Fisher was born and grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne in the North East of England in the United Kingdom to Russian émigré parents.

[4] He served just over four years of his sentence before he was exchanged for captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers and Yale University doctoral student Frederic Pryor.

[10] As Heinrich Fisher had served a sentence for offenses against the Russian Imperial Crown, he was forced to flee to the United Kingdom in 1901,[11] the alternative being deportation to Germany or imprisonment in Russia for avoidance of military service.

[8] While living in the United Kingdom, Fisher's father, a keen Bolshevik, took part in gunrunning, shipping arms from northeast England to Russia's Baltic coast.

[13] Though Fisher was not as hard-working as Henry, he showed aptitude for science, mathematics, languages, art and music, inherited in part from his father's abilities.

Encouraging their son's love of music, Fisher's parents gave him piano lessons; he also learned to play the guitar.

[15] Fisher became an apprentice draughtsman at Swan Hunter, Wallsend, and attended evening classes at Rutherford College before being accepted into London University in 1920.

[18] Fluent in English, Russian, German, Polish and Yiddish,[19] Fisher worked for the Comintern as a translator following his family's return to the Soviet Union.

He returned to the Soviet Union in 1936, as head of a school that trained radio operators destined for duty in illegal residences.

[11] Having been adopted as a protégé by Pavel Sudoplatov, he took part in Operation Scherhorn (Операция Березино, Operatsiya Berezino) in August 1944.

[25] Fisher's role in this operation was rewarded with what his superiors regarded as one of the most prestigious postings in Soviet foreign intelligence, the United States.

[28] Fisher, as Kayotis, then travelled aboard the RMS Scythia from Le Havre, France, to North America, disembarking at Quebec.

Goldfus's birth certificate was obtained by the NKVD at the end of the Spanish Civil War, when the Centre would collect identity documents from International Brigades members for use in espionage operations.

Theodore "Ted" Hall (codenamed "MLAD"), a physicist, was the most important agent in the network in 1945, passing atomic secrets from Los Alamos.

Kitty Harris, a former pupil of Fisher's, had spent a year in Santa Fe during the war, where she passed secrets from physicists to couriers.

[32] During this period, Fisher received the Order of the Red Banner, an important Soviet decoration normally reserved for military personnel.

[33] Fisher was relieved when the Rosenbergs did not disclose any information about him to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), but the arrests heralded a bleak outlook for his new spy network.

Codenamed "VIK", Häyhänen arrived in New York on the RMS Queen Mary, under the alias Eugene Nikolai Maki.

[1][40][41] Over time his artistic technique improved and he became a competent painter, though he disliked abstract painting, preferring more conventional styles.

He mingled with New York artists, who were surprised by his admiration for the Russian painter Isaak Levitan, although Fisher was careful not to discuss Stalinist "socialist realism".

In the spring of 1955, Fisher and Häyhänen visited Bear Mountain Park, and buried $5,000 (equivalent to $56,870 in 2023), destined for the wife of the Soviet spy Morton Sobell, who in 1951 was sentenced to thirty years in jail.

[38] In 1955, Fisher, exhausted by the constant pressure, returned to Moscow for six months of rest and recuperation, leaving Häyhänen in charge.

[46] Fisher, unsuspecting, advised Häyhänen to leave the U.S. immediately to avoid FBI surveillance and handed him $200 for travel expenses.

Four days later, instead of continuing his journey to the Soviet Union he entered the American embassy in Paris, announcing that he was a KGB officer and asking for asylum.

As a member of a Soviet spy ring operating on American soil, Häyhänen came under the FBI's jurisdiction and they began verifying his story.

Fisher decided that he would not turn traitor as Häyhänen had done because he still trusted the KGB and he knew that if he cooperated with the FBI, he would not see his wife and daughter again.

[54] During this period Fisher stated that his "real" name was Rudolf Ivanovich Abel and that he was a Soviet citizen, although he refused to discuss his intelligence activities.

Because he had served as a wartime counsel in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and had years of courtroom experience, the Bar Association believed Donovan was uniquely qualified to act as Fisher's defense lawyer.

[67] At precisely the same time, at Checkpoint Charlie, Frederic Pryor was released by the East German Stasi into the waiting arms of his father.

[69] For the sake of its own reputation it suited the KGB to reveal "Abel's" nine years of being an undetected agent in the United States as a triumph by a dedicated NKVD member.