Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall - from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness

14

Arrest and Rescue

BOBBY FISCHER WAS a non-convicted felon-at-large with a ten-year prison sentence hanging over his head. After nine years of the government’s apparent lack of interest in pursuing him, however, he really didn’t feel like a fugitive. He traveled almost anywhere and did virtually anything he wanted to do, was a multimillionaire, had a woman who loved him, and although he was a man without a country, a modern-day Flying Dutchman hauntingly roaming the seas, he felt relatively secure. Then everything went amiss when he discovered that his memorabilia had been auctioned off; it was as if he’d lost not just old letters and score sheets, but a part of his inner being.

In a real sense, he’d lost himself—his grip was slipping.

It was a conspiracy, he conjectured, and the United States government and the Jews were responsible. He wanted the world to know about his devastating loss. That was when the radio broadcasts started. Most were aired over a small station in Baguio City, and if he’d gone on the air at that same station ten years earlier, he probably could have continued to live as he had since 1992, since so few listeners were normally tuned in. In 2001, though, with the Internet rapidly expanding, his rants were heard all over the world, and what he said brought renewed scrutiny by the United States government.

Following Bobby’s 9/11 remarks, editorials were written denouncing him; the U.S. Chess Federation made a motion to ban him from its organization; and players—and even some of his closest friends—who’d forgiven his 1992 hate mongering in Yugoslavia, were now totally incensed. Scores of letters were sent to the White House and the Justice Department demanding his arrest; many of them stated it was long overdue. The government’s engine of bureaucracy accelerated slowly, however, and although the Justice Department decided to make its move against him, it took time and approvals to decide when and where an arrest could be made.

Bobby was astute enough to know that by making more and more broadcasts calling the United States a “shit country of criminals,” demanding a new Holocaust for Jews, and chanting “death to the President,” he was increasing his chances of eventual arrest. When nothing happened, however, he felt invulnerable and continued to travel without hiding. Since he was never questioned or stopped at any airport or customs entry point to any country, he felt free to persist with his broadcast vitriol.

Nevertheless, he did exhibit a certain wariness in dealing with the U.S. government. His passport (which he’d renewed for ten years in 1997) was running out of space on the pages that are normally stamped when one leaves or enters a country. From 1997 to 2000, while living in Hungary, he’d traveled to many European countries, and from 2000 to 2003 he’d made fifteen trips from Tokyo to Manila and back again. Finally, he was told by a customs agent that he had to have additional pages added to his passport. It would have been more convenient to go to the American embassy in either Tokyo or Manila, but he chose to have it done in Switzerland, for the same reason he chose that country when he’d had his passport renewed in 1997: In case they confiscated the passport, he could remain in Switzerland, where his money was safe and he could have physical access to it (unless he was arrested). He was also considering the possibility of settling in Switzerland permanently, so he looked for any excuse to visit that beautiful country.

Bobby arrived in Bern at the end of October 2003, checked into an inexpensive hotel, and the next afternoon went to the U.S. embassy on Sulgeneckstrasse. Although he didn’t know the Bernese dialect, his German was fluent enough to be understood easily, and since it was the U.S. embassy, everybody spoke English anyway. He was told that his passport would be taken apart and then new pages would be inserted. The process would take about ten days. Bobby gave the authorities the address of his hotel and his cell phone number and asked if they could call him when the reconstructed passport was ready.

When he returned to the hotel, he checked out immediately. A short time later, he took the train to Zurich about one hour away and registered at an upscale hotel there, using an assumed name. All of this cloak-and-dagger movement was a way of hiding his whereabouts should the embassy at Bern be informed by Washington that a warrant had been issued for his arrest and his passport should be confiscated. It’s true that the embassy had his cell phone number, but he’d left no forwarding address at the Bern hotel. If the authorities came after him in Zurich, he could probably make an escape before they arrived. As it developed, after about a week he called the embassy himself and discovered that all was well: His passport was waiting for him.

Back at Bern he wondered if it was a trap, if the moment he entered the embassy he’d be arrested. He took the chance and walked into the building as nonchalantly as he could. Voilà! The documents clerk handed him his passport, and he remarked to her how nice it looked with the twenty-four new pages perfectly sewn in. With the knowledge that his old passport was good until 2007, he then flew “home” to Tokyo.

