Free Spy Hook by Len Deighton

Lisl's, only three rooms were occupied.'
    'That's only half of the trouble,' said Frank. The doctor said running that place is too much for her. He told Werner that he wouldn't give her more than six months if she doesn't rest completely.'
    'Poor Lisl.'
    'Yes, poor Lisl,' said Frank handing me a brimming glass of port wine. There was a sardonic note in his voice: he usually called her Frau Hennig.
    'I know you never liked her,' I said.
    'Come, Bernard. That's not true.' He picked up his pipe and got it going again.
    'Isn't it?'
    'I said she was a Nazi,' he said in a measured way and smiled to acknowledge his dissembling.
    'That's nonsense.' She was like a second mother to me. Even if Frank was like a second father I wasn't going to let him get away with such damaging generalizations about her.
    'The Hennigs were social climbers in Hitler's time,' said Frank. 'Her husband was a member of the Party, and a lot of the people she mixed with were damned shady.'
    'For instance?'
    'Don't get so defensive, Bernard. Lisl and her friends were enthusiastic Hitler supporters right up to the time when the Red Army started waving a flag from the Brandenburger Tor.' He sipped. 'And even after that she only learned to keep her political opinions to herself.'
    'Maybe,' I said grudgingly. It was true that Lisl had always had a quick eye for any failings of socialism.
    'And that Lothar Koch… Well, we've been through all that before.'
    Frank was convinced that Lothar Koch, an old friend of Lisl's, had some sort of Nazi past. One of Frank's German pals said Koch was a Gestapo man but there were always stories about people being Gestapo men, and Frank had said the same thing about many other people. Sometimes I thought Frank spent more time worrying about the Nazis than he did about the Russians. But that was something common to a lot of the old-timers.
    'Lothar Koch was just a clerk,' I said. I emptied my glass and got to my feet. 'And you're just a romantic, Frank, that's your problem. You're still hoping that Martin Bormann will be discovered helping Hitler to type his memoirs in a tin hut in the rain forest.'
    Still puffing his pipe Frank got to his feet and gave me one of his 'we'll-see-one-day' smiles. When we got to the door he said, 'I'll acknowledge Dicky's memo on the teleprinter, and we'll get together late tomorrow so you can take a verbal back to him. Will that suit you?'
    'Just right! I wanted to have a day sightseeing,' I said.
    He nodded knowingly and without enthusiasm. Frank didn't approve of some of my Berlin acquaintances. 'I thought you might,' he said.
     
    It was about one-thirty when I got back to Lisl Hennig's little hotel. I'd arranged that Klara should leave the door unlatched for me. I crept up the grand front staircase under crippled cherubs that were yellowing and cobwebbed. A tiny shaded table lamp in the bar spilled its meagre light across the parquet floor of the salon, where the enormous baroque mirrors – stained and speckled – dimly reflected the tables set ready for breakfast.
    The pantry near the back stairs had been converted to a bedroom for Lisl Hennig when her arthritis made the stairs a torment to her. There was a wedge of yellow light under her door and a curious intermittent buzzing noise. I tapped lightly.
    'Come in, Bernd,' she called, with no hint in her voice of the frailty I'd been led to expect. She was sitting up in bed, looking as perky as ever: cushions and pillows behind her and newspapers all over the red and green quilt. Reading newspapers was Lisl's obsession.
    Parchment lampshades made the light rich and golden and made a halo of her disarranged hair. She had a small plastic box in her hands and she was pushing and pulling at it. 'Look at this, Bernd! Just look at it!'
    She fiddled with the little box again. A loud buzz with a metallic rattle came from behind me. I was visibly startled and Lisl laughed.
    'Look at it, Bernd. Careful now! Isn't that wonderful!' She chuckled with delight.