ESPIONAGE: Artist in Brooklyn

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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.