Chapter 4

Paris

Two days later and Le Chiffre sat, black espresso in one hand and the other to his mouth, looking at the limp figure of Leo slumped unconscious on a rickety wooden chair before him. He took a drink, enjoying the bitter flavour and jolt of caffeine in his flagging system. It seemed, he thought with a broad smile, that if you gave James Bond an ultimatum the man was incredibly efficient. I should have thought of hiring someone more suited to the job months ago, he thought as he let out a soft laugh to match his vicious smile.

Manipulating government employees who hid behind a veneer of morality always put him in a good mood. Men like Bond enjoyed feeling right; it allowed them a semblance of normalcy which, without, they would be nothing but ruthless killers. Le Chiffre recognised in Bond something which he had once been himself: a blunt instrument with blood on his hands scrabbling for a sense of justice. Only Le Chiffre had shed that ambition years ago. Now there was a considerable rift, he thought, between himself and Mr Bond.

Still, he had been useful for something at least.

Also it seemed Le Chiffre himself was not as suited to the world of espionage as some, considering it had taken Bond two days to do what he could not in over a month. However, the sting of being outdone was far overweighed by the end result. His 'present' was coming round, blinking groggily.

This was the part he excelled at, he thought as he stood up, placed his half drunk coffee down carefully on a crate and pulled the rope from his bag.

The third day rolled around quicker than he would have thought. He watched the daylight rise through one of the high windows in the abandoned warehouse, automatically reaching for his inhaler as he coughed, wheezing slightly. He stopped on realising that his right hand was still coated in a sticky layer of blood. Le Chiffre grimaced and pulled out his handkerchief from his trouser pocket with his left hand, rubbing at the mess.

So much worse, it had turned out to be so much worse than he had imagined. Le Chiffre swallowed, turning to walk towards the small bag he had brought with him, past Leo's naked, bloody corpse still tied to its chair, and rummaged for the bottle of disinfectant. He washed his hands and then rinsed them with a water bottle. Once he was done he took a shot from his inhaler, changed out of his clothes and into a fresh set and a pair of gloves. He put the soiled ones, along with the bag and its contents, into an empty bin and set the whole affair ablaze. Leo was next, the gasoline stinging at his nose as he poured. Still, getting rid of the evidence didn't wipe away the proof Bond had delivered him. If only it could, he thought.

"Oh god, oh god please! No! No ah..!" the sentence slid into an inarticulate howl as Le Chiffre swung the rope hard, connecting with a telling thump.

There wasn't much left of the man, if Le Chiffre was to be honest with himself. Of all the inventive ways which he had devised over the years with which to pry information from people, he found that prolonged and agonising pain was the most effective. For men, an easy and humiliating torture was simple. Some put up a fight, held out for rescue, mercy, whatever else hope could bring them, but nearly everyone crumbled. Pain and fear were the basest of instincts. It was difficult to override something that you were programmed form birth to escape at all costs.

He dropped the rope to the ground, running a hand over his forehead to wipe away the sweat. It was hot in the warehouse, like a brick oven. He wished Leo wouldn't be so very obstinate. It was ruining his complexion.

He reached down to pick up the long dagger from his chair. The look in Leo's eyes was blank, stained with resignation, sweat and crusted blood. Of the multiple bruises, cuts and welts on the man's prone form, none were fatal. Le Chiffre decided to push for a more direct agony, hoping to break through the last of the man's 'hope'.

"Then perhaps you should consider spilling your guts, as they say," Le Chiffre said as he walked in front of Leo, sat shaking and trembling, and played with the knife in his hands, "or I could do that for you? Perhaps I should let you do it yourself. Traitors are supposed to take their own lives, aren't they? But then maybe you were never loyal in the first place. Or not to me, anyway."

Leo didn't talk, just shook his head nervously and tried to stop his face breaking into spasms of weeping and realisations of horror at his situation. Le Chiffre's smile did not reach his eyes as he walked forwards the last few steps to place himself flush against Leo's side. He could feel the sweat from the man's arms and chest soaking into his trousers. Le Chiffre rested the sharp edge of the knife against Leo's shoulder, tracing the sweat beaded skin there.

"A name, how much you were paid and why," Le Chiffre said for the third time that night, "and maybe there will be enough of you left to save. The longer you make me wait, Leo, the less there will be."

