‘There’s a kid on the other side of that partition,’ Shirley said furiously. ‘Cropped hair, blue eyes, no more than sixteen years old. He’s the reason you’ve all been spending so much time on the toilet in the last few hours. Be sure to pass on your appreciation, won’t you?’
James squirmed on his damp plastic seat as powerfully built soldiers thumped on the far side of the partition and threatened a variety of things ranging from arse whippings to castration and a good old-fashioned pipe beating.
‘Dead meat,’ one of them shouted as he pounded the boards so hard that the whole wall shuddered.
James had made a few enemies in his time, but having a whole battalion of soldiers on his back was a first, and he didn’t like it one bit.
RISK
Kevin, Lauren and Rat, along with a bunch of SAS officers and some other insurgents, hung around in a reception area outside General Shirley’s command room. They sat on plastic chairs, shuffling feet, yawning and being careful not to use the water in case any trace of Phenolphthalein laxative remained in the pipes.
The air outside was heavy with the smell of disinfectant. Soldiers queued up to receive rehydration medicine and anti-diarrhoea drugs helicoptered in from a hospital in Las Vegas. The least seriously affected were already well enough to resume light duties and had begun cleaning up the camp, while a crew of engineers responsible for maintaining Fort Reagan’s facilities worked to unblock the sewage system and mop up any overflows.
Beyond the army base, the rumour Kazakov started that all civilians would be sent home with a full two weeks’ pay had led to jubilation, only to turn into bitterness and vandalism when it was quashed.
Inside the command room Mac joined Kazakov, Base Commander O’Halloran, General Shirley and several junior officers. Messengers came and went, trying to get updates from medical staff and engineers on how soon it would be before all soldiers were back to full health and base facilities were in good enough shape for a training exercise.
It was close to midnight by the time everyone agreed that a revised mission scenario would be devised and a fresh ten-day exercise would start in forty-eight hours. But Kazakov and General Shirley were at each other’s throats.
Kazakov said that Shirley was a sore loser. Shirley said that Kazakov had fought dirty and endangered the health of his men. Shirley and Base Commander O’Halloran were both one star generals, but as Base Commander O’Halloran had the final call.
O’Halloran hadn’t been impressed with Shirley’s command skills, nor with the fact that Kazakov’s unorthodox strategies had wrecked both the drones, the expensive aerodrome in which they were housed and the sewage system.
In the end his diplomatic solution was to restart the exercise from scratch. Two of Shirley’s deputies would take charge of the opposing sides, Shirley would stay on as a non-participating observer and Kazakov would be asked to leave the base.
‘Bastards,’ Kazakov shouted, waking Lauren and several others from a daze as he opened the doors of the command room with an explosive kick. At the last moment he doubled back and ripped the surveillance device stuck to the side of a computer monitor before waggling it under Shirley’s nose.
‘You see that?’ Kazakov smiled. ‘Another of your little mistakes. I heard every command. I knew every order before your own men did.’
Shirley looked battered. He knew there would be an investigation into the conduct of the exercise and the cost of damages. Even if it concluded that Kazakov’s tactics somehow breached Fort Reagan rules, the General was still going to end up looking bad after his battalion had been defeated by a much smaller and less capable force.
‘Why don’t you go back to Russia where you belong?’ Shirley hissed, before swinging a crazy punch.
At forty-nine, Kazakov was only a year younger than the general, but unlike the portly American he kept in shape and was fitter than most men half his age. He ducked beneath the swinging arm before giving Shirley a push that made him overbalance and topple forwards into a desk, snapping an LCD monitor from its base and sending a stack of papers to the floor.
Kazakov grabbed a plastic clipboard and swatted the panting general’s bald head with it, before emptying a pot filled with pens and pencils over his head.
‘Fill in your forms, General,’ Kazakov glowered. ‘Push your pens, but don’t try pretending that you’re a soldier. Real soldiers end up dead because of decisions made by buffoons like you.’
Mac and the base commander followed Kazakov out into the lobby area.
O’Halloran eyeballed Kazakov. ‘Get your things and head out to the reception point. There’s a black sedan car in bay three-sixteen. Reception has the key, tell me where you park it when you fly out and we’ll have someone to collect it from the airport.’
