on february 10, 1962, two spies walked past each other on Berlin’s Glienicke Bridge, not meeting one another’s gaze. They were pawns being exchanged on the Cold War chessboard.
Walking west was the famous U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, who, on May 1, 1960, had been shot down over the Soviet Union while on a reconnaissance flight from Peshawar, Pakistan to Bodo, Norway. Powers had pled guilty to espionage and been sentenced to ten years in a Soviet prison. But the man walking east remained largely a mystery to American authorities, despite months of investigation and five years in prison. At the time of his arrest, he identified himself as Rudolph Ivanovich Abel, yet he had used documents in the names of Emil R. Goldfus, Martin Collins, and Andrew Kaoytis, while his informants and subordinates referred to him simply as Mark.
Even after he returned to his own country, where he received numerous regalia and was proclaimed one of the Soviet Union’s most famous “illegals,” he had a hard time keeping his own name. Soviet authorities wanted him to go down in history as Abel – the name of a longtime friend. But, at home in Moscow, as his daughter Evelina (who died subsequent to this interview) told Nikolai Dolgopolov, he was William Fisher:
The hardest thing father had to endure at the end of his life was the fact that he was not allowed to relinquish the name the authorities had pinned on him. They decreed that he should be known once and for all as Abel. And mother and I only dug in our heels the day before his funeral, saying “We will bury him at Donskoy [monastery] under his real name.”
Evelina Fisher, the daughter of the famous spy, never herself joined the Service, yet her life was such that she unquestioningly obeyed its strict rules.
In my long decades of journalism, I never met a more difficult interviewee than Evelina Vilyamovna Fisher. She met me happily enough: “Well, where have you been? I’ve been waiting and waiting. And I’ve already read your book.” Yet she could be truly cutting: “How can you even dare to ask such questions!? It’s indecent!” Overcome with anger, I would leave Abel’s apartment on Prospect Mira, a place where even the paintings on the wall recalled her father’s peculiar profession. Alongside a landscape of Russian birches hung a portrait of a black boxer from God knows where.
And yet, at the end of her life, even Iron Evelina began to open up.
William Genrikhovich Fisher was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1903. His father, an ethnic German, and his Russian mother were exiled to England in 1901 for their support of revolutionary activities. He fell into the Cheka accidentally, while working as a Komsomol translator in 1927, after the family returned to Russia in 1920. He lacked a higher education, so his parents said, “You wanna get married, you’re gonna have to earn a living.” In spite of his modest experience, the Cheka bosses became rather interested in him, because he was still a British citizen.
Evelina was still a young girl when, in the 1930s, her father took her and her mother on his first assignment to his homeland, to England, and then on to Norway. The little girl was an excellent cover for the illegal radio operator. Even though the location of Lieutenant Fisher’s first foreign assignment had long since been declassified, Evelina remained guarded about the details of the family’s life in England and Norway.
To the extent I was able, I of course understood something about the duality of our situation. We lived there under our own names. While abroad, Mama and Papa were called Willy and Ella Fisher. And I had my own name; my whole life I have been Evelina. Whenever I would interact with local children, with Norwegians or with the English, it was of course embarrassing that they had so many relatives and I had none.
Once, prior to father’s passing, when he was sick, he was sitting on the couch and he did not so much confess as simply mumble that he had taken a great sin upon his soul when he convinced the famous scientist Pyotr Kapitsa to return back home from England. He had been ordered to persuade Kapitsa to return home. It was not a typical assignment for him: he generally did not work with our people, with Soviets. And father recounted this without any happiness or pride, simply that he had convinced him. He met him, and applied all his orator’s skills, saying that massive, thrilling work awaited Kapitsa in Moscow, on a new, unprecedented project. Perhaps they had in mind something that was later connected with the atomic business? Or simply they did not want to lose a talented scientist, leaving him in England? Father succeeded. And they sort of stayed in touch.
When father was fired from the service in December 1938, that family’s name arose again in Moscow, in connection with translation work in 1939-1941. Of course, they knew one another. Kapitsa, who feared no one, worked in the Patent Office and father got some translation work through him. That helped a lot during the time he was idle and didn’t have a job. This truly surprised father. Many people turned their backs on him then. But not Kapitsa. They had fired him without explanation, but apparently because the rezident Orlov had stayed abroad and defected to the U.S. Father was his radio operator, and they knew each other well.
