Endgame (29 page)

The non-chess media gave the tournament far more attention than usual, though they’d never been sure whether chess was a sport or an art.
Life
and the
Saturday Evening Post
arranged to interview Bobby.
Sports Illustrated
headlined its story
THE AMAZING VICTORY STREAK OF BOBBY FISCHER
. Chess publications around the world wrote of the unparalleled achievement. Only Bent Larsen, always a Fischer detractor, was unimpressed: “
Fischer was playing against children,” he said.

Reshevsky a child? Robert Byrne? Larry Evans? Pal Benko?

On March 9, 1964, Bobby Fischer was twenty-one. His birthday gave him something in common with many young American males during that time of military escalation: participation in the military draft. President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated the previous November, and his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, had escalated the war in Vietnam. To be drafted at that time meant a strong likelihood of serving in Southeast Asia.

As a “1-A” candidate, Bobby was scheduled to take his physical examination at the U.S. Army Recruiting Station on Whitehall Street in New York City. If selected, he’d spend the next two years in the army. Fischer was patriotic at that time, but his focus was chess, and the chess community was counting on him to play in the Interzonal at Amsterdam. True,
he’d said that he would never play in the FIDE cycle again because it was stacked in favor of the Soviets. But might he somehow get back on the road to the championship? The world wanted it, and in his heart Bobby wanted it—but he said he wouldn’t change his mind. Nevertheless, several people began researching
whether there might be a way to get Fischer a deferment until after the Interzonal was completed … just in case he played in it.

On Bobby’s behalf, an official of the United States Chess Federation contacted
General George B. Hershey, head of the Selective Service bureau. Hershey explained that “a
temporary
deferment, on almost any grounds, is usually an easy matter to secure from a local board, but eventually Fischer will probably be drafted.”

A somewhat longer deferment was available, and totally legal, for college students. Bobby had dropped out of high school, but the New School for Social Research, a progressive college in New York City, was willing to accept his extraordinary chess accomplishments in lieu of traditional schoolwork.
Alfred Landa, then assistant to the president, said that Fischer would not only be allowed to matriculate into the college, but be given a full scholarship. Bobby thought long and hard about the offer. One afternoon he started to walk to the New School to put in his application—and then stopped. His experience with schools had been distasteful, and perhaps that caused forebodings. Without giving an explanation, he refused to enter the school building, and he refused to apply for a student deferment.

He was rescheduled to take his physical examination and went to the recruiting station by himself. Afterward, it was announced that Bobby had been rejected—for reasons that have never been made public.
Bobby Fischer was classified 4F—the military rating that meant you had one or more medical conditions that totally disqualified you from serving in uniform. He
seemed
and appeared fine, physically.

Whatever the reason, Bobby Fischer never served in the military.

Bobby sat confined in a small wood-paneled room at the Marshall Chess Club, with only the chessboard and a referee. There was no player facing him. After deciding on his move, he wrote it down on his score sheet, which was then carried by the referee to a “runner,” who brought it quickly to a nearby room where a Teletype machine had been set up. Bobby then waited, still alone, as the move was transmitted to Havana, Cuba, where his opponent sat facing his own chessboard. When the opponent made his answering move, it was transmitted by wire from Havana back to the Marshall, the
Teletype operator turned the reply over to the runner, and the move was carried back to the silent room where Bobby tensely awaited it.

It was 1965 and Bobby had accepted an invitation to play in the Capablanca Memorial Tournament in Havana. It was exactly the type of tournament he’d been seeking for his return to international competition. There would be thirteen grandmasters and eight international masters, not quite as strong a field as at Bobby’s last international tournament, but incredibly powerful. The $3,000 appearance fee sealed it for him. Bobby was back.

But not quite. Diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba were still severely strained. The State Department had begun to permit journalists access to Cuba, although it denied entry to ordinary citizens. Fischer had applied for a visa, since he was a regular contributor to
Chess Life
and had made special arrangements to do an article on this tournament for the
Saturday Review
, which sent a letter to the United States Department of State—as did the U.S. Chess Federation—confirming the legitimacy of his trip and petitioning permission for him to go to Cuba. There’s no question that his primary motivation in wanting to go was to play in the tournament, but he also intended to write about it.
Nonetheless, the State Department flatly refused to recognize him as a legitimate columnist, and therefore denied him the opportunity to travel to Havana.