"I don't...I don't..." Leo huffed out harshly, head shaking violently, unable to tear his eyes from the knife; Le Chiffre let his smile drop and pushed violently with the knife against the soft skin, sinking the dagger in half way until he felt it scrape against bone.

The scream of agony had been abrasive but what came next even more so, "Haines! Ah, ah it was Haines!"

Le Chiffre twisted the knife half to spill more information from Leo's lips and half from involuntary fear. Another scream and useless squirming as blood began to flow from the ground open wound, laying bare muscle and fatty tissue from beneath the skin.

"He...he...he," Leo puffed out in breaths, his eyes wide, "didn't pay me. I didn't meet him...it was White, he came and said Haines...he wants you dead. Said..." a choking sob and Leo began to cry in earnest, his face twisted with grief and choking sobs of agony, "...he said he knows what you've been doing. That...that money wasn't as important as knowing who to trust."

He would give Leo this, Le Chiffre thought as he walked along the Miami promenade towards the harbour, it had taken eighteen solid hours to break him. It was plainly obvious that Leo was terrified of whomever he was going to reveal and, on hearing the name from blood stained lips, Le Chiffre couldn't blame him. He assumed that, at some point, Leo had realised Le Chiffre was going to kill him regardless and had only given the name up when he had understood that he was already dead. There was only one Haines he knew of powerful enough to cause this much dread while inspiring that much loyalty. Mr White may have been a lapdog of Quantum, but Guy Haines was an alpha.

Le Chiffre stumbled over a crack in the pavement as he walked. His exhaustion made the recovery all the harder, forcing him to reach out and steady himself against a nearby wall. This was a mess, such a large, fractured mess. If Haines was the master behind the puppet strings being pulled then MI6 would be no saviour to him. Not with the British Prime Minister's private advisor being the source of his assassination order.

He did not want to go back to the yacht. The feeling was sudden and visceral. A rising panic that had him hauling out his inhaler again. He hadn't suspected Leo any more than he had suspected everyone else. So which of the others were watching and waiting? Waiting for him to let his guard down? The propellant left a bitter taste in his mouth as he hauled the misted spray down into his lungs. He swallowed. Fuck, he thought suddenly, fuck.

Nowhere to run.

There's always a way out.

Le Chiffre ran his hand over his face, smelling the twang of disinfectant on his fingers and the barest hint of gasoline. One thing that hadn't added up, as far as he was concerned, was why he was still alive now. If Haines and White wanted him silenced then a sniper's bullet or an assassin's knife would do the job. Leo had been their mole within his private world, separate, or so he had thought, from Quantum's expectations. What had Leo been waiting for? Ellipsis? But the man had said money was not their concern, which Le Chiffre could believe. Quantum was not exactly short on money, that much he knew from his own private investigations. Perhaps, he thought, some of the reason he was being targeted was because of how much he knew. Le Chiffre cursed under his breath, wishing he'd had the foresight to keep his eyes where they needed to be and away from where they were not wanted.

He said he knows what you've been doing. The blood pumping in his veins drew colder from his heart. He closed his eyes.

So where now?

A tongue darted out to wet his lips. He would have to keep up appearances or risk raising suspicion. There was no point in taking the chance to spoil the fact that the only thing keeping him alive right now was that he was obviously destined for something he did not know about. Not yet. Until then he was living on borrowed time. He would return to the yacht and give Dimitrios the go ahead. A plan was beginning to form in his mind, one with a slim but hopeful chance of leaving him breathing at the end of it.

But first, he needed to lay the groundwork.

He found Bond's villa without too much trouble. The man hadn't made much of an effort to hide himself, although Le Chiffre would allow for the fact that he probably wouldn't have needed to if he hadn't made himself so visible to Le Chiffre in the first place.

The main living room was pleasantly cool. Le Chiffre took a moment to inspect the rooms, finding nothing useful, and then realised he was doing the one thing that had put him in this mess in the first place: snooping. You always have to know everything, don't you? he asked himself. Before he would have thought of it as contingency; now it seemed more like prying-with-consequences.

Still, the lack of evidence did not count for nothing. There was a telling placement of shoes by the side of the bed. Smartly together and tongues turned out. The bed itself was turned down immaculately but not in hotel fashion but a rigid, military style. The watch and the book on the dresser were immaculately straight with the counter edge. In the small kitchen a bottle of water and an apple had been laid out as if in preparation for being eaten. Typical boarding school behaviour, Le Chiffre thought. He should know, it had taken long years to drum the familiar behaviour out of himself after all.

