The Recipient (25 page)

“That's
exactly
what I'm gonna do,” she grinned. She sprang from her seat and rounded the desk before Lionel could respond. She bounded up the stairs to the mezzanine, forcing Lionel to follow after her. She disappeared into the guest room before Lionel reached the top of the stairs. He found her on her hands and knees before the wardrobe, rummaging through boxes and tossing various equipment and computer hardware left and right.

“Casey. Think about this for a moment,” Lionel pleaded. “Breaking into a federal facility could get you thrown into prison! What do you think you could possibly achieve if that happened?”

Casey took a small black case out from a plastic storage container and unzipped it, checking its contents.

“I'm not gonna get caught, Pa,” she said without looking up. “It would be more risky for me to try and hack the federal government network remotely. Their network infrastructure is too well-protected from outside incursions. They would be onto me in a second if I tried to hack them from here.”

“Even with your skills? Your hardware? Surely not.”

Casey would not be assuaged.

“If I'm onsite, I can access their database and see if those file numbers are still in their system. And I can look around and see who might be in there.”

Lionel made a noise that was somewhere between a gasp and a hiss. He rolled his eyes and clenched his jaw.

“You cannot be serious, Casey! It's bloody stupidity. I
cannot
have any part in this.”

Casey sprang to her feet. Glaring at him, she brushed past him, black case in hand.

“Fine,” she snarled. “Don't then.”

“Casey.”

“What if he's still there?” she challenged, dropping back down the stairs. “What if this person works there right now and no one realises what he's done?”

“Whittaker will make sure—”

“I don't trust Whittaker,” Casey shouted angrily. “I can't even be sure that he's on my side. Hell, I can't be sure if anyone's on my side!”

“Casey,” Lionel croaked. “That's not fair and you know it. We're all here for you. Your mother and your father and I. We all just want to help you.”

Casey stopped at the bottom of the stairs and wheeled around, snapping her head up at Lionel.

“Are you really? You might want have a talk with your daughter, Lionel. Because I think she knows a lot more than she is willing to admit about all of this.” Casey snarled, pointing her finger at her chest in a circular motion.

Lionel felt a sharp pang in the pit of his stomach and he appeared to wilt at her stinging accusation.

“Casey, that's not fair. You're not thinking straight.”

Casey levelled a glare strong enough to bore through lead.

“I
am
thinking straight,” she hissed, her whispered voice quivering on the edge of fury. “I am the
only
one thinking about this. I've done nothing
but
think about this for three fucking years!”

She wiped angrily at sudden fresh tears.

“I want it to stop and I am going to
make it stop
!”

Lionel held up his hands to placate her but it was no use. “I'm…I didn't mean to…”

Casey turned on him and crossed the living room to her bedroom where she opened her wardrobe and snatched the first decent outfit that her hands fell across. She threw it down on the bed behind her then plunged her hand back in, grabbing a pair of heels.

Lionel gulped. He wanted to move his legs but couldn't.

“Casey,” he said pathetically as Casey gathered up her belongings in both arms. She strode through the apartment, unable to look at her grandfather as she made for the door.

“Go home, Lionel,” she retorted bitterly. “I don't need you here anymore.”

Lionel froze as the door clanged shut behind Casey.

CHAPTER 26.

T
he hand of the assailant came down, smashing through the chest wall with a sickening mixture of blood and bone.

And still she fought to free herself.

Saskia's head twisted in a desperate effort to find a means of escape.

In that moment, Casey and Saskia were looking at one another.

Saskia thrust her free hand out, stretching her fingers as far as she could, searching in desperation for Casey's own hand.

Saskia's face contorted; her lips formed words which Casey could see and understand though she could not hear them.

Help me!

Casey reached out, trying to cup her hands over Saskia'
s cheeks. Once again, she began reciting letters and numbers.

Casey repeated them back to her in silence until they were repeating them in unison.

S…X…8…0…3…2…5…4…

Saskia's expression became serene. Casey thought she saw a smile.

Then, Saskia
's eyes looked over Casey's shoulder. Puzzled, Casey looked behind her hesitantly.

Dark human forms coalesced from the darkness and stood on the road, watching the scene.

Casey gasped as the forms seemed to step forward and come into focus.

Lionel stood there. His expression was taut, plagued with disappointment. Beside him stood Edie, her expression stony. Next to her stood Casey's father. He was shaking his head slowly, his eyes filled with anger. More figures emerged. First Prishna, then Whittaker. Behind them emerged Lesia Andrutsiv, supporting herself on her walker while her nurse shuffled along beside her.

Casey looked back to Saskia who was weeping in terror while the assailant continued to violate her.

What is this?

Casey stood and spun on her heel to confront the audience behind her, all of whom were glaring with accusatory menace at her now.

Why are you here?
Casey's mind shouted in silence.

