Was it an Affair?

She grasped my meaning, "You think if the board are involved, they may try something similar on me as a way to keep me quiet?" I nodded. She smiled, "They don't know me. I'll happily stand up in court and have them jailed."

I had a call later from Brian, Samantha had spoken to Harriet. She wasn't to return to the office until she felt able enough. She would decide when she had enough each day. She would be paid as normal. Samantha would keep in contact with her and offered to have the firm pay for counselling for her and for me.

On the following Monday, Samantha arrived unannounced at our offices. She was smiling. She had the contract signed off by the board. She said many on the board were concerned regarding the confidentiality agreement. She persuaded them it covered wholly their business confidentiality as that was required by both companies to enable them to function. She didn't add this didn't include criminal behaviour. She had gone straight on to it may be possible to attack their competitors who were spying on them using their own trojan software against them. The fact they could potentially wreak revenge on their competitors took their minds off the confidentiality agreement.

They were meeting again on Wednesday to discuss the computer system. The costs of a completely new computer and office system had caused concern but even the dinosaurs saw they had to invest or they would lose the business totally.

Max and I followed her back to her offices. We went to their IT and gained passes to their computers and servers, including their offsite ones. We'd have a team of ten working on them initially but first we had to discover the full extent of the problems. During the afternoon, we had access to a computer which we unlinked from the network so we could scan and add programmes to it without compromising the setup. Samantha's very good home security product had found some disturbing stuff, ours found significantly more.

Such was the level of breaches we knew the computer would have to run all night and we'd need to return in the morning. It would take days if not weeks to scan. I couldn't do anything regarding Bright until I had access to their servers. I assumed, he never left anything on his office computer in case that was accessed by others. We updated Samantha as we left. I left her a note allegedly with my contact details if there was a problem but as the computer was not linked to anything, it should be fine. We'd discovered seventy-two infestations already and no doubt more. Once we had an action plan for those we found, we could consider how to deal with the servers as they would be even more infected.

She looked at me and then the note. We had already discussed such an action plan for that eventuality. The note said, "You have at least two cameras covering you in this office."

She didn't look happy, "Thank you. I know this must be extremely difficult for you. I appreciate your efforts. Alan had an idea of what we may need but I presume from what you've found, it will need revised."

I answered, "It may take a couple of weeks even to identify the rogue software on this one computer. We haven't scanned one percent yet and we're over seventy. Hopefully, running it overnight will get us to 8 or 9%. I feel it will be far less. If we're lucky, they will all have similar coding so we can identify and deal with them more quickly. That operating suite has been obsolete for years and no security updates issued for a decade or more. It's no surprise you have colossal problems. This could mean multiple different styles of threats. We'll update Alan and Christine so they can amend their plans."

Once home I had my tea and sat ruminating on what to do about Harriet. I'd never been so unfocussed on anything in my life. I always knew what I wanted to do and set my path to achieve it. My mind was going in all directions.

My mum called to see how I was. Her conversation continued on the line that Harriet hadn't been having an affair. I couldn't see that. Mum was adamant, "if she's had to be drugged and drugged, she wasn't doing it willingly. An affair is being a willing partner. Whatever the outcome, you've both been badly hurt. Listen to your conscience. Allow counselling before jumping into something you can't retract. Take your time, nothing can be done immediately anyway. Just know, Moira and Brian, your dad and I and even Harriet love you.

"Don't stew facing a blank wall. Head to your gym, work out your frustrations, get help. When the media get a hold of it, Harriet and you will need all the support you can muster. We'll all be here for you."

I did head to the gym. It was only them wanting to close which meant I left. When I got home, I was shattered. I'd really gone at it, cardio, and weights. The punchbag had a pounding. My knuckles were complaining.

The next morning, I wasn't surprised to find the programme was only at 3%. There were close to 350 breaches. Breeches being programmes designed to send information back to the source company. Malware, phishing, cookies, we were in five figure thousands. They would soon reach six figures. By the time we finished, there were over one hundred million. I called Alan and said I was on my way.

I stopped at Samantha's and asked if she could be free as we needed to talk in our secure room. We'd need her IT guys as well. She'd round them up and be right behind me. I heard her telling her secretary to cancel her meetings. This was her number one priority.

I had briefed Alan and Christine when they arrived. Max was visiting one of their server sites.

Samantha was shocked when I started that at least forty of the breaches so far detected came directly from their three main competitors. Was she working on something which would be highly interesting to them? She was. She had eight employees researching little bits so no one would know the whole story. She wanted to ensure confidentiality and she was the only one she trusted totally meantime apart from those present.

We introduced her to three of our colleagues who would author the report which would be disseminated to her competitors. It would be convincing and cost them millions. Christine gave her a laptop from our store. It was totally secure and looked like hers. Her original laptop we would keep. We would run additional checks on it. She would take her employees reports and forward to our group. When the full report was ready and she was ready to act, the doctored one would be sent to their system as normal. The spy programmes would download it to their competitors' servers.

As we discover the identities behind other breaches we'd act out research of a similar stature so they would have false information as well.

