does it belong to the British royal family?’
‘Her Majesty is a distant cousin,’ Mac lied, making his Scottish accent sound as posh as possible while struggling to keep a straight face. ‘She regularly uses our skiing lodge in the Swiss Alps, and when we decided to make a last-minute trip she kindly let us use the Royal Flight.’
‘Faaaaantastic,’ Julio Sweet beamed. ‘You’re so lucky to know the Queen. We have billionaires and film stars coming through this terminal to play in Las Vegas, but I don’t believe we’ve ever had royal guests before.’
Mac saw the funny side of pulling such a blatant con, but he couldn’t help but feel slightly embarrassed. ‘I’m a very distant cousin,’ he emphasised. ‘And it’s something we prefer not to flaunt.’
‘Absolutely,’ Julio said exuberantly. ‘Everyone on the Reef VIP team can cater to your needs in the utmost privacy.’
Two limousines and a van with Reef Casino logos on it pulled up on the road outside the terminal.
‘And how long do you intend staying?’ Julio asked.
‘Two nights,’ Meryl said. ‘If that’s OK?’
*
The complimentary suites were on top of the thirty-five floor Reef Casino Resort, overlooking the southern end of the Vegas Strip. Meryl, Kazakov and Mac had been given a huge three-bedroom suite with floor to ceiling marble, while the ten kids were split between three smaller but no less luxurious suites down the hall.
James ended up sharing a suite with Jake and Kevin, but with two bedrooms, each containing two king-sized beds, two massive bathrooms and a lounge with an eighty-inch plasma screen, this was no great hardship.
It was five in the afternoon by the time everyone had freshened up and changed clothes. The three boys pigged out on room service and had a massive battle with M&Ms from the mini-bar. By that time it was dark and Julio set up a pair of limousines to take the thirteen-strong group on a tour of the spectacularly lit casinos on the Strip. But it was 5 a.m. British time. Everyone was sleepy and Jake and Kevin were having real problems keeping their eyes open.
James was jet-lagged and woke at half-five the next morning. He took a solo stroll around the casino. Vegas had been crammed with new year revellers two days earlier, but was now mostly home to hardcore gamblers who’d yet to go to bed and cleaning staff buffing tiles with giant polishing machines.
James wasn’t allowed to gamble, but as a hotel guest he was allowed on the casino floor so long as he didn’t linger in front of a table or slot machine. He’d expected to find men in bow ties sitting at roulette tables like in a James Bond movie, but the reality was a vast airless space filled with several thousand bleeping slot machines. The cocktail waitresses flitting between the rows of machines were supposed to look sexy, but a night walking the casino’s floors in high heels meant their smiles were fake and their overdone make-up was melting under the bright lights.
Beyond the casino floor was an indoor strip of more than a dozen restaurants and an upscale shopping mall with a sign out front boasting Four million square feet of retail paradise! But the only places open at six on a Tuesday morning were the twenty-four-hour buffet and a hotel gift shop.
James wandered into the gift shop for no particular reason and spent a couple of minutes studying the racks of tacky Vegas paperweights, snowstorm models of the Vegas Strip and plastic Elvis Presley statues that sang Viva Las Vegas when you reached around the back and pressed a button. The clerk had heard Elvis a million times and looked up from her copy of People magazine, defying James to press the button again.
At the back of the store there was a rack of books. It was mostly souvenir guides and fold-out tourist maps, but there was half a shelf dedicated to books on gambling. James’ eye was drawn to a slim volume called The Ultimate Blackjack Manual.
He picked it up and spent a few minutes flicking through the pages. He was surprised that a book sold in a casino would contain several chapters detailing card-counting strategies, but the information was openly available on the web and he figured the casino would rather make a buck selling it to you than leave it to someone else.
‘That’s seven eighty-three with tax,’ the assistant said, as James handed her the book. ‘Got ex-casino card decks for fifty cents if you want one.’
James