The senior rank of the KGB participants has probably more to do with Ivonin’s ministerial status than with the importance accorded Reykjavik. Viktor Ivonin is unable to recall anything of these visits. His normally unfailing memory for people and events lets him down when confronted with these KGB names. While his tone becomes decidedly more guarded, his mind is a blank.
What might they have discussed?
The theme of these comings and goings is less how to undermine Fischer and more how to prop up a rattled Spassky. (In this period, there is a proposal to send the champion Kogitum—a medicine against nervous tension—and some exasperation at his refusal to take it.) First, this requires investigating stories of possible interference with his playing. One report to have reached the KGB was that Fischer was being assisted by a computer (in Russian called an IBM—a Soviet tribute to American big business) and a device in his chair. (Whether the two are linked, a computer in Fischer’s chair, is unclear.) There have already been reports in the Western press of Fischer being computer aided, reports derisively dismissed in Reykjavik by Spassky, Geller, and Krogius. Back in Moscow, the KGB does not believe silicon-based shenanigans are any more practical. A Comrade Lvov, a KGB technical officer and a constant caller on Ivonin at this time, explains to the deputy minister that Fischer would have needed a full year to develop the requisite computer program and would have to have a portable receiver and a membrane in his ear to receive the signals.
Lvov is also the bearer of other shadowy news: he reports the possibility that Spassky has had a letter threatening his family if he returns to Moscow a winner. This is investigated, and no proof of its existence is found. The provenance of this letter is unclear; today, Spassky says he had no knowledge of it.
Other means of defending Spassky are afoot. As July turns into August, an unnamed forensic psychiatrist takes part in a meeting with Lvov and Gostiev. Lvov is all set to organize a check for radiation from radio waves and X-rays “on the spot”—presumably in the hall.
Throughout this period, the possibility of Spassky’s being the target of hypnosis and telepathy is being discussed. There is a hint that sending a psychiatrist to Reykjavik is Gostiev’s brainchild. The psychiatrists Vartanian and Zharikov are primed, and Gostiev arranges the logistics of their visit.
Then there is the alarm over Spassky’s refreshments—that on 15 August he drank some juice and was overcome with lethargy. Once more, the KGB and Gostiev are involved. Once more, Gostiev springs into action, ensuring a sample is sent to Moscow. KGB scientists check the sample. Later, Gostiev’s superior, Nikashkin, tells Ivonin that nothing untoward was found.
However, the KGB is not content to play a purely reactive role. The organization’s idea of a helping hand also involves taking the initiative, instigating its own rumor that Fischer is cheating through a device hidden in his chair—a device, so the rumor goes, that is impairing Spassky’s performance and/or benefiting Fischer. This idea is canvassed toward the end of July. It must have sounded convincing. As Ivonin listens to the “comrades” talking, he finds himself wondering whether there might really be something to it. On 29 July, Boris Goncharov, of the Central Committee, reports to Ivonin that the rumor has been “launched.” The rest is silence.
Given the launch date, it is a mystery whether there was any connection between this rumor and Geller’s statement to the press three weeks later, on 22 August, protesting about dirty tricks being used to influence Spassky, though Geller asserted that “letters had been received.” The story of the scenes that followed this statement has already been related. In Moscow, Major General Nikashkin informed Ivonin that the episode had received a lot of publicity; that Icelandic experts had checked everything and nothing had been found.
Was Geller obeying KGB orders? Had he been told the full details of the KGB plotting, or was he himself a victim of the plot, inveigled into believing and then publicly conveying the allegations of American high-tech machinations? Within Spassky’s chess team, Geller, who was ultrasuspicious of the West, acted alone. Krogius did not sign the controversial declaration, and today he categorizes the action as “unsuccessful and clumsy.” He attributes it entirely to “Geller’s tendency to act spontaneously.” Nei says he refused to put his name to the statement because it was evident to him that Geller had issued it under political instruction from Moscow. Ivonin declares that the first he heard of the letter was when news of it came from Reykjavik. Spassky now remembers that a letter before the match had warned about the chair and “this letter was fished out.” Perhaps, nearing the end of the contest, desperate to account for his failure to find a breakthrough at the board, he and Geller consciously or subconsciously cast about for non-chess explanations. Still ignorant of the KGB scheme, Spassky continues to believe that Fischer’s black leather swivel chair might have had something in it; he says he was not at all embarrassed by Geller’s pronouncement.
It remains an open question whether a KGB operative actually planted something in Fischer’s chair for the X-rays to pick up, part of an inept attempt to rescue the champion’s reputation, perhaps even to have Fischer disgraced and disqualified. Strikingly, even the American Don Schultz, an IBM engineer by profession and president of the USCF from 1996 to 1999, is suspicious. During the X-ray process, Fischer’s team sent Schultz along to act as an observer. He still has the contemporaneous notes he took, including a sketch of the object with the loop that he saw in the first X-ray. At the time, in public, he laughed off the Soviet allegations. But later he too admitted to doubts: “Everything wasn’t fully explained.” What puzzled him was the discrepancy between the two X-rays. He was there as the second set of X-rays was developed and saw that the looplike object, the “anomaly,” as he calls it, had disappeared.
I’ve thought long about this. The only plausible thing—and it really sounds radical, and I didn’t want to mention it at the time, as I thought nobody would believe me—but I think there is a slight chance that some crackpot Russian agent—and this is really wild—some crackpot Russian agent had a plan to try to embarrass the U.S. by planting something in the chair and then making a complaint and having it found. And their security forces found out what he did and thought it was a crackpot idea, and somehow they got it out.
This, he says, is “a very disconcerting possibility. I am convinced this is what had to have happened.” Of course, once the alarm was raised, the Soviets and the Icelanders might each have had their own reasons for ensuring nothing was found. Don Schultz was startled when Icelandic officials announced the all clear before the results from the second set of X-rays had been reported.
Whether or not the KGB did implant a device, what is clear is that Krogius is right to call the entire exploit clumsy and unsuccessful. The Icelandic organizers dismissed the accusation, the American media ridiculed it, and the Soviets were left humbled.
The possibility of a spy in the troubled Soviet camp also raised its head. The challenger’s unforeseen departure from a lifetime of opening predictability had thrown Spassky; that Fischer was the better prepared is indisputable. But Geller was convinced that Spassky’s prematch analysis had been leaked.
To suspicious Soviet minds, if there were a fifth columnist, who was the likely culprit? In the written record of the postmortem on the match, there is no direct accusation against any member of the Spassky team, but the wording of a comment by Viktor Baturinskii points a finger. Spassky had cited Ivo Nei as the weak link in his team. Evidently angry and on the defensive, the former prosecutor lashed out: “Here mention has been made of Nei, who proved to he all hut a spy. I objected to the inclusion of Nei in the training group, but Boris Vasilievich [Spassky] insisted on it. To cite Nei now as one of the reasons for his own performance is at the very least unscrupulous.”