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.