EVERYONE HAS THEIR OWN WAR
On October 8, 1941, Mama, Papa and I left Moscow for Kuybyshev.* We were evacuated. All the personnel and the families of Chekists were loaded in teplushkas (stove heated vans), and we even had Spot with us. He was a really excellent, magnificent, sparkling-fur fox terrier with an ordinary English name. Papa said: if they don’t agree to take Spot in the van, then I will shoot him, because he would surely die in any case. But they agreed and our van was the only one to make the long trip without getting robbed. Thanks to us having a dog on board, no outsiders could approach. There were two other children in our van besides me, and they were crazy happy that we had a dog with us.
By the end of October, the convoy reached Kuybyshev, but they didn’t let us get off there, even though Mama had an agreement with the local opera and ballet theater to work there as a harpist. They let us off at Sernovodsk, a tiny little resort town. Papa stayed with us for, I believe, two days, then went back to Kuybyshev… and disappeared. We sat there with nothing – no ration cards, no money. They had dropped us off and forgotten about us.
Then Mama sprang into action. The wife of a coworker who had been in our van was a professional singer. And the two of them organized a concert for an air unit which was stationed nearby. Everyone who was able took part. I played the cello and my cousin Lida recited [Mayakovsky’s 1929] poem “On the Soviet Passport.” Lida was my cousin, but she grew up in our family, so she is like a sister.
The officers of the unit were very satisfied with the concert: things were not so comfortable in Sernovodsk. In gratitude, they took Mama to Kuybyshev in one of their military vehicles – at that time you could only get there if you had a pass. And there, on the street, Mama by chance met Uncle Rudolf [Abel], who told Mama that Papa had been sent on an assignment to Ufa, to get some kind of equipment. He gave Mama a bottle of liquor and said that, when Willy returned, we would all have a drink together. There was very little left in the bottle and it ended up being used for something else entirely.
On the return trip from Ufa or wherever, father fell through the ice in the river Ufimka. He arrived in Sernovodsk wet, dirty and covered with lice, because when they had dragged him from the river, they had taken him to some village izba, where he picked up all those creatures. Mama did not even let him get close. What it was they hauled back, I have no idea, maybe you can find out through other sources. But all of the liquor left went to sanitizing Papa.
After that, Papa spent another couple of weeks in Kuybyshev. Then he went to Moscow and did not return again. We returned to Moscow in March of 1943, and Uncle Rudolf remained in Kuybyshev longer than Papa. And since they both were doing the same thing – training partizans – that is why I think the Kuybyshev comrades ascribed to my father the organization of a special spy school for saboteurs. But I suspect that it was Rudolf Abel who was responsible for the school.
They were often mistaken for one another. But that one of them might try to pass himself off as the other, the way they describe it in some books – that’s nonsense. Lord, what will they think of next?! They say that Papa used the name Abel in the war years. That’s false. It’s all rubbish.
I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but most likely he and Rudolph Abel met in 1937, when they were both in the service. Papa had a higher rank than Rudolph. He was lean and dark, Uncle Rudolph was blonde, stocky, quick to smile and had a thick head of hair. Some said that in the radio operators’ school no one could tell them apart. They didn’t look at all alike, yet people still mixed them up. But it was simply because they spent so much of their free time together.
We got on really well with Uncle Rudolph. In the prewar years, I mostly remember him at the dacha. He was a very happy person. With us, with the children, he would play any sort of game and do whatever we asked. He knew how to relate to kids, how to talk to them, which Papa was not so good at. Papa would talk to kids the same way he did to adults, and make the same sorts of demands on them. With Papa, we became close only much later, when we started to have the same interests. But when I was young, we did not have anything in common, except for disagreements. Papa and I have similar personalities, so we frequently clashed.
And after they met up at his house or ours, Papa and Abel would always walk one another home. There was no direct transport line between our home and Uncle Rudolph’s. They were young and it was just easier for them to walk down Sretenka.* I suspect that Papa and Uncle Rudolph had certain conversations along the way that we were not supposed to hear. They would get to Abel’s home and if it turned out they had not reached an agreement, then Uncle Abel would accompany Papa back home. And they could spend a rather long time accompanying each other back and forth that way.
Yes, it was a truly great friendship. And apparently this is why Papa, when he was arrested, used Uncle Rudolph’s name.