Kazakov looked startled. ‘Can’t I stay overnight? I’ve barely slept in two days and we’re four hours from Vegas.’
‘I want the bad blood cleared,’ O’Halloran said. ‘There’s a motel twenty miles out east.’
Mac looked at Kazakov as they began walking down a hallway towards the exit with Lauren, Kevin and Rat in tow.
‘I think you’d better take James with you,’ Mac said. ‘Word’s already out that he was the one who infiltrated the water plant and if he becomes a target I can see things escalating out of control.’
*
James woke at half-seven but the exhausted Kazakov snored on. The motel was peculiar, fitted out some time in the early eighties by someone who thought bright red plastic looked cool. The surfaces were dusty and the battery in the wall clock dead, as if they were the only people who’d stayed here in months.
James was starving and he wandered out into the morning sun. Their black Ford sedan was the only car parked outside of a room. There was desert in all directions and a two-lane highway without a car in sight.
His stomach led him to reception, which had a busted insect screen over the door and a stack of leaflets promoting visits to Area 51 and a couple of tacky local casinos.
‘Is there anywhere round here you can get something to eat?’ he asked.
The stringy old bird behind the counter looked up over half-framed glasses. ‘Got a Burger King about twelve mile east.’
‘Twelve mile,’ James said, unconsciously mocking her accent. ‘Nothing in walking distance?’
The woman looked up at him like he was stupid. ‘You see anything in walking distance? We got a vending area out back behind room sixteen.’
James found it and stuffed in quarters until he had a bottle of no-brand lemonade and a packet of Mini Oreos for his breakfast. Back in the room he took a shower and dried off on a towel so thin you could see your skin colour from the other side. He crunched his biscuits and made a bit of extra noise as he dressed, hoping that Kazakov would wake up; but the big Ukrainian was blissed out with an open mouth and a puddle of drool on his pillow.
James was impatient to get some proper food and thought about turning on the TV, but Kazakov might get annoyed if he was woken deliberately and he wasn’t the kind of man you wanted to wind up.
He felt fuller after the cookies and gassy soda, but the combo left a sickly taste in his mouth. The curtains didn’t do much to stop light coming in so he sat on his bed and re-read a couple of sections of his blackjack manual before getting out the cards and practising his card-counting skills. After half an hour he got the urge to pee, but when he looked around he saw that Kazakov had one eye open, staring right at him.
‘Hey,’ James said awkwardly. ‘How long have you been awake?’
Kazakov had done a lot of shouting over the previous two days and his voice was thinner than usual. ‘Twenty minutes, maybe.’
James smiled. ‘Just staring for no reason?’
‘There’s always a reason,’ Kazakov said, as he threw off his covers and sat up. ‘It’s interesting what people do when they don’t think they’re being watched. How’s it going?’
‘How’s what going?’
‘Counting cards,’ Kazakov said.
‘Hard to say,’ James said, ‘never having sat at a real casino table and seen how fast they deal. Or tried to keep track of cards with people moving in front of you and fruit machines bleeping. Book says it’s completely different to dealing out cards by yourself.’
Kazakov stood up naked and let off three pungent farts before gasping with relief.
‘Shit and a shower,’ Kazakov said, as James buried his face against the sleeve of his T-shirt to mask the putrid smell. ‘Then we find somewhere for breakfast.’
SPIRIT
One thing Kazakov disliked about America – along with everything else – were the roads. He said the desert scenery was boring and the car’s suspension too soft so he let James drive.
They couldn’t stop for breakfast at the first diner they reached because it was the one where the owner had pulled her shotgun on the way out. Despite being starving, James didn’t even bother asking Kazakov if they should stop at a McDonalds drive-through and by the time they reached a reasonable-looking diner they were half way to Vegas and it was past noon.
‘Maybe I should call campus,’ James suggested, as he sat facing Kazakov across a custard-yellow table top. ‘Get them to sort out our flights home and stuff.’
‘Could,’ Kazakov said, his face so full of cheeseburger and fries that he could only manage one word at a time. ‘Only … I’ve got nothing on campus scheduled until the next basic training starts in ten days. What are you so desperate to get home for?’
James shrugged. ‘I thought you hated America and everything it stood for. In fact, you said those exact words at least five times on the ride here.’
