Meanwhile, conscience-stricken, Schmid tries to reach Fischer to discuss matters. He makes it plain to the match committee, which will hear the inevitable American protest, how ready he is to have his decision overruled. After receiving a note from Cramer, he tells Darrach to write an official letter of appeal to reach him before the deadline under the rules, midnight (six hours after the forfeit). According to Darrach, Schmid comes to Fischer’s suite just before time runs out, hoping to obtain the appeal. He is shown some scrawled pages and feels that they might count as delivered on time if he but touches them—which he does, then leaves them to be typed.
Why did the chief arbiter show such solicitude for the challenger? “I tried to give Bobby a chance. I had to be fair to both players. Bobby was unusual. He wasn’t protesting just to protest. He thought he was right even when he was not. I knew Bobby was not easy, but I knew also that he was not a bad boy. We had to save the match.”
Schmid is still in his pajamas, though with his hair neatly combed, when Fischer personally delivers the letter. Jumping up, the arbiter accidentally bangs his head on a lamp hanging low over a coffee table. According to Darrach, “Bobby grinned” at the sight of Schmid’s discomfort. In the letter, Fischer writes that he had been told the cameras would be silent and invisible and that “nothing could have been further from the facts.” “The bungling unknowns who claimed to be professional cameramen were clumsy, rude and deceitful. The only thing invisible, silent and out of sight was fairness on the part of the organizers. I have never compromised on anything affecting playing conditions of the game itself, which is my art and my profession. It seemed to me that the organizers deliberately tried to upset and provoke me by the way they coddled and kowtowed to that [camera] crew.” Spassky sniffs, “The letter is about everything except chess.”
That same morning, Friday, 14 July, the match committee meets. It consists of one American, Fred Cramer; one Russian, Nikolai Krogius; and two Icelanders, the assistant arbiter, Gudmundur Arnlaugsson, and a member of the ICF and head of the FIDE match committee Baldur Moeller, who is the Icelandic minister of justice.
Before the substantive issues can be thrashed out, a prior question must be addressed: Did Fischer’s appeal arrive on time? Schmid presents the facts. The previous night at 8:40 P.M., he had received a letter from Cramer, who said that it was not the formal protest: that would come later. At 11:50 P.M., Fischer had invited Schmid to his room and shown him some scribbles. At one A.M., Schmid had gone to the Russians in the Saga to tell them that there was a protest, but he did not yet have the text. They made clear that they did not accept Cramer’s letter as sufficient: Fischer had not signed it, as the rules required. The official protest duly signed had finally been delivered to him at eight A.M.
Davis then intervenes. He attempts to persuade the committee that the written protest was a mere formality; they must get to the essence. Schmid should not have started the clock because Fischer had already protested against the presence of television cameras in the hall. They had not been withdrawn. Thus, the conditions were not in order, in accordance with his demands. Ergo, Fischer was not late.
At this point, Geller interjects a counterargument. The rules said that players must be at the game on time. Now that the match was under way, it was too late to protest against the general conditions—there could be complaints only about specific games, and they must be made at the game itself.
As it is his judgment that is under question, Schmid withdraws. That same day at a news conference, Arnlaugsson announces the committee’s ruling. The protest is accepted as delivered in time, but Schmid’s decision to start the clock is affirmed. The cameras would be discussed later with the participants. Fischer’s loss is approved.
Everything to do with Fischer now goes into reverse: in place of the question “Will he comer?” is “Will he leave?” Lombardy, Cramer, Marshall in New York, all scurry around, organizing telegrams from fans in the States beseeching him to stay put. But in the event, an equal number of people, unprompted, send telegrams of condemnation.
While all this is going on, Henry Kissinger is on duty in California, helping to entertain the Soviet ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin at Nixon’s western White House, Casa Pacifica, on the beach at San Clemente. It is a considerable honor for Dobrynin as well as an opportunity for long, informal conversations with Kissinger on U.S.-Soviet relations. They sunbathe on the beach, and Kissinger takes the ambassador and his wife to Hollywood to mingle with the stars. There is no record of them meeting the Marx Brothers, though Hitchcock proposes a suspense film set in the Kremlin. “The time is not yet ripe,” intones Dobrynin. At some stage, Kissinger is said to have found time to put in a call to Reykjavik 22322, the hotel Loftleidir.
Fox’s chief cameraman, Gissli Gestsson, tells the story of how he, Gestsson, was in Fischer’s suite when the telephone rang: “That is the strangest call I ever witnessed in my life. I could hear Henry Kissinger giving him this pep talk like a coach, saying, ‘You’re our man up against the Commies.’ It was unbelievable.” Quite. Bearing in mind that the whole problem was caused by Fischer’s wrath directed at the cameramen, being admitted to Fischer’s side and hearing him take a call from the U.S. president’s right-hand man must have been the scoop of the match.
Fischer’s mind is unchanged, and again the match has descended into Marx Brothers burlesque. There are scenes involving flight reservations, plots to detain Fischer in Reykjavik to prevent his escape, and aborted drives to the airport. Marshall recalls:
We mainly communicated by telex. But one guy with a telephone would occasionally get through to us. We kept receiving messages about Fischer being booked on various planes; a plane to New York, a plane to Greenland, every flight that went out of Reykjavik had Fischer on the flight list. And we were getting these wonderfully droll messages from an Icelander about how Fischer had booked himself on these flights and that Cramer had gone to the airport to try to dissuade him. And there were all these exciting car chases going on.
Fischer off-stage continues to command almost all the attention. In the press, much of it makes for uncomfortable reading. The Washington Post agonizes that “Fischer has alienated millions of chess enthusiasts around the world.” All the expectations of him have “turned to ashes, with Bobby Fischer himself as arsonist.” The correspondent of Agence France-Presse writes that Fischer has crossed the boundaries of all proper behavior.
In contrast, the front pages of the Icelandic press are adorned with pictures of the well-mannered and apparently carefree world champion walking, fishing for salmon, or playing tennis. No doubt these help reassure the organizers that they can focus their efforts on keeping Fischer in the match and let the world champion await the challenger’s decision. It is difficult to resist the conjecture that their attitude is also influenced by the cold war. The West-East, us-them relationship is instrumental in what follows. The Americans and the Icelanders, partners in NATO, both with free market economies and democratically elected governments, are “us,” the Soviet chess delegation is “them.” Not being a true “them” is to prove Spassky’s undoing.
13. BLOOD IN THE BACK ROOM
Spassky was a gentleman. Gentlemen may win the ladies, but gentlemen lose at chess.
Whatever the impression given in the press, the champion was in deep dismay. He had no wish to retain the title by default. To calm him down after the forfeit was announced, Viktor Ivonin took him on a long walk. Nothing was turning out as the champion had anticipated. He had wanted the focus of the combat to be on the aesthetic creations at the chessboard. “I was very patient with Fischer, but he is impossible to understand. And the organizers are making concessions to him. Remember how they said, ‘Bobby Fischer is ill and in hospital.…’”