Perhaps, after he'd finished the cigarette he'd even be able to catch a few hours of sleep before the three-thirty rendezvous with Spalko's boat.
He had almost finished his cigarette and was about to turn around when he heard the whisper of low voices. Startled, he drew his gun and looked around. The voices, drifting on the night air, were coming from behind a pair of enormous boulders that rose up like the horns of a monster from the top of the cliff's face.
Dropping his cigarette and grinding its lit end into the ground, he moved toward the rock formation. Though he used caution, he was fully prepared to empty his weapon into the hearts of whoever was spying on them.
But as he peered around the curving face of the rock, it wasn't infidels he saw but Zina. She was talking in low tones to another, larger figure, but from his angle Arsenov could not tell who it was. He moved slightly, drawing closer. He couldn't hear their words, but even before he noticed Zina's hand on the other's arm, he had recognized the voice she used when she was set on seducing him.
He pressed his fist to his temple as if to stop the sudden throbbing in his head. He wanted to scream as he watched the fingers of Zina's hand draw up into what looked to him like spider's legs, her nails scoring the forearm of . . . who was it she was trying to seduce? His jealousy goaded him to action. At the risk of being seen, he moved farther, part of him entering the moonlight, until the face of Magomet came into view.
Blind rage gripped him; he was shaking all over. He thought of his men-tor. What would Khalid Murat have done? he asked himself. Doubtless, he would have confronted the pair, heard their separate explanations of what they were doing and then made his judgment accordingly.
Arsenov stood up to his full height and, advancing on the pair, held his right arm out straight in front of him. Magomet, who was more or less turned facing him, saw him and abruptly stepped back, severing the hold Zina had on him. His mouth opened wide, but in his shock and terror, nothing came out.
"Magomet, what is it?" Zina said and, turning, saw Arsenov advancing on them.
"Hasan, no!" she cried just as Arsenov pulled the trigger.
The bullet entered Magomet's open mouth and blew the back of his head off. He was thrown backward in a welter of blood and brains.
Arsenov turned the gun on Zina. Yes, he thought, Khalid Murat would surely have handled the situation differently, but Khalid Murat was dead and he, Hasan Arsenov, the architect of Murat's demise, was alive and in charge, and this was why. It was a new world.
"Now you," he said.
Staring into his black eyes, she knew that he wanted her to grovel, to get down on her knees and beg him for mercy. He could care less about any ex-planation she might give him. She knew that he was beyond reason; at this moment he wouldn't know the truth from a clever concoction.
She also knew that giving him what he wanted at the moment he wanted it was a trap, a slippery slope once embarked upon impossible to get off. There was only one way to stop him in his tracks.
Her eyes blazed. "Stop it!" she ordered. "Right now!" Reaching out, she closed her fingers around the barrel of the gun, drew it upward so that it was no longer pointed at her head. She risked a quick glance at the dead Magomet. That was a mistake she wouldn't make twice.
"What's come over you?" she said. "So close to our shared goal, have you lost your mind?"
She was clever to have reminded Arsenov of their reason for being in Reykjavik. For the moment, his devotion to her had blinded him to the larger goal. All he'd reacted to was her voice and her hand on Magomet's arm.
With a ragged motion, he put the gun away.
"Now what will we do?" she said. "Who'll take over Magomet's responsibilities?"
"You caused this," he said with disgust. "You figure it out."
"Hasan:" She knew better than to try to touch him at this moment or even to come closer than she already was. "You are our leader. It's your decision and yours alone."
He looked around, as if just coming out of a trance. "I suspect our neighbors will assume the report of the gunshot was