In 1953, a Brooklyn newsboy fumbles his change and a nickel breaks open on the sidewalk, revealing a microphotograph of secret numbers inside. For four years the FBI is baffled by a single coin, and that fumbled five-cent piece becomes the thread that unravels one of the most successful Soviet spy rings in American history.

This is the story of the man the world knew as Rudolf Abel, who was actually William Fisher, a British-born radio prodigy turned elite Soviet illegal operating from a Brooklyn art studio. It is a tale of immense psychological discipline undone by a spectacularly incompetent assistant, ending on the famous Bridge of Spies.

• How Fisher's identity was laundered through dead men's passports, from Soviet citizen to Andrew Kayotis to Emil Goldfus
• The art-studio cover that let a spy disappear for days without  ...