The man often said to possess the world's most brilliant chess mind, and a great eccentric in a game that has many, sits in an airport jail facing deportation and subsequent arrest by US marshals as early as tomorrow.
Returning to the United States in handcuffs would mark a bitter homecoming for the Brooklyn-raised exile. In the 1960s and '70s, Fischer transformed chess from nerdy to sexy and became a Cold War-era hero by vanquishing Boris Spassky, the Soviet Union's best, in the strange but legendary world championship contest of 1972.
He has been a recluse almost since then. Now 61, Fischer has emerged in public only fitfully in recent years, usually to berate the US government for what he regards as its evil foreign policies and to cast himself the victim of persecution by ''world Jewry."
The prospect of a return to face trial on the 1992 charge, which could carry a prison sentence of up to 10 years and a $50,000 fine, looks increasingly probable.
Fischer has yet to hire a lawyer to fight deportation proceedings stemming from the Japanese government's contention that he entered the country with an illegal passport, said Miyoko Watai, a friend from Tokyo's chess community. Watai, who said she had known Fischer since 1973, said he phoned her after being taken into custody, and ''the problem is he doesn't trust the lawyers."
Instead, Fischer has declared himself a political prisoner, appealing via a Japan-based Internet site for asylum in a ''friendly third country." Through Watai, he claimed to have been ''viciously attacked, brutalized, seriously injured, and very nearly killed" during his airport arrest.
Japanese officials, acting ''in collusion with the US government," destroyed his passport, he said.
The US case against him stems from his out-of-retirement exhibition battle with Spassky in 1992, which led to a $3.5-million payday for Fischer. Staged in Yugoslavia, a federation unraveling in civil war, his appearance violated UN sanctions and an embargo on doing business in the Balkan country signed by the first President Bush.