Barely six weeks later the Department of Justice sent him a letter revoking his passport, stating that the revocation was issued because he was “the subject of an outstanding federal warrant of arrest for a felony,” which didn’t refer by name to the Fischer-Spassky match of 1992, but made reference to the U.S. Code under which Fischer was accused: the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, Title 50, Sections 1701, 1702, and 1705, signed by President George H. W. Bush.

There were problems with the revocation of the passport, however. Fischer never received the notice and therefore couldn’t appeal it, which according to law he had the right to do. The Justice Department claimed that the letter had been sent to the hotel in Bern (the location Bobby had given to the embassy) and was returned to them with no forwarding address appended. It was dated December 11, 2003, and when a faxed copy of the letter was ultimately examined, it didn’t have an address for Fischer on it, the implication being that the embassy had never sent the letter to Bern. According to law, Bobby would have had sixty days for a hearing and perhaps another sixty days to confront the appeal if it didn’t go his way. Such a hearing would only determine whether he was the subject of the warrant for arrest and whether the proper procedures for his application had been in effect when he applied for the passport renewal in 1997. The law stated that a passport “shall not be issued to an applicant subject to a federal arrest warrant or subpoena for any matter involving a felony.” One of two things had to be operative in Bern in 1997: Either the State Department made a clerical mistake in issuing him a renewed passport at that time, or else Fischer didn’t indicate on his application that he was a wanted felon. If he’d lied by omission, he would have been guilty of fraud, a charge that could have been added to his sanction violation and his income tax evasion.

Had he received the notice, his appeal—had he attempted it—would probably have been denied, but it might have given him some time to travel to another country, or to some hideout—perhaps somewhere in Switzerland, such as the Alps—to avoid arrest.

Not knowing that his arrest was imminent, and believing that his passport was legal, on July 13, 2004, he went to Narita Airport in Tokyo to board a plane bound for Manila. He was arrested and shackled in chains.

One of the first things Fischer tried to do while he was behind bars was to ask permission to call someone—perhaps an attorney who could assist with setting bail. The authorities wouldn’t permit him access to a telephone, however. People who violate Japanese law, even unknowingly, may be arrested, imprisoned, and deported. They may also be held in detention for a minor offense, without bail, for months or more during investigation and legal proceedings. Bobby’s claim that he was an American citizen and had a right to make a phone call was ignored.

Twenty-four hours later, an immigration official at the airport called Miyoko to tell her what had happened, and she immediately contacted an attorney and headed for the airport detention facility to see Bobby—but when she arrived there, visiting hours were over. She did see him the next day, for thirty minutes. “He was so upset, and I didn’t know what to say to console him,” she told a journalist.

Fischer was kept in the Narita Airport Detention Center for illegal immigrants for almost a month on the initial charge that he was attempting to travel on an invalid passport, but the more serious charge echoed back to 1992, for defying the American trade embargo and participating in the match with Spassky in the former Yugoslavia. It’s possible that Fischer’s broadcasts were the fuel that sparked the U.S. government to activate the decade-old charge against him. Certainly, the Department of Justice wanted him deported back to the United States to stand trial for his violations, possibly in concert with the Department of the Treasury, for income tax evasion. Miyoko, for her part, thought that U.S. authorities could have arrested Bobby anytime post-1992, but they didn’t and only went after him when “suddenly he started to attack America and it made the government very angry.”

Bobby was like a caged panther, pacing up and down, continually complaining about everything, from the food, to the temperature, to the disrespect his captors showed him, and screaming at the guards. He wasn’t the ideal prisoner; he was the type of person who couldn’t be incarcerated indefinitely without doing harm to himself or others. As it was, he sparked fights with the jailers and eventually was transferred to the East Japan Immigration Detention Center in Ushiku, forty miles northeast of Tokyo. The center had all of the trappings of a high-security prison, and its inmates were incarcerated there for relatively long periods. Fischer claimed that at sixty-one he was the oldest prisoner in the center and therefore deserved more deference. But his seniority and chess credentials counted little with the guards. Once, when he told the guard who brought him his breakfast that his soft-boiled eggs were really hard-boiled and that he wanted an additional egg, they got into a scuffle. He ended up in solitary confinement for several days and wasn’t permitted visits or even allowed to leave his cell. Another time, he purposely stepped on the glasses of a guard he didn’t like and was given solitary again.

