After passing through security, Customs, and Immigration, they arrived on the tarmac and approached the 747. A set of mobile stairs rose up to the high passenger door, which stood open. On the far side of the plane, the truck from Kaller Steelworks Gesellschaft was parked, along with an airport hoist, which was lifting crated parts of the LNG coupling link into the jet's cargo area. The truck was obviously late, and the loading process was necessarily slow and tedious. Neither Kaller nor NextGen could afford an accident at this late stage.
Moira showed her NextGen ID to one of the crew members standing at the bottom of the stairs. He smiled and nodded, welcoming them aboard. Moira breathed a sigh of relief. Now all that stood between them and the Black Legion attack was the ten-hour flight to Long Beach.
But as they neared the top of the stairs, a figure appeared from the plane's interior. He stood in the doorway, staring down at her.
"Moira," Noah said, "what are you doing here? Why aren't you on your way to Damascus?"
Manfred Holger, Icoupov's man in Immigration, met them at the checkpoint to the freight terminals, got in the car with them, and they lurched forward. Icoupov had called him using Sever's cell phone. He'd been about to go off duty, but luckily for them had not yet changed out of his uniform.
"There's no problem." Holger spoke in the officious manner that had been drummed into him by his superiors. "All I have to do is check the recent immigration records to see if she's come through the system."
"Not good enough," Icoupov said. "She may be traveling under a pseudonym."
"All right then, I'll go on board and check everyone's passports." Holger was sitting in the front seat. Now he swiveled around to look at Icoupov. "If I find that this woman, Moira Trevor, is on board, what would you have me do?"
"Take her off the plane," Sever said at once.
Holger looked inquiringly at Icoupov, who nodded. Icoupov's face was gray again, and he was having more difficulty keeping the pain at bay.
"Bring her here to us," Sever said.
Holger had taken their diplomatic passports, passed them quickly through security. Now the Mercedes was sitting just off the tarmac. The 747 with the NextGen logo emblazoned on its sides and tail was at rest, still being loaded from the Kaller Steelworks truck. The driver had pulled up so that the truck shielded them from being seen by anyone boarding the plane or already inside it.
Holger nodded, got out of the Mercedes, and walked across the tarmac to the rolling stairs.
Kriminalpolizei," Arkadin said as he stopped the police car at the freight terminal checkpoint. "We have reason to believe a man who killed two people this afternoon has fled here."
The guards waved him past Customs and Immigration without asking for ID; the car itself was proof enough for them. As Arkadin rolled past the parking lot and onto the tarmac, he saw the jet, crates from the NextGen truck being hoisted into the cargo bay, and the black Mercedes idling some distance away from both. Recognizing the car at once, he nosed the police cruiser to a spot directly behind the Mercedes. For a moment, he sat behind the wheel, staring at the Mercedes as if the car itself were his enemy.
He could see the silhouettes of two male figures in the backseat; it wasn't a stretch for him to figure that one of them was Semion Icoupov. He wondered which of the handguns he had with him he should use to kill his former mentor: the SIG Sauer 9mm, the Luger, or the.22 SIG Mosquito. It all depended on what kind of damage he wanted to inflict and to what part of the body. He'd shot Stas Kuzin in the knees, the better to watch him suffer, but this was another time and, especially, another place. The airport was public space; the adjacent passenger terminal was crawling with security personnel. Just because he had been able to get this far as a member of the kriminalpolizei, he knew better than to overstep his luck. No, this kill needed to be quick and clean. All he desired was to look into Icoupov's eyes when he died, for him to know who'd ended his life and why.
Unlike the moment of Kuzin's demise, Arkadin was fully aware of this moment, keyed in to the importance of the son overtaking the father, of revenging himself for the