We explained what Max was doing. He was exploring whether the servers had been compromised at source, if they had redundant ones we could utilise. The IT guys said, no chance to that. The system was so old, they were struggling to keep it together. They cannibalised anything which failed to use any working parts. They needed new, high-quality servers and computers, up to date software, especially protection from hackers.

Samantha was taking notes. She smiled, "I love a good battle and tomorrow's board meeting is going to be one. Do you have any recommendations for what we would need to be as secure and up to date as we can be?"

Alan and Christine gave her their views. They were the hardware gurus. The IT guys were enthralled at how everything they suggested meshed together. Alan suggested replacing the current copper cables with fibre optic which would allow massive speed and content increases which would utilise the full benefits of the new system. He gave her the names of companies we used for that.

"As far as operating systems go, our own inhouse one is one of the best. It works with all major software packages like Office. The antivirus, malware, phishing software we produce is as good if not better than anyone else's and we have Tom and others keeping us ahead of the game."

Samantha left agreeing that we would update her every other day here. As she left she said she looked for those cameras but never saw any. I smiled, "The lock on the filing cabinet and the desk light. I'd need to check them when we have full access to see where they record to and for whom. It may be Bright wanted to know if others were doing what he did or it's the board making sure you don't expose them, so be careful."

She left shaking her head.

Work kept me busy but in my down hours, I still was unable to focus on what I needed to do. Brian kept me up to date on how Harriet was doing. She was suffering from withdrawal symptoms but was becoming more like her normal self. "Slut," I thought.

It took almost a month to analyse that computer. Fortunately, most of the many thousands of breaches were within a class of fifty known worms. This would make it easier to eliminate them, still bloody difficult. Over the following six weeks, we put eighteen major false reports and over two hundred investigative reports on future work into the various multiple competitors' systems which had breached their security. The hope was these would cause them to overpay for business or ignore what were actually potentially very good prospects coming along later. Once we had confirmation they had reached their intended targets we scheduled a holiday weekend to shut down the whole system.

All the computers and servers would be replaced with new ones. We had already installed the base programmes and updated versions of the software they were using, into the new units so it was mostly connectivity problems we were encountering.

We had our antispyware, antivirus system purge the servers of most of the worms but we knew there would be more we hadn't found. Due to the fact that much of the software they had been using was corrupted by those breaches, before files and such like could be transferred to the new ones, we had to screen each file and folder. We even discovered several new variations of viruses which helped us improve our own products. We shared those within our network of similar companies around the world. If they found solutions before us, we benefited. It worked for all of us.

Every staff member had left a list of current projects and files required which we would install on the new computers so they had their work available to them on the Tuesday hopefully. Between the computer suppliers, cabling folk, Fawkes IT and ourselves, there must have been close to two hundred working those four days and nights.

Max, I, and other code workers were tasked to screen everything especially documents to the new servers. I admit my focus was on finding more dirt on Bright and the board. The others covered for me. If they came across anything, they would inform me. Such was the extent of the breaches we had found, the slow process was not met with much annoyance. Anyone needing a file from the old servers just had to ask and we would action that as soon as possible.

Samantha had had a group working with her IT to design a better filing system so it was easier to locate everything. We helped where we could. There were some from her teams who worked alongside us to learn what we were doing to scan, protect their systems. The idea was that they would take over when the number of requests was low or we reached the archive materials. This took four more weeks.

During these weeks we kept the meetings with Samantha. She was delighted. Productivity, despite the limited resource access was up with the new system. We had transferred about 60% to the new servers. We had fewer ongoing files requests to check and the archive could be done by their own staff. Their competitors were already finding those reports contained significant errors and were struggling to get out of overpriced contracts they had entered into on the back of those reports. Fawkes had picked up new business without their competitors trying to muscle in so it appears our efforts were working. It didn't help those competitors that we'd piggybacked a worm which closed their systems down randomly. They're a bugger to find!

On a personal level, I was working or heading to the gym. My mum and Moira kept me updated on Harriet. Moira was in tears when she described the Policewoman interviewing Harriet. She had been there for support. Harriet had taken three weeks for the drugs to come out of her system. She had literally disembowelled herself, blaming herself for everything. The Policewoman had been very professional, explaining why she hadn't caused this. The drugs used weren't date rape drugs but more a mind control and she believed this allowed him to play with her mind and memories. This is what they saw on the videos which they were going through. She was never emotionally involved with him and did try to resist. The fact she was so disgusted at herself showed this.

Harriet was so down, Moira made her go to the doctor and she's on medication. She had contacted Samantha and she was about to take Harriet for counselling. Moira turned on me saying she and my mum agreed I needed help as well. My anger was eating me up. I couldn't move on. She'd ask the counsellor to speak with me. Under duress from my parents, I accepted I needed help so I did have a number of sessions. They helped me lose a bit of the anger. I struggled with accepting Harriet was innocent. It boiled down to my mind portraying Harriet's treatment of me as proof she wanted Bright. It took a few sessions just on this for me to understand Bright used the drugs to coach her in her treatment of me, he viewed me as a cuckold. My standing up to him came as a shock to him.

