China Blue IV ©

As SuMing walked slowly back to her office, she found herself thinking about Travis. Shaking her head as if to expel him, she thought to herself, "Why am I thinking about him, why am I letting him bother me, I just met him." She tried to think of the spreadsheet and the discrepancies she had found to try and get him off her mind, but again she found herself thinking about him. "Why would he being leaving with her? I am sure he understands company policy concerning fraternization with subordinates and the possible actions that could be taken against both of them. Why should I even care?" she continued to think to herself. "It is none of my concern." Again she found herself thinking about him, those deep soft brown eyes and that sandy hair flecked with a bit of silver here and there. His rugged complexion and the way he carried himself. The self assurance and confidence he displayed. It had been a very long time since she had felt such an attraction to a man. A long time since she even wanted to feel such emotions and she wondered if she really wanted to feel that again. The last time she did, she was left with twin girls and a very bitter divorce. She did not relish the idea of that repeating itself. She had no regrets when it came to her girls. She cherished them and would not trade them for anything in the world. It was just sad to think that it had all ended so badly. All he had done once she started to move up in her career was accuse her of sleeping her way to the top. He could not accept the fact that a woman had worth outside the marriage. Every time she had gotten an award or a promotion, he would accuse her of sleeping with someone in order to be awarded it. She could remember running into their bedroom and crying, not believing what he had just accused her of. He could not understand that she was not just doing this for herself, but for both of them, so that their girls could have a better life than they each had had. And he would not have to work so hard to support them. As time went on, it just got worse. He started drinking and missing days at work. He was remiss in remembering their anniversary, her birthday, the girl's birthdays. He was starting to withdraw from them, pulling himself away. He even started telling her that maybe the girls weren't his at all. SuMing remembered the pain this had caused her when he started thinking that. How he refused to sleep in their bed now, staying instead in the front room, passed out in a chair from drinking himself into a stupor. She remembered the day she came home and found him drunk again. "Already?" she sadly said to him, "Can you not stop that long enough to talk to me or to your children? You have to start drinking as soon as you get home?" Tears had started flowing from her eyes. He looked at her, his eyes cold and blank, "I did not go in today. I called in after you had left and they told me that I needed to think about what was more important to me, my job or my drinking. I chose drinking SuMing. And you want to know why? It is because of you SuMing. It is the only way I can forget about your cheating on me. How you have slept your way into your position. How your career is more important than me or our marriage. I can't even look at the girls anymore. They do not favor me at all. I blame you SuMing for what has happened to me." SuMing started crying uncontrollably, her voice trembling, "How....how can you say such horrible things about me? Why do you accuse me of things I have never done? I have earned what I have been given, by my hard work and loyalty. I’ve not slept with anyone, I have never even thought about it, much less done it. I do this for us, our family. Can't you see that? Can't you see and understand that it is because of our family, our marriage, our children that I work as hard as I do? Have I complained at all? You sit around and drink, thinking of things, conjuring up secret liaisons between me and men at work that have never taken place. It does not help you to forget, all it does is add fuel to your anger and your hate. You never wanted to see me succeed at all. You would have been perfectly happy if I stayed at home and catered to you. Be there like the dutiful housewife with dinner ready and inquiring as to how your day went. It eats at you to know that I am of worth outside of our marriage. I have honored my vows that I made to you. I have stood by you through everything and you cannot give that back to me. You do everything you can to try and destroy what I have worked for and our marriage. You say it is my fault that you are the way you are today, I do not agree, you put yourself where you are right now. I had nothing to do with it. I have done nothing to warrant your false accusations towards me. You drink because you are weak and jealous." His eyes were seething now as he stared at her, "Jealous! Jealous that you cannot pass up the chance to lay down with another man?" He had started walking towards her, his hands doubled into fists. "You think I do not know what it takes for a woman to make it anywhere in business?" She found herself starting to back up, trembling, afraid that she had pushed him too far. "You whored yourself to where you are at today and you know it." he was screaming at her, "Never would you have obtained the authority you have today without putting a smile on the face of your superiors. Men SuMing, your superiors are men and they do not just award a woman with