Searching for Bobby Fischer No More

By Sora Song

After an international hunt that lasted more than a decade, U.S. authorities have finally nabbed a slippery fugitive from justice: former chess wunderkind BOBBY FISCHER, 61. (We feel safer already.) Fischer has been a wanted man since 1992 when, in violation of a U.S. ban, he headed to Yugoslavia for a highly publicized rematch with his cold war--era rival Boris Spassky, whom Fischer had defeated 20 years earlier in Reykjavik to become the first American world chess champ. Fischer beat Spassky again in 1992 and won $3.3 million. Since then the eccentric grand master has been living secretly in the Philippines, Japan, Switzerland and Hungary, and claims to have quit playing chess in favor of a game of his own creation, Fischerandom chess, in which traditional playing pieces are put in mostly random places on the board. Last week immigration authorities took the renegade gamester into custody at Tokyo's Narita Airport as he attempted to board a flight with a canceled passport. U.S. to Fischer: checkmate.