You walk into the casino and set a deliberate course for the baccarat table. As you pass a series of floor to ceiling mirrors, you notice that the clean lines of your eveningwear, so impeccably crisp and elegant, perfectly conceal your Walther PPK semi-automatic pistol. You smile at the dealer, a young woman dressed in the same white shirt and liveried vest as the male croupiers. Unlike the men, however, she alone has shiny red cufflinks that match the design of the ruby-colored vest. The rest of the dealers, you notice, have black and white cufflinks. Perhaps the house has rewarded her with special cufflinks in recognition of her special skills.
She smiles back at you, but you are already making mental notes about the others at the table, though their backs are toward you. One is a plump, middle-aged man, and another a younger man, tall and thin with a prominent adam's apple, blond hair and wispy first mustache. Both men wear black tuxedos. Then there is a woman in a green empire gown, a choke of matching emeralds around her neck, and brunette hair piled on her head in a pompadour. There is plenty of room at the table. In fact, it cries out for more players. This is why the dealer smiles so invitingly.
"De la Banque à la Banque," says the dealer in a perfect Parisian accent. Is she a bit far south from home, you wonder, or has she improved her speech through some correspondence course? You wait until there is a pause and she deals you in.
The young man on your left is not doing well. He looks a bit disheveled, his collar undone, empty wallet on the table. The cards are swiftly dealt and you peek at yours. They add up to seven. That is probably the best you can do. You stick with what you have, but the nervous youth asks for another card. He has no poker face at all and you see the chagrin in his mouth and eyes as soon as he sees the card he got. The color drains from his already pale cheeks, and you know he must concede defeat.
The plump businessman to your left is as cool as the young man is over-heated. He smiles beatifically. He has seen his cards and he is standing pat. The woman on the other side of the youth has asked for a card, and now she is smiling too. You think to yourself that it is likely that one or both of them has a better hand than you do. Should you get another card or leave it alone? You decide to see what will happen when one of your competitors wins.
Now it is time for everyone to show his hand. The youth has four, you have seven, the lady has eight and the older gentleman has nine. His ruddy face breaks into a grin. He is the one to beat at this table. At least he was until you came along.
Two hands later and the youth has slunk away in defeat, the lady is down, and she, too, resigns. But you and the older gentleman are tied. He smiles directly at you, but you can tell he is sizing you up.
"Let us make this next hand interesting," he says in accented but impeccable English. "Say, perhaps, two million francs?"
"How about ten million," you say. Ice could not melt in your mouth as you add, "That would be even more interesting."
The gentleman's face breaks into that winner's smile. "Very well," he replies. "Ten million francs it is." He tells the dealer in French what the two of you intend. The dealer shows no change in expression. She understood perfectly well, and she knows that your credit is as good as his.
Out come the cards from the dealer's shoe and she puts them before each of you. You each peek. You glance at him but his face is a blank, and you know that yours is, too.
You have a seven once again. He asks for a card. It is a Jack. You try to read him again but cannot. You ask for a card, as well. A two. He stands pat. So do you. The cards are turned and, incredibly, you both have nines.
"Once again?" you say.
"Double or nothing," he says.
"That makes things very interesting, indeed," you say.
The cards are dealt once more. This time you have a three. He is unreadable as ever as he peeks at his card. You ask for another and so does he. You have a five and he has a four.
Keeping your thoughts close is not easy, but you calculate your odds as well as his. The dealer looks pleasantly yet expectantly at each of you.
The man who is your opponent leans toward the dealer and speaks to her in French. Not his native language or yours, but you know enough to recognize that he is as fluent in it as he is in English. No doubt he is trilingual, at least. His native language, you discern, must be an Eastern European one, perhaps Czech. The dealer says, "D'accord, Monsieur."
You understood enough of what he has said, and to which she has just agreed, to anticipate his next utterance, which is directed toward you.
"Let us make this even more interesting and double it again. Say, forty million francs?"
"D'accord," you say so that the dealer as well as your opponent will understand your position.
He then asks for yet another card. An ace this time.
You know that the odds against another ace coming out of the shoe are astronomical. A ten would be as good, a Jack would be better, but, if you get another face card, you will lose all forty million francs, the entire stake that M allotted for this operation. On the other hand, you know that Le Chat cannot afford to lose forty million, either. SMERSH would have his skin tanned and stretched on a wall in the inner sanctum of Stalin's dacha, possibly with his taxidermied head mounted next to it.
You put all of these considerations to one side as you firmly tap your finger on your cards. The dealer immediately puts down another card on top of your hand.
A Jack. If Le Chat has nine, you are tied. Again. If not, you have won. Forty million francs to add to the forty million M gave you to use. Ruefully, you reflect that all of it will go into the royal exchequer. They say that a spy has no friend, but you would rather that be your fate if only you could keep the profits from this game. If you win it, that is.
The cards are turned. You, of course, have nine.
Le Chat has eight.