Later, I found out from DI Spark, the counsellor had contacted him to ask in general terms as he knew he couldn't tell him specifics at that time, what type of drugs he used and how he talked to Harriet. DS McIntosh had called and explained it in as much detail as possible at this time to him. After the trial everything would be made available.

It was this assistance which helped both Harriet and I understand slightly better what had happened. Getting over it would take time, a lot of time.

About three months in, at one meeting, I turned Samantha's world upside down.

After updating on the work in hand, I handed her a folder with an SD card of the images of her in her office, especially when she was changing. The enclosed documents detailed who was spying on her and his network. I told her I hadn't looked at the videos just the accompanying footnotes as I followed the digital trail. What she did with the information was up to her.

At an older site, we had found two servers which had an additional eight extra hidden hard drives. They had what would have been ten years ago, good protection but not from us.

From there we spent three hours explaining what we had found on two of these hard drives. Every member of the board going back the twenty years of records we had accessed so far had been involved. My off-beat suggestion that Sneddon and Davidson raped Harriet as part of their initiation was unfortunately correct. It was a way of ensuring their compliance. In all we had established there were sixty women abused by them. We still had six hard drives to get through so we expected that figure would rise. If everything went well, I hoped to complete analysing those hard drives by the end of the following week. There were three other servers at that site which were still to be examined fully but they appeared standard configuration. The filing system was haphazard but with other colleagues, we were putting each individual rape victim's ordeals together with documentary evidence of who the culprit or culprits were and who they shared those videos with. This procedure followed a defined forensic path with corroboration which would allow prosecutions.

I spoke softly, " I started solely interested in Bright. I can prove he raped two other women at least. What were on his SD cards only the Police know. Where we are struggling is with victim identification. They used their first names or a nickname. We have dates, locations in the offices. The question is how can we identify the victims without alerting them? Even when all the evidence is available, processing it will take more time. I know all this leaves you exposed if they find out.

"Those servers are here within our secure area so they cannot access it. We'll work on it to document all such rapes. Hopefully, we'll not find another. It's unlikely anyone will come up to you saying they have no access to these particular files. If so, tell us. Tell them, in the meantime, some servers failed due to their corruption, efforts are being made to retrieve the lost data.

"You'll have time to plan how you wish to act."

Samantha was shocked at the revelations, "I'm glad that the evidence you have could lead to prosecutions. If you can give me any details of those victims, I'll try and find out who they are. Mark and Bill can access our HR files and match photographs. They'll be careful. When you have everything, I'll have a plan ready to go. These victims will be supported should they wish to lodge complaints. Anyone involved will be gone. It will be difficult but they cannot remain nor be allowed to move elsewhere and continue.

She thought some more before adding, "It may be a good idea to meet the Police Officer in charge of Bright's case here with all the extras. He can advise how I should proceed or indeed take over and I deal with the outcome."

Nothing was said for a few minutes.

I broke the silence, "Samantha, the necklace has recorded your meetings and nothing untoward has happened. Two board members are very keen to have you visit them often and have offered you drinks. We haven't monitored it as such. I'm concerned, given what we've learned about them, they may be preparing the ground to rape you.

"Can you text Board 2 if you are called to a meeting with them? We'll monitor it and if we see you are being plied with something or behaving oddly, we contact Mark and Bill to have them rescue you. If you are in a meeting and feel it's off, text and we'll monitor. Better forty false alarms than one actual event."

They nodded.

She gave an exasperated gasp, "Bloody hell! I love this job, dead boring, nothing to do all day.

"Do you know if any others are involved yet? Those looking to step up to the board."

I shook my head, "They play it very close and there are none we are aware of at this time."

I was wrong it took a month to recover all the files of the board members and their rapes. In all over one hundred and forty women and thirteen men were victims. The rapes only lasted for a period of three months. With Samantha's team's help, we had identified all bar twenty-seven of the victims.

I called the Detective Inspector and updated him. I asked him if he would attend at our office due to our secure room. He asked for the time and I explained when he was able, we would make ourselves available. He would call someone else who was involved and get back to me.

It was now over four months since Harriet's rape ordeal ended. Bright was still on remand but dates for the intermediate diet and the trial at the High Court had been set. The first was in five weeks.

At the meeting, Detective Inspector Spark introduced the Procurator Fiscal, Alison Hutcheon and the Depute Advocate, David Ralston who was prosecuting Bright. DS McIntosh and two other Policewomen from the sexual offences' unit were also present. Samantha, Mark, and Bill were also present. Alan, Christine, and I represented our firm.

David Ralston spoke first, "DI Spark has appraised us of what you have found. Before we get into specifics I need to confirm two points as if they haven't been met, it may scupper any chance of prosecutions going forward. I assume, in keeping with your businesses' requirements you will have confidentiality clauses to protect your business secrets. Does your agreement allow this material to be disclosed? Secondly, the material and the subsequent recovery has been done in a manner which will allow it to be used in evidence?