"Devra, it's me." And after a short silence, "Open the door."
A moment later, the door folded back. She stood in front of him.
"I want to come in," he said.
Their eyes locked for the space of several heartbeats as each tried to gauge the intent of the other.
Then she backed up against the tiny sink, Arkadin stepped inside, with some difficulty shut the door behind him, and turned the lock.
Chapter Thirty
IT'S STATE-OF-THE-ART," Gunter M?ller said. "Guaranteed."
Both he and Moira were wearing hard hats as they walked through the series of semi-automated workshops of Kaller Steelworks Gesellschaft, where the coupling link that would receive the LNG tankers as they nosed into the NextGen Long Beach terminal had been manufactured.
M?ller, the team leader on the NextGen coupling link project, was a senior vice president of Kaller, a smallish man dressed impeccably in a conservatively cut three-piece chalk-striped suit, expensive shoes, and a tie in black and gold, Munich's colors since the time of the Holy Roman Empire. His skin was bright pink, as if he'd just had his face steam-cleaned, and thick brown hair, graying at the sides. He talked slowly and distinctly in good English, though he was rather endearingly weak with modern American idioms.
At each step he explained the manufacturing process with excruciating detail, great pride. Spread out before them were the design drawings, along with the specs, to which M?ller referred time and again.
Moira was listening with only one ear. How her situation had changed now that the Firm was out of the picture, now that NextGen was on its own with the security of its terminal operations in Long Beach, now that she had been reassigned.
But the more things change, she thought, the more they stay the same. The moment Noah had handed her the packet for Damascus she knew she wouldn't disengage herself from the Long Beach terminal project. No matter what Noah or his bosses had determined she couldn't leave NextGen or this project in jeopardy. M?ller, like everyone else at Kaller and, for that matter, nearly everyone at NextGen, had no idea she worked for the Firm. Only she knew she should be on a flight to Damascus, not here with him. She had a grace period of mere hours before her contact at NextGen would begin to ask questions as to why she was still on the LNG terminal project. By then, she hoped to convince NextGen's president of the wisdom of her disobeying the Firm's orders.
Finally, they reached the loading bay where the sixteen parts of the coupling link were being packed for shipment by air to Long Beach on the NextGen 747 jet that had brought her and Bourne to Munich.
"As specified in the contract, our team of engineers will be accompanying you on the homeward journey." M?ller rolled up the drawings, snapped a rubber band around them, and handed them to Moira. "They'll be in charge of putting the coupling link together on site. I have every confidence that all will go smoothly."
"It had better," Moira said. "The LNG tanker is scheduled to dock at the terminal in thirty hours." She shot M?ller an unpleasant look. "Not much leeway for your engineers."
"Not to worry, Fraulein Trevor," he said cheerfully. "They're more than up to the task."
"For your company's sake, I sincerely hope so." She stowed the roll under her left arm, preparatory to leaving. "Shall we speak frankly, Herr M?ller?"
He smiled. "Always."
"I wouldn't have had to come here at all had it not been for the string of delays that set your manufacturing process back."
M?ller's smile seemed immovable. "My dear Fraulein, as I explained to your superiors, the delays were unavoidable-please blame the Chinese for the temporary shortage of steel, and the South Africans for the energy shortages that is forcing the platinum mines to work at half speed." He spread his hands. "We've done the best we could, I assure you." His smile widened. "And now we are at the end of our journey together. The coupling link will be in Long Beach within eighteen hours, and eight hours later it will be in one piece and ready to receive your tanker of liquid natural gas." He stuck out his hand. "All will have a happy ending, yes?"
"Of course it will. Thank you, Herr M?ller."
M?ller nearly clicked his heels. "The pleasure is all mine, Fraulein."
Moira walked back through the factory with M?ller at her side. She said good-bye to him once more at the gates to the factory, walked across the