James Bond: The Authorised Biography by John Pearson

encounters Bond always had the uncomfortable feeling that they knew far more about him than they said. Nobody told him anything specific – even Maddox had become curiously reticent – but Bond gathered that he was on probation for the Secret Service. He had been chosen for an unusual assignment. His training would begin within a day or two.
    Maddox explained all this over dinner in the grill room. He also said that he would be saying goodbye to Bond for a month or two. Now that he had started him on his career he must return to Paris where he had work to do. But quite soon now, Bond would be meeting his instructor.
    Bond was becoming slightly bored with the whole air of mystery.
    ‘Why the delay?’ he asked.
    ‘Because it's taking just a little while to get him out of prison,’ Maddox replied.
    ‘Prison?’
    ‘Yes, Wormwood Scrubs. A splendid fellow called Esposito – Steffi Esposito. American, I'm afraid. And, as you'd imagine with a name like that, he's a professional card-sharp. Scotland Yard tell me he's the best in Britain.’
    ‘He must be if he's in Wormwood Scrubs.’
    ‘That's not the point,’ said Maddox. ‘He's going to teach you everything he knows. Work hard. You've a lot to learn.’
    Bond tried to find out more, but Maddox's wrinkled monkey-face was now impassive. All that he would tell Bond was to take his work seriously.
    ‘They're letting this Esposito off a nine-month rap in your honour.’
    *
    James Bond met his teacher three days later in an over-furnished flat off Baker Street. He was expecting someone seedy from the underworld (Bond's experience of criminals was limited). Instead, he found himself greeted by an impeccably dressed, plump, grey-haired man with sad eyes and a pompous manner. Something about him made Bond think immediately of the chaplain at Eton.
    ‘I am informed, sir, that I must teach you all I know.’ Esposito sounded much put out by this. His voice had traces of New York and Budapest. ‘I tried to tell the fools that it would be impossible, and probably not in anybody's interests, but the police have never understood my sort of work. Your Mr Maddox seemed a cut above the rest of them. He and I agreed upon a basic course for you on the manipulation of the pack. May I see your hands?’ He felt Bond's fingers, tested the suppleness of the joints, and sighed impatiently.
    ‘You will have to work. You, my friend, possess the hands of a karate expert. Instead you need the touch of a virtuoso with the violin. Perhaps we should begin with the bread-and-butter business of our art. We call it the Riffle Stack, a straightforward matter of shuffling the cards to produce a desired pattern for the dealer. When – and I use the word ‘when’ advisedly – when we have mastered that we can move on to more artistic things, until we can deal our aces, kings and any card at will. The aim, dear Mr Bond, is to make those fifty-two cards in the pack our devoted servants.’
    Esposito, for all his talk, was an iron teacher; for the next week, ten hours a day, he kept Bond practising the Riffle Stack. Bond used to dream of cards at night, but after ten days of this gruelling work, Esposito let drop his first hint of encouragement.
    ‘You are learning, Mr Bond. Slowly, but you are learning. The fingers are becoming suppler. Within a year or two you might even make a living from the cards.’
    But this was not the purpose of the course, and now that Bond was beginning to achieve the basic skills of the card-sharp, Esposito started to introduce him to the main tricks on the repertoire – how aces could be slightly waxed so that the pack broke at them, how cards could be marked on the back with faint razor cuts, and how the whole pack could be minutely trimmed to leave just the faintest belly on a few key cards.
    Finally Bond graduated to the gadgetry of the profession – ‘Shiners’, small mirrors fixed into rings or jewellery, devices that would feed cards from underneath the sleeve,