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Vmax, I think. There might have been people working there who thought the man better off dead than alive and happy to be working for us, though I wish I didn’t find it so easy to believe.”
    “Well, if the evidence suggests anything of the sort, we’ll certainly have our minds open to the possibility,” Lee said.
    Gelert stretched a little on his pad. “There’s one thing I’d like to clear up,” he said. “That ExTel’s impending acquisition of Maermen GmbH, which was Xainacom Europe until about five weeks ago, doesn’t have anything to do with your urgency about this murder investigation.”
    Hagen said nothing for an entire second, smiling all the while like a still image. “Nothing whatsoever,” he said. “The markets are always full of rumors, Gelert; if half of them were worth half what they were supposed to be, we’d all be rich.”
    “Of course,” Gelert said.
    “Mr. Hagen,” Lee said, working on how to phrase this. “ExTel employs enough Alfen across its facilities that you know better than most what kind of problems a party can run into when looking for even very basic personal information about them, at least from sources in Alfheim.”
    Hagen’s expression went sour. “Tell me about it.”
    “Naturally you’ll be passing on your corporate profile on dil’Sorden to us. But we may need to call on you during the course of this investigation for information that might be…more difficult to access.”
    Hagen looked uncomfortable, and held that still-image look again for a moment or two. In shadowy blue, a line of stick-and-curl Palmerrand characters ran across the bottom of Lee’s field of vision, transcribing the words Gelert was subvocalizing right now:  Let’s see how high he blows.
    “I take your meaning,” Hagen said. “If it comes to that, we’ll talk. Meanwhile, I’ll see to it that his personnel file is on your desk in a few minutes.”
    “That’s fine,” Lee said. “Thanks for the assistance. We’ll be in touch.”
    She waved the link dead, then looked over at Gelert. “Did you think he was going to say ‘no’ right then?” Gelert said. “Because I did.”
    “I was wondering, myself,” Lee said. “And in the unsubtlety department,  you’re  certainly batting strong today. What was that business about Maermen?”
    “He tried to blow it off as a rumor,” Gelert said, and grinned. “Not that he thought I bought it, either. He knows my sources are better than that. Lee, Hagen’s boss, the president of ExTel, is on a rampage right now! After eleven years of frustration, he’s finally got the biggest shopping cart in the world, given him by the UN&ME itself, and he’s running up and down the aisles grabbing every available chunk of Xainacom that’s got ‘50% OFF!’ marked on it. So the word has gone down the line to his minions…especially Hagen. His cash liquidity is stretched to the limit, and he does not want anything in the news right now,  anything , that could make his company look even slightly bad and impair his credit rating. Especially not a murder.”
    Lee got up and stretched again, then started kneading at her back. “Why especially?”
    “It’s too personal. Portfolio managers and stock analysts are timid creatures.” Gelert smiled, showing teeth. “Show them a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, and they see a thunderstorm and dump all their wheat futures. Show them blood and they faint, then sell everything short when they come to. The publicity surrounding a highprofile murder can start all kinds of paranoia working in the people who do the valuation on your company’s stock, and if there’s anything Hagen’s boss doesn’t need right this minute, it’s a slump in his share price. The asset managers will be praying for a quick fix or a  crime   passionelle .” Gelert got up from his pad and stretched fore and aft. “And you know what  you  should be looking for? A new mattress.”
    Lee stopped rubbing her back.