by Howard Blum
Barr read it, and then offered a small, cryptic smile that left his handler perplexed. But in the next satisfying moment the mystery was solved.
“That’s funny!” Meter said. “We must have a crystal ball. Five days ago we read your minds and got the technical manual of this facility. We finished photographing it last night at two a.m. There are six hundred pages of texts and drawings.”
He passed Sasha several canisters of film under the table.
Two days later the films traveled in the diplomatic pouch to Moscow. And one week after the cable had been sent, the much-desired documents were on Pavel Fitin’s desk in the Lubyanka.
As long as the flow of product remained constant—and of such high quality—Sasha felt he had no choice but to resign himself to the risks created by his two agents’ imprudent behavior. But all the while, Sasha couldn’t help pondering how much longer they’d be able to continue to get away with leading their secret lives. Or if the entire network would soon come crashing down.
22
EVEN TODAY, THERE REMAINS SOME mystery as to why Meredith, at this point in the investigation, decided to replow old ground. At least one of the intelligence historians who reviewed the files insists it was simply Meredith’s new knowledge about the relationship between Meter and Hughes that had sent him scurrying back on this detour. This explanation is further bolstered by the undeniable fact that Meter is specifically mentioned in the cable to which Meredith’s attention returned.
Yet there is another school of thought that suggests the revelations in the first flurry of decryptions that had set up the two spies as friends working in tandem had little to do with Meredith’s next move. Totally irrelevant, they huff. In fact, they assert, it’s impossible to gauge with any kind of accuracy how a unique mind like Meredith’s worked. Genius, they point out with an argument-ending smugness, has its own intuitive logic.
Still, whatever the reason, it is a matter of record that even as the Bureau continued its pursuit of several targets, from his desk at Arlington Hall Meredith issued a new “Special Study.” It was titled “Revised Translation of Message on Antenna—Liberal’s wife Ethel.”
“Further work on this message has so improved the text,” began Meredith, for once taking the slightest self-congratulatory bow, “that a revised translation is in order.” His new version of the cable sent on November 27, 1944, from the New York station to Moscow Center now read:
Intelligence on Liberal’s wife. Surname that of her husband. Christian name Ethel 29 years old. Married 5 years. Finished middle school. A fellow countryman in 1938. Sufficiently well-developed politically. She knows about her husband’s work and the role of Meter and Nil. In view of her delicate health does not work.
Meredith’s second go-round did not shed any further light on Meter (the man Bob was convinced was Joel Barr). And Nil still remained a complete and total puzzle; the agent’s identity was as impenetrable as it had been in the earlier translation. Nevertheless, Meredith believed he had found something he’d previously missed. It was a clue that took him deeper into the inner machinery of Liberal’s ring. And to an understanding of the role of Liberal’s wife. The key was a single verb.
Meredith, a linguist in his previous life who still felt on firmest ground when dealing with syntactical notions, had initially zeroed in on the use of the verb “work” in the message. The word in Russian, rabotayet, had, Meredith had recently grown certain, “a special meaning” in the cable. It referred, he wrote in his report, to “conspiratorial work in the interests of the U.S.S.R.” And, therefore, the sentence “In view of her delicate health does not work” took on a special meaning, too.
“In the same way,” Meredith reasoned, “the work that Ethel cannot do in view of her delicate health may not be the earning of her bread and butter, but conspiratorial work.”
With that deduction, the network of spies took on a greater physical shape. There was the ringleader and talent spotter, Liberal. There were agents, productive operatives like Meter and Hughes. And then there was the head man’s wife, Christian name Ethel, who was apparently fully cognizant of what was going on but at the same time stood on the sideline. Does not work. A passive spectator to the treason being played out around her.
FOR BOB, THE INVETERATE CASE man, there was little appreciation of his friend’s semantic feat. He had no time for digressions into the use of Russian nouns and verbs. The knowledge Bob took from the revised translation was purely tactical: He had a new unsub. A woman. And she was at the very heart of the ring.