Kazakov’s eyes narrowed. ‘I want my three thousand dollars back.’
‘Right,’ James laughed. ‘You don’t wanna start gambling again, boss. No offence, but I saw what happened at the Reef the other night. You can’t hold your drink and you’re a terrible loser to boot.’
‘But this card counting,’ Kazakov said, raising one eyebrow. ‘You said it works.’
James smiled. ‘It gives you an edge, but it takes a shitload of skill. I can’t get near to a table until I’m twenty-one and even if you’ve got an aptitude for maths, it would still take me days to teach you.’
Kazakov pulled the receiver unit he’d used to bug the Fort Reagan command centre from the pocket of his tracksuit top and thumped it down on the table.
‘I know basic blackjack strategy. I wear the camera; you watch the cards and signal me when I need to bet big.’
James’ first reaction was shock. ‘You’re tripping,’ he snorted. ‘I’d need a full view of the table and I’d never be able to read the cards on that titchy screen.’
‘It plugs into my laptop screen. The camera itself is high resolution. I didn’t know what I’d need so I brought a full surveillance kit: bugs, cameras, wide angles, telephotos, triggers, relays, signal units. It’s all in the car.’
James looked around to make sure nobody was in earshot. ‘Counting cards in your head is legal,’ he said quietly. ‘But once you start using gadgets and cameras you’re cheating the casino and that’s criminal. I’ve seen the prisons in these parts and believe me, you don’t want to end up in one.’
‘I’m nearly fifty years old,’ Kazakov said determinedly. ‘I have no home, a small government pension. I’m not wealthy like Mac. I can’t afford to lose three thousand dollars.’
‘Gambling’s a mug’s game,’ James said. ‘You should have known better.’
‘Come on, James,’ Kazakov begged. ‘Where’s your spirit of adventure? I saw the look in your eyes when you were sitting on that bed dealing cards. Concentrating so hard, counting the numbers in your head. You want to try it now, you don’t want to wait for five years.’
Kazakov watched James’ expression and saw that he was tempted.
‘We have the best hardware,’ Kazakov continued. ‘You just count the cards and signal me when the odds are in our favour. Our equipment is CHERUB stock: state of the art. That camera is the size of a pin-head, the transmissions are so secure that no surveillance system could ever detect it.’
James knew he’d get kicked out of CHERUB if he was caught and possibly face criminal charges too. But Kazakov was right about the technology being better than anything regular casino cheats could buy off the shelf and everything that had happened lately left James feeling empty: the anti-terrorist mission going wrong, Dana dumping him, getting kicked out of Fort Reagan and the fact that he was sixteen and a half years old with the bulk of his CHERUB career in the rear-view mirror.
He needed a victory to get his life back on track and coming out of a casino with a big pile of dollars fitted the bill perfectly.
‘Maybe we could do a trial run,’ James said uneasily. ‘One of the smaller casinos. All the windows on that car are blacked out so I could operate from a car park.’
‘Good man,’ Kazakov said, reaching across the tabletop to give James a high five. ‘You know it makes sense.’
*
James wondered about himself as he drove on towards Las Vegas in the black sedan. He had a history of getting involved in half-baked schemes and winding up in trouble, but the weird thing was that he always had the appetite for another one. Being at CHERUB enabled him to channel these traits into training and missions and his appetite for risk and excitement was one of the reasons he’d been recruited in the first place. But what did it mean for his future?
When James looked at mates like Kerry and Shakeel he could see them as thirty-year-olds with a couple of kids who had their friends over for barbecues and spent weekends doing DIY. But he could never see himself that way. Maybe he’d use his maths skills to count cards or trade stocks and shares and get rich, but what if that didn’t work out?
James was smart enough to worry about what he was getting into, but by the time they pulled up in a giant shopping mall parking lot to sort out the equipment he was buzzing. Having Kazakov on his side helped enormously: the Ukrainian was impulsive, but he was smart and he’d fought and won battles with enemies a lot tougher than casino security guards.
They headed into a department store and bought Kazakov some less militaristic clothes: slacks, a white shirt, a blazer and a pair of sunglasses. Most importantly they bought a scarf. If a camera is pinned to your lapel or shirt there’s not much you can do covertly to change your viewpoint, but with the camera on a scarf hung loosely around your neck you can easily slide it up and down to get the best view of the table.
