DARKMARK

Çağatay was enjoying his summer – he was a convivial chap who liked to step out with his friends. He often escorted beautiful women, including, it was rumoured, one daring member of the Saudi royal family. He liked expensive drinks, fine dining and attending parties on yachts, and over the years had put on some weight. Money appeared to be no object in the pursuit of his fancy lifestyle.

Bilal put tails on Çağatay’s various co-workers – the evidence was mounting that Cha0 was not just Çağatay Evyapan, but a well-oiled criminal syndicate. This was organised crime, not some script-kiddy hacking servers for the first time. As such, it was evidence of a growing trend around the world. For a long time traditional organised-crime syndicates regarded fraud on the Web as crime-lite and scarcely worthy of their attention. That was now beginning to change. Cybercrime was becoming more systematic, more efficient and more security-conscious as it moved out of its original incubator, where mischievous geeks giggle and play, and into the more adult realm of real mafia structures. By implication, Bilal’s quarry would have correspondingly greater resources and so building the case required close care and attention, if the Inspector were to avoid being tripped up in court.

The cops duly gathered evidence, and of course Keith Mularski and Cha0 were still fellow administrators on DarkMarket. The operation lasted a full five months, as Bilal stored tiny scraps of evidence day by day. He ascertained that Çağatay’s group of intimates was relatively small and that his security was military in its precision. But along with those scraps, which might link Çağatay with any crime, Bilal had a second agenda: he was still trying to establish whether Çağatay had someone on the inside – while praying that he didn’t.

In late August Çağatay disappeared. Panic spread throughout the team that had been tracking him. Nonetheless, the journalist with Haber 7 continued to receive messages, not from Cha0, but from a certain Yarris, who seemed to have an intimate knowledge of Cha0’s activities. Mercifully for Bilal, Cha0 turned up in Istanbul as unexpectedly as he had departed. Nonetheless it was a warning as to how precarious the situation was, and Bilal made the decision to move on him in early September.

Back at the villa in Tuzla, surveillance had identified that one of the residents would go out every few days or so to fetch provisions. On 8th September out he came. Bilal Şen was back in Ankara, biting his