by Frank Brady
Regina’s political activities—any or all of which could be considered “subversive,” taking into account the near hysterical anti-Communist climate of the day—were fodder for the FBI: her six years in Moscow, her mercurial ex-husband in Chile, her work at defense plants, her association with rabble-rousers, her affiliation with left-wing political organizations, and her active participation in protests—such as a vigil she joined on the night of the execution of the convicted spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Had she done anything illegal? Were any of her friends spies? She questioned herself, and then called her lawyer, before telling Joanie and Bobby what had happened.
To her relief, there were no further overt visits from the FBI. What Regina didn’t know, however, was that since 1942 the Justice Department had suspected her of being a Soviet espionage agent. Consequently, there was a sweeping investigation taking place of her activities, past and present, spearheaded by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
The confidential FBI report on Regina dramatically points up the degree to which McCarthy-inspired paranoia gripped America at that time:
SECRET
It is to be noted that subject is a well-educated, widely traveled intelligent woman who has for years been associated with communists and persons with procommunist leanings. She would appear to be a person who would be ideologically motivated to be of assistance to the Russians. In view of the foregoing and in light of her recent contact of an official of the Soviet Embassy, it is desired that this case be re-opened and that investigation be instituted in an effort to determine if subject has in the past or may presently be engaged in activities inimical to the interest of the United States. Investigation of Fischer is not to be limited to developing additional data concerning her recent contact of XXXXXX. It is desired that the investigation of subject be most searching and pointed towards ascertaining the nature of her present activity and the identity of her associate.
The telephone in the Fischer home was tapped. Undercover agents rifled through Joan Fischer’s records at Brooklyn College. Regina was shadowed. Her fellow nurses and neighbors were questioned. Her high school and college records were examined, and her former teachers and administrators were questioned. Even the second wife of Jacob Wender, Bobby’s grandfather, was investigated. The investigation would continue for almost a half century and produce some 750 pages of reports, costing the American taxpayers hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of dollars, all ending with a whimper, nary a bang, since nothing definitive was ever found about any espionage activity on Regina’s part. “My mother,” said Joan Fischer, “is a professional protester.” Other than that, the FBI eventually considered Regina Fischer harmless to the security of the United States.
An ironic twist to this red-hunting saga developed when the FBI learned from an informer that Regina had been “kicked out” of the Communist Party—if indeed she’d ever been a member; the informer claimed she’d been active from 1949 to 1951. Supposedly, she’d been ejected for failing to be a “faithful Party member.” If that was, in fact, the case, the Bureau reasoned that Regina might be eager to retaliate against the Communists, by being “cooperative and furnishing information regarding persons who were active in the Party and other current information she may possess.” If the Bureau had acted on this notion, Regina Fischer might have actually become a counteragent, a spy, for the U.S. government. It would have been a suitable career for her, considering her penchant for intrigue, politics, and travel. No approach to her was ever made, however.
Bobby kept telling his mother that he wanted to go to Russia to try his hand against the best players in the world. Besides his trip to Cuba and his participation in a tournament in Canada when he was twelve, he’d never been out of the country, and Regina, a peripatetic, almost obsessive traveler, was eager for her son to go abroad. But where was the travel money to come from?
She sent a letter directly to Premier Nikita Khrushchev, asking him to extend an invitation to Bobby for the World Youth Festival. While waiting for a reply, Bobby applied for a passport and then submitted an application for a visa to enter Russia. A year later the visa request was granted, and all that was needed was the money for air transportation and expenses. The idea was that Bobby would spend the summer, or part of it, in Russia so as to train before playing in the Interzonal, which was to be held in Yugoslavia.
Agents and informers continued to spy on the Fischers, and the idea that Big Brother could always be watching haunted Regina. Such continued suspicion on her part—which had a valid basis—greatly influenced her children.
