Yeah, I had this exact same situation happen to me not too long ago as well. I was wondering why my Tactics Pearl quest never triggered, and then one day I just went into Promyvion, and lo and behold, there was my NPC after I clicked on the rendevous point. Now I have my pearl.
Yeah, the trigger text is rather innocuous, and never comes up again, so you can easily miss it. It's not in your quest log, so you wouldn't know you had it open if you didn't catch it, either.
