In the minds of the Sports Committee, Nei had no real business in Reykjavik. From the moment Spassky’s team was first assembled, Nei was referred to as the champion’s “physical trainer.” Nei insists that he played a full part in the chess analysis, working at night alongside the rest of the team. He also spoke fluent German and some English, and in Reykjavik he interpreted for the chief arbiter, Lothar Schmid, and for Max Euwe, president of FIDE. He knew the president well.
No doubt it was a combination of Nei’s command of chess and his position as an “insider” that commended him to Paul Marshall as the possible author of a book on the match. Marshall recognized the market for such books—especially one written from inside Spassky’s camp. Nei says that as well as royalties, Marshall offered him anything he wanted from America. Nei then approached grandmaster Robert Byrne to be coauthor. This former U.S. champion was in Reykjavik as a commentator for a Dutch television station. Nei had been getting out and about, hobnobbing with match officials and the American visitors. The Soviet ambassador had not vetoed his extramural activities, but he advised Nei to be cautious in his contact with U.S. citizens. As Spassky’s coach, says Nei, his meeting the Americans was beneficial for Spassky: He was able to give his team some insight into how the U.S. camp was thinking.
The book Marshall brokered is called Both Sides of the Chess Board. It includes an introduction by Euwe in which the FIDE president notes that Nei was privy to inside information, both technical and psychological. Just so, and from Nei’s viewpoint a more apt title would have been Farewell to Reykjavik.
Immediately after game seventeen on 22 August, Nei left the match so abruptly that he had to kick his heels in Copenhagen waiting for an onward flight to Moscow. Today he says that his job was done and he was needed for the beginning of the academic year in Estonia, where he was head of the chess school. The match was as good as over. He was no longer engaged in serious analysis with Spassky’s other seconds, and Geller thought it was pointless for him to stay. Spassky agreed.
Krogius’s version differs. Certain Soviet embassy personnel informed him and Geller that “Nei is behaving oddly.” The Estonian was spending a long time alone with Byrne. In turn, the two seconds told Spassky. The same evening, Nei was put under hostile interrogation. He did not deny his contacts with Byrne, that he and the American were analyzing the match and that he was passing Byrne his comments on the games for future publication in the United States. His dubious listeners pressed Nei: “Why was he engaged in outside work of such a suspicious nature, and in secret, without Spassky’s permission? And in the material passed to the American, what had he said about Spassky’s condition and his own assessment of Spassky’s chess to date?” They were not satisfied with Nei’s responses. The conversation grew extremely heated. Nei was told that his services were no longer required and that he must leave. (Spassky says members of his team had no right to engage in business.)
On the following day, the Estonian flew out. He changed planes in Moscow, flying straight to his home city of Tallinn, thus avoiding a visit to the Sports Committee, where he was due to hand in his foreign travel passport.
Nei says that many people in the chess world were surprised to see him return to Estonia; they thought he would end up in Siberia or the West. But, he asks, why? He had not behaved incorrectly. From Tallinn, he went on to send his final contributions for the book to the States, in seven parts. He must have had some trepidation about the project: he posted each of these sections to separate addresses in Canada as well as the United States.
For transgressing the rules—he had not informed the KGB or the authorities about the book—Nei had earned official displeasure. Upon his return, he was banned from foreign travel for two years, a relatively light punishment signifying that the critical charge of disclosing secrets was not taken seriously. It was highly incorrect, says Ivonin, to talk about the match during the match, but Nei could not be punished, as nothing was proved. “There was only suspicion.”
There was more than enough of that to go around. The KGB was even focusing on Spassky himself.
As the match approached its climax, Reykjavik was swept by gossip that Spassky was about to defect. The American chargé d’affaires, Theodore Tremblay, recalls how the Yugoslavs at the match “kept coming to me and saying, ‘Spassky wants to defect, Spassky wants to defect.’ Well, by that time, I had developed a rather close relationship with Boris. I kept telling them, ‘Look, if Boris wants to defect, all he has to do is tell me. We’ll see what we can do.’”
Tremblay had met Spassky at the reception following the official opening, and they had talked amicably over the champagne. According to Tremblay, they became good friends and “just kept running into each other.” The American diplomat sometimes dined at Spassky’s hotel, and when the world champion spotted him, he would come over to chat. Tremblay found the atmosphere around the Soviets much more relaxed than in his previous posting in Bangkok. No one circled around, keeping people away from Spassky—though if he spoke for any length of time in the hotel or on the street, somebody would deliberately break it up. Naturally, the American denies cultivating Spassky professionally, though without sounding wholehearted about it: “Actually, we could have got him out of the country in a hurry if he had wanted to, but I knew he had no intention of defecting.”
The Soviet authorities did not share Tremblay’s confidence. In Ivonin’s office, there were expressions of unease and confusion over what would become of Spassky. The KGB was certainly aware of the rumors. Major General Nikashkin decided they needed a representative in Reykjavik and recommended to Ivonin that Spassky’s friend Stanislav Melen’tiev should return to Iceland. Ivonin was anxious not to provoke Spassky into feeling he was distrusted and warned Nikashkin that the champion could misunderstand Melen’tiev’s arrival. The Sports Minister Pavlov then intervened, ringing in to say that this was a lot of fuss over nothing and they simply had to rely on Spassky’s loyalty. Nikashkin coolly pointed to press reports that Spassky had ignored Pavlov’s advice at the beginning of the match, though all other sportsmen would have had to take it. (According to Ivonin, if they had thought there was a real danger of Spassky’s defecting, they would have taken precautionary measures—for instance, having someone escort him back or offering him an inducement to return.)
Relief arrived on 4 September. Nikashkin informed Ivonin that Spassky had bought a car in Iceland and was planning to ship it to Leningrad. At first, he had wanted to transport it to Copenhagen and drive home, but he was persuaded that the journey would be too dangerous. More heartening news had come: He had attacked those journalists who had questioned him on whether he might defect. “This is a provocation,” he told them. He said he was thinking of buying a dacha outside Moscow. In the Central Committee, Aleksandr Yakovlev was duly told: Spassky is coming home.
Tremblay’s judgment about Spassky proved correct. Spassky’s chess colleagues never doubted his patriotism—Russian, if not Soviet. Defection could not have been further from his mind, says Spassky today. So what was the source of the rumors, spread so assiduously by the Yugoslavs? With the match seemingly lost, could this have been another ham-fisted KGB operation—this time to discredit Spassky rather than bolster him, this time to explain why he seemed unable to make a breakthrough against the American?