She was worried that the FBI might come again, perhaps when she wasn’t at home, and begin questioning Bobby. If they were trying to build a case against her, any scrap of information that Bobby might give them could possibly be used against her. She began to train him as to what to say should the investigators appear: “Bobby, if they come, and ask you any questions—even your age or where you go to school—just say, ‘I have nothing to say to you.’ Don’t change the words; do you understand? ‘I have nothing to say to you.’ ”
She made him repeat the phrase over and over again until she was sure he had it right. In retrospect, Bobby said that it was probable that she had learned the phrase from other people who had been investigated by the FBI, as the most effective tactic. “I think it was terrible that they might have questioned a little boy: I was only ten or twelve at the time.” As it developed, Bobby was never questioned, but the fear had been implanted.
As a further protection for Bobby, Regina bought fairly expensive leather covers for his Russian chess books so that the titles could not be read by agents or possible informants and cause trouble for him as he was studying the books while traveling to and from Brooklyn on the subway.
One morning when Bobby was in geometry class, a student from the principal’s office appeared with a note for Bobby’s teacher. It said that Bobby had been invited to be a contestant on the television show I’ve Got a Secret at four-thirty that afternoon. It was the week after his fifteenth birthday. The show was a guessing game to determine a contestant’s “secret,” in this case not that Bobby or his mother might be a Communist, but that he was United States Chess Champion. On the broadcast, looking shy and fearful, he held up a mock newspaper specially printed by the show, with a headline that blared, TEENAGER’S STRATEGY DEFEATS ALL COMERS. When the emcee mentioned that his young guest, introduced as “Mister X,” was from Brooklyn, someone shouted “Hooray!” and Bobby beamed. When he was asked by a panel member whether what he did, as his secret, made people happy, he quipped: “It made me happy,” sparking appreciative laughter from the audience (who were in on the secret). Bobby stumped the panel.
Determined to get Bobby to Moscow, Regina had appealed to the producers to help her come up with a ticket not only for her son but also for his sister Joan to accompany him. Perhaps through their phone tap, the FBI learned about the Moscow trip. They dispatched a young-looking undercover agent, posing as a reporter for a college newspaper, to “interview” the public relations representatives at the Goodson-Todman Productions, producers of I’ve Got a Secret. The agent remained throughout the broadcast but did not reveal his true identity.
Since Sabena Airlines was one of the show’s sponsors, it was agreed that two round-trip tickets would be given to Bobby as a promotional gift. Without his knowledge, and much to his delight, at the end of the broadcast he was given the tickets to Russia, with a stopover in Belgium, Sabena’s home country. So ebullient was he over finally being able to get to the country of his dreams, he tripped with youthful awkwardness on the microphone wire while making his exit from the stage, but managed to keep his balance. At the show’s conclusion the FBI immediately phoned their contact in Moscow to make sure Bobby’s activities were monitored while he was behind the Iron Curtain.
Someone at the Manhattan Chess Club asked Bobby what he’d do if he were invited to a state dinner while in Moscow, where he’d have to wear a tie; Bobby had never been seen wearing
one. “If I have to wear a tie, I won’t go,” he answered honestly.
It was the first time he’d been in an airplane. Bobby and Joan had a three-day stopover in Brussels and visited Expo 58, one of the greatest international fairs of all time (“The eighth wonder of the world,” Bobby wrote to Jack Collins, describing the 335-foot Atomium monument whose nine steep spheres formed the shape of a cell of an iron crystal). While the Belgians were sampling Coca-Cola for the first time, Bobby, avoiding Joan’s watchful eye, drank too many bottles of Belgian beer and the next day experienced his first hangover. Nevertheless, he played some seven-minute games—which he won—with the tall and elegant Count Alberic O’Kelly de Galway, an international grandmaster. Bobby also ate as much soft ice cream—another first at the fair—as he could consume. After a few days of fun and education in Brussels, the Fischers were ready to leave, but not before a minor fracas occurred. When checking in, Bobby had rudely voiced objections to the hotel staff over the accommodations they were to have (he didn’t want to share a room with his sister), and as they were checking out he was severely criticized by the management, who’d given up the room as a complimentary gesture and were short of space due to the fair. The self-confident fifteen-year-old paid no heed to their discontent and discourteously stormed out.
