Sitting in the jetliner he heard the quick report from the gun, leaves falling over her dead body, covering her like a blanket.

Devra, who was seated on the aisle, got up, made her way back to the lavatories.

Arkadin closed his eyes and was back in the sooty stench of Nizhny Tagil, men with filed

teeth and blurry tattoos, women old before their time, bent, swigging homemade vodka

from plastic soda bottles, girls with sunken eyes, bereft of a future. And then the mass

grave…

His eyes popped open. He was having difficulty breathing. Heaving himself to his feet,

he followed Devra. She was the last of the passengers waiting. The accordion door on the

right opened, an older women bustled out, squeezed by Devra then Arkadin. Devra went

into the lavatory, closed the door, and locked it. The OCCUPIED sign came on.

Arkadin walked to the door, stood in front of it for a moment. Then he knocked on it

gently.

“Just a minute,” her voice came to him.

Leaning his head against the door, he said, “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.

Thirty

IT’S STATE-OF-THE-ART,” Gunter Mьller 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.

Mьller, 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

Mьller 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. Mьller, 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.” Mьller 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 Mьller 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 Mьller?”

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.”

Mьller’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 Mьller.”

Mьller nearly clicked his heels. “The pleasure is all mine, Fraulein.”

Moira walked back through the factory with Mьller at her side. She said good-bye to

him once more at the gates to the factory, walked across the gravel drive to where her

chauffeured car sat waiting for her, its precisely engineered German engine purring

quietly.

They pulled out of the Kaller Steelworks property, turned left toward the autobahn

back to Munich. Five minutes later, her driver said, “There’s a car following us,

Fraulein.”

Turning around, Moira peered out the back window. A small Volks-wagen, no more

than fifty yards behind them, flashed its headlights.

“Pull over.” She pushed aside the hem of her long skirt, took a SIG Sauer out of the

holster strapped to her left ankle.

The driver did as he was told, and the car came to a stop on the shoulder of the road.

The Volkswagen pulled in behind. Moira sat waiting for something to happen; she was

too well trained to get out of the car.

At length, the Volkswagen drove off the shoulder, into the underbrush, where it

disappeared from sight. A moment later a man became visible tramping out onto the side

of the road. He was tall and narrow, with a pencil mustache and suspenders holding up

his trousers. He was in his shirtsleeves, oblivious to the German winter chill. She could

see that he had no weapons on him, which, she reasoned, was the point. When he came

abreast of her car, she leaned across the backseat, opened the door for him, and he slipped inside.

“My name is Hauser, Fraulein Trevor. Arthur Hauser.” His expression was morose,

bitter. “I apologize for the incivility of this impromptu meeting, but I assure you the

melodrama is necessary.” As if to underscore his words, he glanced back down the road

toward the factory, his expression fearful. “I do not have much time so I shall come

straight to the point. There is a flaw in the coupling link-not, I hasten to add, in the

hardware. That, I assure you, is absolutely sound. But there is a problem with the

software. Nothing that will interfere with the operation of the link, no, not at all. It is, rather, a security flaw-a window, if you will. The chances are it might never be