“I wasn’t banned,” Dewey said, “I was told not to linger near the War Room. That’s not a ban. It’s more like a suggestion.”
“It’s a ban, Dewey. Don’t go near the War Room, and don’t speak to the guard at the entrance, and especially don’t ask him questions about the security!”
“People are so touchy,” Dewey muttered. “I do work here, you know. Why does everyone treat me like I’m an idiot?”
“Because you don’t have any self-awareness. You’re like a…” She trailed off. Dewey’s face fell, and for the first time, she noticed he was clean-shaven. He wore a ridiculous-looking red shirt that was two sizes too small for his lanky frame, but it was the fact that it was clean and wrinkle free that gave her pause. Even his brown slacks were neatly pressed.
It was the first time in over a year that she had seen him in anything other than sweatpants and t-shirts. “What’s going on? What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” Dewey said. “I got lonely. I… feel like my brain is short-circuiting. I’ve absorbed too much information. So, I made a task list of things to make me seem more human. You know. Put on some decent clothes. Eat a salad instead of beef jerky and popcorn. Go somewhere different. Speak to friends.”
She sighed. In all their years of friendship, Dewey had exhibited very little inclination in doing any of those things. “You’re creeping me out.”
Dewey blinked. “I should have some coffee. Are you still on the wagon?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. That takes discipline. I should know. I gave up porn when you gave up coffee.”
It was her turn to blink. “What?”
“Yeah,” Dewey said breezily, “I figured if you could give up something you love, then so could I. I don’t know if you know it, but I love porn.”
“Porn isn’t the same as coffee.”
Dewey rolled his eyes, stood, and returned soon after with a large coffee. He sat down on the high silver stool and raised an eyebrow. “This won’t bother you?”
“Well…”
He took a long sip and made a face. “I don’t know what you see in this stuff. It’s not as good as Red Bull.”
“You need to take better care of yourself.”
“I am taking better care of myself. I haven’t had a Red Bull in almost two days.”
“You gave up porn and Red Bull?”
He glanced down at the table. “I don’t know if I should tell you…”
“Tell me what?”
“I was having heart palpitations.”
“God, Dewey!”
He held up a hand. “It’s nothing. Doctor Barnwell said I need to lose forty pounds and start exercising, but he said I’ll be okay. Well, he said I won’t die if I follow his orders. That’s another reason why I”—he glanced around at the gray concrete walls of the coffee shop—“decided to get out and see the sights. Not like there are a lot of sights around here. Hey, can I go outside?”
“It’s hot outside. And dusty. And there’s low-level radioactive contamination from controlled burns back in the seventies and eighties.”
“Sheesh. Everyone says nature is supposed to be good for you. No wonder I’ve avoided it.”
She frowned. “When was the last time you left the base?”
He blinked. “Leave? Why would I leave?”
“You get a week of leave every four months. I know because I helped get you hired, remember?”
He squinted at her. “I haven’t left since I got here. You didn’t know?”
She rocked back in her chair. “You’ve been here almost six years. What do you do on your leave?”
“Play games, mostly. Binge-watch television series. I’m really into Alias right now. Jennifer Garner is so… nubile.”
“That’s gross. I’m sorry, Dewey. I thought you were getting out of this place.”
He smiled, and it lit up his face, making him appear like an overgrown teenager. “It’s okay. I know you’re busy. I’m not your problem.”
Her stomach lurched. “We’re friends. Friends look after each other.”
“Yeah? Hey, I almost forgot. I found those Digital Freedom Alliance people.”
“You what?”
“The DFA. I thought you were looking for them.”
“I wanted you to investigate the oil prices.”
“Yeah, about that. I traced lots of purchases through dozens of accounts, but the accounts were fake.”
“How is that possible?”
“Someone has a lot of money,” Dewey said. “And some pretty hefty hardware. Remember that AI thing I wrote for analysis? The purchases didn’t seem legit, so I tracked the different brokerages. The transactions were made using Tor, so I started cracking their hosting servers, one by one.”
“There are hundreds of Tor servers on the Internet. Maybe thousands.”
“Yeah, sorry it took so long.”
“Long? It’s only been two days!”
“Is that all? Anyway, after I compromised enough servers, I did a mile-high analysis of traffic patterns, and then it was pretty easy to track it back through the Tor network to a pair of servers in London. It turns out those are private proxies. After I hacked those, I found logs of traffic to the hacker site where the DFA’s been dumping all that bank data. And that video. Did you see that video?”
“Yes, I saw the video.”
“That looked a lot like John Frist, didn’t it? I mean, jumping from the window and using a drone to slow his fall? Only a maniac would try something like that, and he’s kind of a maniac…”
It took every ounce of her willpower to keep from slapping him. “That was Frist.”
“Oh. That’s pretty cool, isn’t it? I wonder if his prosthetic leg helped cushion the fall. I’ll bet—”
“Can you focus on the DFA? Pretty please?”
“Sure,” he said. “Like I said, my brain’s… scrambled.”
“Dewey!”
“Right, right. I’m just guessing, you understand, but either the DFA, or someone in the DFA, has been shorting oil.”
Karen’s friend, Keyla, worked the financial analyst desk and had explained the concept of shorting. “How could shorting oil be profitable?”
“The oil market isn’t like other markets. Probably sixty percent of the price is actually geopolitical. Every time there’s a hiccup in production, it creates an artificial spike in price. As the Iraqi oil fields were brought back online, it caused a price dip.”
“I know that.”
“Even after factoring in the geopolitical conflicts, the price has still trended up. The global recession should have put downward pressure on the prices. Even the increase in Chinese demand can’t explain the surge.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I think,” Dewey said slowly, taking another gulp of coffee, “that the DFA has been shorting oil for years. Every time there is a report that shows the oil glut increasing, the DFA places huge numbers of shorts by thousands of fake accounts.”
“They short oil when it is falling? They should be losing all their money.”
He shook his head. “You would think that, but remember, they have a lot of money. Oil isn’t like stocks or other commodities. The balance between supply and demand is tight. Even small disruptions are blown out of proportion. When they short themselves, they also go long.”
“They’re losing money to make money?”
“They take massive losses, but the appearance of losses scares other investors, who also go long. It keeps the price so artificially high that they make back much of the money.”
“Then why do it?”
As soon as she asked the question, she realized the answer had a simple solution. America was the biggest consumer of oil. An artificial inflation of oil prices hurt the US economy. “You made yourself an expert in global oil markets, found global price manipulation, figured out it was the DFA, and changed your clothes. All in the past two days?”