What no one knew was that the FBI was investigating Bobby, and had been for years. Their interest in him may have been triggered by their belief that his mother was a Communist, in part because she’d spent six years in Moscow attending medical school; they’d been investigating Regina since Bobby was a child. When Bobby went to Moscow in 1958, when he was fifteen, the FBI presumed that Regina had sent him there to be indoctrinated.

The Bureau obviously had trouble believing that someone would travel so much simply for the purpose of playing chess, especially to countries that were restricted for political reasons. A notice in Bobby’s FBI file states that his passport was “not valid for travel to Albania, Cuba, and those portions of China, Korea and Vietnam under communist control,” and it contains a 1965 memorandum from the Office of the Coordinator of Cuban Affairs which advises that “
Cuban travel criteria make no provision for validation for the purpose of participating in chess competitions.”

FBI target or not, Bobby was primed to play in the tournament, and he wouldn’t be denied. Helping him out were officials in the United States Chess Federation who came up with a highly unorthodox idea: Bobby would stay in New York and play the tournament from a room in the Marshall Chess Club. There were no cell phones in 1965, and there was certainly no Internet. But Fischer could play the tournament by Teletype. Cuban chess officials were delighted, offering to pay some $10,000 in expenses for the open telephone line and Teletype machine that were required. As for the other participants in the tournament, they agreed, some reluctantly, to the novel arrangement. Che Guevara, a strong chess player, was the principal force behind organizing the tournament.

Then Fidel Castro intervened, calling the situation a “great propaganda victory for Cuba.” It made headlines.
Furious, Bobby cabled Castro, threatening to withdraw from the tournament unless the premier promised to stop using him as a political ploy. Bobby continued:

Castro cabled back, denying making the statement and questioning Bobby’s courage:

Upon receiving word from Castro, Bobby confirmed his participation in the tournament without any further sparring. He wanted to play the game of chess, not be a party to sensationalism.

The arrangement was certainly awkward for Bobby, however. To avoid any hint of cheating, he had to be isolated from everyone except the referee. It was a sterile, feedback-barren experience with no chance to read his opponent’s body language. As Bobby sat with the referee, not a word was spoken; the afternoons crept slowly into summer twilight. Occasionally, while waiting for his opponent’s move to come back from Havana, Bobby would gaze out into the club’s garden. A bust of Philidor, the eighteenth-century French chess player and composer who was considered the best player of his day, was perched atop an étagère of chess sets, almost as if he were at the game.
The tick of the chess clock was the only sound heard.

A typical four-hour game was transformed by the Teletype process into an eight- or nine-hour affair. Some games stretched to twelve hours. The tournament became a test of endurance and stamina. Bobby grew exhausted. His opponents had the same problem, but each only had to submit to the process once—when playing Fischer.
Bobby had to play this strange, isolated form of chess every single game. In the midst of the tournament, someone asked how well he thought he’d do and he answered, “It’s a question of when I’ll crack up.”

Bobby won his first two games but as the tournament wore on he lost to some players and drew with several others well below his caliber. While he exhibited flashes of brilliance, this wasn’t the same Bobby Fischer who’d swept through the United States Championship eighteen months earlier.
Still, he tied for second, a half point behind Russia’s Vasily Smyslov, the former World Champion.

Had Fischer not done as well as he did, his story might have ended right there, surrealistically, in the quiet back room of a chess club. Havana was his comeback in the world spotlight, and a poor showing would only have deepened Bobby’s disillusionment with himself, probably permanently. Two setbacks in international tournaments would have been intolerable to him. True, for Bobby there was only one place in a tournament and that was first. But after the long international layoff, and playing every game under grueling
conditions, he likely considered his second-place showing somewhat acceptable.

Openly, Bobby disparaged how he’d performed, but the Soviet chess establishment was dazzled by how he managed to place so high under such arduous conditions. They
were convinced that he was continuing to grow as a player, and that unless something were done quickly, he’d smash the Soviets’ hegemony.

Worry about Fischer led the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Sports, which studied the psychology of sports, to appoint a Soviet grandmaster and theoretician, Vladimir Alatortsev, to create a secret laboratory (located near the Moscow Central Chess Club). Its mission was to analyze Fischer’s games. Alatortsev and a small group of other masters and psychologists worked tirelessly for ten years attempting to “solve” the mystery of Fischer’s prowess, in addition to analyzing his personality and behavior.
They rigorously studied his opening, middle game, and endings—and filtered classified analyses of their findings to the top Soviet players.