He demands to know what she’s hiding from him, and she promises she will tell him the following day. Finally, he cannot bear the tension between them anymore and he confronts her. Her actions are suspicious, and though he doesn’t confront her about them, he doesn’t ask her to marry him either. Bond decides he wants to marry Vesper and leave his life of espionage behind, but before he can propose, he witnesses her making a secret phone call.

He’s attracted to Vesper, and decides that he’d rather start a romantic relationship with her than be a spy, so when he’s released from the hospital, they go on vacation to the seaside. During that time, he considers whether or not he wants to be a spy. For the next three weeks, he is hospitalized. Although both Bond and Vesper escape the SMERSH agent, Bond is gravely injured. Before Le Chiffre can break him, a SMERSH agent catches up to them and kills Le Chiffre. Le Chiffre tortures him, and Bond learns first-hand the dangers he faces if he pursues a career as a spy. He gets into a car accident though, and is captured as well. When Vesper is lured away by Le Chiffre and kidnapped, Bond follows to try to save her.

Even though Bond won against Le Chiffre, his evolution into a master spy is not yet complete. Their attempt is unsuccessful and Bond reaches the casino, where he succeeds in winning all of Le Chiffre’s money. Before Bond can even get into a game of baccarat with Le Chiffre, SMERSH agents catch up to him and try to kill him with a bomb. He has allies: Vesper Lynd Mathis, a French agent and Felix Lieter, an American agent in the CIA. In this, his first mission as a spy, Bond isn’t alone. Bond, an experienced gambler, plans to bankrupt Le Chiffre to stop him funneling money to the Communists. The Casino Royale, located in the north of France, is where Le Chiffre and James Bond face off. He intends to recover the money he spent on brothels through gambling. He faces another threat in the form of SMERSH, the Soviet spy agency, which is trying to hunt him down and kill him. When France outlaws prostitution, Le Chiffre finds himself in hot water. Le Chiffre has taken Soviet money, intended to fund a Communist-controlled trade union, and invested it in brothels. This particular novel shows how Bond came to occupy that role after he accepts a mission from MI-6, the British Secret Service, to defeat Le Chiffre, a Russian agent, in a poker game.

Fleming created the James Bond character, and wrote many novels about the British spy and his fight against enemy agents during the Cold War. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming is a spy thriller featuring James Bond.

Mathis from casino royale