brought him success and riches in New York legal combat: “I dropped them on the floor, saying, ‘They’re written in English: Do not quote rules that you can’t read.’ Almost as an afterthought, Marshall adds, ‘Because the rules were clearly in Bobby’s favor, and his complaint was absolutely right.’”
Through Marshall, Fischer demands that the ICF underwrite a document giving him complete control over filming. Believing it could not favor one player over another, the federation says no. With only one game over, the match reaches another impasse. Fox has his rights. Schmid and Thorarinsson have the match to safeguard. Fischer has his rage. Behind the walls a space is discovered in which the cameras are hidden yet can still see the board. Has the problem been finessed? On learning that the cameras are still there, Fischer refuses to come to the hall for the second game.
The game is scheduled to begin at five P.M. on Thursday, 13 July. Schmid presses the clock on the dot. Rule five states, “If a player does not appear within one hour of the start of the game, he loses that game by forfeit.” The road is cleared between the hall and Fischer’s hotel. Engine running, a police car stands ready to bring him. All the traffic lights are held at green. From New York, Andrew Davis intervenes, calling Richard Stein, one of the lawyers for Chester Fox Inc., and proposes that the cameras be removed for this game only, pending further discussion. Stein takes the call at 5:30 P.M. while Fischer’s clock is ticking and immediately agrees. He calls Lombardy on a hot line that has been set up from Fischer’s room to the playing hall. Thorarinsson orders the cameras to be removed completely. Fischer adds one more condition: His clock must be restarted. Already bruised by Fischer, and now distraught, Schmid refuses. The rules are the rules. He has Spassky to consider; the world champion has been waiting for forty minutes.
Unwillingly, finding the whole affair “vulgar,” grandmaster Fridrik Olafsson steps in at the request of the Icelandic Chess Federation. Within a few minutes, he has arrived at the Loftleidir hotel on a mission to mediate. His reward is a second dose of rudeness. Having ignored the Icelandic grandmaster at Keflavik, Fischer now submits him to a verbal tirade. Again and again he tells him that the ICF is a communist front. Olafsson phones Schmid. The only hope is to ask Spassky to agree to a restart. Schmid cannot. “There has to be a limit.” In one of the worst moments of his life, he goes onto the stage at six o’clock and announces that Spassky has been awarded the game. That night, Schmid wakes up with tears in his eyes “because I thought I had destroyed a genius by my decision.” Spassky now leads by two games to zero; it seems extraordinarily difficult for Fischer to surmount that—the champion needs only twelve points out of twenty-four to retain the title.
A new round of crisis meetings begins. Andrew Davis jets in from New York, dropping everything to mastermind the predictable protest against Schmid’s decision. It will be based on what he claims has been a guarantee by Iceland that all television equipment would be “invisible and noiseless.” Seeking a way out for his client Chester Fox, Richard Stein tries schmoozing Fischer. He writes: “I can only express my admiration and appreciation for the elevation of chess in the eyes of the people of the States, through your Herculean efforts. As a folk hero of the Americans, you must permit millions of Americans to share this experience with you in their homes, through television.” Stein points out Fox’s investment and notes that the Icelandic Chess Federation’s entire financial structure depends on video and film proceeds. For all the impact this letter was going to have, he might as well have put it in a bottle and thrown it into Iceland’s famous Blue Lagoon.
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.
