It was two o’clock in the morning. Apart from the thick crowd round the big game, play was still going on at three of the chemin-de-fer games and at the same number of roulette tables.
In the silence round his own table, Bond suddenly heard a distant croupier intone: ‘Neuf. Le rouge gagne, impair et manque.’
Was this an omen for him or for Le Chiffre?
The two cards slithered towards him across the green sea.
Like an octopus under a rock, Le Chiffre watched him from the other side of the table.
Bond reached out a steady right hand and drew the cards towards him. Would it be the lift of the heart which a nine brings, or an eight brings?
He fanned the two cards under the curtain of his hand. The muscles of his jaw rippled as he clenched his teeth. His whole body stiffened in a reflex of self-defence.
He had two queens, two red queens.
They looked roguishly back at him from the shadows. They were the worst. They were nothing. Zero. Baccarat.
“A card,” said Bond fighting to keep hopelessness out of his voice. He felt Le Chiffre’s eyes boring into his brain.
The banker slowly turned his own two cards face up.
He had a count of three – a king and a black three.
Bond softly exhaled a cloud of tobacco smoke. He still had a chance. Now he was really faced with the moment of truth. Le Chiffre slapped the shoe, slipped out a card, Bond’s fate, and slowly turned it face up.
It was a nine, a wonderful nine of hearts, the card known in gipsy magic as ‘a whisper of love, a whisper of hate’, the card that meant almost certain victory for Bond.
The croupier slipped it delicately across. To Le Chiffre it meant nothing. Bond might have had a one, in which case he now had ten points, or nothing, or baccarat, as it is called. Or he might have had a two, three, four, or even five. In which case, with the nine, his maximum count would be four.
Holding a three and giving nine is one of the moot situations at the game. The odds are so nearly divided between to draw or not to draw. Bond let the banker sweat it out. Since his nine could only be equalled by the banker drawing a six, he would normally have shown his count if it had been a friendly game.
Bond’s cards lay on the table before him, the two impersonal pale pink-patterned backs and the faced nine of hearts. To Le Chiffre the nine might be telling the truth or many variations of lies.
The whole secret lay in the reverse of the two pink backs where the pair of queens kissed the green cloth.
The sweat was running down either side of the banker’s beaky nose. His thick tongue came out slyly and licked a drop out of the corner of his red gash of a mouth. He looked at Bond’s cards, and then at his own, and then back at Bond’s.
Then his whole body shrugged and he slipped out a card for himself from the lisping shoe.
He faced it. The table craned. It was a wonderful card, a five.
‘Huit … la banque,’ said the croupier.
As Bond sat silent, Le Chiffre suddenly grinned wolfishly. He must have won.
The croupier’s spatula reached almost apologetically across the table. There was not a man at the table who did not believe Bond was defeated.
The spatula flicked the two pink cards over on their backs. The gay red queens smiled up at the lights.
‘Et le neuf.’
A great gasp went up round the table, and then a hubbub of talk.
Bond’s eyes were on Le Chiffre. The big man fell back in his chair as if slugged above the heart. His mouth opened and shut once or twice and his right hand felt at his throat. Then he rocked back. His lips were grey.
As the huge stack of plaques was shunted across the table to Bond the banker reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and threw a wad of notes on to the table.