Frank Brady - Endgame

Another match against Spassky was discussed (and Spassky was agreeable to playing Fischer Random), but these talks ended in a matter of days. The potential match organizer, Dr. Alex Titomirov, a Russian scientist who was an expert in DNA transfer technology and CEO of a company called ATEO Holdings Ltd., invited Spassky to meet him in Reykjavik to help with his negotiations with Bobby. Canadian-born Joel Lautier, the top player in France, was also a part of the group that met Bobby. It became clear, however, that Titomirov had no interest in yet another Fischer-Spassky contest, but wanted a Fischer-Kramnik match instead. Spassky was just being used to convince Fischer to “come back to chess.” Fischer was open to discussions, but nothing was signed or agreed upon. Spassky was angered when he learned that he was not being considered for the match with Fischer, and he used insulting language when referring to Titomirov. Bobby chimed in with an equally vicious slur, again using what had happened as typical of Russian machinations.

Other offers proved to be too small or, in a few cases, even spurious. Some of Bobby’s Icelandic friends thought certain “match organizers” weren’t seriously negotiating, but rather just wanted to meet the mysterious Fischer, an event akin to meeting J. D. Salinger or Greta Garbo—something to boast about for the rest of their lives.

One offer, to play a twelve-game match with Karpov in a variation called Gothic Chess (with an expanded board of eighty squares, three extra pawns, and two new pieces—one that would combine the moves of the rook and the knight, and another that would combine the moves of the bishop and the knight), seemed like it had a chance to result in a match of historic significance, especially since the announced prize fund was $14 million: $10 million for the winner and $4 million for the loser. Karpov signed the contract, but when the promoters showed up in Reykjavik, Bobby wanted to be paid in three installments, one per meeting—in amounts of $10,000, $50,000, and $100,000 respectively— just to discuss it . Bobby also wanted proof that the prize fund was actually in a bank, and when that information, or proof of equity, wasn’t forthcoming, the entire venture dribbled away.

Next came a proposal for a $2 million “Bobby Fischer Museum,” to be housed in Iceland—or maybe it should be Brooklyn, the promoters mused. It appeared and dissolved like a dream almost before anyone had a chance to wake up.

Bobby peered over the chessboard, scanning and evaluating—attempting not just to suggest a Russian conspiracy, but to prove it unequivocally. Despite his promotion of Fischer Random and his rejection of and scorn for the “old chess,” he still played over games, tempted by the action of contemporary tournaments and matches. A board and set, with pieces in their traditional positions, sat on the coffee table in his apartment, always ready for a session of analysis. On this particular day, Bobby was going over once again, perhaps for the hundredth time, the fourth game of the 1985 World Championship match between the two Russian grandmasters Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov. Bobby’s belief in a Russian cabal involving the two Ks had become his crusade, and he’d been airing his views all over the world for several years. He never wavered from claiming that all of the games in the 1985 match were fixed and prearranged move-by-move. “Even Polgar and Spassky, both World Champions, understand what I’m talking about,” he said to no one in particular, becoming more strident as he went on. “These games are fake! Kasparov should answer my charges! He should be put through a lie detector test, and then the whole world will see what a liar he is!”

The cheating in that 1985 match was obvious , he insisted. In the fourth game Karpov moved his knight on his twenty-first move, which Bobby insisted was the “proof” of the beginning of the staged sequence. He pointed out to anyone who’d listen that Karpov “makes no less than eighteen consecutive moves on the light squares. Incredible!” This was statistically unusual, but not totally improbable, and was certainly not incontrovertible evidence of a plot.

Despite that, no one could talk Bobby out of his belief that Kasparov and Karpov were “crooks.” Bobby remained resolute in his views, even though almost all grandmasters and many other members of the chess fraternity insisted that his accusations had no credible foundation. A scientist at the Center for Bioformatics and Molecular Biostatistics of the University of California, Mark Segal, proved mathematically that such a charge was specious and that the moves in the 1985 contest were more statistically likely to have occurred than Fischer’s own shutouts of Taimanov and Larsen, and his near total defeat of Petrosian. Segal concluded his scholarly paper by facetiously musing, “Perhaps Fischer’s ascent to world champion was part of some conspiracy.”

Some people believed that Bobby was still stewing over the fact that he’d refused to play Karpov in 1975, and therefore was trying to belittle Karpov’s resulting match with Kasparov. Others held that his accusations were a ploy to promote his new Fischer Random chess. Still others chalked them up to simple paranoia. For his part, Bobby never explained what either Karpov or Kasparov had to gain from prearranging match results, except to keep the title in the Russian family. But since both men were Russian that made no sense.

If gratitude is the heart’s memory, Bobby’s call to remembrance was weak or sometimes nonexistent. Not only did the stouthearted Icelanders on the RJF Committee manage to extricate him from a Japanese jail and a looming ten-year prison term, they did everything they could for him once he arrived in their country: finding him a place to live, protecting him from exploiters and prying journalists, advising him on his finances, driving him to the thermal baths, inviting him to dinners and holiday celebrations, taking him fishing and on tours throughout the country, trying to make him feel at home.

Indeed, they created a cultlike following around Bobby, treating him almost as seventeenth-century royalty. Each functionary had his own role to play in granting whatever wishes the king requested. What they didn’t expect was that the king would respond to even the smallest failure with an “off with his head!” attitude. Bobby had behaved this way in his teen years, displaying unforgiving impatience toward any of his young followers who chanced, inadvertently, to displease him. Now, in Reykjavik, despite being the recipient of numerous acts of kindness and generosity, Bobby began finding fault, negatively overgeneralizing, and snapping at those who’d shown him the most loyalty.

His first break was with his obsequious bodyguard Saemi Palsson. Palsson had never been paid anything (“not a cent,” he complained, although there was a report that Bobby gave him a check for $300 before he went back to Iceland) for the months of bodyguard work he’d provided for Bobby in Reykjavik in 1972 and in the United States after the match. And Palsson had been the initial Icelander to join forces with Bobby in his attempt to get out of jail. Palsson had traveled to Japan at his own expense, and he continued to help when Bobby became an Icelandic citizen. Palsson had ample reason to expect goodwill from Bobby. The seeds of their ultimate break were sown, though, when, even prior to Bobby’s departure from Japan, Palsson was approached by an Icelandic filmmaker, Fridrik Gudmundsson, to do a documentary for Icelandic television about Bobby’s incarceration, the fight to release him, and his escape to freedom. Palsson and Bobby might see some money, it was suggested, if the film made a profit, although it was highly unlikely for a documentary to realize even a slight windfall.