Before boarding the plane to Russia, Bobby plugged cotton into his ears to reduce the pressure (which had bothered him on the trip from New York to Brussels) and also to block out engine noise so that he could quietly work out variations on his pocket chess set.
Met at the Moscow airport by Lev Abramov, the head of the chess section of the USSR, and by a guide from Intourist, Joan and Bobby were ushered to Moscow’s finest hotel, the National. It was an apt choice, since one of the Bolshevik leaders who worked out of there after the Revolution of 1917 was Vladimir Lenin, an active chess player who fostered a continuing interest in the game among the Russian people.
The Fischers enjoyed the amenities of a relatively opulent suite, with two bedrooms and an unobstructed view—across Mokhovaya Street—of the Kremlin, Red Square, and the splendor of the towers of St. Basil’s. As part of the celebrity treatment, Bobby was also given a car, driver, and interpreter. Three months before, the Russians had feted another young American: twenty-three-year old Van Cliburn, who’d won the Soviet Union’s International Tchaikovsky piano competition and, in so doing, helped momentarily temper the Cold War rivalry of the two countries. Bobby didn’t expect to earn the same acclaim, nor did he think he’d melt any diplomatic ice. Nonetheless, Regina thought he should be afforded equal respect and attention. Although many chess players believed that Bobby could emerge as America’s answer to the Sputnik, Regina was thinking in more practical terms: She’d read that Van Cliburn had called his mother in Texas each night while he was in Moscow and as a perk wasn’t charged for the international telephone call. “Call me,” she wrote to Bobby. “It’s on the house.” He didn’t.
His respect for the Soviet players, from what he knew of their games, was immense, and at first, the reality of being in Russia was like being in chess heaven. He wanted to see how the game was taught and played at the state-supported Pioneer Palaces. He wanted to read and purchase Russian chess literature and visit the clubs and parks where chess was played. But mostly he wanted to duel with the best in the world. His mission was to play as many masters as possible and to emulate the Soviets’ training regimen for the Yugoslav tournament. Fortune, however, seemed to have other plans.
There was no way that the Soviet chess regime would allow an American to observe their training methods or to share in their chess secrets—especially when the very same players Fischer hoped to train with would be competing against him in a few weeks. The Soviet chess establishment thought of Bobby as a novinka—a novelty—but, also, someone ultimately to be feared. They certainly weren’t going to aid his attempt to defeat them at their own national pastime.
An itinerary and schedule were established for the Fischers, which included a tour of the city, a sightseeing introduction to the buildings and galleries of the Kremlin, and a visit to the Bolshoi Ballet, the Moscow Circus, and various museums. For Bobby, it was a chance to gorge himself on Russian history and culture. He had little interest, though, in such figures as Ivan the Terrible or Peter the Great or Joseph Stalin or Leo Tolstoy or Alexander Pushkin. He’d come to Moscow to play chess, to cross pawns with a serious Russian tournament player. And every spare minute he spent there he wanted to be engaged in chess, hopefully playing with the highest-rated masters in the country. Moscow was the city where the great tournament of 1925 had been played; where Alekhine had become a grandmaster; where most of the world’s top masters played, learned, and lived; where the World Championship had been held only a few months prior. For Bobby, Moscow was the Elysium of chess, and his head was spinning with the possibilities.
Spurning Abramov’s offer of an introduction to the city, Bobby asked to be brought immediately to the Tsentralny Shakhmatny Klub, the Moscow Central Chess Club, said to be one of the finest in the world. Virtually all of the strongest players in Moscow belonged to the club, which had been opened in 1956 and boasted a library reported to consist of ten thousand chess books and over one hundred thousand index cards of opening variations. Bobby simply couldn’t wait until he saw it all.
Upon arriving at the club’s headquarters on Gogolsky Boulevard, Bobby was first introduced to two young Soviet masters, both in their early twenties: Evgeni Vasukov and Alexander Nikitin. He began playing speed chess in rotation with both, in a hallway on the first floor of the club, and won every game. Lev Khariton, a Soviet master, then a teenager, remembered that a crowd gathered. Everyone wanted to see the American wunderkind. “There was a certain loneliness about him hunched above the board,” said Khariton.