He sat for twenty minutes by the window, staring out at the water, before the panic began to slip back in. He was being given too much time to worry. The adrenaline from earlier was beginning to seep back into his blood, he could feel it in the thump of his heartbeat against his breastbone. The shake in his hands as he reached for the water he'd poured himself.

Fuck it, he thought arrogantly.

He took a shower while he waited, if only to rid himself of any vestiges of dirt, blood, the smell of disinfectant and the growing panic. The towel was clean and soft against his skin, unused. As he dressed in Bond's bedroom he wondered if the man had even been there at all since last night. The bed appeared undisturbed. It was as he buttoned his shirt that the press of cold hard metal appeared at the nape of his neck. Le Chiffre smiled without humour.

"Enjoying ourselves, are we?"

Bond's tone was hard even with the relaxed lilt; somehow this animosity and sheer improbability of their combined situation made Le Chiffre feel absurdly safe and in control.

"Quite," Le Chiffre said.

As he turned he allowed the muzzle of the gun to trail his throat until it sat against his jugular. Bond's eyes held none of the conceited playfulness from their dinner the day before. Cold and steel-like, they watched him dispassionately.

"You smell like a bloody cleaner," Bond said, stepping back a little but not lowering his gun, "I'm guessing your man didn't survive the encounter?"

"Does that bother you, Mr Bond?" Le Chiffre asked, buttoning up the last of his shirt.

"Do I look like I care if one scumbag offs another scumbag?" Bond said dryly, "What I'm more concerned with is why you're in my bedroom."

Le Chiffre smiled with teeth, looking down at his feet. He sat down on the bed behind him and clasped his hands together. One scumbag, hmm? He thought. How eloquent. Le Chiffre was sure Bond had no idea what he had muscled his way into, or just how much he had made himself as big a target now as Le Chiffre was. He was unable to stop the laughter from escaping his throat, slightly hysterical.

"It seems that I have miscalculated," he said.

"As pleasant as it is to hear you've screwed yourself," Bond said, "that's not an explanation. If you're seen here there won't be much of a point to our little deal, will there. I'm pretty sure that you've miscalculated before and didn't feel the need to run and tell me about it."

"Miscalculated before?" Le Chiffre had only been half listening, already calculating whether or not this would sink him completely, "Our game you mean? How naive of you to think that I did not throw you a bone there."

"What?" Bond frowned, "Look, I don't need you to..."

"You must have thought me a proper little fool," Le Chiffre said, laughing again, "losing to such a simple ploy. I wanted to give you a chance, at least, or perhaps give myself a chance. Whichever."

"Will you shut..."

"You do not know what Ellipsis is," Le Chiffre said, quieting the man into a sullen, fuming silence, gun still aimed, "just as you seem to have only a moderate grasp of chess."

"Moderate," Bond snapped, making Le Chiffre's shark smile widen.

"I could have taken you any way I wanted, Mr Bond," Le Chiffre said, musing on all of the counter plays he could have used to decimate his opponent in their ephemeral game, "I still could."

Instead he had sacrificed his king and a small part of his dignity in order to set up a meeting where his opponent would think themselves safely superior. So far it was all working out far better than if he had just ploughed on alone. He looked at Bond, watching him angrily. The adrenaline still rushing through his system was giving him odd ideas about where he was and how much he could risk.

The gun did not waver but Bond's eyes narrowed.

"No thanks," Bond said acidly, "you're not my type."

Well, he hadn't intended to take it anywhere near there. Sleeping with the enemy; very dangerous territory indeed. Even if it was usually very pleasurable, dangerous territory. Although he found it interesting that Bond's first instincts seemed to have steered him towards innuendo. Le Chiffre smiled.

"Not your type," he repeated, "Male?"

"Single," Bond said the word as if it were distasteful and the gun was holstered.

"Just goes to show how much you know about me," Le Chiffre tilted his head and Bond narrowed his eyes.

"We had a deal," he said, steering away from the odd tangent they had taken.

"I'm changing the deal."

"That's not how deals work," Bond said tightly.

"It is when there is suddenly more on the table than the original bargain."

"Thought you'd managed to weasel your way out of assassination."

