by winning a high-stakes baccarat game before his handlers realize anything is amiss. Unbeknownst to him SMERSH has already discovered his perfidy and sent an agent from the Polish People's Republic to assassinate him, while his mistress passes word of his financial troubles to the Head of Station S (Soviet Union) at the British Secret Service. As NATO has determined the union could serve as a fifth column in a war with the Eastern Bloc, the agency's director M approves S's proposal to send a 00 Agent to play against Le Chiffre and bankrupt both him and the union. M chooses the agent James Bond, 007, for the mission because of Bond's expertise in gambling. As part of Bond's cover as a wealthy Jamaican planter, M also assigns as his companion Vesper Lynd, personal assistant to the Head of Section S. Although Bond and Vesper attempt to maintain a dispassionate working relationship, they nevertheless grow closer. The CIA and the French Deuxième Bureau also send agents Rene Mathis and Felix Leiter as observers. Mathis quickly warns Bond that his cover has somehow been blown and that he is under surveillance from the couple staying in the hotel room above him. That night he narrowly survives a bombing by two of Le Chiffre's Bulgarian henchmen, who are themselves killed after being falsely assured that one of the explosives was merely a smokescreen to help them escape. The game soon turns into an intense confrontation between Le Chiffre and Bond; Le Chiffre buys the bank, and Bond takes the strategy of constantly calling his bets until one of them have been bankrupted. Although initially Bond costs him millions of francs Le Chiffre wins the first round with a series of sudden coups, cleaning Bond out of his funds. As Bond contemplates the prospect of reporting his failure to M, Leiter gives him an envelope of money and a note: "Marshall Aid. Thirty-two million francs. With the compliments of the USA." Le Chiffre attempts to retrieve his remaining debts by raising the stakes to that amount, the highest bet raised in the history of the game. When Bond unexpectedly calls the bet Le Chiffre's Corsican associate threatens to kill him with a silenced handgun, which Bond disarms while pretending to faint. Bond wins the hand, and goes on to clean out Le Chiffre and win eighty million francs of his funds. Desperate to