Once again cavalierly ignoring the restrictions both Arlington Hall and his superiors in the Bureau had placed on the investigation, he let the field offices know why he was so keen on tracking her down. Like Barr, she was thought “to have acted as an intermediary between person or persons who were working on wartime nuclear fission research and for KGB agents.”
Bob reasoned that if he nabbed “Christian name Ethel,” and if in the process she led him to Liberal, then let the bosses come gunning for him. He’d have something to shut them up all right. In his obstinate way he sent a supplementary letter to the Bureau offices detailing what he knew, thanks entirely to Meredith, about the ringleader’s wife:
“ETHEL, used her husband’s last name; had been married for five years (at this time); 29 years of age; member of the Communist Party USA, possibly joining in 1938; knew about her husband’s work with the Soviets.”
But although this description offered, as Bob fervently wanted to believe, “a considerable amount of positive information,” it wasn’t enough. Not a single promising tip reached his desk. The identity of the female unsub remained an enigma. He needed to find another way to get to her.
Desperate, Bob began grasping at straws. He theorized, despite the fact that the deciphered cable had clearly stated “Christian name Ethel” was Liberal’s wife, that she might be involved with Barr. His rationale, as much as he had one, hinged on a belief that this network of fellow countrymen might also have liberated sexual ideals. A bourgeois concept like matrimony might not be too restrictive in Marxist circles. Thus began the investigation, as Bob would primly describe it, “of Barr’s women friends.”
It was quickly established that Barr didn’t have a wife, but at the head of his list of many girlfriends, there was one longtime relationship. And when the Bureau started poking into Vivian Glassman’s background, they found themselves following a trail similar to the ones they’d previously traveled while attempting to identify members of the ring. Her life had been lived in near lockstep with Barr’s and Elitcher’s, and, even more tantalizingly, perhaps with Liberal’s. She was the daughter of immigrants, attended City College, worked at the Army Signal Corps laboratories at Fort Monmouth, had access to classified defense information, and had ties to Communist groups. But as much as Bob wanted to make the match, he came to the conclusion that there was nothing that could tie her to the female unsub.
Then, just as Bob was ready to surrender, a new bit of information came in: one of Barr’s friends claimed that, in fact, he was married. Could his wife—a secret wife, since few people appeared to know about her—be “Christian name Ethel”? And what if, Bob now found himself wondering, and not for the first time, Barr was really Liberal? Had all the girlfriends just been one more bit of Moscow Center subterfuge to throw the enemy off the scent in the event they ever discovered the ringleader was married? To conceal that Joel Barr was the agent pulling the network’s strings?
Elaine Goldfarb was the name of the woman alleged to have been Barr’s wife, and the FBI pulled her biography apart. Yet in the end, Bob had to concede that Goldfarb and Barr had never been married, and there was nothing furtive about their relationship. True, they had lived together for a short time. But Goldfarb had not set eyes on Barr for seven years. The premise that she was the elusive unsub he’d been hunting could not, even Bob had to agree, be logically sustained.
“We came to a dead end on the investigation into ‘Christian name Ethel,�
�” Bob decided, full of a certainty he’d live to regret.
BUT THERE WAS STILL MAX Elitcher. He was suddenly on the move, and the FBI, as Bob had instructed, was sticking closely to him.
It was July 30, 1948, a muggy midsummer morning, and Elitcher, his wife, Helene, and their young daughter were in their two-door Chevy, driving from Washington up to New York. Elitcher had given notice to his superiors in the Naval Ordnance Department that he’d be leaving soon; a school friend, Morton Sobell, had helped him land a better-paying job at Reeves Instrument Company in New York. The purpose of this trip was to check out the progress on the new house in Queens the Elitchers would be moving into as of September. Its backyard bordered Sobell’s home, and the convivial plan was for the Elitchers to be weekend houseguests at the Sobells’.
They were heading through Baltimore when Helene Elitcher noticed the car trailing behind them. It was a dark sedan and both the driver and the man next to him in the front seat wore ties, jackets, and fedoras. It was as identifying as any uniform, and she excitedly told her husband that the FBI was following them.
Elitcher tried to lose the tail. He sped up; he slowed down; he switched lanes. The dark sedan relentlessly kept pace.