Father left rather frequently and for long periods. But as to how long it was… back then I did not count the days, and now it is rather difficult for me to estimate, even though we, of course, lived together. And after the war he said very little about his intelligence activities. After the war I found out that father took part in Operation Berezina, that he was even honored, received an Order of Lenin I believe. But it was all very hush-hush, without any tooting his own horn.
What else do I remember from the war years? This just came to mind: Papa had two students, two German brothers. And he spent time with them, got them prepared. But they never came around to our place. All of his real life took place outside our home. And he was silent about it. Even on May 9, 1945, we did not celebrate in any special way. Papa, as was almost always the case, was not at home. Another assignment. Where he was, what he was up to, we had no idea. And we didn’t really want to gather around the table and raise our glasses without him.
There is another episode from the war. Since there were all sorts of problems with the lights, and since matches had become really scarce and everyone at home was a smoker, Father brought home a lighter he had made. At that time I still did not smoke, but grandma, Mama and Father all did… That lighter was an object of pride to him; it had a platinum spring. But it turns out that the lighter had an interesting history. One of his coworkers had said to him, “Oy, Willy, you have such a nice lighter. You should make one just like it for our boss.” To which Papa replied, “What for? Our boss is completely able to make one on his own. He has much better access to the necessary parts.” The next day, Papa arrived at work and his lighter was gone. He quickly figured out what had happened. He went to his boss’ office and saw the lighter on his desk. Father immediately said, “Ah, hello, it seems my lighter accidentally landed here.” And he took it and left. And then brought it home.
In 1948, Fisher traveled to Canada under a false identity. He entered the United States in 1948 and lived in Brooklyn, NY, in the name of Emil Robert Goldfus. His cover was as a photo finisher. In reality he was a rezident – the senior “illegal” in America, supervising a pre-existing spy ring that included Lona and Morris Cohen (see Russian Life July/Aug 2006), who in turn worked with a number of Soviet agents, including the Rosenbergs, helping to steal nuclear secrets, among other things.
LET’S NOT GET EMOTIONAL
Father left for the U.S. in 1948 and only had one vacation, in 1955. Even when a separation of several years loomed, we didn’t sense that Father was getting ready to leave. We never had any conversations on this subject at home. He went away so often (of course usually it was just for a short time), that one more trip, even if it were a long one, was just part of his work. Never, there was never an instance when we had a conversation on this subject. But once Father did say to us simply and even in a ho-hum sort of way, kind of matter of factly, so that there would not be any moaning or groaning, “I am leaving.” And that was it. But of course there were not and could not be any complaints.
It’s possible Mama guessed it. Probably they had some conversations just between themselves, but what sort, exactly, I don’t know. I didn’t hear any.
He didn’t even warn us that it would be for a long time. He left and then there was just the occasional letter. This was unusual, but Mama and I completely understood. At first no one even called us – back then we didn’t have a telephone. Then they installed one and they started calling from Papa’s office: tomorrow we’re sending a man around. When they allowed it, we wrote Papa a letter. Short ones, as they recommended. And a man always came.
It’s difficult for me to say now how often these people came around. Periodically. We didn’t chat with them. And they changed from year to year. Some stayed for a year, some for longer. I didn’t keep track. But someone always appeared, I believe once a month. He would bring Papa’s salary and, more importantly, a note from Father. We would give him ours. But there was not any regularity to his letters. And he never sent photographs. We read his letters, but without getting emotional. We are not a sentimental family; we were not the sorts to be blubbering about at home.
They told us a week, or maybe it was two, in advance that he was returning. The plane was late due to bad weather. But still we met him at Vnukovo [airport]. The flight for some reason came from Vienna. I have no idea how he got there, using what name. They allowed us to meet him in the general arrivals hall, where everyone was.
We got into the car, which was also late, and went straight home. While we waited, Father and Mama smoked. And so did I. And Papa muttered at Mama, displeased, “It’s all your fault.” I was surprised, after all I was all grown, had graduated from the foreign languages institute, was working.
But how happy I was. Seven years without Papa. Only I couldn’t show it. That would not have been proper. And I couldn’t tell him that he didn’t look so good. He was very tired. He brought us all presents. A watch for Mama, me and for Andryusha, the son of my cousin Lida. Excellent watches, Swiss. They are somewhere at my dacha, still running to this day.
His comrades came by the house. Some fellow whose name I don’t remember – I simply didn’t know him. And Uncle Rudolph.
