Then he lifted his head and looked Le Chiffre in the eye.
‘Non,’ said the Greek flatly.
From the decision to stand on his two cards and not ask for another, it was clear that the Greek had a five, or a six, or a seven. To be certain of winning, the banker had to reveal an eight or a nine. If the banker failed to show either figure, he also had the right to take another card which might or might not improve his count.
Le Chiffre’s hands were clasped in front of him, his two cards three or four inches away. With his right hand he picked up the two cards and turned them face upwards on the table with a faint snap.
They were a four and a five, an undefeatable natural nine.
He had won.
‘Neuf … la banque,’ quietly said the croupier. With his spatula he faced the Greek’s two cards, ‘Et le sept,’ he said unemotionally, lifting up gently the corpses of the seven and queen and slipping them through the wide slot in the table near his chair which leads into the gib metal canister to which all dead cards are consigned. Le Chiffre’s two cards followed them with a faint rattle which comes from the canister at the beginning of each session before the discards have made a cushion over the metal floor of their oubliette.
The Greek pushed forward five plaques of one hundred thousand and the croupier added these to Le Chiffre’s half million plaque which lay in the centre of the table. From each bet the Casino takes a tiny percentage, the cagnotte, but it is usual at a big game for the banker to subscribe this himself either in a prearranged lump or by contributions at the end of each hand, so that the amount of the bank’s stake can always be a round figure. Le Chiffre had chosen the second course.
The croupier slipped some counters through the slot in the table which receives the cagnotte and announced quietly:
‘Un banco d’un million.’
‘Suivi,’ murmured the Greek, meaning that he exercised his right to follow up his lost bet.
Bond lit a cigarette and settled himself in his chair. The long game was launched and the sequence of these gestures and the reiteration of this subdued litany would continue until the end came and the players dispersed. Then the enigmatic cards would be burnt or defaced, a shroud would be draped over the table and the grass-green baize battlefield would soak up the blood of its victims and refresh itself.
The Greek, after taking a third card, could achieve no better than a four to the bank’s seven.
‘Un banco de deux millions,’ said the croupier.
The players on Bond’s left remained silent.
‘Banco,’ said Bond.
CHAPTER 11 – MOMENT OF TRUTH
Le Chiffre looked incuriously at him, the whites of his eyes, which showed all round the irises, lending something impassive and doll-like to his gaze.
He slowly removed one thick hand from the table and slipped it into the pocket of his dinner-jacket. The hand came out holding a small metal cylinder with a cap which Le Chiffre unscrewed. He inserted the nozzle of the cylinder, with an obscene deliberation, twice into each black nostril in turn, and luxuriously inhaled the benzedrine vapour.
Unhurriedly he pocketed the inhaler, then his hand came quickly back above the level of the table and gave the shoe its usual hard, sharp slap.
During this offensive pantomime Bond had coldly held the banker’s gaze, taking in the wide expanse of white face surmounted by the short abrupt cliff of reddish-brown hair, the unsmiling wet red mouth and the impressive width of the shoulders, loosely draped in a massively cut dinner-jacket.
But for the high-lights on the satin of the shawl-cut lapels, he might have been faced by the thick bust of a black-fleeced Minotaur rising out of a green grass field.
Bond slipped a packet of notes on to the table without counting them. If he lost the croupier would extract what was necessary to cover the bet, but the easy gesture conveyed that Bond didn’t expect to lose and that, this was only a token display from the deep funds at Bond’s disposal.