The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (24 page)

Brian Merrill is about to be seriously outgunned.

"Todd, you want to give us a physical make on this guy?" Crow
asks.

"He's a white male," Young begins. "Long, wavy brown hair,
about five ten, two hundred pounds. He's always worn this dark
brown or black leather jacket and blue jeans."

"When can we expect him to be on the air?"

"After six p.m.," Young replies.

Crow lays out the raid strategy. "OK, I'm going to divide every-
body up into teams.

"Remember," reminds Crow. "We ran him and we didn't get any-
thing conclusive. We've got no prior history. We don't know who
we're dealing with."

"John, you want to give us the layout?"

Detective John Moore, a seasoned, grumpy cop in his late forties,
stands up. "I did a slow drive by before coming over," drawls the
cop, wearing his usual deadpan face. "There aren't many cars out in
front, and there's no sign of activity. The suspect's apartment is on
the street level. There's only one way in or out. We don't have to
worry about going down a hallway with multiple units. It's a fairly
easy unit to secure."

"Here's the plan!" barks Crow. "Molitor and Lewitt, you guys go
first to the door and knock as a ruse to make sure he's controlled."

p ■ ■

The Secret Service agents and cops mill about Burger King near the
white bomb squad van and the Dodge Aries compacts, chowing
down on burgers or tacos from Merrill's favorite Taco Bell. Every-
one's dressed in standard Seattle garb, blue jeans, flannel shirts,
down jackets. Crow sips his coffee and watches his breath steam in
the cold evening air.

It's 1900 hours.

"This guy could walk right by and we wouldn't even know it!"
Detective Linda Patrick jokes to Lewitt. None of the other cops are
worried. How could they be spotted? There's only one manned
squad car in the lot.

"It's too goddamned cold to be out chitchatting," grumbles
Crow, climbing back into the warm blue vinyl of his metallic blue
Dodge Aries.

Meanwhile across from 5227 Brooklyn, Young sits in his Jeep and
taps the cursor key, bouncing between channels, listening for mo-
dem breath. The lights are on in Merrill's apartment, but Young
hears nothing. Pazaski was afraid this might happen. Every fifteen
minutes Crow's voice crackles over the police radio the cops loaned
them for the raid.

"Any activity?"

"No," Pazaski says. "No activity."

Young keeps surfing. More than an hour with nothing.

"Damn it!" Pazaski swears. "They're going to go in anyway."

Crow's voice crackles over the police radio.

"We're going in."

"I'd like to wait a little longer, till he's on the air," argues Young.

"No," Crow orders. "We're going in."

Detective John Lewitt and Special Agent Thomas Molitor care-
fully approach the door and knock, and knock and knock.

"Police! Open up! Police! Open up!"

The time is 2100 hours.

Agent Molitor kicks the door. It won't budge. Detective Lewitt
kicks the door. Nothing.

"Linda, you wanna try a kick?"

Patrick, all five foot two inches of her, gives the door a few kicks.
Another cop kicks it a few times.

Nothing.

Lewitt suggests they try to break it with a team kick. Another
Secret Service agent joins them, and they lean back against the door,
placing the soles of their shoes near the door frame.

"One, two, three," Lewitt counts.

KICK!

The door jamb splinters.

"Police!" Lewitt and Molitor shout, waving their guns. They're
wearing bulletproof vests just in case.

Is he gone? Lewitt wonders, surprised at how sparsely the apart-
ment is furnished. But why would Merrill leave the lights on?

Crow stakes out the musty living room. Two worn couches, a
police scanner on a table, a workout bag by the front door, and a
mountain bike in the corner. A Toshiba laptop sits on a Formica
table in the cramped, windowless kitchen. They fan out, waving
guns in case he's hiding. The place smells damp, the air stale. Neon
green linoleum tiles curl from the bathroom floor. A thick layer of
mold covers the ceiling over the apricot-colored tub. The bedroom is
claustrophobic, with faded olive indoor-outdoor carpet. The closet
is nearly empty.

Brian Merrill is nowhere to be found.

Detectives Patrick and Moore snap photos of the depressing
scene.

"We've given up our whole night for THIS?" Crow grouses.

Lewitt pulls out his supply box stuffed with clipboards, sandwich—

and garbage-sized plastic bags, black marker pens and labels, and
flattened boxes. They stick the little yellow labels on each piece of
evidence, numbering and photographing the items. But Lewitt
doesn't see much of interest besides the laptop and scanner, some
papers, perhaps, a battery charger, cellular phone parts, a couple of
antennae, a few computer disks, a cheap porn mag, and an envelope
from some company called Netcom.

"Hey, look at this," Patrick cries, dragging a set of brown
martial arts Chaco sticks out from under the bed. Minutes later,
Patrick is flipping through hospital bills they found from a nearby
Virginia Mason clinic. It appears Merrill's got some kind of stom-
ach problem.

"It's getting to him. This guy's sweating it," she says to a Secret
Service agent. "He's probably getting ulcers over this stuff."

Young and Pazaski are invited in to take a look around. Pazaski is
struck by what a guy's pad it is. Hardly anything personal. He no-
tices a Vegas hat decorated with slot machine coins, and a
New York
Times
article with a big picture of a fat, mean-looking guy with
glasses, and a big headline,

cyberspace's most wanted: hacker eludes f.b.i. pursuit

The Seattle PD crime lab van pulls up in front and the cops and
special agents methodically load up the evidence. Meanwhile, Todd
Young paces back and forth on Brooklyn, hoping to catch sight of
Merrill before he's frightened off by the late-night circus.