No one got all worked up. Everyone was as usual. Papa was a very reserved person, and we tried to be as well. The only exception was that when he got angry, outraged, he was always emotional. But otherwise, no.
And no storytelling or special discussions. Complete silence about work. And we didn’t expect anything. I don’t even remember what language we all spoke together – we must have gone straight into Russian. And I didn’t notice any peculiar accent, which they say can happen with illegals who are cut off from their homeland for a long time.
He returned at the end of July or, hold on, at the beginning of August. And we mainly lived at the dacha. One time he went to work and returned on the Chelyuskinskaya elektrichka.* We managed to go to his favorite place, to Ostashkov, to Kuvshinovo. We spent some time in Moscow, apparently he was preparing for his departure. Then we went to Leningrad for two weeks. Just the three of us in a four-berth sleeper. The service had reserved it for him just in case, for Father, Mama and me. In Leningrad we stayed with Mama’s relatives.
Father was the sort of person who could not stand any kind of special treatment. I gather that he refused any assistance from local colleagues. No one took us around or showed us the sights. We did it all on our own. We went to the Hermitage a few times, just to the painting galleries. We looked at Rembrandt, which were Papa’s favorites. And we looked at Mama’s favorite Italians too.
Father brought along a Leica camera and taught me how to use it in Petersburg. We took a lot of pictures there. There is a photograph from Petersburg: my cousin – the daughter of Mama’s brother, Mama, and Papa are sitting on the banks of the Neva, with their backs to the water. I took it with that Leica. And there is another famous photo, which is in many books. It is at the dacha, in the chaise lounges. There is Papa, Uncle Rudolph, Uncle Willy Martens. And Mama, and the wives of Martens and Uncle Rudolph – Aunt Asya. I took that one too.
Father, for obvious reasons, socialized with a very narrow group of people. Uncle Rudolph and Willy Martens came around. And we had no other friends. No new acquaintances. Not that it was forbidden, they just weren’t necessary. We had enough, and back then neither I nor anyone else thought about it.
And we didn’t go out to the theater. There were no theater lovers in our family. We all loved to be at home. So there weren’t any issues with premieres, with getting into restaurants, or with any other such diversions. Mama worked as a harpist in an orchestra. A very difficult job, which didn’t really make one inclined to go rushing out to premieres and what not.
Toward the end of his vacation, Papa, sitting in his chaise lounge at the dacha, suddenly opened up. He had been very troubled: he had requested they recall one coworker who was seriously ill, and a second – the liaison Vic, who drank too much and in the end betrayed him.
Papa told us about his departure just one day before he left. I even lost my head a bit. He informed us only on the eve like that so that there would not be any of the tears he hated so much. He went, if I am not mistaken, in December 1955. He was home with us for a little over four months. We started to learn what happiness was. They didn’t let us accompany him to the airport.
We expected Father to return soon. But then some time passed, followed by the tragic news of his arrest.
When arrested, Fisher identified himself as Colonel Rudolph Abel, revealing nothing about his personal background or contacts. He was indicted as a spy in New York federal court on three counts of conspiracy.
Details of the trial, in which the prosecution based its case almost entirely on Häyhänen’s testimony, were described in the book Strangers on the Bridge written by Abel’s legal counsel, James Donovan, who was a key figure in negotiating the terms of Abel’s exchange for Francis Powers. Arguing against the death penalty for Abel, Donovan said, “It is possible that in the foreseeable future, an American of equivalent rank will be captured by the Soviet Union or an ally. At such time, an exchange of prisoners could be considered to be in the best interest of the United States.”
On October 25, 1957, Abel was found guilty on all three counts and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Meanwhile, back in Russia, Evelina and her mother waited. When, in 1961, the Service advised them to write a letter to Donovan, asking about the chances of exchanging Abel for Powers, they wrote it. Donovan started exploring the idea, and found both sides willing. The Soviets, never admitting Abel was a spy, insisted that Evelina and her mother just wanted their father and husband back, and flew them to Berlin.
We arrived in Berlin. Things got started. They took us around the city and I had to remember how and where to go. There was a lot of fuss. Finally, after a few days we were supposed to meet with this Donovan, Papa’s lawyer. He arrived at the Soviet embassy and he was scared to death. He was extremely worried, and feared what they might do to him. I told Donovan that I was the daughter of Colonel Abel, that Mama was his wife. But he didn’t believe me; he decided that I was a coworker, that Mama was an actress, hired to play a role.
