CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Gary spent about five minutes using a kitchen rag to wipe everything he touched in the apartment, including the lamp, before leaving the building with his hood up and face obscured. Despite having just thrown a man off a balcony, he felt far less guilty than he expected. Cassidy took his best shot and missed; Gary responded in kind and didn't. What else should Gary have done? Surely, he wasn't supposed to let Cassidy keep trying to kill him until he finally succeeded. In a death match, fuck-ups had to have consequences. In any event, he quickly focused on the flash drive in his pocket, desperate to read its contents on his laptop.
He drove along Victoria Road for a couple of minutes until he reached Birkenhead Shopping Centre, perched beside the harbour, and parked in its multi-deck car park. Because the centre was surrounded by affluent neighbourhoods, it didn't attract the riff-raff who often infested shopping centres during the day. Instead, there were lots of yummie mummies pushing prams and well-heeled retirees.
Gary strolled into a near-deserted cafe with his laptop. After ordering a cup of coffee at the counter, he sat in a corner, booted up his laptop and speared the flash drive into a USB port. The flash drive contained only one file, tagged 'Trewaley'. A promising start.
He nervously opened it and saw it contained hundreds of PDFs. Christ. He started flipping through them and saw dozens of letters and emails between Merton and lawyers and accountants in Panama and the Bahamas about setting up trusts, offshore corporations and bank accounts for Trewaley. Other documents showed the trusts and corporations owned real estate in London and New York worth tens of millions of US dollars. Bank statements showed foreign accounts in Trewaley's name had balances totalling about $30 million and huge sums flowing through them.
Gary accessed the Register of Member's Interests on the Federal Parliament website. Trewaley had listed none of the financial interests Gary had just read about. None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Jesus H. Christ.
The file also contained copies of Trewaley's signed tax returns for the last five years. They showed he never declared an annual taxable income of more than $100,000 or paid more than $20,000 in tax.
A pre-schooler could see that Trewaley was a shocking tax cheat who lied to Parliament about his financial affairs. If these documents were released, the chances of his party winning the election and him becoming PM would evaporate.
Of course, he could claim they were all forgeries. But that wouldn't be easy. They were very comprehensive and many facts could be verified, like whether the off-shore trusts and corporations owned the real estate in New York and London. If he yelled "forgery", he'd also come under immense pressure to release his true tax returns to support his claim. No wonder he and Merton hired thugs to recover these documents. The stakes were astronomically high.
Gary pondered what to do with them. Nobody, including Trewaley, knew he had them. So he could forget about them and get on with his life, if he wanted.
However, he couldn't do that. People had died - and he had killed people - because of these documents. Their deaths must be given some meaning. And surely Trewaley, who caused all of the recent mayhem and cheated on his tax while Gary struggled to pay his, should not become Prime Minister. Trewaley was a guy for whom too much was obviously not enough. He deserved punishment and Gary was going to dish it out.
Gary sensed the real reason why Patrick Arnott stole the documents was not because he felt a Christian duty to do so, like he claimed. Rather, because the documents conferred immense power. If released, they would rock the political system to its core and decide the election. They converted Arnott from a weak man into a powerful one with his hand on a hidden lever of history. And now Gary held that lever and was anxious to pull it. He would get Vincent Drew to publish the documents on the internet and then watch the fall-out from a safe distance.
Gary wanted to dispose of the clothes he wore when he threw Cassidy off the balcony in case he left fibres in the apartment. After leaving the cafe, he ducked into a men's clothing shop and bought some cheap jeans and a T-shirt. In the changing room, he swapped into the new clothes and tucked his old ones into a plastic bag. While driving to Vincent Drew's terrace in Redfern, he stopped and tossed the old clothes into a charity clothing bin.
Gary knocked on Vincent's front door just after noon. No answer. The guy worked vampirish hours. So maybe he was still asleep. Gary knocked a lot harder and kicked the door a few times. Still no answer. Shit.
He mobile phoned Vincent and was told the number he had called was not answering. Double shit.
What to do now? He could drive back to his office and return later. However, he was desperate to talk to the hacker and decided to hang around.
Across the road, several gloomy Housing Commission towers were clustered around a small park. A daub of sunlight lay on a lonely bench in the middle. He sat on the bench and idly scrolled through news and gossip on his smartphone, while keeping an eye on Vincent's terrace. A news story said that, according to the latest opinion polls, Angus Trewaley had opened up an election-winning lead. Not for long, hopefully.
Gary realised he knew little about Trewaley's background and hunted around on his smartphone for articles about him. He discovered that Trewaley was the son of a successful Eastern Suburbs real estate agent who inducted him into his business at an early age. Trewaley used that job as a springboard into property development. By the time he was forty, his company, Trewaley Enterprises, was one of the state's biggest builders and owners of retirement villages, and he often appeared on television or in newspapers to attack building unions and promote free-market ideas. When the Conservative member for the electorate of La Perouse threw in the towel, Trewaley stood for party pre-selection. After a bruising contest, during which he was accused of vote-rigging, he won the contest. At the next election, he won the seat handsomely and quickly established himself as a rising star in the Conservative Party. Indeed, after only six years in Parliament, he was elected its leader. Now he was closing his avaricious fist around his ultimate goal, the Prime Ministership.