‘There is one thing I like about America,’ Kazakov grinned, as he buttoned his shirt. ‘They’re all so overweight you can buy my size anywhere.’
James thought America was cool and was bored of Kazakov’s sniping, but he didn’t say anything because he was in the back of the car linking the receiver unit up to the laptop.
‘What are you seeing?’ Kazakov asked.
James swung the laptop screen to face Kazakov. They’d fitted a fisheye attachment, creating an ultra-wide-angle image that was distorted around the edges.
‘The resolution’s superb, so I can pan and zoom and still read the cards, but you really need to sit in the middle seat at the table for me to have a decent chance of keeping count.’
Kazakov showed James the back of his watch, to which he’d stuck the vibrating signal unit. ‘You’ll be able to hear what I’m saying, but it’s too risky for me to wear an earpiece. We’ll need to work out a code.’
‘It’s better there than strapped to your leg,’ James nodded. ‘I’ll send two pulses when you should up the bet. Three when you should cut it. One long pulse means I’ve lost the count, two long pulses means there’s trouble.’
‘OK,’ Kazakov said. ‘We’ll have to work out separate signals for adjusting the camera up and down when I first arrive and during the game.’
James shook his head. ‘You’ve got to keep the camera on the game. If it drifts, I’ll have missed two or three hands by the time it’s sorted and I’ll have lost the count.’
‘I can’t sit completely still,’ Kazakov said. ‘It’ll look suspicious.’
‘You don’t have to sit there stiff as a board,’ James said. ‘Just don’t drift too far from your starting position or I won’t see all the cards.’
Kazakov opened the door of the car and put his foot down on the tarmac. ‘I’m gonna walk around with this thing before we hit the big time.’
‘Good idea,’ James said. ‘Go into a café, practise sitting still without making it look like you’re sitting still. I’ll give you a call to let you know how it’s looking from this end. Oh, and while you’re in there get me a coffee and a fruit salad from that stand in the food court.’
*
Over the next two hours James and Kazakov practised their moves until they were smooth. Kazakov could walk around with the camera in his scarf, sit down and instantly adjust the camera to a position that gave a wide view over several metres in every direction.
Card counting gives you a slight edge if you keep a simple count of each card dealt and the number of cards remaining in the dealer’s card shoe. But with Kazakov playing blackjack and visually checking on the number of remaining cards, James realised he could increase their chances further by keeping a separate count of the number of aces. He made calculations of the amount that Kazakov should bet by making a simple spreadsheet and running it in the right-hand corner of the laptop screen while the camera footage ran next to it.
Just before 4 p.m. James pulled into the parking lot of the Wagon Wheel Hotel and Casino. James handed over his five hundred dollars’ holiday spending money and felt queasy as he drew five hundred more on his cash card. Kazakov took James’ money to the casino cage and turned it into chips, along with two thousand from his credit card.
They’d parked in the most out of the way corner of the casino’s open lot and James sat in the back seat watching Kazakov walking past the lines of bleeping slot machines, searching for blackjack tables.
The Wagon Wheel was known as a locals’ joint. It didn’t have ten thousand rooms or a model of the Sphinx in the lobby like the big casinos on the Strip, but according to James’ book it did have some of the best two-deck blackjack tables in Vegas.
Playing with two decks instead of six to eight meant you had a bigger advantage when the cards were in your favour. It was also easier to see how many cards were left because the dealer held the decks in hand, rather than having them hidden inside a card shoe.
‘This one?’ Kazakov mumbled in Russian, as he turned to face a table.
Under Nevada law every gaming table has to clearly display all the rules and table limits. Casinos have a reputation for sneaking in extra rules that turn the odds even further in their own favour. After scanning the rules quickly, James pressed the laptop’s F5 key twice to activate the vibrating receiver under Kazakov’s watch and indicate that it was OK to sit down.
The centre stool was taken, so Kazakov sat one place to the left. The three other gamblers were elderly women. Kazakov played the table minimum, $10, just to get a feel for things as one of the old timers told him that she loved his accent and had a cousin who’d worked as a diplomat in Odessa. Distractions at the table are one of the most difficult things for a card counter to deal with, but Kazakov didn’t have this problem because James was doing the difficult part of the job for him.