such a position because they think she works hard!" SuMing could not believe that he actually believed what he was saying. "I should have never married you!" he lashed out again, "All you have done is cause me pain and dishonor my name. You have brought shame on our marriage. Everyone laughs at me because of you SuMing. They think I am less of a man because of your position. That I cannot provide for you, that you have to work so that we can make a living and that you are willing to do anything to be successful, even sleep with your superiors!" She found herself shaking now, not from the pain he was inflicting on her, but from the anger that was raising deep within her now. She was tired of this and all she wanted now was out of it. "I dishonor your name?" she screamed out, "You bring shame on yourself because you know you lack what it takes to be a good husband and provider. They laugh at you because you are weak and can only find strength in a bottle. Do not blame me for your lack of self confidence or your inability to be successful. You are the only one to blame for the problems you have put into our marriage. You should not have married me? No, it is I that should not have married you; I should have seen your weaknesses before I accepted your proposal. You and your petty accusations have destroyed everything that was between us." SuMing could feel the strength her anger had given her. She started pulling herself together now, staring back at him with just as much loathing as he had. "I want out of this, this marriage or what is left of it. I am not going to suffer your jealous tirades any more. I have a life and a future and I do not see you in it any longer. She noticed that he had gone slack; she was not cowering from him as she had done so many times in the past. All expression was out of his face as he stood there looking at her. "You can have it your way SuMing. You can have your life, if that is what you call it." his last attempt to belittle her, "You will never make it without me. You will beg me to come back." SuMing found herself laughing at him now, this was the final blow to his ego, he had went after her to get her to submit to him and had ended laying himself open to the truth about himself. He looked around the room, spotted his jacket, without looking back, he left. It was the last time; he would not be coming back. SuMing sank down in the chair, feeling empty, drained. It was over, she had nothing to worry about or fear from him again.

SuMing blinked and found she was standing in front of her desk. Not even remembering when she had got there or how long she had been standing there. "You just going to stand there all day?" she heard Lucy asking her. She turned around to see Lucy looking at her with a puzzled look on her face. "Everything okay Su?" Lucy asked again. "Yes Lucy, I am fine, I just got side tracked on something for a moment." she answered. "For a moment? You have been standing there for half an hour." Lucy continued. SuMing looked down at the file folder she was carrying. It was stained with tears and the blue ink on the file label had run in streaks across the face of it. "Oh, why do I let myself keep going back to that?" she asked herself. "Go back to what?" she heard Lucy asking. She had not realized she was talking out loud. "Nothing Lucy, nothing at all, just something I resolved a long time ago." she sat down at her desk and placed the folder on it. Turning to her terminal, she logged in and opened the chinablue spreadsheet. A splash screen came up on her monitor, "Unable to open file. File in use." She stared at it for a moment, "In use? How can that be?" She looked down to see if it was minimized on her task bar. No, it was not open. She clicked the Ok button and tried to open it again, with the same results. "Lucy, has there been anyone at my desk while I was gone?" Answering, Lucy said, "Not that I know of, at least not while I have been here. I took a break right after you left, so I cannot say for sure. Sorry." She picked up the phone and immediately called Wong Fey. "IT, Wong Fey here." came the greeting. "Mr. Wong, this is Ms Chang, I cannot open the chinablue file, it is saying it is already open." There was a pause, "Do you maybe have it open and just minimized?" "No, I do not have it opened; I have already looked to see if I did." SuMing impatiently answered. "Let me see what I can do Ms Chang." Wong Fey started, "Did you have it open at another terminal someplace in the building and forget to close it?" "No, I have been in a budget meeting this afternoon with Human Resources, I have not opened the file since before I left.", she informed Wong Fey. "Is the file local to your computer or is it stored on the network?" Wong Fey continued to ask. "Local.", came her reply. "Hmmmm, I want you to look in the bottom right hand corner of your screen and tell me what programs are currently running Ms Chang." Fey had requested of her. Looking she told him, "The system clock, network connection, antivirus and one that shows two hands shaking, as in a greeting." "Two hands shaking? Place your cursor over it and tell me what it says." Fey instructed her. "It just says "connected"." SuMing replied. "Do not touch anything, do not close any programs or shut your system down. I will be there in two minutes." Fey informed her. SuMing sat there and stared at the screen. "What on earth is going on here?" she asked herself and then waited on Wong Fey.