Miyoko visited him a few times each week—a two-hour trip each way from Tokyo—and she brought him newspapers and some money so he could buy extra food (usually natto, which was fermented soybeans) from the jailers. Several people immediately tried to assist Bobby in securing his release, most prominently Masako Suzuki, a brilliant young lawyer who became his chief counsel and most determined advocate, and John Bosnitch, a forty-three-year-old Canadian journalist of Bosnian origin who was stationed in Tokyo. They formed a committee called “Free Bobby Fischer” and worked with others trying to extricate Fischer from his cell. Suzuki filed proceedings to address what she claimed was an illegal arrest. Fischer called it a “kidnapping.”

It isn’t known how much Fischer paid for his legal defense, but it probably wasn’t all that much since Suzuki was receiving pro bono advice and assistance from those who felt Bobby was being persecuted. His plight had become a cause. And although Bosnitch was not a lawyer, he seemed to know the intricacies of the Japanese legal system and was both pleasantly aggressive and courteous, which impressed the lawmakers and officials he had to deal with. He was subsequently named an amicus curiae in Fischer’s case and sat in on and participated in all of the legal proceedings. One of the first orders of business was to prevent Fischer’s deportation to the United States. Bobby believed that if he were brought back and forced to stand trial, he’d be convicted. But that was the least of it. He was convinced that he was so hated by the government that he’d be murdered while serving time. One of the ways he thought the deportation might be prevented, or at least delayed, was for him to become stateless by legally renouncing his citizenship. Then the United States would have less jurisdiction over him. He wanted to stay in Japan.

Renunciation of United States citizenship requires three things: (1) an appearance before a U.S. consular or diplomatic officer, (2) the renunciation must be done in a foreign country (normally at a U.S. embassy or consulate), and (3) an oath of renunciation must be signed in person before a U.S. official.

Bobby wrote to the U.S. embassy in Tokyo asking them to send a member of the diplomatic staff to the detention center so that an official could accept his citizenship renunciation. No one came. He also wrote to Secretary of State Colin Powell to enlist his help in allowing him to renounce his citizenship. No answer. Finally, Bobby wrote another letter to the U.S. embassy in Tokyo insisting that they send someone, and in case they didn’t comply, he appended his renunciation. If Bobby had any trepidation about permanently severing his relationship with the United States, there was no evidence of it in the renunciation he wrote. He had to get out of his imprisonment, and so he attempted to surgically remove himself—quickly and precisely, slicing away at his homeland, aware that it would be a permanent farewell, never to be undone. The text:

I am Robert James Fischer. I am a U.S. citizen. I was born on March 9, 1943 in Chicago, Ill. U.S.A. My U.S. passport no. is or was Z7792702. It was issued at the U.S. Embassy in Bern, Switzerland. The issue date is January 24, 1997 and the expiry date is January 23, 2007. I Robert James Fischer do hereby irrevocably and permanently renounce my U.S. citizenship and all the supposed rights and privileges of United States citizenship.

Bobby Fischer’s renunciation of his citizenship was never accepted by the United States. He remained a citizen. Meanwhile, Suzuki and Bosnitch appealed to the courts on Bobby’s behalf for him to become a political refugee from the United States and be allowed to live in Japan. Their argument was that when he competed in Yugoslavia, he violated the trade sanctions purely as a political act against the United States, and he was now being punished for it. This request was denied. Bobby’s team also pleaded to the court that it strike down the deportation order requested by the United States and brought by the Japanese Immigration Bureau. That request was denied too. Bobby had been locked up for over a month at this point and was becoming desperate. Finally able to make outgoing calls, he, along with his team, started contacting a number of countries to determine if they would offer him asylum:

Germany—Bobby’s plea was based on his paternity, in that his father, Gerhardt Fischer, was German, and under the blood citizenship law of the country, Bobby claimed to be a German citizen. The problem was that Bobby was a Holocaust denier, which is a crime in Germany. If the country offered him asylum, his past remarks would get him arrested as soon as he entered.

