The girl laughed at him when he told her she had beautiful eyes.
They were sitting at the bar inside the Hotel De Grandin, just the two of them and the man behind the counter. Shrader thought he saw the barkeep smirk in the mirror in back of the serried ranks of liquor bottles, but he wasn’t much discouraged. He might be new to London, but he thought women were the same all over the world.
The girl was looking into the bottom of her glass. Shrader offered to buy her another round. “What are you having?” he asked.
She said she was drinking Scotch whisky. She had hints of some exotic accent in her voice, which made him want to know her all the more. Shrader nodded at the barkeep and laid a half crown on the counter.
“God save the King!” he said, clinking his glass against hers.
The girl just smiled and sipped her Scotch. He decided to try another tack.
“You can probably tell I’m not British,” he said. “My name’s Shrader, from the States. I’m in flame-retardant fabrics—jackets for firemen, blankets for welders, like that.”
“No doubt a lucrative trade,” said the girl. “Especially if Herr Hitler has his way.” She still hadn’t offered her name.
“Then you don’t agree with the PM? No appeasement for you, eh?”
“Hitler only respects strength. The British would do well to understand that.” The girl shrugged. “Thank you for the drink, Mr. Shrader.” She turned gracefully on her seat with her knees together, preparatory to standing up.
“At least tell me your name,” said Shrader.
For a moment he thought she would demur, then: “You can call me Liné,” she said.
“LEE-nay.” Shrader repeated her name carefully to fix it in his memory—his salesman’s habit on meeting someone new.
“It’s an old Spanish name,” said the girl. “Or rather, Latin. But recently I’ve been living in Berlin. Berlin is the center of the world, these days…”
“Tell me about it,” said Shrader.
He was about to go on when the barkeep leaned over the counter at him, both hands flat on the polished teak. “If you don’t mind, sir. I’ll be closing up soon.”
Annoyed, Shrader turned to look at him: a red-faced Cockney in a waiter’s white shirtsleeves and black tie. He looked closer, saw a spot of color on the bartender’s lapel. It was a pin, an enameled roundel with a white flash on a field of blue. British Union party. Nazi sympathizers.
“I want nothing else from you,” said Shrader coldly. “You damned Limey fascist—”
“I’ve a right to my own views,” said the bartender. He huffed, gave the counter a violent swipe with his towel and turned his back.
Shrader was about to say something more when the girl put her hand on his arm.
§
In the end he escorted her back to her room, traversing the long, carpeted halls of the De Grandin with an arm about her waist. He moved in close while she searched her pocketbook for the room key, brushing back the auburn hair from the nape of her neck. She turned and kissed him hard then, biting his lower lip before pulling back with her palms flat against his chest. She had dainty hands in gloves of fine white kid.
“Not here,” she said. “Someone might come.”
Inside the room, she left her pocketbook on the nightstand, turned back the counterpane, and told him to get into bed while she changed. When she came back from the cloakroom she was wearing a printed silk kimono, sashed at the waist with a broad green obi, her hands hidden inside the sleeves of the gown.
She stood for a moment at the bedside, smiling down at him. Then she turned and opened the gown and let it fall away from her white shoulders with a whisper of silk on skin. Her body underneath the dress was long and fit, with smooth powerful thighs and buttocks. A tail of the same ginger-colored shade as her auburn locks depended from the base of her spine; switched restlessly against the backs of her knees. She faced him then with her hands turned out from her sides. She had not removed the white kid gloves.
“Do you still think me beautiful?” she said.
From breast to groin ran a double row of teats, eight in all.
“I went to Berlin for these,” she said. She put a finger in her eye and when she took it out again the iris was all golden with a vertical slit for a pupil and there was a little glass circlet between her thumb and forefinger. “They’re called contact lenses,” said Liné. She removed the lens from her other eye as she spoke and put them both into a compact she took out of her pocketbook. “The Germans didn’t invent them, but as with everything else, it seems, they have perfected them. I had these made specially for me by Dr. Heinrich Wohlk himself.”
She began tugging at her fingers, removing the white gloves at last. Underneath she had short digits with pads and hooked talons. She reached into her mouth and removed a dental plate. Her real teeth were all sharp and perfect.
“Yes,” he said. He stared at her. He felt that she was what he’d been looking for all his life without knowing it.
She put one of her short-fingered hands to his face and raked it gently down his cheek.
“I’m adopted,” he said suddenly. “My parents sent me to all the best doctors and dentists. So, I know about Dr. Wohlk. And my teeth are all capped.” He held up a hand and waggled his fingers. “Declawed. Cropped, too.”
“You poor thing,” said Liné.
§
Afterwards they lay together in the mess of silk bedclothes and talked long into the night. Liné told him that her family had used the surname Bera for centuries, although they were not, of course, really Turkish. They didn’t belong to any nation known to man. They belonged only to their own hidden nation. She told him, too, about her time in Germany.
“Hitler has the Nazis so terrified of a Jewish conspiracy that they can’t see what’s right in front of them.”
“You met the man?”
“I wanted to. He has an eye for the ladies, you know. I thought I might get close to him, get him alone—”
“And?”
She shrugged her lithe shoulders. “Curiosity, perhaps. Or perhaps I thought I might save the world.”
“You’ve been reading too many novels,” laughed Shrader. “Like that British fellow, Household. Rogue Male, indeed!”
They were still awake when the sun came up, and Shrader offered to go down for breakfast. “I’m an American in my habits,” he said. “And I prefer coffee, just plain black coffee. But I can bring tea and milk if you want—?”
“Oh, no,” said Liné. “I like a strong cup, like the Turks. Darker than you think.”
After breakfast they went out, arm in arm, to see all the sights of their great, cruel city.
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