Story of a Russian spy in 1950’s Brooklyn

[ narrative.ly].  

This is a story about a man named Rudolf Ivanovich Abel. He was a colonel in the KGB—a master spy, a mole deeply embedded in the United States, and the central hub of a massive, all-consuming espionage network that threatened all that we hold near and dear.

Well, that’s not totally true.
He was also Emil Goldfus, a kindly, unassuming, retired photofinisher and amateur painter, developing his craft with a group of fledgling Realist artists living and working in Brooklyn in the 1950’s.

Of course, that’s not entirely true either.
What is undeniable is this: At seven a.m. on the morning of June 21, 1957, a naked, sleep-deprived and bedraggled Emil Goldfus, a fifty-ish man, answered a persistent rapping on the door of his shabby room in the Hotel Latham on East 28th Street.

In marched three F.B.I. agents, who directed the target of their early-morning interrogation to find a pair of undershorts and sit on the bed. Calling him “Colonel,” they peppered him with questions about his identity and matters relating to espionage, warning him that a refusal to cooperate would result in his immediate arrest. Goldfus remained mostly silent, grunting one-word, often contradictory or false responses, and denying everything.

…

On August 7, 1957, my father, Burton Silverman—a young artist fresh out of the Army—was walking down the street on the way to his layout and graphic design job for the then-liberal New York Post when he caught a glimpse of a blaring headline at a newsstand: “RUSSIAN COLONEL IS INDICTED HERE AS TOP SPY IN U.S.” and the sub-header, “Suspect Said to Have Used Brooklyn Studio to Direct Network.” The lede further stated that he was, “The most important spy ever caught in the United States.”

For my father, it was a moment of extreme unreality. The face staring back at him from the newspaper was his good friend Emil, not some KGB spook. How could Emil be a “master spy,” or even a common, everyday spy? He was an amateur painter, a fine guitar player and a charming older gentleman. How could that man be the enemy? He was frozen in his tracks, transfixed by the image, unable to reconcile the contradiction of the man he knew (or thought he knew) with the words in print staring back at him. It was as if a hole in the fabric of his universe had suddenly opened up under his feet.

…

One story that might lend credence to that idea occurred when Silverman and Goldfus were once again in the studio late at night. They were in Goldfus’s room and his shortwave radio was on, sputtering an unfamiliar, Strauss-like tune along with an indecipherable, Central European-sounding commentator.

The phone rang in Silverman’s studio. He answered it, and the voice on the other end asked why he was working at such a late hour. Jokingly, Silverman responded, “Oh, Emil and I were just listening in on Moscow.”

When Silverman hung up the phone, Goldfus’s affable, easygoing demeanor had vanished completely, replaced by a cold, hard glare—the only one he had ever evinced in the three years they were friends. He snapped, “Don’t ever say such a thing like that on the telephone again. Not even in jest.”

Goldfus wasn’t wrong. Conspiracy charges have been built on far flimsier evidence than ill-considered jokes, especially via telephone. It’s the kind of incident that, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t be memorable. It’s only in recollection, when you discover that your friend was a spy, that it stands out.

There were other odd moments as well: nagging details and incidents that just didn’t make sense. To Silverman, Jules Feiffer said, “You know, Emil gives me the feeling of a guy who’s been on the bum. No matter how much of a fat cat they get to be, they never lose that look.”

Danny Schwartz agreed. Upon first meeting Emil Goldfus and hearing his story about working as a photofinisher, he said that Goldfus was too worldly and too educated for that particular trade, saying, “You know, the whole thing sounds fishy. This guy isn’t what Burt [Silverman] takes him to be.”

Silverman’s brother Gordon had his suspicions as well. He was an electronics engineer, and one day, while visiting Silverman’s studio, he got into a conversation about physics with Goldfus, finding that he possessed a degree of expertise that was surprising for someone that wasn’t a professional.

Of course, when he wasn’t in his studio, Goldfus was, in fact, engaged in espionage.

…

Goldfus would receive coded messages from Moscow via his shortwave radio transmitter. He would then translate the code via his Russian codebook into yet another code, and then make microdotted messages, photographing, shrinking and transferring those messages to the secret compartments that he had hidden inside the laundry list of everyday items that the F.B.I. discovered: the coin, the hairbrush, etc.

The vast bulk of his time was spent in this delicate, precise, ritualistic and yet ultimately tedious task. For the most part, these messages were mundane: letters from home, records of cash deliveries, changes in the times for processing and sending other orders.

…

il Goldfus was convicted of conspiracy to obtain and transmit U.S. defense information, and of acting as an agent of a foreign government. He was sentenced to thirty years in prison and a $3,000 fine, even though the prosecution had failed to identify any other members of the ‘ring’ that he allegedly operated. While in federal prison in Atlanta, Goldfus’s lawyer contacted Silverman, asking if he’d be willing to correspond with his client.

Silverman refused, explaining that, as much as he’d like to, the political climate of the Cold War made that impossible. In 1962, after only serving four years of his sentence, Goldfus was sent back to the Soviet Union, traded for downed U-2 Pilot Gary Powers in a truly filmic exchange on the Glienicke Bridge, known during the Cold War as the “Bridge of Spies” for the numerous transactions that occurred there.

After his return, the U.S.S.R. feted him as a national hero—an operative who had evaded and subverted the Americans for nine years without detection. Though like the F.B.I., the Soviets never overtly declared what information Goldfus had obtained and sent back to Moscow, they were just as invested as the United States in the myth that Goldfus had been a “master spy.”

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