Cuba—Since Castro was so anti-American, and Fischer knew the premier, he thought Cuba might accept him. Nada.

North Korea—Possibly the most anti-American country in the world. The problem was that Miyoko thought it was the worst country in the world and could not see herself living there or even visiting.

Libya—Mu’ammar Gadhafi was attempting to ingratiate himself with the United States and couldn’t take the chance of antagonizing President Bush.

Iran—To the Iranians’ way of thinking, Bobby was Jewish, and they had no interest.

Venezuela—No reason given for rejection.

Switzerland—Although the country was politically neutral, Bobby’s anti-Semitic views were not acceptable there.

Montenegro—Fischer’s connection with Vasiljevic, who had scammed so much money from the citizens, left them unenthused.

The Philippines—Although Bobby was adored by the Philippine chess community and had established ties there, he was unhappy with the ouster of president Joseph Estrada, whom he believed was “pushed out illegally.” He also felt that crime and corruption was rising in Manila and even in Baguio, and although he enjoyed living there, he was uncertain about gaining, or even wanting, asylum.

Iceland—Yes, Iceland! As a result of the 1972 match, Fischer had more to do with promoting Iceland than anyone in modern times. In effect, as a hero who’d come to the island and performed great deeds, he’d become part of the Icelandic sagas. The Icelanders were also known for their strength, fairness, and stubbornness. They had the ability as a people not only to offer him asylum, but to secure it and extricate him from prison.

Saemi Palsson, Fischer’s old bodyguard, was tracked down at his winter home in the north of Spain. “Saemi, this is Bobby. I need your help. I’m a prisoner in Japan and I want to get asylum in Iceland. Can you help me?”

A former policeman and carpenter who in his youth had gained unlikely fame as a “rock dancer,” who delighted people with his “twist” performances, Saemi would do anything for a friend. He also had an innate sense of self-publicity. Although he hadn’t seen Bobby in thirty-two years, Saemi phoned some political and business leaders and several from the chess community who he thought might be able to help Bobby. He was on a plane to the East in short order.

While Palsson was en route to Japan, a group of stalwart Icelanders met in Reykjavik to discuss whether there was any way asylum could be offered to Fischer. A committee was formed using Bobby’s initials: “RJF.” Perhaps as an afterthought someone came up with another meaning for the acronym: “Rights, Justice, Freedom.”

Though the rest of the world, including his own country, was vilifying Bobby for his outrageous positions and statements, the Icelanders felt sorry for him. They deplored what he’d said, but felt he had a right to express himself. The Icelanders also felt a sense of obligation. Fischer, in effect, had honored the country of Iceland by playing there in 1972, and now he was in trouble. To not help him, they believed, would be a greater moral offense and act of ingratitude than even his verbal attacks of hostility and hatred.

All of the members of the committee were eminent Icelanders and ardent chess enthusiasts: Gudmundur Thorarinsson, former member of parliament and the principal organizer of the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match; Magnus Skulasson, a psychiatrist; Gardar Sverrisson, a political scientist; Helgi Olafsson, a grandmaster; and Einar Einarsson, a bank executive. The group met for over five months in formal meetings, and there was much correspondence and phone exchanges between them as they began lobbying the Icelandic government to consider Fischer’s case. In the midst of this, they contacted both the United States and Japanese embassies in Reykjavik to protest Fischer’s incarceration. In a letter to Fumiko Saiga, the Japanese ambassador to Iceland, the RJF Committee stated, in part:

We feel obliged to express our deepest dismay and sorrow of the Japanese authorities’ grotesque violation of his [Fischer’s] human rights and of international law.… As we protest in the strongest possible terms against your handling of this matter, we request immediate release of Mr. Robert J. Fischer.

Palsson began visiting Bobby at the jail and met with some of the Japanese officials to see what he could do. Having a representative there from Iceland, although Saemi wasn’t an official, helped Bobby somewhat to make a credible case that the country was considering asylum. The problem was that he wasn’t helping his own case.

