There were press reports that Bobby might be indicted and extradited back to the United States. Although he wanted to return to California, he didn’t want to take the chance of entering the United States just yet. In mid-December, he received a telephone call from his attorney that a federal grand jury was about to meet and consider his case, and there was an almost certain chance that they’d vote for an indictment. The spitting incident, symbolically equivalent to burning the American flag, had apparently earned the government’s wrath. Bobby immediately left Belgrade—taking with him his second, Eugene Torre, and two bodyguards provided by Vasiljevic—and secretly traveled to the small town of Magyarkanizsa, in the northernmost reaches of Serbia, on the border with Hungary. Vasiljevic had selected this location for Bobby for a few reasons: Its population consisted of about 90 percent Hungarian nationals, so people from Budapest and its environs could cross the border with impunity, meaning that Zita could visit him easily. Also, should Bobby have to quickly cross from Serbia into Hungary, it was probable that he could do so without being stopped, since the checkpoint was undermanned and the guards wouldn’t likely be on the lookout for him. The fact that Magyarkanizsa was known as “The City of Silence” also made it attractive to Bobby … at least at first.
On December 15, 1992, a single-count indictment in federal court in Washington, D.C., was handed down by a grand jury against Bobby Fischer for violating economic sanctions, through an executive order issued by President George Bush. A letter to that effect was sent to Bobby in Belgrade, and upon announcement of the indictment, federal officials issued a warrant for his arrest. It wasn’t clear how rapidly—or aggressively—the government would pursue him.
In the middle of winter, there was little to do in Magyarkanizsa. Bobby didn’t want to write letters or receive them, for fear of being tracked by the U.S. government, which was attempting to arrest him. When he communicated by telephone, he did so by having one of his bodyguards call the intended person and then hand over the phone. No call-back number was ever left. Trying to outwit any government pursuers, he at first stayed at a small hotel and then at an inn on the outskirts of town. And when the weather became warm, he moved into a health and rehabilitation center, not because he was ailing but because the facility had a swimming pool and a gym where he could work out. After a while, he moved to another hotel. Occasionally, Svetozar Gligoric, his old friend, would visit him and stay for a week or so.
In late May of 1993, the Polgars, the royal chess family of Hungary, visited Bobby—Laszlo, the father, and his two precocious daughters, Judit, sixteen, and Sofia, nineteen. Both girls were chess prodigies. (The oldest daughter, Zsuzsa, twenty-three—a grandmaster—was in Peru at a tournament.) Bobby welcomed their arrival since he was starved for companionship.
Soon after they left, though, he began to feel very hemmed in by circumstances. His funds were getting a bit crimped since he was fearful of traveling to Switzerland to draw money from his account—and if he tried to have the Swiss bank wire money to a bank in Magyarkanizsa, he’d once again be violating the sanctions. Not having many people to interact with or much to do was making him feel lonely and bored. (“I have no friends here; only Gliga and the bodyguards,” he wrote to Zita.) Somehow, he had to extricate himself from Yugoslavia.
Without naming the country he wanted to go to, he sought legal advice from an attorney in Los Angeles and without mentioning names, should the phones be tapped, he had an English-speaking attorney in Magyarkanizsa take down the information. The country that Bobby had in mind to go to was the Philippines, although other than Torre he told no one of his intended destination. Getting there would be complicated.
If Bobby managed to get to Hungary without being arrested, he could fly directly to the Philippines. If traveling there directly appeared too risky, he could rent a small private plane somewhere in Hungary, or even Yugoslavia, and fly to Greece or Egypt and then to Manila. Another possibility was taking a boat or a tramp steamer, but that might be too prolonged. Bobby worried that his funds in the Union Bank of Switzerland might be sequestered, so he wanted to get the money out of there as soon as possible.
Ultimately, Bobby felt that traveling to the Philippines—as much as he wanted to go—was a risk he wasn’t prepared to take at that particular time, and in any event, he learned that his UBS funds couldn’t be sequestered. While he was still pondering what to do, he received some shocking news.
Zita had taken the bus from Budapest to visit him, and she had an announcement to make: She was pregnant, and not by Bobby. One can only imagine Bobby’s shock, anger, and sadness at hearing this. He couldn’t understand or accept that the passion he felt for Zita wasn’t reciprocal. His proposal of marriage was categorically refused. A bitter argument raged through the night. “He was rough,” Zita said. “His behavior was very, very bad.… he hurt those that I love.” Finally, as dawn approached, Bobby went to sleep and Zita awoke a few hours later. She left a good-bye note indicating that her affair had nothing to do with why she didn’t want to marry him. The fact was, she just didn’t love him.
When Bobby awoke, he wrote a letter of apology to her, but she didn’t answer.
When Zsuzsa Polgar returned to Budapest, her family made a second visit to Magyarkanizsa, specifically so that she could meet Bobby. Accompanying the family in Zsuzsa’s VW Passat was Janos Kubat. Describing her first impressions of Bobby Fischer, Zsuzsa recalled: “I was surprised to see how tall and big he was. He was slightly overweight, though I wouldn’t call him fat, and he seemed to have enormous hands and feet. He was very friendly and open with me right away, and had a lot of questions including about my recent trip to Peru.”
Zsuzsa questioned Bobby about why he was staying in Magyarkanizsa—an ancient town, small and colorless—when he could be living in Budapest, the Paris of Eastern Europe, a city with many restaurants (including ones that featured his favorite Japanese cuisine), movie theaters, bookshops, thermal baths, concerts, and libraries. She added that there he could socialize with some of the great Hungarian players he knew—men such as Benko, Lilienthal, Portisch, and Szabo.
Bobby listened closely to what Zsuzsa was saying. He realized that if he was in Budapest he could continue to pursue Zita much more easily. He saw his quest for her in chess terms: “I have been in lost positions before … worse than this, and I won!” Laszlo Polgar invited Bobby to stay with his family anytime at his country home. That left only one question to ponder: Would he be stopped at the crossing into Hungary and turned over to the U.S. authorities?
The Polgars, thinking of everything, had taken a chance on their way across the border and asked the guards that very question. They were assured that Bobby wouldn’t have any trouble entering Hungary. He was somewhat skeptical, however, and wrote apprehensively to his friend Miyoko Watai in Japan: “I think the Hungarians may arrest me as soon as I cross the border.”