At least my leg is hurting less, and the doctors reckon they’ve managed to save it, although they said it was touch and go at one point. By the time the police found us in the empty block in Gorbitz, I think I was already drifting in and out of consciousness so it was probably for the best that we were arrested. What is the penalty, though, for killing an East German officer, even though we’re not sure whether he was Stasi or police? If they still use the death penalty, I guess it would be for something like that. Would I have more chance of receiving clemency as a foreigner? I’m not sure. In any case, I’m not going to rat on Lotti. I’ve let her down enough – although perhaps she was expecting too much.

If my German has been good enough to understand the guards correctly, I’m now in some sort of remand cell in the main People’s Police building in Dresden – the one that overlooks the Neumarkt and looks a little like an Aztec temple with windows. It’s given me ample opportunity to think about everything, and where it all went wrong.

I don’t think I was set up from the start. That came later.

First there was the meeting with the whistle-blower in London, before I even got to Dresden. I still believe he was genuine – that the documents he handed over were genuine, or at least, copies of the real thing.

Seeing the documents felt like a punch in the guts. It was a betrayal, a perversion, of the sacrifice that had been Fred’s death: my baby brother, with his whole life ahead of him – too young to have dreams, ambitions. So perfect and untouched in death that you couldn’t believe he’d breathed his last breath. My parents certainly never did. And in my dreams, Fred often appears as an adult, and I’m full of joy about what a wonderful human being he’s turned out to be. I’m overcome by love – and then I wake, in a sweat, my heart thumping, and the loss is as painful as ever.

We’d arranged to meet in the Lyceum Tavern – my contact was apparently coming in by train from the Guildford area. He insisted the pub was convenient – he could just walk across Waterloo Bridge to it – but still had plenty of hidden corners. I knew of it vaguely from interviews I’d done at the World Service in Bush House – killing time there either before or after.