The Other Traitor by Sharon Potts Page A

asked.
    They passed a copse of leafless trees. Just beyond, a couple of horses with bundled up riders were loping down the bridle path.
    “I learned a lot about being a spy in the 1930s and 40s,” she said. “It was pretty unsophisticated. They actually did dorky things like greet each other with secret passwords. You know like, ‘Bobo sent me.’ They even cut up Jell-O boxes and matched up the pieces to confirm who they were. I thought that was just in Grade-B spy movies.”
    “Spying’s become a lot more sophisticated in the last sixty or seventy years, thanks to technology and the internet. Anything in the book that ties to your grandfather?”
    “Indirectly,” she said. “The author, Boris Yaklisov, worked for the Soviet Embassy in New York, but he was also a case officer for the communists. He went to college rallies and recruited students who were sympathetic to the communist movement.”
    “That wouldn’t have been too difficult,” Bill said. “Back in the thirties, college students in New York were even more left-wing than today. City College and NYU were both fertile recruiting grounds for the communists.” A group of joggers going the wrong way forced her and Bill to squeeze to the right as they passed. “In fact, some of the most prominent people accused of being atomic spies came out of CCNY,” Bill continued. “Morton Sobell, Alfred Sarant, Julius Rosenberg.”
    “Interesting,” she said. “Yaklisov recalled meeting Isaac Goldstein at a meeting around 1938. But Yaklisov wasn’t impressed with him. He called Goldstein a dilettante and didn’t think he had much value for the Party. He didn’t see him again until after the war. And then, only briefly.”
    They passed the midway point around the reservoir and she looked across the water at the eastern and southern skylines of Manhattan, staircases of flat and pointed rooftops clearly visible behind the skeletal trees.
    “I suppose Goldstein became more valuable to the communists after the war,” Bill said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “As you saw in your grandmother’s old photo, he was quite the war hero. He rescued a soldier from drowning and was seriously injured in 1943. He received the Soldier’s Medal, Purple Heart, and a medical discharge.”
    Bill was right. Recruiting an American war hero would have been quite a coup for the Soviets.
    “Then he went to work for the Army Signal Corps as an engineer,” Bill said. “His job was to inspect electrical equipment manufactured by defense contractors for the government. A couple of witnesses at his trial claimed Goldstein stole confidential information from the Signal Corps and passed it on to the Russians.” Bill took off his headband and gloves and stuffed them into a pocket. “Have you read anything about the trial?”
    “I started reading the transcript, but it’s almost three thousand pages. I tried to find a concise summary, but there’s a ton of material out there. I can’t figure out what’s been verified and what’s been shown to be false.”
    “It can be overwhelming,” he said. “But here’s one thing you may find helpful.” He slowed down to a fast walk. “The key witness against Goldstein was a woman named Florence Heller. She claimed Goldstein was the head of the spy ring she was part of and that Goldstein received documents from a contact in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the major work on the atomic bomb was done. She said Goldstein passed these documents on to the Russians. Most trial analysts now believe she lied to protect her boyfriend.”
    “I read that. Could the boyfriend have been the spy?”
    “Not likely. During the years after the trial, it was pretty much confirmed that no one in this alleged spy ring had access to any significant details relating to the construction of the bomb.”
    They reached the end of the jogging path. “One other thing I wanted to ask you about,” she said. “Yaklisov claimed in his book that someone with the code name