A little after 10 p.m., David Drew, the tall, thirty-ish apartment
manager, shows up. He chats for a while with the cops, and tells
Lewitt what he knows. Merrill rented the place on the first of
July, always paid his rent in cash, was polite, and kept to himself.
Drew could hear Merrill logging onto his computer at all hours
of the night, and late one night, he had to ask him to turn down
his heavy metal music. Lewitt thanks him, completes the nine-
page search warrant inventory, and leaves a copy on Merrill's
kitchen table at about 10:30 p.m. The front door hangs off its
hinges, wide open.

Young and Pazaski sit in the Jeep and watch the evidence van
and the last undercover Dodge Aries drive off, headed for Orton's

downtown Seattle office. They debate sticking around a couple
more hours in case Merrill returns.

"We can't just jump the guy if he shows up," Young shrugs.
They're not cops.

The bounty hunter flips off his scanner and turns to Pazaski.

"Hell. If they're not gonna stay, we're not going to stay."

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.

What do the cops want now, David Drew thinks, rousing himself
from bed.

He opens the door. It's Brian Merrill. He's agitated.

"Did you let somebody into my apartment?"

"No," says Drew. "But they did."

"Who's
they???"

"The police, Brian. There's a search warrant on your kitchen
table."

"Oh, shit!" mutters Merrill.

"They left a phone number you're supposed to call."

"Thanks," Merrill offers, turning away.

"Good luck, Brian."

Brian Merrill doesn't turn to say goodbye. He walks to the nar-
row alley behind the building and disappears into the darkness.

It's midnight in Seattle and once again Kevin Mitnick has nar-
rowly escaped capture.

December 27-30 , 1994

My technique is the best,"
chimes the male, cockney,
almost computerized voice on Tsutomu Shimomura's voice mail on
December 27, 1994.

"Damn you. I know sendmail technique . . .

"Don't you know who I am? Me and my friends, we'll kill you."

A second voice comes on the line.

"Hey, boss, my kung fu is really good."

Three days later, December 30, 1994, a second message will be
left.

"Your technique will be defeated. Your technique is no
good.. .."

An unusual piece of e-mail pops into my Well account a couple of
days after Christmas.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]
(Peter Moore)

Subject: Kevin Mitnick

I've been talking with John Markoff of the NYT about a Kevin
Mitnick profile we at Playboy would like to do, covering Mitnick's

fugitive years. He tossed the ball to you. Do you think there's stuff
there for a good profile/cyber-whodunit? Is it possible to find Mit-
nick right now? Are you interested?. . .

■ ■ *

"Hey."

Kevin Mitnick is not in the holiday spirit. He sounds sullen,
downbeat. It's nearly noon, the day before New Year's Eve, just an
hour after I agreed by telephone to write a story about him for
Play-
boy
magazine.

The calls from Mitnick have continued the last couple months.
Just days after he evaded capture in Seattle in late October, Mitnick
phoned with the story that he'd been burglarized and lost every-
thing, his computers, his phones, his clothes, his gold. By then I
knew that De Payne had received a frantic SOS call from Mitnick
after the raid. Mitnick then phoned one of the officers, pretending to
be part of the investigation, and social engineered information about
his near capture. I just didn't know it had happened in Seattle.

My most recent Mitnick call was right before Christmas. He was
in a cheery mood. He congratulated me on the birth of my daughter,
offered to teach her to hack one day, then apologized for the com-
ment. But today he's down in the dumps.

"Hi. I guess you heard the news?" I venture cautiously, knowing
Mitnick's uncanny sleuthing skills.

"Yeah. Well, when I saw my name there I figured I better call
you."

Mitnick's still regularly hacking my e-mail, and why shouldn't he?
Neither the Well nor I can protect it. It's almost like we're old ac-
quaintances. It's just that Mitnick does most of the acquainting.

"I think it would be more interesting if you did a story on Pe-
tersen," Mitnick begins in his most persuasive tone. "If you put my
name in the media, they'll start looking for me."

"Who will?"

"Markoff and his buddy in San Diego," Mitnick says matter-of-
factly.

"Who's that?"

"Tsutomu Shimomura — he's a spook for Los Alamos Labs."

"Who does he work for? Which initials?"

Mitnick pauses. "I better not say."

"Just one of the initials?" I try.

Mitnick ignores my probing. "I looked at your mailbox. I read it.
I thought,
shit,
I got to call you! So what are you planning on writ-
ing, what kind of story?"

"They want me to write a story about you. I think it could be
interesting.
Playboy's
got a lot of readers. It's a pretty big forum."

"It's a
big
fucking forum!" Mitnick booms. "You know more
information than anybody. It's scary thinking all the information
might be used against me. I
trusted
you. The stuff with Mark Lottor
could put me in a bad position."

"How?"

"I know how they twist things. I don't want to give them
any-
thing.
I'm not asking you to lie, I'm just asking you to leave stuff
out."

Mitnick's voice has an edge I've never heard before. He's not
threatening me, but. . . .

"I'm too much of a trusting person," Mitnick groans, his voice
cycling like a record on the wrong speed. "They are going to be
scanning you on Sprint and MCI — oh
fuck!

"I don't know how you feel about it, whether you give a shit. I
don't want you to put anything in that would lead them to me. I
should have taken Settle's [a former FBI agent] advice and discon-
nected from the past.

"I haven't lied to you. I don't know if you owe me something, but
I'm scared. I'm hoping you would help me out. I didn't ask for shit
from you. Lewis said you seemed like an all right guy. Like you
wouldn't fuck me over. I said, OK, I'd talk to you."