Donovan immediately said that they might bring Papa to Berlin in one or maybe two days, I don’t remember, but as soon as they agreed on the terms of the exchange. But our people thought that Donovan had come to Berlin just to get the lay of the land. And, as far as I recall, they were unprepared to talk about any kind of definite exchange, they presumed that everyone used the same methods as we did.
Then began the waiting for a decision from Moscow. From the very beginning, they did not correctly understand how many people the Americans were trading for Papa. Then, when it turned out that the exchange was to take place in two days, it turned out the Americans wanted to trade him not for two, but for three people. And we got together and started doing things the way we are used to – six months scratching our heads, then another six months of thinking, then five years laying the groundwork. Someone nonetheless decided to call Khrushchev (he was on vacation and everyone was afraid to approach him while he was resting)… and he gave his okay. And everything came together.
There was a point when Fisher’s daughter might have entered the service herself. She knew English well, working as a professional translator and editor. But when her father come home for his vacation in 1955, he told her that she would never pass the strict medical exam required for the service. Actually, her father, as if he sensed something, suddenly said, “I think that one intelligence officer is enough for a family.”
During her father’s absence, Evelina and her mother had to endure the grumbling of their ill-willed neighbors at the dacha. They could see in their eyes that they thought the head of the family was in prison as an enemy of the people or had left them for another. But what could be done? Better filthy rumors than a confession: “You idiots, he’s a Soviet intelligence officer, living in the States.”
Evelina’s real life only began after her father was released. That was when they could be together. The family traveled all over the Soviet Union together, attending concerts and visiting museums. He taught Evelina silk-screening and continued to tutor her in photography. The illegal Fisher was talented in both.
They set up their dacha as best they could on their modest means. Evelina and Willy traveled to where they were shooting the film Dead Season (Myortvy sezon – a 1968 film about Soviet espionage which has a prisoner exchange scene on Glienicke Bridge), in which they allowed Fisher to be called Abel and where he greeted viewers wearing a toupee. Not as a disguise, but just to cover his balding pate.
She loved to watch her father while he painted nature scenes around Moscow. Everything was good and they didn’t need anyone or anything. But happiness is always brief. Her father died in 1971, and soon after that her mama also passed away. Evelina had few relatives left – just her female cousin and her relation Andrei, who would come out and fix her television and who tenderly looked after her during her final months… Friends and things she had few of. But she needed for little.
Her personal life was clearly stunted by all the secrecy that engulfed the life of Willy Fisher, an illegal in the employ of Soviet intelligence. Even in the rather loose (for Soviet times) Foreign Language Institute, Evelina kept herself apart. One could not become too close with one’s classmates. One could not invite them home. And of course one could never mention where one’s father worked. One of the few places she let herself relax was while playing chess. She met her future husband across a chessboard. But of course there was the required conversation with him prior to their getting married.
Apparently Evelina Vilyamovna separated from her husband because she would constantly, albeit involuntarily, compare him with her father. And who could come out ahead in a comparison with a father whose intelligence had been tested by the Americans while he was in jail and was declared “close to genius”?
Evelina Vilyamovna Fisher died in 2007, at the age of 78, not long after our conversations. She suffered from a long and painful illness and died surrounded by her own people, in a quiet, cozy place in the boundless reaches of Moscow region where they tenderly care for those who have served the USSR and now Russia as illegals and agents, but most are former illegals.
A humble villa far from the busy highways welcomes them – tired and worn out by illness – like family. Respectful nurses and experienced doctors are at hand, along with the occasional visiting “anchors” – that’s what they call the young and not so young coworkers who for years and sometimes for decades, come to help out “their” veteran. The Service does not forget its past, does not cast aside those who have served.
Rather interesting conversations take place in this village, conversations that, God forbid, can never be heard by outsiders. But then outsiders are strictly forbidden here and cannot even get within a kilometer.
Here, amid the quiet, measured rhythms of lives winding down, one sometimes hears the drone of an airplane flying past off in the distance – as if to remind the residents of the more intense pace of life with which they were once so familiar. RL
* “Spy” is a term used by journalists and historians, but never by Soviet/Russian agents. They call themselves “intelligence officers,” perhaps further defining themselves as an “agent” or “illegal” (one who infiltrates and takes up illegal residence in a country). A rezident is the senior intelligence officer in a foreign country.
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