Lionel slowly raised his hand and, suddenly, Casey was yanked backwards. She cried out as her body tumbled and rolled violently along the bitumen. Saskia's face, the car, the assailant, her family—all of them disappeared into the gloom.

Clawing frantically at the air, Casey screamed…

___

Somewhere in the chilly pre-dawn hours, Casey jolted in the confines of the cramped Volkswagen and reflexively clawed at the air in front of her. Her hands slapped against the windshield glass until she realised she had been dreaming.

Shaking her head to rid herself of the dream, she shivered. She drew the blanket up around her shoulders, pulling it tightly against herself and blinked in the darkness. She peered through the windscreen but was confronted by a thin layer of frost that obscured everything.

“Jesus,” she hissed reaching out and turning the key in the ignition. The car's engine coughed to life, then Casey reached over and turned the climate control knob all the way over until the warmth from the heater filtered into the cabin. Relaxing into her seat, she cast a glance to her left, to the smartphone that lay on the passenger seat in pieces: the handset, battery and rear cover.

Ever the paranoid cracker,
she thought, even though she knew that was only part of the reason for ensuring she couldn't be tracked.

She picked up the handset, hesitating as she looked at the darkened screen.

Part of her wanted to call Lionel to apologise for storming out the way she had. But she couldn't bring herself to.

She knew her outburst had been callous, that her accusations had been particularly cruel. She didn't know what she could say to repair the damage. Feeling despondent, she lowered the handset to the seat, hesitated and thought about reinserting the battery so that she could boot it up in case Lionel had called.

She growled and let it fall from her hand.

Closing her eyes, she leaned her head back against the headrest, trying to rationalise her actions and push away her guilt. All she could see in her mind's eye was her grandfather's tortured expression and it caused her emotions to spin out of control.

Everything was such a mess.

Her gaze fell across the copy of the photograph she'd taken with her phone in Saskia's bedroom, clipped to the dashboard vent. She reached out and took it, drawing it to her. In the half-light of the emerging dawn, she gazed into Saskia's features, her worldly eyes, her carefree smile.

What had happened? What had Saskia uncovered?

Casey's guilt was blunted by determination and she batted away her torment.

Pa will have to wait.

Sitting forward, Casey flicked the wiper controls and watched as the blades swung up, removing the rapidly melting frost so that she could see out through the glass.

A four-lane highway separated the vacant car park in which she sat from the austere grey walls of the Flaxley Park Immigration Detention Facility. It stood out some distance away from her, amongst thick eucalyptus trees and dense fog. She could see lights winking from inside, signs of life—of the day beginning. Soon, people would come to begin their day as employees and administrators of the centre and Casey knew she would have to be prepared and ready.

The imposing structure caused Casey to shiver.

Flaxley was described as a lower level facility in the Australian government's federal immigration system, designed to house refugees whose status had already been determined and were awaiting release into the community. It also held visa holders who were in breach of their conditions, like Saskia, and were awaiting the outcome of their reviews.

A nexus of hope and despair.

Casey cast the blanket aside. She needed to get moving.

Reaching into the back seat, Casey grabbed the strap of her bag and hefted it through into the front, setting it down on the passenger seat beside her. She rummaged through the contents inside until her hand brushed over a familiar rectangular object. She drew it out and held it up, then reached for the components of her smartphone. Reinserting the battery and securing the rear cover, Casey turned it over, powered it up, then twirled the rectangular box in her thumb and forefinger.

Roughly half the size of her phone, the small, white object was featureless except for a silver micro USB plug that protruded from one side. Casey slotted this plug into the corresponding jack of her phone, then checked the screen as a notification window popped up.

‘
RFID scanner detected. Please wait…'

Casey built this device herself and had employed it frequently as a tool to test the custom security systems her corporate clients purchased along with her expertise. Casey's brief included comprehensive testing of the security software she had designed and deployed; specifically those systems that employed the use of radio-frequency identification technologies, RFID for short.

Though RFID technologies—particularly those applied to employee swipe cards—were improving all the time, the uptake of the latest versions was patchy at best, especially where governments, concerned more with their budgets than best practice, were concerned.

Her device was able to ‘sniff' any unprotected RFID chips embedded in employee identification cards and upload the data stored on them. She would then look for any weaknesses in the system that she could neutralise.

Despite their rhetoric to the contrary, government departments were notoriously lax when it came to the security technologies, often trailing their corporate counterparts by a factor of years. Casey was banking on that fact.

The smartphone's screen transitioned once more and a new notification popped up.

‘RFID scan initialised. Ready…'

Casey allowed herself a smile, then she set the phone down and reached into her bag again, taking out a tablet computer and pressing the power button on its side. Checking to make sure that it was fully charged, Casey then placed it down beside the phone.

