Endgame (37 page)

But where was Bobby Fischer? The clucks and whispers spread throughout the hall: “He isn’t coming!” “He has to come … even his sister is here!” “He wouldn’t do this to Spassky!” “He still has to collect his check!” “He’s already back in Brooklyn!” “He won’t come!”

After an hour had passed with no sign of the champion and with revelers already deep into their goblets of Viking’s Blood, Dr. Euwe lumbered up onto the stage, while the orchestra played the anthem of FIDE:
“Gens Una Sumus.”
Then suddenly, wearing a maroon corduroy suit that he’d had custom made in Reykjavik, Bobby appeared. Without waiting for the music to stop, he walked to the head table and sat. Spassky was two seats away, and eventually Bobby stretched his hand across and they shook. Euwe called Fischer to the stage, draped a large laurel wreath over his shoulders, and proclaimed him Champion of the World. Then he presented him with a gold medal and a certificate. The coronation was over in a blink.

Examining the medal, Bobby whispered to Euwe, “But my name is not on it.” Euwe smiled and replied, “
We didn’t know if you were going to be the winner!” Without speaking further, Bobby returned to his table. Euwe continued
to talk and mentioned that the rules would have to be changed for future World Championships, in large part because of Bobby Fischer, who’d brought so much attention to the game.

As Euwe continued with his remarks, Bobby appeared bored and lonely, perhaps because more than a thousand people were looking up regularly to stare at him. But even those who knew him well seemed afraid to approach. Two burly Icelanders, the size of restaurant refrigerators—both chess players—sat guard near his table, and whenever anyone came near Bobby to get an autograph, or a kiss, or just to offer their felicitations, they were not so gently steered away.

At his seat Bobby studied the stage from the audience’s perspective, seeing it as they must have seen it for two months, when they’d watched the combatants in profile. He was lost in a reverie, and one can only guess at his thoughts. Did he mentally replay some of his games with Spassky? Did he consider lines that he should have pursued—weigh whether he could have performed better? Did he admonish himself for all of the disquiet he’d caused—all of the disputes over money and cameras and lighting?

Some yearning for the comfort of old habits must have seized him, because, finally, he pulled out his leather pocket chess set and started going over the last game of the match. Spassky had moved to the seat next to him and was listening to Bobby’s analysis. The dialogue seemed natural, almost as if they were still playing. “
I should have played
here
as my sealed move,” said Spassky, moving a little plastic piece and trying to demonstrate how he might have held on to the game. “It wouldn’t have made any difference,” Bobby responded. He then showed the Russian all of the variations he’d worked out during the adjournment. Soon, grandmasters Efim Geller and Robert Byrne jumped into the fray. There was a blur of hands as the four men made moves on a chess set hardly larger than an index card. At that moment Offenbach’s
“Les oiseaux dans la charmille”
filtered down from the stage. But the chess players seemed not to notice.

Eventually, Fischer was given his two prize checks, one from the Icelandic Chess Federation and the other from James Slater, the millionaire whose eleventh-hour financial offer had saved the match. Bobby’s winnings came to $153,240. He was also given a collector’s item, a huge leather-bound, slipcased book on the history of Iceland. Guthmundur Thorarinsson privately complained—but not to Bobby—that the Icelandic Chess Federation had lost $50,000 on the match, because there was no money from television or film rights.

When Bobby had had enough of the party, he slipped out the back door with his friend, the Argentinean player Miguel Quinteros, and went off into the night to frolic with Icelandic girls whom they hoped to pick up. So anxious was he to leave the party, he forgot to take his commemorative Icelandic book, and it was never found.

Just before Spassky left Reykjavik, Bobby had delivered to the Russian at his hotel an amiable letter and a gift-wrapped camera as a token of friendship. Spassky seemed to have no animosity for the man who’d defeated him, although he knew he was going to face difficult times when he returned home to Moscow. His last comment about Bobby was “
Fischer is a man of art, but he is a rare human being in the everyday life of this century. I like Fischer and I think I understand him.”

Mayor Lindsay’s limousine was waiting for Bobby when he touched down in New York. Bobby’s retinue included his bodyguard Saemi Palsson and Palsson’s wife, as well as Quinteros. “It’s great to be back in America” was Fischer’s only comment to the waiting reporters.
The mayor had offered Bobby a ticker-tape parade down the “Canyon of Heroes” on Broadway in lower Manhattan, a rare honor given in the past to such luminaries as Charles Lindbergh, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Apollo astronauts, but Bobby wasn’t much excited by the idea. Friends and advisors reminded him that if he accepted, he’d be the only chess player ever to have a ticker-tape parade, and probably there’d never be another chess player receiving the distinction. He was unmoved: “No, I don’t want it,” he decided. He would, however, agree to a “small” ceremony on the steps of City Hall.

