Page 36 of In A Faraway Land

Counting Cards

Dieter Schwarz

I have a specialized set of skills.

No, not those.

Other ones.

Ones that don’t involve killing people.

Slot machines jangled and flashed around the cluster of poker tables. People pushed and shoved through the crowds, yelling right behind him. Spilled liquor was turning rancid in the carpeting. A row of red and blue lights behind theblackjack dealer ran a wave left to right and blinked three times before it started over again.

Wulfram could count cards at blackjack.

Flicka could count cards at blackjack.

Though Dieter had understood the concept quickly enough the night before when Flicka had shuffled one deck of cards with her dainty fingers and dealt hand after hand, the casino was using a tall stack of at least eightdecks of cards. No matter how much he kept track, the cards were too randomized and evenly distributed to allow him to increase or decrease his bets near the end of a shoe.

And there was no end of each shoe. When about half the cards were played, the dealer shoved the whole stack in a huge mechanical shuffler, and the whole count started over again from zero.

Impossible.

He was leaking money,and they didn’t have enough money for him to lose a little every day at the tables while he guarded Flicka at work.

Dieter moved to a Texas Hold’em poker table so he could read the other players’ body language instead of trying to keep a running total of the value of the played cards.

At the Texas Hold’em table, the other poker players thought they were being subtle, but Dieter was practicedat finding the one guy in the crowd who was a little too jumpy to be normal. His eagle eye could pick a jackal out at five hundred yards.

Sitting right across the table from a group of people who were trying to keep secrets from him almost wasn’t sporting.

Almost.

When the dealer flipped the river card and one of the other players nearly crawled up on the back of his chair and flapped his arms,Dieter knew the guy must have good cards in his hand, making a full house or straight flush.

He folded.

However, when another guy got nervous-happy and kept checking his cards while he was half-hunched in the chair, he was obviously bluffing. Dieter raised and re-raised until the pain became intolerable for the bluffer, and he folded. Dieter raked in that pot.

Dieter went home almost a thousanddollars richer than when he’d walked in.

And he was going home to Flicka and Alina, and he thought he could die happy right there on the rug in the middle of the living room, except that it would leave the two of them alone.

He would never leave them vulnerable. He might not be a mathematical genius like Wulfram or a criminal financier like his father, but Dieter was a hell of a bodyguard.

He would keep them both safe.