“Once I get ashore, yes,” answered Kendrick. “Once I get ashore, I can manage the rest easy; it’s getting ashore in that damn thing that worries me.”
“If I were in your shoes it would be the other way round,” said Evans. “Landing in the kayak is play. But to smuggle myself into a stronghold of the enemy as one of them; ye gods! I’d be paralyzed at the start and wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“It’s all in what you’re used to,” said Kendrick. “I’m so used to knocking round Spain and bluffing my way along, it’s more or less second nature.”
“Your game is very different from ours here at Headquarters,” said Evans, musing. “We can play our game something like chess, taking our time to think out the next move. Your game is more like tennis. You’ve got to hit the ball when it comes and place it where the other fellow can’t get it, and your time to act is measured in hundredths of a second.”
He then went on to explain to Kendrick the purpose of his mission, and told him how Heringham was established in Constantinople with radio operators in enemy stations for the purpose of communicating with the Allies. But the distance from Constantinople to the Azores hampered direct radio communication, and it was therefore important to install another radio man at Gibraltar to relay messages between Constantinople and Punta Delgada. His problem was to get himself established as an operator in the main radio station of the enemy at Gibraltar. In the art of making himself acceptable and trusted by the enemy he was a master, almost if not quite unsurpassed. How to proceed to do this was to be left to him.
“Commander Barton will give you points about establishing communication with Heringham,” said Evans. “My job is to show you how to adapt their apparatus to your needs, once you get your hands on it, and how to superpose your messages to us on their regular traffic; also to teach you how to get ashore safely in this kayak.”
It was planned, he explained, to have a seaplane take him and the kayak at early dawn to a point within easy paddling distance of the Spanish coast and leave him to find a landing-place where he could approach with the least risk of detection, landing preferably at dusk.
“With the help of our weather experts,” said Evans, “we can choose a day when the sea will be calm. And now why don’t you get into the kayak and start getting the feel of her as soon as possible? Paddle a few miles in smooth water before you try landing where it’s rough, and you’ll be surprised to find how quickly you get a sense of stability.”
So Kendrick began a series of lessons in a form of seamanship which till that morning he didn’t know existed. At first it was with some nervousness that he stepped into the narrow craft and, when seated, anxiously pushed off from the shore. But before long he was quite at home in her and paddling a good stroke; and then Evans began to initiate him into the art of handling her in the surf, which he soon learned was largely a matter of “watchful waiting” and then letting the waves do the work.
But during these days exercises in the surf were incidental; the principal task was teaching Kendrick all he needed to know of radio apparatus and methods, and the special ciphers he was to use for weaving his messages into the enemy traffic.