MONTCLAIR

— The phone call began with a question, spoken in secret code.

"Could we have met in Beijing in 2004?" asked an undercover FBI agent, posing as a Russian government official.

"Yes. We might have, but I believe it was in Harbin," was the prearranged response from Mikhail Semenko, a 28-year-old Seton Hall graduate who authorities say was a budding Russian spy.

That exchange, authorities say, led to a meeting on a Washington, D.C., street corner Saturday night between Semenko and the agent. The undercover passed him $5,000 cash wrapped in newspaper and a map showing where to hide it in a park for a fellow spy, authorities said.

Semenko — who grew up in Russia and is fluent in four languages — was arrested hours later by the FBI in one of the largest espionage takedowns in recent U.S. history. His background is among the details that emerged today about three people with ties to New Jersey, who authorities say were part of an 11-member team of Russian agents trying to gradually embed themselves into American businesses and government circles.

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Taken together, those details tell of men and women who, in many ways, melded seamlessly into American society. They swapped recipes with neighbors, had hundreds of friends on Facebook and walked their children to the school bus stop each morning. But all the while, authorities say, they were hoping to gather intelligence for Moscow.

The suspects are not charged with stealing or transmitting classified information, and it is unclear how much intelligence they successfully gathered. Russian officials angrily denounced the arrests as "Cold War-era spy stories." But officials there and in Washington said the charges would not significantly erode relations between the two nations.

Authorities say most of those charged lived under fake names and passed themselves off as married couples at their posts in New Jersey, Boston and New York. Richard and Cynthia Murphy lived on a quiet street in Montclair, where neighbors said they socialized at block parties, tended to flowers and — save perhaps for Cynthia Murphy’s slightly accented English — seemed like any other family on the street.

"They were unassuming," said Margo Sokolow, who lives three doors away from the Murphy’s two-story colonial with pink flowers out front.

Semenko, on the other hand, used his real name, authorities said. He told friends of growing up in Russia and teaching English at the Harbin Institute of Technology in China. Semenko — who is fluent in Russian, Mandarin, English and Spanish — came to Seton Hall in 2005 to earn dual masters’ degrees in Asian studies/diplomacy and international relations.

"He definitely didn’t seem to be hiding anything," said Molly Holzbauer, 23, a former classmate. "He must have told me that he was Russian within two minutes of meeting him."

Semenko passed background checks required for an international student, said Thomas White, a Seton Hall spokesman. "By all accounts he was a good student and an engaged alumnus," White said.

After graduating in 2008, Semenko worked for six months at a nonprofit business research group, before landing his current job at Travel All Russia, where he sold custom tours to English, Spanish and Chinese-speaking clients.

He was active on Facebook and blogged about the Chinese economy. Last Thursday — days before his arrest — Semenko mingled with Seton Hall deans at an alumni cocktail party in Washington, D.C., for graduates of the diplomacy school.

But, authorities say, Semenko led a double life. During an alleged conversation with the undercover FBI agent, Semenko said he spent three weeks with the foreign intelligence service in Moscow, learning to covertly exchange messages on wireless computer networks.

Like the other suspects, Semenko is charged with conspiring to illegally act as an agent of a foreign government, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Nine of the suspects, including the Murphys, are also charged with money laundering conspiracy, which carries a 20-year maximum prison term.

The Murphys and Semenko remain in federal custody pending bail hearings Wednesday. Attempts to reach their lawyers today were unsuccessful.

On Marquette Road in Montclair today, the Murphys’ neighbors continued to grapple with the notion the couple in the beige house with red shutters had been accused of being foreign agents.

"Just a week ago, I saw her watering flowers in the yard," Sokolow said.

With her blonde hair and easy smile, Cynthia Murphy, 35, was the more gregarious of the two, chatting with neighbors about gardening and cooking. Each morning, she walked to the corner bus stop to commute to her job as a certified financial planner at a small Manhattan accounting firm. She had an MBA from Columbia University and a finance and international business degree from New York University, according to her online resume.

"She was a very good employee and a terrific mom," said Barbara Morea, Murphy’s boss at Morea Financial Services. "I am in total shock."

But authorities said she used her job at the firm to gather financial data for her handlers in Moscow, including in 2009 to learn details of the prospective global gold market, authorities said.

Alan Patricof, a powerful Democratic fundraiser and confidant of Bill and Hillary Clinton, told the Washington Post today he believed Cynthia Murphy may have tried to target him while she worked as his financial adviser. But in the end, they never discussed politics, Patricof told the newspaper.

Richard Murphy, 39, with dark hair and thick build, mostly kept to himself and stayed home to care for their daughters, 7 and 11. He spoke in perfect English and talked about being an architect.

"He was like an enigma more than anything else," said Elizabeth Lapin, a neighbor.

By Grace J. Chung and Joe Ryan/The Star-Ledger

Staff writers Kelly Heyboer, Philip Read, Rohan Mascarenhas and Nic Corbett of the New Jersey Local News Service contributed to this report.