Near Philadelphia, another team of FBI watchers took over. And for a while, the Elitchers appeared at ease; they hadn’t spotted the new tail. But as he drove into New York City, coming down the expressway along the Hudson River, Elitcher looked into his rearview mirror and saw a dark sedan on his bumper. There were two beefy men sporting fedoras in the front seat.
Elitcher quickly improvised a new plan. He wouldn’t lead the FBI to his friend’s home. Instead, he’d wait out the storm at his mother’s apartment on upper Lexington Avenue. If they wanted to arrest him, they could do it there. At least his family would be safe.
It was a long, uneasy stay for the Elitchers. The husband and wife went repeatedly to the living room window, looking furtively up and down the street. The slightest noise and they wondered if it was the sound of the FBI stomping up the steps, preparing to pound on the apartment door.
Hours passed, but nothing happened.
As the sky darkened, the Elitchers grew convinced the FBI had abandoned their surveillance. They’d be able to continue undetected to the Sobells in Queens.
They were wrong. When the Elitchers arrived at their friends’ home, Agents William McCarthy and John Ward were still on their backs. But it didn’t matter. The two FBI men did not stay for long.
The next morning Bob read their surveillance report:
“It should be stated that on the trip from Manhattan to the Sobells’ home, it was confirmed without a doubt that the Elitchers were ‘tail conscious,’ and, therefore, the surveillance was discontinued.”
And so Bob never knew what happened next.
MORTON SOBELL WAS FURIOUS. HOW could his guest have led the FBI to his doorstep? What if they come charging in and arrest you? With or without a warrant, they’ll have the excuse they need to search my home, he worried.
The two families sat down to an uneasy dinner. Conversation was difficult. They were on high alert, listening for a sudden noise, an unnatural sound that rose above the passing traffic. Max and Mort, two old friends, could not help feeling that this might be their last supper as free men.
The table was cleared, and still nothing, no intrusions, no arrests. But Sobell’s nerves were frayed. He took Elitcher aside and spoke to him in a low voice. He had some material in the house that was, Elitcher would remember his saying, “too good to throw away.” But it was too dangerous to keep it, not with the chance that the FBI could barge in at any moment. He needed to get it to Rosenberg now! And he wanted his friend to come with him. He was too tired to drive into Manhattan alone.
In the car, Sobell convinced the reliably subservient Elitcher to drive. But first Sobell took a small canister, the size that would hold a roll of 35mm film, out of his jacket pocket and placed it in the glove compartment.
Elitcher drove carefully, and all the while his eyes were constantly darting to the rearview mirror, checking for unwanted company. He followed his friend’s directions, heading down the East River Drive. Sobell told him when to exit, and then guided him to a deserted stretch in Lower Manhattan. It had an odd name for a city street, a woman’s name—Catherine Slip. “Park,” Sobell ordered. From the car the two men could see the dark ribbon of the East River in the distance. The night seemed unnaturally quiet. Elitcher sat behind the wheel as Sobell made his way on foot toward Knickerbocker Village.
Sobell walked the two blocks neither fast nor slow. The film canister was now deep in his pocket.
Meanwhile, Elitcher waited. He quickly lost track of the time. Minutes? An hour? A lifetime? In his churning mind it was as if a chaotic chorus were screaming mad, incoherent thoughts. He felt completely unnerved.
Then the car door opened and Sobell climbed in.
“What did Julie think about it?” his friend swiftly asked, not even trying to disguise the panic in his words.
Sobell, though, was all calm. “Julie says there’s nothing to worry about,” he answered.
And there wasn’t. The Bureau’s watchers had already returned their car to the garage. The evening came and went without either Bob or Sasha knowing just how close the Bureau had come to breaking the ring.
In their blindness, the hunters and the hunted continued on.
23
THEN, WITHOUT ANY WARNING, THE high-flying investigation went into a tailspin. For Bob and Meredith, there was the before, and then the after. And in the aftermath, America’s hegemony came to an unexpected end, and the world changed forever. Bob would always remember the day he’d heard the shocking news, and the deep sense of personal failure that swiftly followed.