Back in the parking lot, James sat in the back seat behind the tinted glass with Kazakov’s mini laptop drawing power from the cigarette lighter socket. The cards were fairly easy to watch and banter between the three women and the dealer slowed the game down.
Kazakov played solid basic blackjack strategy and won his first three hands, but James was disappointed to see lots of high cards flying across the table. The count quickly dropped to minus five, stacking the odds heavily in favour of the casino. Kazakov varied his bet between ten and twenty dollars, but the casino’s edge steadily took its toll and by the time the last cards were dealt Kazakov had lost his early gains and was down eighty dollars.
A cowboy joined the table and the dealer took his break and got replaced by a woman. There were now a minimum of twelve cards to count per hand and the new dealer dropped the banter and moved faster than her predecessor. But this time the count swung in Kazakov’s favour and James hit the F5 key twice, indicating to Kazakov that he should up the bet.
The odds were now in the players’ favour. Kazakov upped his bets to between thirty and fifty dollars per hand, but the cards didn’t fall his way. Counting cards and upping your bet when the count is in your favour gives the player edge over the casino, but it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll win any particular hand and Kazakov wasn’t getting the right cards.
When the dealer shuffled the decks to start again, Kazakov was down close to four hundred dollars, while the cowboy on his left had won two hundred playing a supposedly suicidal strategy of following his hunches.
James couldn’t see Kazakov’s face, but the instructor was fidgeting and clenching his knuckles. A pretty waitress handed a complimentary orange juice to Kazakov and a bourbon for the cowboy. Shortly afterwards the three elderly women headed off with smiles and a twenty-dollar tip for the dealer.
With just two players at the table Kazakov moved on to the centre stool so that there was space between them. He drew blackjack – a perfect twenty-one that pays odds of three for two – on the first hand bet of forty dollars. Kazakov won a couple more hands on smaller bets of ten and twenty dollars and for the second time the count swung in the players’ favour.
Kazakov upped his bet to the fifty-dollar table maximum and won seven hands out of the next eight. The count dropped back into the casino’s favour as more cards were dealt, but Kazakov rode his luck and by the time the dealer reached the end of their second run through the cards their losses had been wiped out and Kazakov was looking at a three-hundred-dollar profit.
‘It’s working,’ Kazakov mumbled in Russian for James’ benefit.
Over the next hour and a quarter, Kazakov kept playing and stacked up steady profits. Sometimes the count went against and Kazakov lost slightly or trod water, but when the count swung in their favour he upped his bet and the winnings piled up. His three thousand dollars of chips had turned into four thousand seven hundred and the pit boss – who was in charge of all the tables in that section of the casino – sanctioned Kazakov’s request to up the table limit from fifty to a hundred dollars.
James watched as the pit boss and a colleague began to hover over the table, paying attention to Kazakov’s mounting pile of chips. Blackjack dealers and senior casino staff are trained to spot card counters. Every table is viewed from above by surveillance cameras and after ninety minutes and a profit of several thousand dollars Kazakov knew someone would be in the security room paying careful attention to every move he made.
If he upped his bets every time the count moved in his favour he’d arouse suspicion and be asked to leave the casino. So Kazakov had to make the odd wrong move to throw the casino staff off the scent, but of course these deliberate mistakes all cost money.
After two and a quarter hours James began to notice the pit boss getting agitated. He changed the dealer and brought in new cards, then reduced the table limit back to fifty dollars per hand to put a cap on Kazakov’s winnings.
James didn’t want to push their luck on a first outing and after two and a quarter hours his eyes ached from being fixed on the tiny laptop screen. His brain was fuzzy and he needed food and a toilet break so he sent through the long signal to tell Kazakov to get out.
After tipping the dealer fifty dollars, Kazakov headed for the casino cage to cash out his chips. James rubbed his eyes and downed half a bottle of water before looking back at the screen. The cage had huge gold bars across the front and the host poured Kazakov’s piles of twenty- and fifty-dollar chips into an automatic counting machine.
The total flashed up on a blue illuminated display: $8,670.
