DARKMARKER

his country, one of the few Turkish policeman with the capacity to do
so - the only other organs of state already aware of the strategic
importance of cyber security were the military and civilian intelligence
agencies, but they, of course, never advertised their capabilities or
motives.

Together with a colleague, Bilal set himself the Herculean task of
persuading the unwieldy Interior Ministry to divert some of its precious
funds to the establishment of a Cyber Crime Unit. It took three years
of pleading, cajoling and politicking. Fortunately, he had a collaborator
who had mastered the Ottoman art of striking the right tone with the
appropriate bureaucrats in the Interior Ministry.

As with all the cybercrime units springing up in police forces around
the world, Turkey's new department was able to exploit the fact that
virtually nobody else in the ministry understood the dark side of
computers. Once given the go-ahead, the two men found themselves
oddly free from outside interference, as nobody else had a clue what
they were doing and they were hardly a burden on the Exchequer.

While the Inspector's own government was scarcely aware of his
work, his counterparts way across the Atlantic had soon taken note of
his achievements. In the summer of 2007 as police in Germany and
Britain arrested the DarkMarket administrators, Matrix001 and JilSi,
Turkey's cybercrime team had put one of the most notorious cyber
criminals, Maksik, behind bars. A major player on DarkMarket (he had
supplied amongst others the French hacker, Lord Kaisersose in
Marseilles with 'dumps'), Maksym Yastremsky from the north-eastern
Ukrainian city of Kharkiv had assumed he would be safe in Turkey
- not only did no cyber criminal ever get arrested there, but relations
between Ukraine and Turkey had never been more cordial, especially
in the underworld.

The Ukrainians also adored the country for its gorgeous coast -
Antalya's beautiful beaches had become a de rigueur destination for
cyber thieves from both nations.

The US Secret Service had been tracking Maksik for two years. They
had successfully stolen the secrets of his laptop in 2006 and then set
up meetings between him and an undercover Secret Service agent in
Thailand, Dubai and Turkey. In the past, cooperating with the Turkish
police had proven awkward, if not downright impossible. But in
arresting Maksik while he was languishing in Antalya's blistering