Arriving a few moments later, Wong Fey requested her chair. Sitting down, he went directly to a command prompt and started a session in Hyper Terminal. "Let's see if we can sneak up on who ever is at the other end of this." Fey said, half talking to himself and half to SuMing. Entering in a number of commands, he sat back and waited for a response. After a few moments came a reply, an ip address of 210.69.24.128 port =3sb52. "Yes, he is in the building.” Fey said excitedly. He got up from his desk and started to leave. "Where are you going?" SuMing demanded. "Sorry Ms Chang, it returned with an ip address within our building and a port location. I am going to go see who has your file open.", Wong Fey told her. "I am going with you, I own the file and I am responsible for it. I want to know who it is that finds it so important to steal information from it." SuMing stated. Following Wong Fey, they headed to the elevator. "Shouldn't we notify security?' SuMing asked Fey. "Don't they normally handle things like this?" "Normally, yes we would and normally, yes they do." Fey replied. "But, this is not a normal situation and I think that the less people that know, the easier it will be to find out who is behind this. Too many red flags are raised and it could give us away to whomever it is connected to your system." Stepping onto the elevator, Fey pushed the button for sub-basement 3. "Isn't that where all the mechanical rooms are located Mr. Wong?" She asked of him. "Yes it is. Even more reason to be suspicious and not to alert anyone right now. If we do find something, I will take directly to the chief of security and fill him in on our findings." Fey continued to assure her. Stepping off the elevator in sb3, Fey went directly to a terminal and brought up an IT floor plan of the port designation for that level. Locating it, he started off with SuMing right behind him. Once they arrived, they found it more of a disappointment than a revelation. All it was was a computer without a monitor. Just a keyboard and mouse connected to the box. It was connected to the network and the modem was connected to a phone jack. It had been placed behind the chiller lines to the air-conditioning system, for the most part out of sight. If it had not been for the network cable and the phone line, you would not have known it was there at all. Looking at the box from behind, the modem and the nic showed activity. "This box is being controlled remotely, off site it seems." Wong Fey informed SuMing. "Shouldn't we disconnect it and shut it down?' she inquired of Fey. "No, that is the last thing we want to do. It will alert them that we are aware of what they are doing and it could make it even harder to catch them. I will leave it just as it is. Do not tell anyone that we have found this. I will go to the chief of security and inform him of our findings." Wong Fey instructed her. "We need to know who it is exactly that is doing this without them knowing." Fey slid the box back exactly the way he had found it, hoping there were not any motion sensors to alert who ever it was at the other end that they had been discovered. Returning to the elevator, they did not speak a word, riding in silence back to their respective floors.

SuMing sat at her desk, the floor quiet. Most had already went home for the evening and the only ones left were either coming out of meetings or finishing up a deadline and preparing to leave. Trying to think of who it could be, she sat there. Then Travis came back to her mind. "Him?' she thought to herself. He had been wandering around, trying to get a "feel" of the place. Maybe his wanderings had brought him to the sub basements. He had never been seen at the facility before, at least not by her. And she would have noticed him anyways. He was the type that made his presence known easily. It is not as if he blended in with the crowd so to say. Tall, muscular, with sandy brown hair and brown eyes, not your typical Chinese SuMing thought smiling to herself. No, Mr. Travis Williams would take a bit more scrutiny as far as she was concerned. She remembered his eyes again. They seemed to invoke trust, or a sense that he could be trusted. But why would he want access to that file? That file, she thought. What is it about that file? All it was was an inventory listing with a few undecipherable notes that she did not have a key to unlocking. Alpha numerical coding that only those in the Dallas corporate office knew how to decipher. She heard a soft beep which caused her to turn to her screen. The two shaking hands were gone. She turned to her desk and tried to open the file. It requested a password. She entered the one she had created when she had closed it the last time. It worked. She sat there, now why did my password work this time and the last time it didn't? One has to be created each time you close it and if it had been used, it could not be used again for another 45 logins. This puzzled her. With the spreadsheet opened, she opened the backup file she is required to create in case she needs to restore any information in the current file, initializing the macro she used to check for inconsistencies and started the comparison, cell by cell to see what had been altered this time.