‘You have a good day sir,’ the teller said brightly. ‘And be sure to put that money somewhere safe just as soon as you can.’
GOLD
James had almost shat himself, risking all of his personal savings and putting his CHERUB career on the line, but now they’d won he was buzzing. His one-third share of $8,760 was $2,920, meaning he’d almost trebled his money. Kazakov’s $5,840 share meant he’d made back the $3,000 he’d lost at the Reef casino a few nights earlier.
James and Kazakov acted like best buddies as they drove the last few miles into the centre of Vegas, swapping stories about car-park security guards, evil stares from the pit boss and how James lost the count during a sneezing fit.
James turned the Ford on to the eight lanes of the Las Vegas Strip. The sun was setting behind the Stratosphere Tower at the north end of the Strip, the neon was starting to glow and an advertisement for an Elton John concert came out of a fifty-metre-high video wall.
‘I hear the all-you-can-eat buffets here are pretty special,’ Kazakov said.
James was shocked: hearing Kazakov complimenting something American was like turning up at your local KFC and finding the royal family tucking into a twelve-piece bargain bucket.
‘Bellagio has the best buffet in Vegas,’ James smiled. ‘Thirty bucks a head, all you can eat. We were gonna go the other day, but Kerry and Rat didn’t have enough cash left.’
The Bellagio was in the middle of the Strip, an upscale joint famous for the giant lake and fountains out front. Like all the main casinos it was vast and by the time they reached the buffet they’d walked through a vast parking structure and a casino the size of several football fields. Everything in Vegas is designed so that you have a long and tempting walk across a casino before you can get anywhere.
The marble-floored corridors and plush-carpeted playing areas thronged with pasty men in smart casual clothing. Thick glasses and greasy hair were abundant.
‘What is this?’ Kazakov asked, as they joined a fifty-strong line to get inside the buffet. ‘Some kind of acne sufferers’ convention?’
The three men ahead in the queue were spewing words about handwriting recognition software, which enabled James to make the link to some billboards he’d seen across town.
‘Compufest 2008,’ James grinned, as they shuffled forwards two paces. ‘It’s a whole massive conference for the computer industry.’
‘Geekfest, more like,’ Kazakov sneered. ‘Give me six weeks and I’d make real men out of them.’
‘They might not have the looks, but they’ve got the money,’ James said. ‘I wondered why there were so many Mercs and Bentleys in the parking lot.’
The buffet was worth the queue and James made a complete pig of himself, stuffing his plate with a dozen slices of roast meat, then going back for fish and pasta before finishing off with half a dozen miniature dessert pastries.
‘So,’ Kazakov said, when they were both too stuffed to eat another mouthful. ‘Feel up to another session of blackjack? That fifty-dollar maximum really cut our edge. How about we try a high-stakes table?’
‘You’ve got whipped cream on the end of your nose,’ James said, as he picked his coffee cup out of its saucer. ‘I looked on the Internet when we were staying at the Reef and for high stakes there are apparently two deck games with low penetration and high table limits at the Vancouver casino. It’s at the south end of the Strip.’
‘What are we waiting for?’ Kazakov asked.
James shrugged. ‘The only thing is, the Vancouver is a new casino so they’ll have top-notch security systems and the higher the stakes, the more closely the table will be watched. I think we rode our luck a bit this afternoon at the Wagon Wheel. We should have taken the hint the minute the pit boss put the table limit back down to fifty.’
‘OK,’ Kazakov said. ‘We turned three grand into nine this afternoon. If we triple our money again, we’re looking at close to thirty grand.’
James smiled. ‘Actually, the initial stake doesn’t matter – as long as you don’t hit a big losing streak and get wiped out. If you’re betting five hundred dollars a hand instead of fifty, your potential winnings are ten times greater.’
‘A hundred thousand dollars,’ Kazakov said, pounding his fist jubilantly on his chest. ‘I could go for some of that.’
‘Wouldn’t mind some myself,’ James said. ‘My share should be good for a nice Harley-Davidson.’
*
The Vancouver was one of Las Vegas’ newest casinos and situated at the southernmost extreme of the Strip. Its sixty-storey hotel tower was the tallest in town and its modern white décor was aimed at a hipper crowd than the marble and heavy pattern carpets in the older casinos.