His eventful week had started off badly, and in that still innocent time he might very well have thought things couldn’t have gotten any worse. Bob had been tethered to his desk at headquarters, poring over the latest batch of decrypts, when in a sudden flash of insight, a piece in the puzzle fell into place. The code name of the KGB agent mentioned in one of the new cables had been gnawing at him for days. Why did he keep returning to it? he wondered. But Bob couldn’t find the answer. The connection eluded him.
Then there it was—he had seen it before, more or less. The name in the cable was similar to the cover name of a Soviet operative the Bureau had unearthed in a previous investigation. He ran to check the files and, digging feverishly, he tracked it down. The two names were so close it couldn’t be an accident. They had to be the same man.
It was a finding, Bob was firmly convinced, that would open up new investigative paths, reveal previously undetected Soviet espionage activities.
But beyond the operational significance, it was also a personal triumph. Bob had come up with this new, important clue on his own. For once he hadn’t relied on Meredith to make the breakthrough. They were a team, but nonetheless it bothered the competitive Bob that Meredith had been leading the way. Bob felt he’d be able to show the code breaker that he wasn’t the only one who had the acuity to penetrate Moscow Center’s secrets.
Flush with pride, Bob hurried to Arlington Hall. And all the way there he was beaming—“Waiting for compliments,” he’d candidly recall.
Meredith listened with an impassive concentration. When he finally spoke, he was, Bob would concede with gratitude, “gentle.” But at the same unflinching time he made it clear that Bob had gotten it all wrong. The problem, explained Meredith, seeming truly embarrassed to be in the role of teacher correcting the naïve pupil, was that Bob didn’t know Russian. Although the two names did look alike, they were worlds apart when pronounced correctly. There was no connection at all.
Chagrined, Bob slunk out of his friend’s office. Over the days that followed, the rebuke, despite the elaborate politeness with which it had been delivered, continued to sting. But Bob was never one to brood for too long; he possessed too much self-confidence. In time he managed to find the philosophy
to shrug it off. Looking back at the conversation, he now could be “amused at my own stupidity.”
And then, without warning, this rosy perspective, along with everything else he’d been working on, or so it seemed at the terrible time, no longer amounted to much. The “stunning news,” as Bob would say with a measure of momentousness as much as shock, changed everything.
FROM THEIR BASE IN ALASKA, the B-29s of the 175th Weather Reconnaissance Squadron routinely patrolled a patch of the Pacific that stretched all the way to Japan, before circling back over the Arctic, just windward of the Soviet Union. As the B-29s flew below the jet stream, their specially designed fuselage ducts scooped up the air through paper filters. The planes were, in Air Force parlance, sniffers. The unit’s secret mission: to detect long-range atomic explosions.
On September 3, 1949, one of the squadron’s B-29s flying east of the Kamchatka Peninsula gathered evidence that set off the plane’s red warning lights. Back at the base, measurements of the filter paper residue confirmed what had previously been unthinkable: radioactivity that was the result of atomic fission.
Five days earlier, on an isolated grassy steppe in northeast Kazakhstan, the Soviet Union had detonated an atom bomb. For four years the United States had been the only nation with this unprecedented weapon in its arsenal. America had dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (more than 140,000 dead) and Nagasaki (more than 70,000 dead) confident that no country on earth could respond with equally dreadful force. Now that monopoly was broken. There were two atomic superpowers.
President Truman, though, didn’t believe it. It seemed impossible to him that “those Asiatics,” as he dismissed the upstart Russian scientists, could build a device as sophisticated as an atom bomb. Adamant, he refused to make a public announcement until the members of the detection committee signed a statement, one of the participants recalled, “to the effect [that] they really believed the Russians had done it.” And even after the committee dutifully affirmed the evidence was irrefutable, the president grumbled that “German scientists in Russia did it.” That was the only explanation that made any sense. After all, just weeks earlier he’d received a report from the CIA repeating its previous estimate that the “most probable date” for a Soviet atomic bomb was “mid-1953.”