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When asked about the Stasi and the KGB’s support for the Red Army Faction, a shadow falls across the still spry face of Horst Jehmlich, the former Dresden Stasi fixer-in-chief. We are sitting around the dining table of the sunlit Stasi apartment he’s lived in ever since the GDR years, just around the corner from the Stasi headquarters and the villa of the KGB. The fine china is out for coffee, the table is covered with lace. The Red Army Faction members were only brought to the GDR ‘to turn them away from terrorism’, he insists. ‘The Stasi wanted to prevent terrorism and stop them from returning to terrorist measures. They wanted to give them a chance to re-educate themselves.’

But when asked whether it was the KGB who were in fact calling the tune, whether it was Putin who the Red Army Faction members were meeting with in Dresden, and whether the order for the Herrhausen attack could have emanated from there, the shadow across his face becomes darker still. ‘I don’t know anything about this. When it was top-secret, I didn’t know. I don’t know whether this involved the Russian secret service. If it is so, then the KGB tried to prevent that anyone knows about this material. They will have said that this is a German problem. They managed to destroy many more documents than us.’[84]

The former Red Army Faction member’s story is near-impossible to verify. Most of his former comrades are either in prison or dead. Others allegedly involved in the meetings back then have disappeared off the grid. But a close Putin ally from the KGB indicated that any such allegations were extremely sensitive, and insisted that no connection between the KGB and the Red Army Faction, or any other European terrorist group, had ever been proved: ‘And you should not try to do so!’ he added sharply.[85] At the same time, however, the story he told about Putin’s resignation from the security services raised a troubling question. According to this former KGB ally, Putin was just six months from qualifying for his KGB pension when he resigned – at thirty-nine, he was far younger than the official pension age of fifty for his rank of lieutenant-colonel. But the KGB doled out early pensions to those who’d given special service in terms of risk or honour to the motherland. For those who were stationed in the United States, one year of service was considered as one and a half years. For those who served time in prison, one year’s service was considered three. Was Putin close to gaining an early pension because one year’s service counted as two, as a result of the high risk involved in working with the Red Army Faction?