“When can I play Botvinnik [the World Champion]?” Bobby asked, using a tone that was almost a demand. “And Smyslov [Botvinnik’s most recent challenger]?” He was told that because it was summer, both men were at their dachas, quite a distance from Moscow, and unavailable. It may have been true.
“Then what about Keres?”
“Keres is not in the country.”
Abramov later claimed that he’d contacted several grandmasters but had made little progress in finding an opponent of the caliber that Fischer was insisting on. True or not, Abramov was becoming more than annoyed by Bobby’s brashness and frequent distemper. Bobby begrudgingly met the weight lifters and Olympians he was introduced to, but he seemed bored by it all. The Russians began calling him Malchick or “Little Boy.” Although it was an affectionate term, to a teenager it could be considered an insult. Bobby didn’t like the implication.
Finally, Tigran Petrosian was, on a semi-official basis, summoned to the club. He was an international grandmaster, known as a colorless player but he was almost scientifically precise, and one of the great defensive competitors of all time. He was also an extraordinarily powerful speed player. Bobby knew of him, of course, having played over his games from the Amsterdam tournament of 1956 and also from seeing him from afar at the USA-USSR match in New York four years earlier. Before he arrived, Fischer wanted to know how much money he’d receive for playing Petrosian. “None. You are our guest,” Abramov frostily replied, “and we don’t pay fees to guests.”
The games were played in a small, high-ceilinged room at the end of the hallway, probably to limit the number of spectators, which had grown to several dozen while Bobby was playing the younger men. The contest with the Russian grandmaster was not a formal match, but consisted of speed games, and Petrosian won the majority. Many years later, Bobby indicated that during those speed games Petrosian’s style of play had bored him “to death,” and that was why he’d wound up losing more than he won.
When the Soviet Union had agreed to invite Bobby to Moscow, and generously pay all expenses for him and his sister, he was granted a visa that was good for only twenty days. Regina, though, wanted him to stay in Europe until the Interzonal in Po
rtorož began, and because of a lack of funds she was trying to get both his visa and his guest status extended. She wanted him to have a European experience and sharpen his use of foreign languages, which she kept insisting was so vital for his education. Plus, she knew that he wanted to play chess against the better Soviet players as training before he entered the Interzonal. It wasn’t to happen, however.
When Bobby discovered that he wasn’t going to play any formal games, but simply speed chess, he went into a not-so-silent rage. He felt that he wasn’t being respected. Wasn’t he the reigning United States Champion? Hadn’t he played “The Game of the Century,” one of the most brilliant chess encounters ever? Hadn’t he played a former World Champion, Dr. Max Euwe, just a year earlier? Wasn’t he the prodigy predicted to become World Champion in two years?
A certain monarchic attitude seized him: How could they possibly refuse him, the Prince of Chess? This was no trivial setback, no mere snub; it was, to Bobby, the greatest insult he could imagine. He reacted to that insult, from his point of view, proportionately. It seemed obvious to him that the reason the top players wouldn’t meet him was because, on some level, they were frightened of him. He likened himself to his hero Paul Morphy, who for the same reason, on his first trip to Europe in 1858 exactly one hundred years before, was denied a match with the Englishman Howard Staunton, then considered the world’s greatest player. Chess historians and critics believed that twenty-one-year-old Morphy would have easily beaten Staunton. And fifteen-year-old Fischer firmly believed that if he were given a chance to meet Mikhail Botvinnik, the World Champion, the Soviet player would be defeated.
As the reality set in that Bobby would not soon—not in the next several days, at least—be meeting the giants of Russian chess and triumphing over them, and that while in the Soviet Union he’d receive no financial reward for his playing, the Soviets ceased to be his heroes; rather, they became his betrayers, never to be forgiven. He made a comment in English, not caring that the interpreter could hear and understand it—something to the effect that he was fed up “with these Russian pigs.” She reported it, although years later Abramov said that the interpreter confused the word “pork” for “pigs” and that Bobby was referring to the food he was eating at a restaurant.