On the Bridge

Actually, the bridge was full of agents and officials on both sides. And there was a third party in this historic exchange. Graduate student Frederic Pryor, who went on to become a Professor of Economics at Swarthmore College, was also exchanged for Abel, but at another point in the city. Pryor had been studying in West Germany, and was arrested the summer before when he traveled into East Germany, mistakenly getting mixed up in a case of a woman who had just slipped to the West; he was held without charge for six months.

Pyotr Kapitsa - A leading Russian physicist (1894-1984) who worked at the Cavendish Research Laboratory in Cambridge, England from 1921-1934, when he was persuaded to return to Russia. He continued his work, constantly at odds with authorities, and was arrested in 1946, but kept working, and was not released until Stalin’s death. He went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978.

Major Alexander Orlov, one of the most senior KGB officials ever to defect, headed up the “Cambridge Five” Ring and led Soviet intelligence in Spain during the Civil War there. Summoned back to Moscow in 1938, he feared for his life and fled to the U.S., where he hid, unbeknownst to U.S. officials, until 1953. He never gave up any secrets, playing cat and mouse with American spy agencies until his death in 1973. For more information, read Deadly Illusions, by John Costello.

Operation Berezina: A KGB operation where a group of imprisoned German officers and soldiers was forced by Soviet intelligence to make radio contact with German HQ and ask for help, saying they were surrounded. German high command fell for the ruse and for a year sent truckloads of supplies and arms to the camp, as well as special agents and troops to help out, all of whom were of course rounded up by the KGB.

Vic was Reino Häyhänen, Fisher’s assistant, who was called back to the Soviet Union in the spring of 1957, but feared for his life and decided to defect, turning himself in to the American Embassy in Paris. Over the next several months he disclosed the functions and activities of a Soviet rezident in New York known as “Mark,” including the approximate location of Mark’s studio in Brooklyn. He had never been there but guessed where he might be living. According to one account, what gave Abel away was his distinctive fedora with a white band. By identifying himself to his FBI interrogators as Rudolph Abel, he was signalling to Moscow Central that he had been captured, but would not give up his true identity or mission.

The third American exchangee was a student from the University of Pennsylvania, Marvin Makinen, who had been arrested in Kiev for photographing military installations. He was not included in the exchange on February 10, but his release was implicitly a part of that day’s swap. For an amazing account of the swap, see Spy Trader, by Craig Whitney. Pryor was set free by the German Stasi elsewhere in Berlin.