The Du Ponts looked at each other.
‘Banco,’ said Mrs Du Pont, and promptly lost to the banker’s natural eight.
‘Un banco de quatre millions,’ said the croupier.
‘Banco,’ said Bond, pushing out a wad of notes.
Again he fixed Le Chiffre with his eye. Again he gave only a cursory look at his two cards.
‘No,’ he said. He held a marginal five. The position was dangerous.
Le Chiffre turned up a knave and a four. He gave the shoe another slap. He drew a three.
‘Sept à la banquet’ said the croupier, ‘et cinq,’ he added as he tipped Bond’s losing cards face upwards. He raked over Bond’s money, extracted four million francs and returned the remainder to Bond.
‘Un banco de huit millions.’
‘Suivi,’ said Bond.
And lost again, to a natural nine.
In two coups he had lost twelve million francs. By scraping the barrel, he had just sixteen million francs left, exactly the amount of the next banco.
Suddenly Bond felt the sweat on his palms. Like snow in sunshine his capital had melted. With the covetous deliberation of the winning gambler, Le Chiffre was tapping a light tattoo on the table with his right hand. Bond looked across into the eyes of murky basalt. They held an ironical question. ‘Do you want the full treatment?’ they seemed to ask.
‘Suivi,’ Bond said softly.
He took some notes and plaques out of his right-hand pocket and the entire stack of notes out of his left and pushed them forward. There was no hint in his movements that this would be his last stake.
His mouth felt suddenly as dry as flock wall-paper. He looked up and saw Vesper and Felix Leiter standing where the gunman with the stick had stood. He did not know how long they had been standing there. Leiter looked faintly worried, but Vesper smiled encouragement at him.
He heard a faint rattle on the rail behind him and turned his head. The battery of bad teeth under the black moustache gaped vacantly back at him.
‘Le jeu est fait,’ said the croupier, and the two cards came slithering towards him over the green baize – a green baize which was no longer smooth, but thick now, and furry and almost choking, its colour as livid as the grass on a fresh tomb.
The light from the broad satin-lined shades which had seemed so welcoming now seemed to take the colour out of his hand as he glanced at the cards. Then he looked again.
It was nearly as bad as it could have been – the king of hearts and an ace, the ace of spades. It squinted up at him like a black widow spider.
‘A card.’ He still kept all emotion out of his voice.
Le Chiffre faced his own two cards. He had a queen and a black five. He looked at Bond and pressed out another card with a wide forefinger. The table was absolutely silent. He faced it and flicked it away. The croupier lifted it delicately with his spatula and slipped it over to Bond. It was a good card, the five of hearts, but to Bond it was a difficult fingerprint in dried blood. He now had a count of six and Le Chiffre a count of five, but the banker, having a five and giving a five, would and must draw another card and try and improve with a one, two, three or four. Drawing any other card he would be defeated.
The odds were on Bond’s side, but now it was Le Chiffre who looked across into Bond’s eyes and hardly glanced at the card as he flicked it face upwards on the table.
It was, unnecessarily, the best, a four, giving the bank a count of nine. He had won, almost slowing up.
Bond was beaten and cleaned out.
12 | THE DEADLY TUBE
Bond sat silent, frozen with defeat. He opened his wide black case and took out a cigarette. He snapped open the tiny jaws of the Ronson and lit the cigarette and put the lighter back on the table. He took a deep lungful of smoke and expelled it between his teeth with a faint hiss.
What now? Back to the hotel and bed, avoiding the commiserating eyes of Mathis and Leiter and Vesper. Back to the telephone call to London, and then tomorrow the plane home, the taxi up to Regent’s Park, the walk up the stairs and along the corridor, and M.’s cold face across the table, his forced sympathy, his ‘better luck next time’ and, of course, there couldn’t be one, not another chance like this.
He looked round the table and up at the spectators. Few were looking at him. They were waiting while the croupier counted the money and piled up the chips in a neat stack in front of the banker, waiting to see if anyone would conceivably challenge this huge bank of thirty-two million francs, this wonderful run of banker’s luck.
Leiter had vanished, not wishing to look Bond in the eye after the knock-out, he supposed. Yet Vesper looked curiously unmoved, she gave him a smile of encouragement. But then, Bond reflected, she knew nothing of the game. Had no notion, probably, of the bitterness of his defeat.
The huissier was coming towards Bond inside the rail. He stopped beside him. Bent over him. Placed a squat envelope beside Bond on the table. It was as thick as a dictionary. Said something about the caisse. Moved away again.
Bond’s heart thumped. He took the heavy anonymous envelope below the level of the table and slit it open with his thumb nail, noticing that the gum was still wet on the flap.
Unbelieving and yet knowing it was true, he felt the broad wads of notes. He slipped them into his pockets, retaining the half-sheet of notepaper which was pinned to the topmost of them. He glanced at it in the shadow below the table. There was one line of writing in ink: ‘Marshall Aid. Thirty-two million francs. With the compliments of the USA.’
Bond swallowed. He looked over towards Vesper. Felix Leiter was again standing beside her. He grinned slightly and Bond smiled back and raised his hand from the table in a small gesture of benediction. Then he set his mind to sweeping away all traces of the sense of complete defeat which had swamped him a few minutes before. This was a reprieve, but only a reprieve. There could be no more miracles. This time he had to win – if Le Chiffre had not already made his fifty million – if he was going to go on!
The croupier had completed his task of computing the cagnotte, changing Bond’s notes into plaques and making a pile of the giant stake in the middle of the table.
There lay thirty-two thousand pounds. Perhaps, thought Bond, Le Chiffre needed just one more coup, even a minor one of a few million francs, to achieve his object. Then he would have made his fifty million francs and would leave the table. By tomorrow his deficits would be covered and his position secure.
He showed no signs of moving and Bond guessed with relief that somehow he must have overestimated Le Chiffre’s resources.
Then the only hope, thought Bond, was to stamp on him now. Not to share the bank with the table, or to take some minor part of it, but to go the whole hog. This would really jolt Le Chiffre. He would hate to see more than ten or fifteen million of the stake covered, and he could not possibly expect anyone to banco the entire thirty-two millions. He might not know that Bond had been cleaned out, but he must imagine that Bond had by now only small reserves. He could not know of the contents of the envelope; if he did, he would probably withdraw the bank and start all over again on the wearisome journey up from the five hundred thousand franc opening bet.
The analysis was right.
Le Chiffre needed another eight million.
At last he nodded.
‘Un banco de trente-deux millions.’
The croupier’s voice rang out. A silence built itself up round the table.