A sharp winter wind blows through the streets of the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New

York. It's late afternoon and the sun hovers over the horizon, casting a cool light onto

the tall red brick tenement buildings. Darkness is encroaching. This is a vibrant but poor

working-class Jewish community, normally filled with the hollering and banter of push-car

vendors. But it's February the 5th, 1944. A Saturday, the Sabbath. The Yiddish theatres

and kosher markets are closed, the streets empty, except for Klaus Fuchs. He is standing

outside the Henry Street Settlement House, a hub for the city's immigrant poor, providing

shelter and support. He is wearing tweeds, carrying a book in one hand and a green tennis

ball in the other. As he waits, he sees across a fence building site, a short, full-faced

man in glasses walking towards him. He is wearing a dark suit and an overcoat. He is also

wearing gloves, but oddly, carrying a second pair. The man crosses the street and approaches

Fuchs. Fuchs replies, I think Chinatown closes at

five o'clock. Klaus Fuchs has been in America for just over a month, but he's now made

contact with his new handler, Harry Gold, the Soviet Union's agent goose. From the BBC

World Service, I'm Rosarellis, and this is Season 2 of the Bomb.

M.I.5 has concluded that Klaus Fuchs would be safer in the US, away from his communist

friends in Britain. How wrong they were. My great aunt and Soviet spy Ursula Kochinsky had

worked at the Henry Street Settlement 15 years previously, and she has arranged this meeting

with the green tennis ball, extra pair of gloves and obscure code words. Within weeks

of arriving stateside, Klaus Fuchs is now walking through Manhattan with an agent for

Soviet intelligence. Fuchs insists on being called by his real name. He's nervous and worries

that if anybody who knows him hears him being addressed by his code name, it will raise suspicions.

...