Bobby continued making broadcasts, this time directly from the detention center’s pay telephone, and they went immediately on the World Wide Web. Most of his vitriol was directed toward the Jews (“absolute pigs”), with a slight softening of his invective against the United States. Although still unkind (“the whole country has no culture, no taste, it’s filled with pollution”), his anti-American remarks were tempered somewhat—though hardly enough to win points with the U.S. Justice Department.

Fischer then announced that he was going to marry Miyoko Watai, his longtime companion. “I could be a sacrifice pawn,” she said to the press. “But in chess there is such a thing as pawn promotion, where a pawn can become a queen. Bobby-san is my king and I will become his queen.” Shortly after that the couple was married in a private ceremony in the prison. John Bosnitch was a witness. But was the marriage ceremony legal? More than a year later, when asked by a reporter whether she ever “tied the knot” with Fischer, Miyoko replied, “I’d rather not say,” and then added, “I prefer not to talk about private things.” Immediately, the media began implying that the alleged marriage was just a ploy to help Fischer obtain his release and live in Japan, but Suzuki disagreed: “It was already a de-facto marriage,” she said. “Now it is a legal marriage. I have never seen a case where there is so much passion and devotion.” Miyoko was more forthright when she stated: “We had been satisfied with our life before he was detained. Marrying him legally may be helpful to avoid the possible deportation and enable him to get a permanent visa in Japan.”

Fischer, on the advice of the RJF Committee, wrote to Iceland’s foreign minister, David Oddsson, and requested a residence permit, which was forwarded to him immediately. The Japanese court didn’t accept it, though. If a country offered Fischer citizenship, they specified, they’d consider deporting him to that country. In the meantime, the Tokyo District Court issued an injunction to stay the deportation order on the grounds that a passport violation was not an extraditable offense. The final lawsuit against the deportation could take as long as a year. After months behind bars, it didn’t look as though Bobby could emotionally survive for much longer.

Almost every day Fischer’s team attempted a new strategy. He was encouraged to write a letter to the Althingi, the Icelandic parliament, and he composed a five-hundred-word plea, extracts of which follow:

Ushiku, Japan January 19, 2005

Althingi, The Icelandic Parliament

150 Reykjavik

Iceland

Honorable Members of Althingi:

I, the undersigned, Robert James Fischer sincerely thank the Icelandic nation for the friendship it has shown to me ever since I came to your country many years ago and competed for the title of World Champion in chess—and even before that.…

For the past six months I have been forcibly and illegally imprisoned in Japan on the completely false and ludicrous grounds that I entered Japan on April 15, 2004 and that I “departed” or attempted to depart Japan on July 13, 2004 with an invalid passport. During this period my health has steadily deteriorated, I’ve been dizzy for about the past two months now.…

When the Narita Airport Immigration Security authorities brutally and violently “arrested” me … I was seriously injured and very nearly killed. Furthermore it is surely not beneficial to my health either physically or psychologically that they’ve dragged me here to Ushiku which is only about 66 kilometers from the leaking Tokaimura Nuclear Power Plant (Japan’s Chernobyl!!) in Tokai City. They just had another accident there on October 14, 2004! …

Neither the Japanese nor the American authorities have ever bothered to offer any explanation whatsoever for this outrageously criminal act [his arrest]. Apparently, they’re strictly heeding Disraeli’s advice which was to “Never apologize, never explain!”

Because of all of the foregoing I would therefore like to formally request that Althingi grant me Icelandic citizenship so that I may actually enjoy the offer of residence in Iceland that your Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. David Oddsson has so graciously extended to me.

Most Respectfully,

BOBBY FISCHER

During his incarceration in Japan, the only respites Bobby had from boredom and emotional turmoil were the visits from his lawyers and Miyoko, and his use of the telephone. He was allowed out of his cell to make collect calls, and the jailers seemed to put no time limit on them. He talked with Palsson, and later he had long, wide-ranging conversations with Gardar Sverrisson, the Icelandic political scientist on the RJF Committee. These calls to Gardar were important to Bobby because they went beyond the complicated aspects of his imprisonment and touched on other matters, such as politics, religion, and philosophy. Bobby asked Gardar in what religion, if any, he’d been raised, and when he was told it was Catholicism, Bobby pressed for more insight, wanting to know the nuances of that theology. The two men created a tele-pal relationship, forming a bond that would last for years.