He received hundreds of congratulatory letters and telegrams, but the one that he was most proud of was as follows:

The “small” ceremony turned out to be “Bobby Fischer Day” in New York City. More than one thousand well-wishers gathered at the steps of City Hall as Mayor Lindsay awarded Bobby with a gold medal (and not the key to the city as has been incorrectly reported) and proclaimed him “
the grandest master of them all.” Many of Bobby’s friends were there, such as Jack and Ethel Collins, Edmar Mednis, Paul Marshall (Bobby’s lawyer) and his wife Betty, and Sam Sloan. This time Bobby gave a speech: “I want to deny a vicious rumor that’s been going around. I think it was started by Moscow. It is not true that Henry Kissinger phoned me during the night to tell me the moves.” The audience roared. “
I never thought I’d see the day when chess would be all over the front pages here, but confined only to one paragraph in
Pravda.
”
That day, Bobby was not the old curmudgeonly Bobby: He was gracious, humorous, and willing to sign countless autographs.
The New York Times
in a mammoth editorial summed up what he’d managed to achieve:

Fischer, the Cold War hero, traveled to New Jersey and became the temporary houseguest of his lawyer Paul Marshall. So besieged was Bobby by the media that for a while Marshall had to have a bodyguard stationed in front of his palatial home to keep the press hordes at bay.

B
OBBY
F
ISCHER’S LONG
, almost monastic pursuit of the World Championship, although not totally chaste, gave him little time to connect with women. “
I want to meet girls,” Bobby said when he moved back to Los Angeles in 1973. “Vivacious girls with big breasts.” He was twenty-nine years old, and though there’d been a few brief liaisons, at no time had he experienced a meaningful romantic relationship. Now, with his earnings from Reykjavik and a new place to live—an apartment provided for him at a modest rental fee of $200 per month by the Worldwide Church of God—he felt that he was starting a new life. He wanted to read more—not just chess journals—acquire more money, continue his religious studies, and possibly meet someone with whom he could fall in love. What it all added up to was an intense need to recharge his emotional and spiritual life.

Not all was altruism and ebullience, however; certain realities still cast a pall. His alienation from the press caused ongoing problems. He’d suffered a series of fractured relationships with chess organizers in the United States (he was no longer speaking to Edmondson, the executive director of the U.S. Chess Federation) and looming in the near future were the Soviets, with what he foresaw would be a resumption of their underhanded ways of competing.

After Bobby’s period of post-Reykjavik idleness had stretched to about a year, he decided that his first priority should be accumulating more money, always on his terms.
So, working with Stanley Rader, the chief counsel for the Worldwide Church, he called a press conference in August of 1973 to publicly discuss his plans.

Rader was a lawyer and Armstrong’s closest advisor. As chief counsel, he was becoming rich through his work with the Church, and Bobby was impressed with Rader’s trappings: his Ferrari, his chauffeur-driven limousine, his palatial mansion in Beverly Hills, and his use of a private jet. Rader was in charge of the $70-million-a-year windfall that the Church was bringing in, mostly from tithing its members. Bobby himself had given the Church more than $60,000 from his Icelandic winnings, and ultimately his tithe would be close to $100,000.

For the press conference, dozens of journalists and photographers assembled in Rader’s soaring living room. Aside from two television appearances right after Reykjavik, it had been almost twelve months since Bobby had made any statements or, for that matter, been seen in public. The words “
secluded” and “recluse” had begun straying into newspaper stories about him. Hardly days after his win in Iceland, an article in
The New York Times
headlined
NEW CHAMPION STILL MYSTERY MAN
speculated as to whether he’d ever play again.
The Associated Press took the same tack, publishing a story entitled
BOBBY FISCHER TURNS DOWN FAME, FORTUNE; GOES INTO SECLUSION
. It was an odd slant, since at that point Bobby had no intention of isolating himself or turning down money; he was just tending to personal matters that he’d neglected for years. Also, up to that time chess champions would traditionally defend their title only every three years. Although the public wanted to see Bobby back at the board, his absence from chess for less than a year was not an aberration.

Rader did most of the talking at the press conference, and he was good at it, having graduated first in his class at the University of California Law School. Bobby, dressed conservatively, stood somewhat nervously at his side. Throughout the event, photographers took photos, and Bobby looked annoyed every time a flashbulb popped. Rader said, in a voice that was both sonorous and emphatic, that Fischer would like to announce that he will soon be back at the 64 squares and 32 pieces again … quite soon. “We are making arrangements for a series of simultaneous exhibitions and matches for early next year. We are also considering an exhibition match where Bobby would play the entire Dutch Olympic team
simultaneously.
” A reporter shot out a question: “What about a re-match for the championship?” Rader and
Bobby exchanged a flicker of a glance, and the lawyer responded: “That is a possibility.” The reporter came back with an immediate follow-up: “Would that match be under the authority of the World Chess Federation?” Rader didn’t hesitate: “That would not be likely but it is under discussion.” Rader also mentioned that a tour of both Russia and South America was being talked about.

The reporters wanted a go at Fischer: “What have you been doing for the last year?” was one of the first questions. Bobby drawled out his response: “Well, uh, I’ve been reading, working out, playing over some games, that sort of thing.” A few other general questions were tossed out, and Bobby answered them succinctly and with aplomb, until someone asked whether he was living in an apartment subsidized by the Church. “That’s personal,” he said. “I don’t want to answer any more personal questions.” A reporter asked him about a supposed offer of $1 million for a match against Spassky in Las Vegas. Rader jumped in with the answer: “To begin with, the Las Vegas offer was not a firm $1 million offer. They said the offer was for a million but it would have turned out less, and Bobby didn’t want to agree with anything less than a firm $1 million.”