The American Connection

that he always carried around. The one with the print-out of all the Citibank credit card numbers.

And so it was that Par came to gaze down at his bag with a look of alarm. He realised instantly that the Secret Service would be looking for that red bag. If they didn't know what he looked like, they would simply watch for the bag.

That bag was not something Par could hide easily. The Citibank print-out was the size of a phone book. He also had dozens of disks loaded with the cards and other sensitive hacking information.

Par had used the cards to make a few free calls, but he hadn't been charging up any jet skis. He fought temptation valiantly, and in the end he had won, but others might not have been so victorious in the same battle. Par figured that some less scrupulous hackers had probably been charging up a storm. He was right. Someone had, for example, tried to send a $367 bouquet of flowers to a woman in El Paso using one of the stolen cards. The carder had unwittingly chosen a debit card belonging to a senior Saudi bank executive who happened to be in his office at the time the flower order was placed. Citibank investigator Larry Wallace added notes on that incident to his growing file.

Par figured that Citibank would probably try to pin every single attempt at carding on him. Why not? What kind of cred- ibility would a seventeen-year-old hacker have in denying those sorts of allegations? Zero. Par made a snap decision. He sidled up to a trash bin in a dark corner. Scanning the scene warily, Par casually reached into the red bag, pulled out the thick wad of Citibank card print-outs and stuffed it into the bin. He fluffed a few stray pieces of garbage over the top.

He worried about the computer disks with all his other valuable hacking information. They represented thousands of hours of work and he couldn't bring himself to throw it all away. The 10 megabyte trophy. More than 4000 cards. 130 000 different transactions. In the end, he decided to hold on to the disks, regardless of the risk. At least, without the print-out, he