Gary stopped reading on his smartphone, turned his face to the sun and wondered what would happen when Vincent posted Trewaley's file on the internet. Would it unleash a shit-storm that engulfed Trewaley and his party? Or would it get swallowed up and lost in the immense sea of information on the internet? Maybe it wouldn't cut through to the public or Trewaley would somehow explain it away.
He sighed. All he could do was post the file on the internet. He couldn't make people read it or believe it. So no point speculating what would happen. He disengaged his brain and bathed in the sun, while teenage mothers and feral children wandered in and out of the towers.
The sun dropped behind one of the satanic towers and a chill descended on the park. He strolled back to his car, sat behind the wheel and listening to a shock-jock and his callers make the airwaves crackle with anger. But even that couldn't keep him awake. A lack of sleep and the strain of the last few days caught up with him. While the inane blather flowed through him, his head drooped and he dozed off.
A revving motor engine woke him. He popped open a bleary eye and saw a battered Fiat Bambino trying to park in front of his car. The car wiggled back and forward a few times before stopping. The driver's door opened and Vincent Drew got out wearing an army jacket and jeans. His pale skin made him look like he was returning to his coffin for his daily nap.
Vincent crossed the road with jangly strides while digging some keys out of a trouser pocket. Gary shook himself awake and climbed out of his vehicle. He caught up with Vincent just before the guy put his key in his front door. "Vincent, Vincent."
Vincent turned around. "Hello, Gary. Wazzup? You been waiting for me?"
"I've been waiting for hours. Where've you been?"
A smug expression. "With my chick."
Of all the revelations that had sideswiped Gary during the last few days, this one stunned him the most. He never imagined Vincent falling in love with anything except his computer.
"You're in a relationship?"
A shrug. "Almost. We've seen each other a few times and we seem to interface. She even loves Manga movies. I think I'm in love."
For the moment, Gary forgot about the Trewaley file. "Who is she? What does she do?"
"She's a uni undergrad, studying stats. That's how we met. Got an amazing mind."
What about her body? "I hope it goes well."
A shrug. "Statistically, the odds are lousy. But I'm going to listen to my heart. What do you want?"
Gary remembered his mission. "Let's go inside and chat."
"OK." Vincent opened the front door and led Gary into his dusty living room. "Take a pew."
Gary sat on a dying armchair that reacted angrily to being sat upon.
Vincent sat opposite. "How can I help?"
"I need some advice."
"On what?"
"I've got some dirt on a major politician. I wanted to post it anonymously on the internet so lots of people read it. What's the best way to do that?"
"Who's the politician?"
"Angus Trewaley."
"Wow. What sort of dirt?"
"I've got a couple of hundred documents that show he's a major tax cheat with tens of millions stashed away in tax havens."
Vincent looked excited for once. "Wow, wow, wow. The documents are legit?"
"Definitely. They come from the accountancy firm he uses; they absolutely nail him."
Gary could have mentioned that several killings had confirmed their authenticity, but didn't want to cause panic.
"What's the name of the firm?"
"Merton & Co."
Vincent squinted. "Really? A few days ago, you asked me about an accountant called Robert Merton, didn't you? Wanted to know what properties he owned. Then I saw on the TV that he got killed - shot dead - up in his beach house. Whole place went up in flames, right?"
"That's right."
"He owned Merton & Co?"
"Yes."
"So these documents came from him?"
"Yes, though I didn't take them."
"Shit. Did his death have something to do with the documents?"
Vincent was entitled to know that, if he helped Gary, he might end up in real danger. "Yes, though I don't want to go into details."
"OK. And do you know what happened at the beach house?"
"Yes, though I don't want to go into details."
"You mean, you were there?"
"Yes, though I'd want to go into details."
A laugh. "Wow. I think I'd rather not know. So, you want to publish these docs on the internet?"
"Yes, without being identified."
"Because you want to hurt Trewaley?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
A shrug. "He's a bad dude."
"Good answer."
"So you'll help me?"
"Of course."
Gary had feared that, when Vincent realised how dangerous it was to help Gary, he would shy away. But Vincent did nothing of the sort. Gary saw him with new eyes. The guy was flaky and arrogant as hell, but he had balls - big ones - and that put his defects in the shade. "Good. How much will you charge?"
"Nothing. I'd love to stick a knife in Trewaley. He's a total dickhead who wants to censor the internet. Let me at him, I say."
"But censorship will be good for your business, won't it?"
"True, but it's wrong. And, of course, I'd love a chance to use my matchless computer skills to bring down a tall poppy."
