Somewhere along the way, Rosen managed to get Par's things returned from the Secret Service raids. He passed the outdated computer and other equipment back to Par, along with disks, print-outs and notes.
Par gathered up every shred of evidence from his case, along with a bottle of Jack Daniels, and made a bonfire. He shredded print-outs, doused them in lighter fluid and set them alight. He fed the disks into the fire and watched them melt in the flames. He flipped through the pages and pages of notes and official reports and let them pull out particular memories. Then he crumpled up each one and tossed it in the fire. He even sprinkled a little Jack Daniels across the top for good measure.
As he pulled the pages from a Secret Service report, making them into tight paper balls, something caught his eye and made him wonder. Many hackers around the world had been busted in a series of raids following the first Thanksgiving raid at Par's house back in 1988. Erik Bloodaxe, the MOD boys, the LOD boys, The Atlanta Three, Pad and Gandalf, the Australians—they had all been either busted or raided during 1989, 1990 and 1991.
How were the raids connected? Were the law-enforcement agencies on three different continents really organised enough to coordinate worldwide attacks on hackers?
The Secret Service report gave him a clue. It said that in December 1988, two informants had called Secret Service special agents in separate divisions with information about Par. The informants—both hackers—told the Secret Service that Par was not the `Citibank hacker' the agency was looking for. They said the real `Citibank hacker' was named Phoenix.
Phoenix from Australia.
CHAPTER 5 — The Holy Grail.
So we came and conquered and found; riches of Commons and Kings.
— from `River Runs Red', Blue Sky Mining.
There it was, in black and white. Two articles by Helen Meredith in The Australian in January 1989.2 The whole Australian computer underground was buzzing with the news.