Knowing it would take a while she called her ex-husband to ask him to pick the girls up from school. Dreading the phone call and his innuendos that she was "working" on another promotion, she started dialing the number. It rang twice, "Hello?" he answered. "Lee, it's me, SuMing, something has come up at the office and I am not going to be able to pick the girls up from school. Would you mind getting them and bringing them home later? I will call you as I am leaving the office." she asked him as politely as she could. "What? You have a promotion or a review coming up and need to polish a few apples?" he remarked sarcastically. "Please Lee, just do this. I have a lot of work to do and I do not have time for this right now." she said calmly. "I will call as soon as I am leaving the office. You won't have to keep them any longer than I need you to. I just need to get this wrapped up before I go home." Sighing, and seeing that he was not going to get a rise out of her, he agreed, with some reluctance, to pick the girls up from school and see that they got back home later. "Oh and Lee, see that they get something to eat and please, don't be drinking." she implored of him. "Don't worry SuMing, I know how to conduct myself like a father and do not be telling me what to do." he shot back at her to satisfy his ego. SuMing hung the phone up without saying goodbye and started back to work. About forty minutes later the macro finished running. SuMing reviewed the results and looked for any changes in it. None....it showed that there had not been any changes made in it at all. It was just as she closed it before going to her meeting in Human Resources, or so it appeared to be just as it was when she had closed it. Now why would someone open the file and just view it? They already had the information from earlier and it was not due to be updated until tomorrow by R&D. So, making a copy of it would be useless right now. Then she started thinking about the terminal in the sub basement and Fey saying it showed activity. That someone had the spreadsheet opened at that very minute. "Fey." she thought and picked up the phone, dialed his extension, hoping he had not left for the day. "IT department, Wong Fey." Fey answered. "Good, you haven't left yet, this is Ms Chang. I wanted to tell you that I was able to open the file about 45 minutes ago. I heard a beep from my computer and when I looked, the hands were gone. So, I went ahead and opened the file up and the backup copy I create each time I close it. I ran a consistency check on it to see if there were any changes made to the spreadsheet, it showed that no changes had been made." SuMing told him. "You have a backup copy? Why didn't you tell me this earlier?" Wong Fey asked her, sounding a bit irritated finding out about the backup now.”You didn't ask and I just assumed you would know that backups are always made." she responded. "Company policy, yes I should have known that there would have been backups. Was it password protected?" Fey queried further. "No, it is not required that we password protect the backups." she replied. "There was this young man from the Helpdesk that came the first time and reset my password, he said that he had installed something on my computer, so that the next time it happened they would be able to tell who it was. That they always leave something behind." she continued. "Do you remember who it was?” Fey asked. "Just a minute, he wrote his name down somewhere." SuMing answered. Hoping it had not been left on her desk when her office had been cleaned, SuMing looked in the top drawer of her desk, where she raked everything at the end of the day. Digging for a moment, she came across it. "Tran Vu Duc is his name." she informed Fey. "Vietnamese....hmmm, just a minute, let me check the roster and see what shift he is working." Fey said. "I do not show a Tran Vu Duc as a helpdesk support tech Ms Chang. Are you sure that was his name?" "Yes, positive. He wrote it himself." she answered. "Are you going to be there for a while Ms Chang? I would like to see exactly what it was that he installed on your system." Fey asked. "Well, I was fixing to leave for the evening. I need to be home. My girls will be arriving soon and their father gets impatient easily." SuMing informed him. "It won't take more than a few minutes, I promise, then you can be on your way." he stated. "I guess I can stay a few more minutes Mr. Wong, but then I really need to get going." she reluctantly agreed.