“Okay,” she whispered aloud in the darkened cabin. “We're ready.”

___

A steady stream of employees was flowing along a path connecting the parking area with the centre. Some walked in groups of three or four, engaged in mundane conversation while others trooped inward on their own. There was a mixture of uniformed personnel: guards, cleaning staff, maintenance staff and ancillary staff along with office workers who were dressed in more formal business wear.

The path flanked a large concrete wall topped with razor wire and was separated by a garden bed populated with uniform shrubbery and leafy saplings. A lone gardener worked about halfway along the path. Armed with a shovel, the gardener, dressed in a pair of tan shorts, matching shirt and a wide-brimmed hat, diligently tilled the soil, ignoring the steady procession of employees, then stood to lift a bag of mulch that lay beside a wheelbarrow. Several employees gave the gardener a wide berth.

Cutting the plastic bag of mulch open with a squat pair of garden shears and tipping it out, the gardener adjusted the right hip of her shorts, upon which sat a mobile phone in a pouch. As the centre staff passed by her, none of them noticed anything particularly unusual about her nor did any of them react to the audible beep that sounded as the device on the gardener's belt scanned each individual identity card that was either clipped to a belt or hanging from a lanyard around a person's neck.

As she emptied the last of the contents onto the garden bed, Casey looked up from her work, angling the brim of her hat down over her eyes.

She watched as the procession filed passed her, oblivious to her presence. They approached the door and dutifully scanned their identification over the reading device beside it before entering the building.

Casey reached for a rake that lay on the ground beside the wheelbarrow and began spreading the mulch out before her. As she did so, she noticed an expensive sedan speed into the car park from the entrance to the centre. Its tyres skidded on the bitumen as it lurched into a parking space close to the centre's entrance and braked hard. Casey noted it was a reserved spot.

Curious, she stood taller while continuing to rake the mulch across the garden bed and she watched as a woman fairly lurched from the interior of the car. Dressed in a smart, figure-hugging business suit, the attractive woman juggled a large handbag and a take-away coffee cup while balancing a phone wedged between her ear and the top of her shoulder. Evidently, she was engaged in some sort of intense conversation.

Approaching the centre through the thinning procession, the woman stopped and stooped down, setting her coffee cup on the pavement while she aimed her keyless remote at the car, locking it, all while continuing her conversation.

Cocking her head, Casey watched the woman as she stood and ended her phone call. Several people nearby acknowledged her as they sidestepped around her. One of the workers stopped and bent down to pick up her coffee cup and handbag for her. Though clearly annoyed, the woman managed to break her taut expression and offer a thankful smile.

“Thanks, Paul,” she greeted.

“You're welcome, Ms. Catea,” he replied. “Good morning, by the way.”

Casey turned slightly and allowed herself to study this exchange. The office worker continued on his way, leaving the woman, Ms. Catea, to collect herself. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she sipped from her coffee cup, then searched inside her bag.

Frustration began to spread across her face once more. Clearly, she wasn't able to find what she was looking for.

Adjusting her smartphone in the holster on her hip, Casey angled herself towards the woman and listened carefully. The smartphone beeped subtly, registering that it had scanned the chip of Catea's swipe card. It was definitely buried somewhere inside the large and expensive leather handbag.

A second office worker paused as she passed by Catea and asked if she was okay.

Catea looked up at the younger woman and offered a pained expression. “I can't seem to find my damned card. Could you swipe me in? I'm running so late and I'll need to empty my entire bag in order to find it.”

Smiling sympathetically, the younger woman nodded and flashed her own identification card. “I've got this. Come on. I'll give you a hand.”

Together the two women walked towards the entrance and Casey watched as the younger woman touched the reader with her card. The doors slid aside and they disappeared inside.

Casey went back to weeding the gardens.

___

Returning to the car and ensuring nobody could see her, Casey quickly stripped out of her gardener's outfit. She washed her face, arms and hands with some disposable wipes, and struggled into a white shirt, matching grey jacket and skirt and heels. She clipped her hair back as professionally as she could, and angling the rear-vision mirror toward her, applied lipstick and checked herself.

Not bad,
she thought.

Satisfied that she could pass for a ‘suit', Casey turned her attention to the smartphone and detached the RFID reader from it.

The woman she had watched on the pavement outside the centre's entrance hovered in her memory. She appeared to carry some level of seniority, judging by the way the other workers had interacted with her. But the critical thing was the fact that one of those colleagues had swiped her in. Officially at least, she wasn't yet logged in with the centre's security system, or so Casey theorized. She believed she had a small window in which to act.

Plugging the RFID reader to the female end of a USB extension cable, she connected that into a port on the underside of the tablet computer, then flipped the device over. Navigating the touch screen, she brought up an application that began displaying the data she had retrieved from the dozens of ID cards she had passively scanned earlier in her guise as a gardener.