from around the world were always dropping in and out of the FBI offices. They came to learn from their American counterparts, but also to build networks of mutual assistance. Cooperation between police forces from different countries usually groaned under the weight of intolerable bureaucratic procedures, and personal friendship among cops was the quickest way to bypass that.

Bilal had come on a three-month attachment. As a Turk, he was a novel, if potentially very useful contact for the Feds. In 2003 he had been one of the two co-founders of the tiny Cyber Crime Unit in Turkey's Anti-Smuggling and Organised Crime Division. And compared to the perpetrators, the inspector had no resources.

For his part, Bilal Şen wanted to learn from the FBI. Not that he was inexperienced. He had joined the police as a fifteen-year-old in 1989, signing up for the gruelling eight-year officer training course.