Artist in Brooklyn

The shabby, bird-faced man stood silently before Federal Judge Matthew Abruzzo in Brooklyn's U.S. District Court as he was arraigned, occasionally rubbed the handcuffs on his wrists, momentarily allowed his faded blue eyes to show a flash of animation as his gaze darted about the courtroom. Alert U.S. deputy marshals hovered close by, and outside the courtroom shirtsleeved FBI men patrolled the corridors. The U.S. had a valuable catch to protect: the prisoner at the bar was Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, 55. Moscow-born colonel of Soviet intelligence, and possibly the most important Soviet spy ever caught in the U.S.

Behind the Red colonel's capture lay a bizarre story--only partly exposed last week by tight-lipped Justice officials--that in spots seemed to reflect equal doses of Alec Guinness and E. Phillips Oppenheim. Aided by his invaluable surface nonentity, Rudolf Abel had been a successful spy since 1927, spoke fluent English, French, German, was a good hand at electronics, mechanical engineering, photography. With a fake U.S. birth certificate in his pocket, Abel slipped into the U.S. in 1948 at "an unknown point" along the Canadian border. At home in Russia he left his wife, son, married daughter--possibly as insurance of his loyalty. His mission: ferreting out U.S. defense secrets, especially in atomic energy, by a variety of means--including efforts to subvert key U.S. service personnel.

On the Line? Abel did not work alone. Also in the plot, as the grand jury indictment told the story, were his deputy, Lieut. Colonel Reino Hayhanen (cover name: "Vic"), and three others--Vitali G. Pavlov, onetime Soviet embassy official in Ottawa; ex-United Nations employee Mikhail Svirin; Aleksandr Mikhailovich Korotkov. For nine years Colonel Abel and his fellow spies played a deadly serious melodrama. They met at prearranged rendezvous, e.g., Manhattan's Tavern-on-the Green and a Newark railroad station, and exchanged or left messages and microfilmed documents, tapped in on telephone lines to make untraceable calls. They banked hefty sums of money around New York City under various aliases. In 1954 Abel (cover: "Mark") sent Lieut. Colonel Hayhanen first to Salida, Colo., later to Quincy, Mass, to check construction of the Navy's first atomic-powered cruiser, Long Beach. In the spring of 1955 both Abel and Hayhanen roamed the countryside around Poughkeepsie, N.Y. looking for a suitable short-wave radio site.

Hayhanen was recalled to the Soviet Union last winter, shortly afterward defected to the West. Through him last spring U.S. counter-intelligence got wind of Abel's activities. By that time, under the name of Emil Goldfus, Colonel Abel, the shy spy with the chameleon gift of protective coloration, had rented as headquarters a tiny, $35-a-month studio in a run-down brick building on Brooklyn's drab Fulton Street, within full view of the U.S. Attorney's office.

Indeed Abel, now Goldfus, seemed to laugh at the law; he stored some innocuous personal effects in a warehouse-office building that also housed the New York branch of the FBI. Posing as a struggling artist (there were several in the building), the spy hung the studio walls with his own well-executed paintings--a wide-hipped nude, Harlem street scenes, an oil portrait that markedly resembled Khrushchev--stocked up on mystery novels and books on Degas and Van Gogh, sipped his brandy neat at the nearby Music Box bar. He read the local papers and, occasionally, The New Yorker. Sometimes he helped the building janitor make wiring repairs. Said one bemused neighbor later: "He didn't look as if he had a nickel. You'd never take him for a spy."

Yes, Mr. Brandt? Late in April, still keeping his Brooklyn studio, Abel checked in at Manhattan's little Latham Hotel, off Fifth Avenue, as Martin Collins of Daytona Beach, Fla. On June 21 Agent Edward Boyle, of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, ordered to make a routine arrest of an illegal alien, found Abel in his hotel room along with a short-wave radio receiver and a bankbook showing deposits of $15,000. Checking Abel's pockets, Boyle discovered $6,000 and a clothing store receipt addressed to Emil Goldfus. "Who's he?" asked Boyle. "That's me," said Abel calmly.

Abel was quickly and secretly flown to Immigration's alien deportation center in McAllen, Texas. Abel, no doubt, hoped that he would be quickly deported, but the FBI had other plans. Breaking into Abel's cluttered studio, agents found much besides art: finely fashioned drills for hollowing out rings and cuff links and making them into message holders, a book on cryptoanalysis, maps of Chicago and Washington and upper New York State, radio tubes, high-speed film, a Hallicrafters radio (capable of receiving messages from Russia), and a variety of cryptic messages written in Russian and English. The most intriguing, possibly a code for an art-gallery rendezvous: "Is this an interesting picture? Yes. Do you want me to see it, Mr. Brandt? Smokes pipe and has red book in left hand."

No, Mr. Abt? At McAllen, Abel confessed his identity and his illegal entry into the U.S. But of espionage he would say nothing. Assistant Attorney General William Tompkins sped to New York from Washington, quickly secured the indictment, got Abel shipped back to Brooklyn for arraignment and trial. Soviet diplomats declared that they would have "nothing to do with the case," refused to send Abel a lawyer or a visa. Needing a defense attorney, Abel asked a U.S. marshal to contact "Abt." The only Lawyer Abt in the Manhattan telephone directory is John J. Abt, 53, longtime counsel for Communists. Said Abt: "I know nothing about him or the case. I don't see how I would have time to defend him."

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