transferred there.â
âWell?â
âOn January 1 a Kurt Neumann was arrested and taken there on a specific charge. See?â
He passed the list to Owen.
âThe last document is a public notice listing the names of certain people arrested and convicted of illegal trading in foreign currency. One of the names is Günther Reichenbach. He was arrested on December 18.â
âVery interesting,â Owen said. âPerhaps youâd care to explain.â
âCertainly,â Wyman said. âAll these men were members of network ERF1O6F, headed by Josef Grünbaum, code-named âDovetailâ. Dovetail was a small-time criminal who indulged in theft, pimping and black-market activities. His allegiance to us was strictly mercenary, though he was of some use. Whenever there were military exercises in Thuringia he was able to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. He also had some useful friends in the Volkspolizei , and he tipped us off about the first Brandt visit to Erfurt in â70. I was his case officer.
âNow to the meat of the story. Here is a copy of the Thüringer Neueste Nachrichten , dated May 6. This article hereââ he tapped the paperââcompletes the picture. Dovetail was shot while resisting arrest at the scene of a café brawl on the night of May 5. Taken to an army hospital, dead on arrival. Or so we are led to believe.â
âAre you suggesting that Dovetail was blown?â
âSince they have been rounding up his network one by one, I can reach no other conclusion. And there lies the problem. Dovetailâs set-up was an F-network: so how were the Germans able to arrest the members before the leader? You will note that all the arrests precede Dovetailâs own. But that is supposed to be impossible; none of these people knew the identity of the other members of the network. So if they were arrested before Dovetail, the question arisesâ¦â
âOf how the Germans could have discovered the network?â Owen nodded thoughtfully. âTricky one, that.â
âIndeed,â Wyman said. âYou see, F-networks were established to avoid precisely this situation. The only people who knew the names of Dovetailâs group were Dovetail himself and us. Assuming that Dovetail did not sabotage his own networkâ¦â
âGood God!â Owen exclaimed. It had dawned upon him at last. âAre you saying that weâve got a leak in the Department?â
âNo. Iâm merely asking you for a better explanation. The only record of network ERF1O6F is kept in one file in this department. As with all F-networks, funding was channelled entirely through the leader, in this case Dovetail. The only entry on the central payroll is âDovetailâ, with the network number. All communication with the network was conducted exclusively with Dovetail himself.
âTherefore, there are only two ways in which ERF1O6F could have been exposed. The first is if Dovetail himself was discovered and made to reveal the identity of his accomplices. The second is if someone here passed on the details of ERF1O6Fâs personnel to the Germans.â
âGood God,â repeated Owen. âThis is monstrous.â
There was a pause as Wyman allowed Owen to register the full implications of his discovery. Wyman noted with quiet amusement a series of Ministerial memoranda on Owenâs desk. They were all concerned with saving money. Wyman knew that within a day the same memoranda would be circulated throughout the Department under Owenâs name.
âThe Minister will have to be told,â Owen said.
âOf course,â Wyman said. âAnd he will want to know what weâre going to do about it.â
âYes.â Owen toyed nervously with his pencil. There were lingering traces of ear-wax on its point. âThis is what every departmental head dreads, Wyman.â
It occurred to Wyman that Owen must have