Above the opposite end of the conference table was a king salmon mounted to a varnished plank. A brass plaque, dark with age, provided statistics on its weight and the circumstances of its demise. Dharmender gave it the side-eye, as if hoping it might supply a clue that would help him solve Laks’s gnomic utterance about fry and smolt. But the dead glass eye of the stuffed fish stared back at him, pitiless and baleful.