DARKMARK

everyone else worked. The last thing any Turkish cop wanted was to become an innocent pawn crushed in a struggle between the Deep State and the democratically constituted government. Almost all Turks avoided public discussion of Ergenekon if they could. But all knew that the Ergenekon investigation hovered in the background of many major criminal cases, whether or not it contained overt political implications.

Bilal would have to take care, but he was not about to give up the chase.

While in Pittsburgh, he and Mularski developed a firm friendship and the FBI agent shared all the intelligence he could on Cha0. Between the two of them, they began to build on their sparse dossier. Mularski was able to call on his vast archive as one of DarkMarket's key players, and Şen was able to read the Turkish runes. The Inspector wanted to assess Cha0's personality to see if it matched any known cyber criminals back home: a lot of documents were scanned, then sent back and forth between Ankara, Istanbul and Pittsburgh.

If things weren't baffling enough already, they took an even stranger turn soon after Inspector Şen returned home to Ankara. A weird image was circulating on the Web.

Bilal could barely contain his anger and frustration. Agent Mularski had sent him a photograph, which had appeared on Haber 7's website and then the San Francisco-based Wired magazine. Sitting on a chair in his underpants was the mystery man, Kier, being compelled, it appeared, to hold up a piece of paper on which was written:

1 I AM KIER. MY REAL NAME IS MERT ORTAÇ
2 I AM PARTNER OF THE MEDIA
3 I AM RAT. I AM PIG.
4 I AM REPORTER
5 I AM FUCKED BY Cha0

Half of Istanbul's police force was looking in vain für Kier — or Mert Ortaç, to give him his real name — but Cha0 had succeeded not only in tracking him down, but in kidnapping and humiliating him as well. It was perfectly possible that the man's life was in danger. What in God's name was going on?