David Edmonds - Bobby Fischer Goes to War

To add to the Icelanders’ woes, Fred Cramer had arrived on 27 June and offered a foretaste of his part in the drama. He had presented a list of expected requirements about lighting and other arrangements, then thrown in an unexpected demand—a new arbiter, a non—chess player. The experienced and respected German grandmaster Lothar Schmid was apparently unacceptable as chief arbiter. This was curious if only because, when a teenager, Fischer had stayed with Schmid in his family home in Bamberg. Passing off the underage chess genius as his nephew, Schmid had taken him to a casino in Bad Homburg, a suburb of Frankfurt am Main, where he observed that Fischer was not a risk taker. The quietly spoken, patently decent Schmid had also refereed Fischer’s last match in the Candidates round, against Petrosian. The manner in which he carried off that task had marked him out for the final. Chess was not Schmid’s only interest. His family-owned firm, Karl-May-Verlag, published the writer of westerns, Karl May—after Goethe, Germany’s best-selling author.

While Fischer hunkered down in the Saidys’ house, the impasse between Icelandic officials and his lawyers pushed the U.S. presidential nominations down the front page. With Fischer’s attorneys haggling over the financial terms, it did not escape the reporters that Dr. Saidy’s father, Fred, was coauthor of Finian’s Rainbow, the musical about the filching of a pot of gold. Contributing to Dr. Saidy’s stress was the fact that his father was seriously ill and needed hospitalization. Fischer told Anthony not to worry: Fred’s illness would not disturb him.

On the day of the official opening, Saturday, 1 July, The New York Times covered the story on its front page: “Bobby Fischer’s erratic posture toward the World Chess Championship has touched off a wave of debate and discussion in New York and Moscow as well as Reykjavik, Iceland.” TASS, the Soviet state press agency, wrote that a “disgusting spirit of gain” motivated Fischer. Ed Edmondson said, “He’s putting on some kind of act—for what I don’t know.” He, Edmondson, thought that the odds were two to one that Fischer would not play. When the match was delayed, a reporter noted: “Everyone hated Bobby. He put himself in the hot seat, and every man in the room would have gladly pulled the switch. But nobody could afford to let the son of a bitch burn. So what did they do? They stopped the world. Now if we all fall down on our knees, Bobby might be willing to get on.”

Icelanders accused Fischer of extortion. In Reykjavik, rumors circulated as in wartime. Among the most popular were that Fischer was in hiding after his arrival in the country a week earlier on a United States Air Force jet or alternately after being smuggled ashore in a rubber dinghy from a U.S. Navy submarine.

Already chilled by the prospect of the whole project’s collapsing, the organizers now faced a problem for which no preplanning could have prepared them. In the absence of the challenger, should they go ahead with the opening ceremony of the match? Absurd though it might be, there seemed no other plausible answer than yes. To proceed as though the match would, at some stage, commence was the surest way to ensure that it did actually commence. That, at least, was the theory.

So, almost as though everything were in order, the dignitaries gather at Reykjavik’s National Theatre for the scheduled event. The seat next to Spassky’s is empty. As befits the magnitude of the occasion for their country, Iceland’s president, Kristjan Eldjarn, and the mayor of Reykjavik, Geir Hallgrimsson, are both present, together with the city councillors. So too are the prime minister, Olafur Johannesson, and the finance minister, Halldor E. Sigurdsson, who has guaranteed the cost of the project up to five million Icelandic kronur. The heads of the Soviet and U.S. embassies are in their places. Max Euwe, the president of FIDE, has flown in from Holland. Chief arbiter, Lothar Schmid, has arrived from Germany. They are aware that this event may be a charade. The public bonhomie conceals anxiety and a smoldering sense of grievance.

However, the most embarrassed and fraught figure of all is the man responsible for the match’s being held in Iceland, Gudmundur Thorarinsson. This should be his moment. He is down to make the opening speech, winning plaudits from the Icelandic establishment to launch his political career. Instead, he is seized by panic, sweating and fearful of being late. He has been in the Loftleidir hotel since ten o’clock, listening, he says, to “demands and demands and new demands.” At 4:50 P.M., with little progress made, Andrew Davis stands up and says, “Forget it. Fischer won’t come and there’ll be no match.” There are ten minutes to go before the opening, and Thorarinsson finds himself racing to the National Theatre. Knowing that Fischer has no intention of leaving New York, he will have to appear on stage in front of his country’s president. Worst of all, he is still dressed in his working clothes.

The drive to the National Theatre is spent in frenzied internal debate: Should he tell the audience it is over or simply open the match with his fingers crossed? He arrives at 5:15 P.M., fifteen minutes late, and begins the longest walk of his life, to the rostrum:

A high official at the Foreign Ministry came running to me when I came through the door, and he said, “What kind of a man are you? This is the height of rudeness. Everybody is waiting and you come dressed like this.” He took me by the arm and he said they’re waiting and the rostrum is there. So, I went alone, fifteen meters or so to the rostrum. I looked at the balcony, where the president of Iceland sat. He was an elderly, experienced man. I think he guessed what kind of a dilemma I was in. We looked at each other, and about a meter from the rostum I made a decision. I will open the match. Then I won’t close any doors. I can always tell them later that it’s over. But if I say now it’s over, it’s really over. Somehow I got through a speech, one I hadn’t prepared. And I opened the match.

The president of Iceland makes no speech. The government’s welcome is given by the minister of culture magnus, Torfi Olafsson. The mayor then talks pointedly of an ongoing chess game. “It is obvious that human beings do not for long wish to be pawns on a chessboard, even if they are in the hands of geniuses.” Euwe’s speech is half explanatory, half apologetic, expressing the hold Fischer has over the officials. “Mr. Fischer is not an easy man. But we should remember that he has lifted the level of world chess for all players.” At the cocktail party after the ceremony, Thorarinsson comes in for criticism from his Icelandic colleagues. “‘Keeping the government waiting is something one doesn’t do. If you’re going to organize this world championship, you’ll have to change your habits.’ I couldn’t let on; it would have been all over the world press. I just said, ‘I’m sorry, I shall try to do better. It won’t happen again.’”

In fact, government ministers have more to worry about than Thorarinsson’s working clothes. Iceland’s economy is wholly dependent on fish, and they are preparing to announce the extension of the country’s fishing limits from twelve to fifty miles, confirming a threat that had been made a year earlier. The new rules will come into force on 1 September 1972. With Great Britain’s fishing industry already suffering from an earlier extension, London’s rejection of the move is inevitable, meaning that this tiny nation, whose entire air force (one helicopter) had recently been incapacitated, is heading for a showdown with one of the mightiest military forces in the world. (In the event, with American backing and a devastating weapon, a wire cutter that traps and cuts trawl ropes, causing thousands of pounds’ worth of damage through lost catches and, worse still, lost nets, Iceland will secure its extension.)