Chapter 561: Interrogation
"Check."
"Check."
"Fifty thousand."
"Call your fifty thousand."
"I call, a hundred thousand."
…
Everyone played very conservatively at the outset; that all-or-nothing scene of everyone going all-in simply never appeared.
Bella didn't resort to any tricks to cheat. Her luck wasn't especially good, and she drew few pairs. After an hour of play, having folded several hands in a row, she finally landed a full house and took a hand with eights full of fives.
Across from her, Kaecilius pressed the fingers of his right hand to his temple, gave a few cold chuckles, and the game went on.
"What are you sneering at? We've been at this for so long now—am I not even allowed to win a single hand?" Bella asked by telepathic communication.
Kaecilius possessed no such ability; he shot her an expressionless glance and lowered his head again to study the cards in his hand.
A real card table was crueler than the movies, but also far more cautious. After two hours, Bella was getting more than a little fed up! Losing more than she won was one thing; her sheer lack of interest in the game was another.
She thought it was more exhausting than sitting an exam! Without good stamina you really couldn't hold out.
Her grasp of casino rules was limited, so for now she could only fall back on telepathic communication to ask 006.
"How long is this game going to run?"
006 knew she had this ability, so when a voice abruptly spoke by his ear he wasn't the least bit flustered. He quietly flashed her four fingers, then spread all five wide, meaning it could be more; the exact time was anyone's guess.
Four hours?! Bella thought she'd finally seen through Kaecilius's sinister intent. You're trying to run me into the ground, aren't you?
She glanced left and right, then beckoned to the alluring woman who had come with the new 007.
The alluring woman was leaning against the bar just then. Seeing Bella beckon, she froze for a moment, looked around, and finally pointed at her own nose, as if to say: You mean me? She hesitated, but with the game at a complete standstill and everyone waiting on her, she had no choice but to walk over to Bella.
"Miss, what's your name?"
"…Vesper Lynd." The question had left her utterly bewildered.
Bella gave a thumbs-up. "Lovely name! For Her Majesty the Queen, for the British Empire, I'm handing you a mission right now."
As confusion spread across the other woman's face, Bella rose and pressed Vesper Lynd down into her own seat. "You play in my place. I've still got about… call it seven million in chips left here. If you lose, so be it. But if you win, everything over seven million is yours. Go get 'em!"
Until the chips in all ten players' hands had been used up, the game wouldn't be over—which meant that, in the end, that entire hundred million euros was bound to end up concentrated in a single person's hands.
If Vesper Lynd could win the game, she'd make out like a bandit.
Vesper Lynd's face was all astonishment. Do I even know you? Aren't you the least bit afraid I'll lose every last cent of your money?
She was an official of HM Treasury and instinctively wanted to refuse, but then she caught the new 007 frantically signaling to her with his eyes, and she realized at once that this was an opportunity. On the spot she settled uneasily into Bella's former seat, on edge.
Bella strolled off without a care in the world, and Kaecilius reached out to stop her.
"As I recall, you said you'd play this game through to the end with me." He reminded her pointedly, spelling out the agreement the two of them had made earlier.
Bella's smile turned especially charming. "Am I not allowed to change my mind? A woman reserves the right to go back on her word. Besides, if I want to catch you, can you really get away? I'm going back to rest. Take your time and enjoy the game."
She sauntered off with that captivating gait, downed a couple of drinks at the bar, took a look at the neighboring tables, and was just about to step out through the casino's main doors when she saw Comrade 006 come staggering after her, his gait all over the place.
006 was drenched in sweat, his face ghastly pale, his gait unsteady.
What was going on? Bella spotted the trouble at a glance—006 had been poisoned! The cell-fusion biovirus didn't make him immune to every toxin; it merely granted him powerful recovery and a stronger constitution. Shatter the brain or the heart and he'd die all the same. Certain poisons could slip past the human immune system to strike directly at the heart, and those were entirely capable of killing 006.
Poison, plus a barrage of trash talk to wear down an enemy's physical and mental resistance as much as possible, followed by a fierce bombardment of mind magic—this had already become her signature three-move combo in a fight. Everything else, the ice, the lightning, was just extra. When it came to her mastery of poisons, there were times even Bella frightened herself…
She could tell at a single glance that 006 had taken a virulent dose, the poison fierce and fast-acting.
She reached out to steady 006, her gaze drifting toward Kaecilius in the distance, and there was a terrifying look in her eyes. Bella didn't imagine her connection to 006 was any great secret. Was he killing one of her people right to her face? Did the man simply not want to live anymore?
Kaecilius frantically signaled to her with his eyes; he felt wronged too. At that moment he couldn't have cared less about the game, and if not for his pride he'd have gone over to explain himself in person.
He looked at the glass on the card table, then at the new 007, his expression endlessly eloquent. The meaning ran something like: I meant to poison this fellow here, but that old buddy on your side went and picked up the glass and drank it. This truly isn't my fault!
With a good twenty-five meters (over eighty feet) between them, Kaecilius had all but strained his eyes with signaling before Bella, on her end, barely managed to grasp his meaning.
By now the many gamblers, along with the casino's band and dancers, had all stopped to stare at her.
Bella waved off the casino attendant's offer to call a doctor. "It's fine, it's fine—this gentleman has simply had a bit too much to drink. Keep the music playing and the dancers dancing!"
Anyone who knew how to make poisons naturally knew how to neutralize them as well.
Once out of the casino, quick as lightning she poured a vial of medicine down Comrade 006's throat, then had an ambulance whisk the old comrade off to the hospital. Go rest up there; the old comrade was so used to hospitals by now that one might as well have been home.
Because of Kaecilius's distraction, the new 007 and Vesper Lynd worked in concert and won the entire game outright with a straight flush running from four to eight.
Per the agreement, the cash from all ten gamblers, more than a hundred million all told, would be deposited into 007's personal account, with a withdrawal password known to him alone.
This 007 was still too young. He had thoroughly underestimated Kaecilius's methods. Even without magic, Kaecilius's fifty-plus years of life experience were more than enough to thrash the inexperienced new 007.
Bella got the weakened 006 settled at the hospital, and by the time she turned and hurried back, she arrived just in time to witness the scene of Kaecilius interrogating 007.
"You've kept yourself in wonderful shape." Kaecilius marveled in a leering, oddly camp tone.
He'd stripped 007 stark naked, and the cushion at the center of the stool had been gouged out as well, leaving 007 to sit bare-bottomed on the seat, his vital parts hanging down of their own accord thanks to the pull of gravity.
Kaecilius swung a length of rope as thick as two fingers, its heavy, bulky end like a miniature meteor hammer. Using the Kamar-Taj method for wielding a mystic-energy whip, he set the weighted end spinning, swung it up from beneath the stool, and hammered it into 007's vital parts.
This was, quite literally, a ball-busting interrogation.
"What the hell?!" Bella, who had tracked her way over, caught sight of precisely this scene, and for a moment she was rather dumbstruck. Should she go over now, or should she make herself scarce?
It could be explained, and yet it would sound scandalous no matter how you put it. Kaecilius was being rather devious; cooking up an interrogation method like this was plainly aimed at the fact that she was a woman! Perhaps she ought to wait a little longer?