Bobby also discussed Catholicism with a second person during this time. Richard Vattuone of San Diego, California, was another attorney who was helping out with the case. He visited Bobby in the jail and gave him a copy of The Apostle of Common Sense, a book about the writer G. K. Chesterton, which covered various matters of religion and culture. Bobby read some of the book and had conversations with Vattuone about religion. Chesterton was a convert to Catholicism.

When Miyoko came to visit, often she’d have to wait to see Bobby if he had another visitor—such as Suzuki or Bosnitch—since the detention center only allowed one visitor at a time, and visiting hours were limited. Fischer would have to pass through sixteen locked doors before reaching the visitors’ room, and could only talk through a plate-glass wall, as if he were not just in an immigration detention center but a maximum security prison.

Three members of the RJF Committee—Einarsson, Thorarinsson, and Sverrisson—traveled to Japan at their own expense to see if they could find a way to expedite Fischer’s release. No matter what logic they offered to the authorities, such as the fact that Iceland’s foreign minister David Oddsson had issued Bobby a foreigner’s passport—similar to what is called a green card in the United States—the rules-conscious, bureaucratic Japanese were not persuaded. They continued to maintain that Bobby would be deported back to the United States once the legal proceedings were concluded.

The RJF members were about to leave Japan, depressed that they’d made little headway, when a call came in from Suzuki that bore potentially good news. A member of the Japanese parliament was willing to meet with the committee to see whether there was a way he could help. He’d studied the issues and sided with Bobby.

The meeting was held in secret, and the parliamentarian, who spoke perfect English, having been educated at Oxford, asked for anonymity, which he believed would enable him to better work behind the scenes. After he heard all of the arguments as to why Bobby should be released, and judged that the RJF members were committed to their cause, he went into action. Somehow he ignited the interest of Miszuko Fukushima, chairman of the Japanese Social Democratic Party. The goal was to get Fukushima to petition for Bobby’s right to be deported to—and accepted by—Iceland. Fukushima criticized Chieko Nohno, Japan’s minister of justice, for the arrest and detention, and asked him to reconsider the case. Although it was not a watershed moment, the current was beginning to shift, and as Bobby saw the accumulation of small advantages—a concept in chess described by Wilhelm Steinitz—he became optimistic, although not exhilarated.

When the RJF Committee members returned to Iceland, they worked full-time arousing their parliament’s interest in the case, warning that if action weren’t taken quickly, it would be too late for Fischer to receive justice. He would be extradited to the United States and probably imprisoned for ten years. Many of them believed, as did Fischer, that he could be murdered while in prison.

The Icelandic Chess Federation took a calculated risk in attempting to add strength to the argument for releasing Bobby. They issued a strong critique condemning Bobby’s statements, while hoping that an appeal to the United States’ sense of humanitarianism might alleviate the tension in Japan:

The Icelandic Chess Federation is, of course, aware of the obscene anti-Semitic and anti-American remarks that Bobby Fischer has made over the last year on different occasions. The Federation is appalled by these remarks, as any civilized body would be, and sees them as signs of a deranged and devastated psyche. In 1992, in Yugoslavia, however, Bobby Fischer’s only crime was to play chess again, after years of isolation. The Icelandic Chess Federation urges the President of the United States to pardon Bobby Fischer and let him go free.

The letter was sent to President George W. Bush and received no reply.

Twelve years prior, months after the 1992 indictment had been issued, Bill Clinton had been elected President of the United States. David Oddsson, then the prime minister of Iceland, had visited the White House at the time and made a personal appeal to one of Clinton’s senior aides, asking that the president drop the charges against Fischer. Word came back that Clinton would prefer not to make a ruling on the matter, “an unusual decision,” according to Oddsson. “When the leader of a country makes a personal plea about a relatively small matter (in the scheme of things) to another leader, it is usually granted.”

