had heard the song many times in Moscow clubs, but it seemed startling here in the hind end of the Crimea.
Shumenko stood on a catwalk four yards in the air, bent over a stainless-steel apparatus as large as a blue whale. He seemed to be sniffing something, possibly the latest batch of champagne he was concocting. Rather than turn down the music, Shumenko gestured for Arkadin to join him.
Without hesitation Arkadin mounted the vertical ladder, climbed swiftly up to the catwalk. The yeasty, slightly sweet odors of fermentation tickled his nostrils, causing him to rub the end of his nose vigorously to stave off a sneezing fit. His practiced gaze swept the immediate vicinity taking in every last detail, no matter how minute.
"Oleg Ivanovich Shumenko?"
The reedy young man put aside a clipboard on which he was taking notes. "At your service." He wore a badly fitting suit. He placed the pen he had been using in his breast pocket, where it joined a line of others. "And you would be?"
"A friend of Pyotr Zilber's."
"Never heard of him."
But his eyes had already betrayed him. Arkadin reached out, turned up the music. "He's heard of you, Oleg Ivanovich. In fact, you're quite important to him."
Shumenko plastered a simulated smile on his face. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"There was a grave mistake made. He needs the document back."
Shumenko, smiling still, jammed his hands in his pockets. "Once again, I must tell you-"
Arkadin made a grab for him, but Shumenko's right hand reappeared, gripping a GSh-18 semi-automatic that was pointed at Arkadin's heart.
"Hmm. The sights are acceptable at best," Arkadin said.
"Please don't move. Whoever you are-and don't bother to give me a name that in any case will be false-you're no friend of Pyotr's. He must be dead. Perhaps even by your hand."
"But the trigger pull is relatively heavy," Arkadin continued, as if he hadn't been listening, "so that'll give me an extra tenth of a second."
"A tenth of a second is nothing."
"It's all I need."
Shumenko backed up, as Arkadin wanted him to, toward the curved side of a container to keep a safer distance. "Even while I mourn Pyotr's death I will defend our network with my life."
He backed up farther as Arkadin took another step toward him.
"It's a long fall from here so I suggest you turn around, climb back down the ladder, and disappear into whatever sewer you crawled out of."
As Shumenko retreated, his right foot skidded on a bit of yeast paste Arkadin had noted earlier. Shumenko's right knee went out from under him, the hand holding the GSh-18 raised in an instinctive gesture to help keep him from falling.
In one long stride Arkadin was inside the perimeter of his defense. He made a grab for the gun, missed. His fist struck Shumenko on the right cheek, sending the reedy man lurching back into the side of the container in the space between two protruding levers. Shumenko slashed his arm in a horizontal arc, the sight on the barrel of the GSh-18 raking across the bridge of Arkadin 's nose, drawing blood.
Arkadin made another lunge at the semi-automatic and, bent back against the curved sheet of stainless steel, the two men grappled. Shumenko was surprisingly strong for a thin man, and he was proficient in hand-to-hand combat. He had the proper counter for every attack Arkadin threw at him. They were very close now, not a hand's span separating them. Their limbs worked quickly, hands, elbows, forearms, even shoulders used to produce pain or, in blocking, minimize it.
Gradually, Arkadin seemed to be getting the better of his adversary, but with a double feint Shumenko managed to get the butt of the GSh-18 lodged against Arkadin's throat. He pressed in, using leverage in an attempt to crush Arkadin's windpipe. One of Arkadin's hands was trapped between their bodies. With the other, he pounded Shumenko's side, but he lacked Shumenko's leverage, and his blows did no damage. When he tried for Shumenko's kidney, the other man twisted his hips away, so his hand glanced off the hip bone.
Shumenko pressed his advantage, bending Arkadin over the railing, trying with the butt of his gun and his upper body to shove Arkadin off the catwalk. Ribbons of darkness flowed across Arkadin's vision, a sign that his brain was becoming oxygen-starved. He had underestimated Shumenko, and now he was about to pay the price.
He coughed, then gagged, trying to breathe. Then he moved his free hand up against the front of Shumenko's