"Good. But how are you going to use those skills?"
"What format are the documents in?"
"PDF."
"Mmmm, let me think." Vincent stared at the cracked and cobwebbed ceiling, enjoying the spotlight, chewing up lots of mental RAM. After about a minute, he stroked his jaw and smiled. "I think we should hijack the Parliament House website and pin the documents on it."
Gary's pulse raced. "Shit. You can do that?"
"Child's play. Just got to find the host server of the website and change the DNS codes so that visitors get redirected to a fake website I've set up."
"How long will they be redirected for?"
"I reckon it'll take the computer techies at Parliament House at least 24 hours to work out what I've done and fix the problem."
Gary smiled. "Then go for it."
"I can also hack into the Parliament House server and get the email addresses of every politician and political journo in the country. There must be several hundred. We can send the documents to all of them with the push of a button."
"Excellent. How long will it take to set up all of this?"
He shrugged. "Maybe three or four hours."
"And nobody will know we're responsible?"
"Don't worry. My IP address is absolutely invisible. The whole US cyber-warfare unit could look forever and not find it, I promise."
Gary consoled himself that, despite often sounding like an overconfident blowhard, Vincent always delivered. "Fine. Then let's get cracking."
"OK. Give me a copy of the PDFs and I'll get to work."
Gary handed over the flash drive. "They're on there."
"Good. While I'm doing my thing on the computer upstairs, you should write a catchy little blurb I can post with the PDFs so people know what's in them. Make it snappy and use an avatar."
"What sort of Avatar?"
"You'll think up something. You got a laptop?"
"In my car."
"Set it up in the kitchen."
Vincent went upstairs and Gary retrieved his laptop from under the driver's seat of his car. He set it up on the warped Formica table in the misshapen kitchen.
He had never tried to write a blurb before and found it a hell of a lot harder than he expected. After one hour, he had made no progress; after two, he had only written a couple of sentences he liked. It eventually took him four hours to write the blurb. A few minutes later, Vincent wandered into the kitchen carrying a laptop that he put on the kitchen table next to Gary's.
Vincent said: "Everything's ready to go. All I need is the blurb. Finished?"
"Yeah. Read this and tell me if it's OK." Gary turned the screen of his laptop towards Vincent.
Vincent read the blurb and smiled. "Excellent. You should have been a journo." He held up a flash drive. "Put it on this."
Gary copied the blurb onto the flash drive and handed it back. Vincent inserted it into his laptop and, after fiddled around for about five minutes, sat back and smiled.
"Alright. Everything's ready to go. This is the fake website that people will see when it goes live."
Gary stepped around and saw an exact replica of the Parliament House website, except that his blurb sat squarely in the middle. Nobody could miss it.
TREWALEY IS A TAX CHEAT
Greetings Australians,
Everybody hates paying tax. But nobody hates paying it more than the Leader of the Opposition, Angus Trewaley. He's got tens of millions of dollars stashed away in tax havens that he's never disclosed to the Tax Office or declared to Federal Parliament. Last year his tax bill was $18,351. You read that right - $18,351.
Trewaley uses Merton & Co - a criminal enterprise that calls itself an accountancy firm - to hide his money overseas and evade tax. The documents attached are from the files of that firm. They show that, instead of becoming our Prime Minister, Trewaley should go to gaol. Read closely. Vote wisely.
GUY FAWKES.
Gary saw that Vincent had found an image on the internet of Guy Fawkes, wearing a Tudor-style felt hat, and stuck it at the bottom of the blurb, next to a link marked "documents".
Vincent said: "What do you think?"
"Bloody brilliant."
"I've also attached the blurb and the documents to about five hundred emails that will be sent to every federal politician, chief of staff and political journo in the country. Just tell me when to hit the button."
Gary glanced at his watch. Just after 6pm. He had no idea if this was the best time to release the infor
mation. So he shrugged. "Why wait?"
Vincent rarely looked happy. Now, a neon smile lit up his face. "Agree. Let's get this done."
Vincent typed for about 30 seconds, punched a few buttons and smiled. "Bo-o-o-o-m. Let me show you the website."
Vincent googled the Parliament House website and turned the screen towards Gary. The fake site was in place. The blurb dominated the screen.
Gary smiled. "Well done. Thank you, thank you very much."
Another wide smile. Vincent had smiled more that afternoon than during the whole time Gary had known him. "No, I should thank you. This is the greatest moment of my life. My whole life has been a preparation for this moment. The internet has unleashed its awesome power."
Gary started to laugh and realised Vincent was deadly serious. He felt obliged, before he left, to build an emotional bridge to the guy. "You know, one of these days, you should explain to me why you think reality is full of software errors."
A frown. "I could try, but I don't think you'd understand."
Gary already regretted being nice. "Well, see it as a challenge."
A faint smile. "Yeah, that's a good idea. OK, let me know when you want your mind expanded."
"I will."