Back at the time of the sanctions controversy, Spassky wasn’t indicted by the French, and Lothar Schmid wasn’t indicted by the Germans. Bobby Fischer was the only person in the world ever known to have faced charges under President Bush’s bill.

Trying to prevent Fischer’s escape to Iceland, various agencies in the United States accelerated their pursuit of Bobby, putting more pressure on Japan to extradite him. A federal grand jury in Washington began what turned out to be a smoke-screen investigation accusing Fischer of money laundering after his match with Spassky in 1992. Since there was no evidence of such laundering, it was Fischer’s lawyers’ belief that the government was attempting to propagandize Fischer’s sanctions case by further tarnishing his public image. Nothing came of the investigation and no additional indictment was handed down.

At this time James Gadsen, the U.S. ambassador to Iceland, got involved, suggesting that Iceland drop the offer of sanctuary to Bobby Fischer. David Oddsson, in his foreign minister role, invited Gadsen to his office and then categorically refused to back down, adding that Fischer’s alleged crime of a violation of trade sanctions in Yugoslavia had exceeded Iceland’s statute of limitations.

Perhaps because of the political pressure exerted on him, Japanese justice minister Chieko Nohno told reporters after a cabinet meeting, “If he [Fischer] has Icelandic citizenship it would be legally possible to deport him to that country. The Immigration Bureau must think about the most appropriate place for him to be deported to.”

The situation remained unresolved, however, and as Bobby reached his sixty-second birthday in his cell, he was morose. He’d served nine months in prison, and the few people who visited him said he looked wretched. Thorarinsson said that Fischer, locked behind bars, reminded him of Hamlet, and then he quoted a line from Shakespeare’s play:

I could be bound in a nutshell

And count myself a king of infinite space

Were it not that I had bad dreams.

The RJF members called virtually every member of parliament to lobby for citizenship: full, permanent citizenship, not just a temporary permit to live in Iceland. They then met with the General Committee of Althingi. A bill was written asking for approval of citizenship for Bobby Fischer, and an Extraordinary Session of Parliament was called for Saturday, March 21, 2005. Three rounds of discussion took place in the space of twelve minutes, and questions were posed regarding the extent of the emergency. The answers were succinct and forthcoming: Bobby Fischer’s improper incarceration was a violation of his rights; all he was really guilty of was moving some wooden pieces across a chessboard; he’d been a friend of Iceland, and had a historical connection to it, and now he needed the country’s help.

Once the issues had been dealt with, each member of the Althingi was polled on whether to grant Fischer permanent citizenship. “Já,” said forty members, one by one. “Forõast,” said two members who abstained. No one voted “Nei.”

Bobby smiled for the first time in months when he heard that the Icelandic bill had been enacted, and on March 23, 2005, he was released from his cell. He was picked up by a limousine supplied by the Icelandic embassy, given his new Icelandic passport, and he and Miyoko, hand in hand, sped to Narita Airport.

When Bobby emerged from the limousine at Narita, the scene resembled that moment in A Tale of Two Cities when Dr. Manette is released from the Bastille, “recalled to life” as it were: white-haired, battered, with a grizzly beard and old clothes. The difference between Bobby and Dickens’s good doctor was the voice: Manette’s was faint, “dreadful and pitiable”; Bobby’s was booming, ferocious and vengeful. “This was nothing but a kidnapping, pure and simple!” he said to the dozens of reporters and photographers who were following him into the terminal. “Bush and Koizumi [the American and Japanese presidents] are criminals. They deserve to be hung!” said bad old Bobby, showing that prison had done nothing to tamp down his denunciatory fervor. But something in him had changed. When Zita, then thirty years old, saw the footage of him on television, she said: “It is not his beard. There is something bothering about his eyes. He is a hopeless, broken man.”

When Bobby’s plane touched down at Keflavik Airport, and he stepped on the tarmac, he didn’t kneel down and kiss the ground—at least, not literally. Metaphorically, however, he genuflected to the land of the Vikings. He was now in a country that really wanted him, and for the first time in thirteen years he felt truly safe. His first order of business was to settle into the Presidential Suite at the Hotel Loftleidir and order one of his Rabelaisian meals, with bowls and bowls of skyr.