David Edmonds - Bobby Fischer Goes to War

He flew back to New York on Tuesday, 27 June, and moved into the Yale Club as a guest of his New York lawyer, Andrew Davis. It was four days before the official opening of the match.

The Soviet party had arrived in Reykjavik on 21 June to settle in and acclimatize. In Iceland at that time of year, there was practically no darkness, only “white nights.” Spassky was thoroughly comfortable with this; it was the season of merrymaking in his home city, Leningrad. The Soviets took up residence in the best hotel in Reykjavik, the Saga, with Spassky occupying room 730— the presidential suite at the secure end of a corridor. With its wide views, Empire-style furniture, and gold-plated taps in the bathroom, his accommodation no doubt made a pleasing change from Moscow. The champion played tennis with Ivo Nei up to eleven o’clock at night, while Geller and Krogius prepared for the chess battle ahead.

A comparison of the two players’ teams is instructive. Spassky had arrived with Geller, Krogius, and Nei—chess players all, two grandmasters and an international master. Lined up on Fischer’s side were thirty-nine-year-old attorney Andrew Davis, educated at Yale and Oxford, and Fred Cramer, a past president of the United States Chess Federation, who had taken over from Edmondson as the challenger’s emissary. Fischer also summoned Paul Marshall to his side. A journalist for Life magazine, Brad Darrach, attached himself to the Fischer squad and later wrote an exuberant, blow-by-blow account of the whole experience.

Fischer had not yet chosen a second; grandmaster William Lombardy took the position at the last moment. Lombardy was strikingly different from the rest of Fischer’s team. He was a chess player of high class: in 1958, he took the World Junior Chess Championship with a perfect eleven victories, no draws, no losses—a truly remarkable accomplishment—and he went on to become U.S. champion twice. Unlike Fischer, he had beaten Spassky. This victory, in twenty-nine moves, came when he led the United States to first place in the 1960 World Student Team Championship in Leningrad. But chess was only a part of his vocation: he was a Roman Catholic priest, possibly the greatest chess-playing cleric since Ruy Lopez in sixteenth-century Spain, originator of the eponymous opening that was Fischer’s favorite.

Rotund, with small eyes peeping out of a podgy face framed by sharply razored muttonchop whiskers and a vestigial mustache, Lombardy tended to divide opinion in Reykjavik. Some thought him approachable, affable, gregarious, and humorous. Others found him insufferably stiff and pompous. Some reported that he was loyal and dependable. Others, such as the writer George Steiner, regarded him as scheming and “sinister.” Certainly, one of the sights of the match was Father Lombardy holding a press conference in clerical garb.

Both Davis and Marshall were accustomed to Fischer’s unpredictability, and each had already resigned once over his repudiation of agreements they had negotiated for him. Yet, in common with so many other acquaintances of Fischer’s, they were prepared to forgive what in other clients or friends would have been unforgivable. Marshall was “amazed” when Davis telephoned suddenly, seeking his help on Fischer’s behalf as though there had been no breach. However, he took his client back on, traveling and acting for him without billing his time or expenses—a New York lawyer taking pro bono to extremes. He reflected on his client in terms appropriate for Charles Dickens’s Tiny Tim: “Bobby never made any money in his life. Everyone who dealt with him when he was fourteen, fifteen, used him. If there was any money to be made, they took it. They’d call him up and say, ‘Come on out here, we’ll pay your bills and we’ll give you a couple of bucks on the side.’ And when it was over, they’d stick him with a huge hotel bill. Here’s a fifteen-year-old kid with an enormous bill, no money, all alone, crying.”

Of course, by 1972 Fischer was no longer a child, and by rights there should have been no further negotiation on money. The financial arrangements appeared to have been settled. The winner would receive $78,125, the loser $46,875, and the two contestants would each take 30 percent of TV and film rights. But Fischer’s approach was always to agree to nothing, sign nothing, confirm nothing. With only days to go before the scheduled start, he now argued that the pot should include 30 percent of the gate receipts—estimated to total $250,000. The Icelanders balked: the venue, the exhibition hall, could seat some 2,500, and they were depending on this revenue to cover their costs.

Although Fischer was in New York on 27 June, and so already twenty-four hours late for his timetabled appearance in Reykjavik, his imminent arrival was still expected. And if he did not arrive? The Icelandic Chess Federation press spokesman, Freysteinn Johannsson, had no press statement ready for such a contingency.

On 28 June, Fischer was booked onto another flight from John F. Kennedy Airport. All the arrangements were in place, including a supply of fresh oranges that he insisted should be squeezed in front of him for fear the Soviets had tampered with his juice. Although the challenger’s financial demands had not been conceded, his lawyers were cautiously optimistic that he would be on the plane. Marshall, who was overwhelmed with work at his practice, was quoted in the press:

I received a call from Andy [Davis] from the limousine taking the two to the airport. It had just passed over the 59th Street Bridge when I spoke to Andy, and I said to him, “Congratulations.” He said, “Don’t congratulate me yet—it’s a little early.” We both laughed and signed off. I was a happy man…. I wouldn’t have to see Bobby for two and a half months, I thought. I went home and my wife congratulated me. I kissed my kids for the first time in weeks. Islept well, went to the office, had a good morning and went out for lunch. I picked up a paper and saw—oh, no, he hadn’t gone yet. I grabbed a quick drink.

Davis himself had boarded the plane. But amid the airport passageways, in scenes worthy of a Marx Brothers film (starring Greta Garbo), Fischer stopped to buy an alarm clock, caught sight of the hordes of cameramen waiting to record his historic departure—and bolted.

He took refuge in the Tudor-style family house of a childhood companion, Anthony Saidy, in Douglaston, in the New York borough of Queens—2 Cedar Lane. A medical doctor from a Lebanese family, Saidy had once won the U.S. Open Chess Championship. Fischer felt at home with the Saidy family, relishing the Lebanese cuisine prepared by Anthony’s mother.

Davis later blamed the media for thwarting his client’s desire to be veiled from the public gaze. Others suspected darker motives for his turning the flight to the championship into a flight from the championship. Some theorized that the cause was not the paparazzi, but a stalemate over Fischer’s latest financial stipulations. In Davis’s briefcase were demands for a better TV deal, the loser’s share of the money in Fischer’s hand at the outset, and 30 percent of the gate. The New York Times found that hard to believe: the amounts were trivial compared with the fortune he could make on becoming champion.

A second hypothesis held that Fischer was deliberately conducting a war of nerves against his opponent. With the challenger still absent, the press claimed the champion was “on the edge already.” A Washington Post reporter visited Fischer in Douglaston and put this to him. “I don’t believe in psychology. I believe in good moves,” the challenger rejoined.