The plump man begins to smolder as he otherwise sits very still, just staring at the cards on the table. The dealer takes all of the chips and gives them to you.
"Merci, Monsieur," you say. "As you promised, this has been a very interesting game."
Le Chat barely acknowledges you, but you believe that you can detect the wheels turning behind his eyes. He will not allow you to get away with this if he can help it, you conclude.
You gather up all of your chips. A man in a liveried jacket helps you put them on a tray, and you follow him to the cage where you exchange them for real francs. Eight hundred, hundred-franc notes in a suitcase. You get your coat, hat and other accessories from the cloakroom, and walk outside into the car park carrying a suitcase. Everything is bathed in the light of a beautiful full moon, its light glinting ghostily off the chrome on your Astin Martin sports coupe.
As you are about to get in, two men, one short and one tall, in dark trench coats and fedora hats get out of the car behind yours and rapidly approach you. You have no time to draw your pistol, but you turn and step in front of your car door as you open it. The closest thug, the tall one, walks right into it as you slam the door on his coat and step back. Then you step in again and strike him in the throat with an open-handed scooping technique, as if to remove his adam's apple right out of his neck. To your surprise, you suddenly see that it is him, the youth you had believed to be just what he seemed, a loser at cards; but here he is, losing his wind and foolishly still trying to tug his coat from between your car's door frame and the driver's door as he makes gagging noises.
The other thug is coming around the front of the car and has his gun out now. But so do you. Two bursts through your silencer and he goes down without a whimper.
Another two shots, and the blond youth goes down, too. You open the door to let his coat free, and his body does a half roll as the slack lets him fall all the way.
"Very good," says Le Chat. You turn, and there he is, pointing a large revolver at you.
You remember that a revolver has a tendency to pull to the right, especially sure to be a pronounced effect in so large a gun. So you dive to his left behind the car next to yours. Le Chat fires. The loud report is going to attract attention, you think, but you might be dead before anyone comes. Fortunately for you, his bullet penetrates the Ferrari you dove behind. Not very fortunate for the owner, you think. Such a beautiful car.
You fire back from behind a fender. Le Chat has taken cover, too. You trade two more shots. Now you are out of bullets, while he has one left. You've got to make him waste it.
Then you hear him advancing. He knows you are empty, too.
Your best chance is to retreat from car to car, stepping backward while in a crouch. Your formalwear makes this somewhat difficult, but you persevere. If you can make it around this last car in the row, you determine that you will make a run for it.
But suddenly he is there, leveling his pistol at your face.
"I will have my eighty million francs, Monsieur," he says.
"You're a greedy one, aren't you," you say. "The forty million isn't yours anymore. I won it fair and square. Yet now you want my half as well."
"I will have all of the money," he says firmly. "I will have it from you while you are still alive, or I will have it after I shoot you dead."
"I notice that you are multi-lingual," you say.
"What are you talking about?" You have perplexed him with an irrelevant remark. No one ever expects the irrelevant.
"You speak very good English. And French. And your native language is, what, Czech?"
"Slovakian."
"Ah. And how is your Spanish?"
"Good enough. What has this to do with anything?"
"Well, you see, my favorite film comedian in the whole world is Cantinflas. Do you know his movies?"
"I do not attend the cinema as often as you apparently do. It is a waste of time."
"Ah, well, I tend to disagree. I don't think you realize what you're missing. In any case, Cantinflas has a catchphrase, in Spanish 'Aqui esta el detalle'. You know what that means?"
Now you have Le Chat thinking about it.
"Yes, it means something like 'Here's the thing'."
"Right. Well, aqui esta el detalle, with regard to the money. You see, I don't have it on me."
"But how could you not have it on you? I just followed you out of the casino, and you still have the case in your hand. You never had a chance to switch it."
"Well, if you will allow me to open it, you can see for yourself." You open the case and tip it so that he can see that it is empty.
"You will regret playing tricks," says Le Chat. "Throw that over to me."
"Gladly," you say. You throw the case at his head and dive behind a Lamborghini. Another sickly sound as Le Chat's last bullet penetrates the lovely paint job on the boot of the car.
You then emerge and approach him, but Le Chat has drawn a knife from under his coat. He lunges for you, but you step out of his way. He turns to face you. You then grab his wrist with your left hand and place your right hand over his and twist his wrist inward so that the knife now points almost toward his torso. You wrench his wrist further and take the knife away from him. Then you elbow him in the face, breaking his nose with a crunch.
Le Chat falls to the pavement. At first on one knee, but then he falls onto his side.
Suddenly, you feel something grip you around your neck. It feels like a vice. It has a body with legs firmly attached to it and its full weight is pulling you backward. Just before you black out, you notice that the sleeve is remarkably white over an arm that is thin despite its concentrated strength, and you notice the liveried cufflink that holds the dealer's cuff together. It is predominantly ruby-red and forms the coat of arms of the casino.