Just as Fischer was becoming settled in Iceland, hardly before he had a chance to unpack his bags (which held few possessions: only what clothes and books he owned in Japan), an impending match with his friend Pal Benko was suddenly announced by Janos Kubat, the man who’d helped arrange the Fischer-Spassky match in 1992. Kubat issued the announcement to RIA, the Russian News Agency, and said the match would take place in the town of Magyarkanizsa on the border of Hungary and Serbia, where Bobby had lived for several months in 1992. Kubat claimed that a financial sponsor had been found and that the venue was already chosen. There was only one problem: Bobby knew nothing of the match. He’d had a falling-out with Kubat in August of 1993 over a moral issue, according to Bobby, and they weren’t on speaking terms. Most important, he had no intention of leaving Iceland, because of the threat of extradition to the United States.
Two weeks after being greeted as a hero in Iceland, and after stating that he just wanted to live in peace, Bobby found that his troubles weren’t over. He received a letter dated April 7, 2005, from the Union Bank of Switzerland to the effect that the institution was closing his account. UBS was holding some $3 million of his assets, originally deposited there in 1992, and wanted to know to which bank in Iceland Bobby wished his investments transferred.
Bobby had no intention of placing his money in an Icelandic bank (despite being able to receive a potentially higher interest rate there) and demanded to know what was going on. While he and the bank were exchanging intransigent letters, he gave an interview to Morgunbladid in which he said: “Possibly a third party has had something to do with this as a part of further attacks against me. In fact, I don’t know what the directors of UBS are thinking but it seems quite clear that the bank is afraid to keep me as a customer. This is absolutely vicious, illegal and unfair of the UBS.” He threatened a lawsuit. The third party he presumed responsible was the United States government.
Bobby turned to Einar Einarsson for advice. Not only was Einarsson a member of the Icelandic committee that had helped secure Bobby’s release from imprisonment, he’d also been a leading banker before introducing the Visa credit card to Iceland. Careful and methodical, Einarsson began to coach Bobby through an exchange of long, technical e-mails with UBS. Bobby was impatient. He didn’t have a chess tournament to discharge his competitive energy, so he vented his anger at the Swiss bank, which he insisted was run by Jews. This was a different kind of opponent, though, and Bobby hadn’t mastered the techniques of dueling with international financial institutions. So he lost. Eventually, UBS liquidated all of his assets and transferred them to Landsbanki in Reykjavik. Bobby claimed that he lost a sizable amount in the transaction.
In retrospect, it seems quite clear what UBS was doing. Many of its fifty-two thousand accounts were offshore holdings, secretly deposited—many without names, just numbers—as tax havens for American citizens. In Bobby’s case, he was broadcasting, some might say boasting—without cover—that he had $3 million at UBS (he may have even given his account number over the air), and since he’d paid no income tax on it, or on any of his other income since 1977, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service was making its displeasure known to UBS.
Within a few years after Bobby’s dispute with the UBS, thousands of American tax evaders, most millionaires like Bobby, came forth to avoid prosecution, and others who continued to hide their money at UBS were being pursued and arrested for income tax evasion. UBS wasn’t conspiring against Bobby: They just wanted to get rid of one of their most public and foolish clients.
Since Iceland’s interest rate at that time was higher than Switzerland’s, it’s curious why Bobby didn’t want the transfer. Some have speculated that he was somehow prescient or had insider or special knowledge that the Icelandic banks would fail (as they did in 2008, in the country’s economic collapse). A more likely explanation is that he really didn’t see himself staying in Iceland forever. Perhaps he was hoping to gain citizenship in yet another country when the time was right.
The bank battle was an unpleasant interlude, but it didn’t interrupt what was becoming the key portion of most of Bobby’s days: reading. As the study of chess had been compulsive when he was a boy, so now his mind was captivated by deep, serious study of history, philosophy, and other topics. Prowling the aisles at Bókin, he was sometimes brought up short by the absence of a book he wanted, in which case he’d have the store order it for him. He was continually buying books, usually two or three a day, keeping most, discarding a few, and giving others to friends.
In ambience, although not in content, Bókin reminded him of Dr. Albrecht Buschke’s chess bookstore in Greenwich Village, the one he’d visited as a child and as a young man. The books at Buschke’s were slapdashedly scattered, but the disarray was nothing compared to the confusion of Bókin. Bobby seriously asked Bragi to hire him to confront and organize “the pile,” because he thought there had to be books there, hidden deep within, that would be of interest to him, and also because he just couldn’t stand the mess. Finally, he said he’d work for nothing. “But where would we put them?” was Bragi’s refusal.
Bobby’s aisle was a totally secure spot. With his back to the wall, gangster style, he could see anyone coming down the long, narrow corridor, and if he sensed that the person was an autograph seeker—or worse, a reporter—he would either scowl or feign total absorption in what he was reading and not respond if spoken to. Those ploys proved as effective as hanging a Do Not Disturb sign around his neck.
Often, if he noticed that the time was nearing six o’clock, he’d dash off to Yggdrasil, a health food store—the name refers to the mythological Tree of Life—deliberately arriving there just one minute before closing time. He’d then shop at his leisure, much to the discontent of the shop workers who wanted to quit for the day. By arriving as late as he did, he avoided the stares of other shoppers.
Checking out at the counter one day, he noticed a brand of candy bars called Rapunzel; there were two types available, chocolate-covered halvah and coconut. “Does this come from Israel?” he asked suspiciously. When told that the candy came from Germany—“You know, the fairy tale and the Brothers Grimm,” the clerk said—Bobby was reassured and bought a few bars, his anti-Semitic sensibilities appeased.
Although he was often recognized in the street, few Icelanders intruded on his privacy. Foreigners weren’t always so considerate, though, and he usually lashed out at anyone audacious enough to address him. There was one exception, noteworthy because it was so abnormal for him. An American tourist—a chess player—approached Bobby one day and invited him to dinner. After checking the man’s passport to make sure he was who he said, and informally interrogating him to make sure he wasn’t a reporter, Bobby atypically agreed to dine with the stranger. They went to one of Reykjavik’s most expensive and elegant restaurants and were said to have a long conversation, mainly about politics.
Months passed placidly until Bobby had been living in Iceland for about a year. When Helgi Olafsson, a grandmaster, asked him how he liked living in the country, Bobby answered in his typical Calvin Coolidge style: “Good.” But his sanctuary at Bókin began to become known, and stories appeared in the press about his going there, together with interviews of the store’s proprietor, Bragi. A Russian television crew showed up to try to interview Fischer, and he fled. Eventually he tired of the reporters waiting to ambush him outside the bookstore, and he changed his routine. He began to frequent the Reykjavik Public Library, only a few blocks farther from where he lived. The library became the focal point of his life.