Once Fey arrived at SuMing's cubicle, he got to work right away. Bringing up a command prompt, he queried for any directories created on the date Tran Vu Duc was on the system. He found two, "dir_one and dir_two". He opened it up dir_one and checked the files. In it he found a thin client and a .sys file. The directory dir_two was empty, suggesting that it was used to hold temporary files that were deleted once the program was terminated. Opening up the autoexec.bat file he found a path from the dir_one directory to the chinablue file and to the backup file SuMing created at the end of each session. Another entry to the config.sys file to activate the drivers for the client and a third path to a net1.cfg file. All created on the same day that Tran Vu Duc had worked on SuMing's computer, even the time they were created coincided with him being there. "I think we have found the first piece to this puzzle Ms Chang." Fey informed her, "Tran did install something on your computer that day, an easier access to your files remotely." "How could that be? I called the Helpdesk. The number provided by your department." she stated. "Calls, Ms Chang can be intercepted. They could have been watching you electronically and when you called the Helpdesk, the call was rerouted to another phone and Tran picked up the call." Fey went on. "He is good, but like he told you, they always leave something behind and he did." With that, Fey left things the way they were on SuMing's computer and shut it down for the evening. "Thank you Ms Chang for your patience and I am terribly sorry for the inconvenience I have caused you. Please have a pleasant evening." Fey apologized. "Thank you Mr. Wong for all your help. I would have never figured this out on my own. You have a nice evening also." SuMing said in return.

"This still doesn't mean he isn't a part of all of this." SuMing thought to herself while leaving the building. "He could have been involved with Tran all along, Tran following his orders." She tried to give herself a reason not to think about Travis and to kill this attraction she felt for him. She boarded the bus and headed home for the evening. "Damn!" she thought to herself. "I forgot to call Lee and tell him I would be home soon." She knew this would upset him, so she got off at the next stop to find a phone and call him. She had gotten off near Travis' hotel. Not knowing that he was staying at this particular one. Looking for a phone, she glanced into the window of a restaurant as she passed it. Close to the window sat Travis and his assistant Lei. They were eating dinner and laughing. She paused for a moment looking at Travis. He just happened to glance out of the window and saw her standing there, the light from the street just illuminating her face down to her shoulders. He smiled at her and waved. Lei looked up and quickly turned her face away. Travis stood up and headed for the door. SuMing turned and started walking quickly away from the window, hoping to disappear in the crowd. A minute later, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She froze, and then she heard his voice saying, "Hey, hold on a minute. I was hoping to see you again. Ms Chang? Correct?" Travis asked her. His slight tug on her shoulder got her turn in his direction. She looked up at him, "Yes, Ms Chang, you are correct." she said in a flat tone of voice. "Please come inside and have dinner or a drink at least." Travis politely asked her. "I would like to make up for my insensitive attitude if I may." "You have nothing to apologize for Mr. Williams and as it is, you already have company. Wouldn't that be impolite to her, to bring another in as you were having your dinner?" SuMing said coldly. "I am sure Lei wouldn't mind at all." Travis insisted. "Well I would Mr. Williams and as it is I am running late and do not have the time." she curtly responded. "I hope you have a very pleasant evening Mr. Williams." "Yeah, you do the same Ms Chang." Travis answers sounding like a child that had just been scolded. He watched SuMing as she turned and walked away. Shaking his head he put his hands in his pockets and went back inside to finish his meal with Lei. He did not notice, but this time SuMing turned for just a moment and watched Travis as he entered the restaurant. "Damn." she again thought to herself and then continued to look for a pay phone.