Chris Jordan - Torn

“We’re the only Fives with a house anything like this one,” she brags, as we tour the shuttered, shaded interior. “Fives, that’s for Level Five, there’s seven levels altogether, and the only one who’s ever reached Seven is Arthur Conklin. There’s only like about ten who ever made Six. Ruler Weems is a Six. So is Evangeline, although some of us sort of assume she cheated because she’s Arthur’s wife and nobody dared to tell her she didn’t pass. So being a Five is, like, really high in the organization. There’s maybe fifty Fives, and you have to share-in a million a year, minimum, to stay a Five. Until you’re like sixty years old and then you’re an Honorary, and you can stay at your level even if you don’t make as much money.”

“Share-in” is the Ruler version of tithing, and Missy is really proud that she and Eldon share-in way more than a million a year. Which Eldon calls “the price of genius,” at least according to his chatty wife. His particular genius being in gameware design, whatever that is, exactly. My first thought is Guitar Hero, like maybe he designed the fake guitars-isn’t that gameware?-but Missy rolls her eyes and explains that Eldon’s genius is way, way more impressive than Guitar Hero because, artificial drumroll please, he designs technologies for cell-phone gamers. Plus with the money he earned from his first patent he had the foresight to buy a ring tone subscription service, and that’s turned out to be “like, a superinvestment.”

“Ring tones?” I ask. “That’s how you got rich?”

Missy must sense that I’m less than impressed, because she huffs herself up and goes, “Me and Eldon own some of the most famous ring tones in the world!”

“Great. Listen, Missy, I appreciate the tour, you and your husband have a fabulous house, even if we’re sort of hiding in it with the shades drawn, but I’m really not in the mood for House Beautiful, okay? Maybe later, but right now all I care about is how you can help me get my son back.”

“We’re doing all we can,” she protests, getting all sulky. “You heard Ruler Weems. This is a really difficult situation. Not to mention dangerous. Me and Eldon, we’re risking our lives to keep you safe.”

“Okay, you’re risking your life. You’re my angel. Where’s Noah? Where are they keeping him?”

“I don’t know. Someplace we can’t get to, that’s all I know. Probably the Pinnacle.”

“The Pinnacle?”

“Yeah, the Pinnacle is where Arthur lives. And Evangeline. It’s way up the mountain, sort of like built into the mountain, you know? Everybody says it’s fabulous and amazing, but I’ve never seen it. You can’t get to the Pinnacle unless you’re a Six. It’s supposed to be superfortified. Eldon says if the world ever blew up, like in a nuclear war, the Pinnacle would survive.”

“So he’s seen the Pinnacle?”

“No, but he knows people who have. Eldon knows everybody important.”

“Does that man who came to see us, Mr. Weems, does he live in the Pinnacle?”

“He used to, but not anymore. Not since Eva decided to take over.”

“Missy, listen to me. I’m going to assume you’re a good person, okay? And that your involvement in this is well-intentioned. But I want you to do me a favor. I want you to persuade Eldon to take me to the Pinnacle, okay?”

“I don’t think he can do that,” she says, reluctantly. “Ruler Weems might, but not Eldon.”

“When is he coming back, Ruler Weems?”

A shrug. “Dunno. In case you haven’t noticed, nobody tells me anything,” she adds, sounding petulant.

At that moment her husband appears on the grand stairway. He doesn’t seem at all pleased that Missy is conducting a house tour. “Upstairs, both of you.”

“But the place is all closed up from the outside,” Missy protests. “Why do we have to hide in the bedroom?”

“Because we want to stay alive,” he says. “Upstairs, now!”

In his private sanctuary deep inside security headquarters, Bagrat Kavashi finally finds time to think for himself. He hates to admit that a woman has the power to overwhelm his powers of concentration, but Evangeline is no ordinary female. She is, after all, the consort of the great leader, a transcendent genius, and has herself reached a level of oneness to which he can only aspire. At the same time he fears for her judgment, if not her sanity. Her lust is not restricted to the flesh, but extends to all the levers of power within her grasp. Money. Greed. Manipulation. Fear. These are, as he well knows, intoxicants that can overwhelm rational thought. So he takes it with a grain of salt when Eva the Diva rants about purification and purging of the Rulers. In his homeland, regular purges are a useful tool for maintaining power. Stand those you mistrust up against a wall and shoot them. Nothing could be simpler. But as the head of a small but increasingly influential U.S. security firm, Vash is keenly aware that even in a remote corner of Colorado, wholesale slaughter is bound to attract the kind of attention that could destroy the Ruler organization, as well as his own company. A missing person here or there-truly missing-is one thing, and a task he’s well equipped to handle, but making an entire faction disappear-scores of citizens, some of them very wealthy-that remains difficult, if not unthinkable. And yet he must find a way to satisfy Evangeline; his own power and wealth, his fate, is commingled with her own.

A problem to be solved-but what a problem!

Vash pours himself a drink of Georgian vodka from a bottle he keeps in a freezer. An American affectation-a true Georgian would drink vodka at any temperature below a full boil-that he’s grown accustomed to since he arrived on these welcoming shores. In truth, not so welcoming at first-the rival Chechens were already firmly established in Brighton Beach and had little respect for a country lad from Pshavi, Georgia. But with a little luck and a steady hand upon his straight razor, Vash established himself as a force to be reckoned with and soon part of an uneasy alliance between the most ruthless factions of the bratva, the brotherhood of criminals who had elbowed the American Mafia out of their own rackets. Vash’s specialty in Brighton Beach was protection and extortion, just as it had been in his home province. But in the good old U.S. of A., the ambitious young immigrant discovered the usefulness of computer surveillance. Before he broke into the life of, say, a prosperous Russian businessman, he first hacked into the man’s computers, establishing exactly what resources could be reasonably extracted, and what personal habits might make the target vulnerable. From computer hacking, Vash got into advanced surveillance techniques-hidden cameras, tracking devices, all the little toys of espionage-so that by the time he made his move he was eight or ten steps beyond whatever ham-fisted security the target mistakenly believed would keep him safe.

It was like taking candy from babies. Big, murderous babies, some of whom had to be disappeared without a trace. Which meant leaving not so much as a filthy fingernail behind. He’d developed a special technique for such in his native land, and perfected it with the help of American technology. By then Vash had become educated in law enforcement. Although grand juries sometimes indicted criminals when there was no dead body to introduce into evidence, they were loath to do so. Missing persons had a habit of turning up on the other side of the earth, alive and well and drawing from their offshore accounts. And even if the victim really was deceased, the lack of physical proof could be exploited by clever defense attorneys to make it look like good old Boris was living the high life in Säo Paulo or Shanghai. Wink-wink to the jaded juries, who in New York tended to distrust the government almost as much as they did those under indictment.