"Actually I was thinking less of my sudden demise and more of what I am now able to offer you. I suggest you get your boss on the phone, Mr Bond. Tell her that there's a bomb set to go off in Miami airport tonight, seven o clock eastern standard time, but that it will be diffused in the way I deem necessary," he watched Bond's face tighten and his muscles bunch, "and that I have a new chip to play which may interest her more than the futile, uninteresting terrorist attacks with which M16 must engage on a daily basis."

"And I'm supposed to just go along with it," Bond said as if he were talking to himself, shaking his head, "why are you even telling me all this? Fit of conscience from a near death experience? Don't feel hurt, but I'm disinclined to trust your motives."

"Oh, my motives are very much understandable," Le Chiffre said, pushing his wet hair back as it fell onto his forehead, "unlike you appear to wish me, I very much enjoy being alive. If the only way to remain so is to bring down those who want to kill me, then so be it. So, the phone Mr Bond."

He sat on the bed and listened as Bond called 'home' in the next room. Even laughed when he realised the man was being reprimanded, talking over someone loudly. Things were falling apart so quickly that it was difficult to keep up with shuffling away the rubble. Le Chiffre stood up, tucked in his shirt and made himself presentable.

No reason not to face Quantum with style, after all.

"Someone talked."

He felt his eye twitch in sympathy with his lie and hoped that it came across as a suitable 'show' of his anxiety as he stood and watched the news reporters at Miami International Airport. The 'anxiety' he would have been feeling had the foiling of the Skyfleet bomb been a surprise and not to the very precarious plan he had developed in the past five hours. That it was falling into place, however unstable, seemed more miraculous than down to his immaculate skills.

"Do you need me to contact anyone?" Kratt asked him discreetly.

That his right hand was actually asking was more telling than what he asked. Kratt knew his place; to speak when spoken to. I really must look dire, Le Chiffre thought.

"Get me Bradleys," he said, "there might be time to salvage this."

There wouldn't be. He already knew there wouldn't be. He was betting on the fact that there wouldn't be. Yet he accepted the phone regardless, to keep up the ruse.

"I'm sorry, I'm not sure yet how much you've lost," his stock broker said with muted sympathy.

A lot and he told him so in exact figures. Yet perhaps stood to gain more than that in return, or would, if this all went through. Le Chiffre sucked in the bitter tang of his inhaler and wondered how much a life was worth in monetary value.

His own was priceless to himself. How much was it worth to others?

"You evacuate and call in the threat and you'll get nothing."

The Boss with which he was making his deal wasn't quite what he had expected. M, as they appeared to be known, was filtered through a voice changer that made him feel as if he were having a conversation with a dalek. He was tempted to tell the woman that the ruse was unnecessary considering he knew exactly what she looked and sounded like, but felt it would be prudent to continue allowing MI6 to feel as if it had the upper hand.

"What you offer seems unlikely. You should know that," M said.

"It is an unlikely situation I have found myself in."

"You know this could all be solved quite simply by arresting you. I find interrogation works wonders on informants."

"Or it would, if you had anything to hold me on."

"Precise details about a terrorist attack should be enough."

"I called in a bomb threat. I'm nothing more than a concerned citizen. Besides, if you arrest me now you'll get nothing more than a pawn," Le Chiffre hated to refer to himself as such but had decided being candid was the way forward for now, "what I can offer you sits upon the back ranks."

A moment's hesitation, just long enough that he knew he was understood and his offer was being considered. Then...

"Go on."

It was what he loved about the British. Such a practical people, despite their almost overwhelming pride and arrogance.

"I'm sure you have the ingenuity to make it look like you figured this all out for yourself. Once the attack fails, believe me you'll have the eyes of people whom you will likely find very interesting focused on me."

"You're offering yourself as bait," even the computerised voice sounded unconvinced.

"I'm already bait," Le Chiffre smiled, knowing no one but Bond would be able to see it anyway, "I'm offering myself as bigger bait. If everything goes according to plan, or should that be when everything falls apart, I can bring about a situation that will be most lucrative for us both. All I need is some protection. Then, once all is said and done...I suppose I will be at your disposal."

Thought it was unlikely that it would ever come to that, he thought as he stood by the window, staring out over the wine dark sea. He refused to make his indefinite incarceration by the British government part of his long term plans. If they believed he would sell himself from one slavery to another, they were quite mistaken.

He clung to the tenant by which he lived his life as a drowning man would a shard of flotsam: there was always a way out.