He stepped of the platform at London Euston and entered the reserved first class compartment. As he laid back against the plush seat cushions he relaxed. The rest of his 'Team' were travelling 'incognito' in 2nd class so as to avoid attention - after all, this was not an official trip. So he would have a few minutes to himself, of which there had been precious few over the last 7 years. What a roller-coaster ride it had been - an almost never ending series of minor miracles .. but it could all have been so very different .. Of course he had taken the first step in April of '25 during his time as Chancellor. At the time his decision to keep Britain off the Gold Standard had been controversial - but he had stuck to his guns. Of course they kicked him out for it - but he was proved right only 4 years later the United States entered their Great Depression. THere was no doubt that had Britian been on the Gold Standard then, we would have dragged down with them - and, no dount, eventually be forced off the Gold Standard anyway. As it was the American Depression hit world wide trade and that hit hard enough, and especially hit the shipbuilding Industry. Then came two years of Labour Party inspired chaos - but at least that rabid extremist Oswald Mosley has quit when he failed to get support for his public control banking and imports - and before his perfectly good proposal of a deficit spending became public knowledge (which would for sure have sunk the whole concept). This paved the way for the first of the little miracles - increased Naval spending in the Budget of '30 that was not 'balanced' - but saved British Shipyards from collapse - and another small miracle when the Americans accepted a small change to the wording of the London Naval Treaty of April '30. The Treaty limited Navy tonnage, including Destroyers which were defined as ships of less than 1,850 tons. With American support, the definition was expanded with the addition of the words 'and over 1,000 tons' - there being no limit to the number of 'coastal defense' ships of less than 1,000 tons permitted - which suited the RN down to the ground. Then came the other side of the coin - with the American Depression hitting trade ever harder, the budget of April '31 reduced Government employee wages by 10%. His moment came in September of '31 at Invergordon where, by some miracle, had been on hand to defuse the crisis. The budget 10% wage cut had been turned into a 25% cut for 'other ranks' by those idiots in Naval Command. What on Earth did they think would happen ??? Well, thank God, the incompetents were long gone now. It had taken him 5 years but after the first dozen heart-attacks he had been able to insist on annual medicals for all Senior Officers. Amazing how many Admirals had been happy to retire 'on medical grounds' once they were told they would be getting a full Pension. Another miracle - any more heart attacks would have resulted in far too many searching questions. As soon as he read the Newspaper headlines he contacted By meeting each ship and repeating that "10% meant 10% for all, not just the few" he had managed to install some sanity before the crews got ashore and read the sensationalist newspaper headlines. The way those idiots of the British Press had fanned the flames it could easily have led to Mutiny ... didn't they read their history ? .. Mutiny in Russia led to Revolution - and the rise of that murderously ignorant peasant farmer, Comrade Stalin. Didn't the capitalist newspaper owners realise what that would mean ? At best they would have lost their business - at worst they would have lost their lives .... Didn't those idiots realise that the Times was read in Moscow and Berlin every morning ? Our most likley enemies didn't need spies - the British Press did it all for them ... Still, he thought, they had their uses - after all, they printed all that rubbish I fed them about the 'new super battleships' - of course if some nosy reporter hadn't managed to photograph the keels of the new Fleet Carriers and worked out the likely finished ship size I wouldn't have had to come up with the cover story. A shrill whistle was followed by a huge jerk that almost tipped him out of his seat as the Engine took up the slack. He looked at his pocket watch - only 10 minutes late - well something more for the Press to bleat about - 'Hitler makes the trains tun on time' - well that's as may be, but Reporters who printed the truth in Nazi Germany hadn't faired any better than those in Soviet Russia .. Parliament was in recess for the summer - or until Herr Hitler precipitated the next crisis. He smiled across at Clementine - they were on their way to Dublin for a well deserved holiday - or at least that's what the Times would be printing tomorrow ... whilst Clementine went on ahead with their luggage he would be spending the weekend with the 'Golden Boys'. Last month it would have taken them hours before they teleprinter him a list of the German ships in the North Sea - now they could real them off along with associated details such as their task force group, direction and speed - and do this whilst he was on the phone. Yesterday he almost dropped his cigar when they telephoned HIM ! For one horrible moment he feared they were about to warn him that the Kriegsmarine High Seas Fleet had sallied without warning - this, his War team had told him - being one of the first indications that war was immanent. In fact it was to warn him that a training U-boat was heading toward one of the Royal Navy 'Exercise areas' in the North Sea and might see tests of the new 'Battleship Bomb'! He was so surprised that it was only when he put the phone down that he realised that they hadn't been included in the 'need to know' list for the tests. This was unheard of - for sure something had changed and he was determined to find out exactly what. He checked his notebook again - his ticket was for the through trip changing at Lancaster for Windermere but he would be getting out at some place called Bletchley - whilst 3 years ago (on 35) he was instrumental, togther with the RAF, in setting the place up he had never actually been there. He hoped his WD1 Team all remembered where they were supposed to be getting off - the Ministry had issued them tickets to just about every Station along the West Coast line except Bletchley ! He smiled to himself at the irony of it all - if only Herr Hitler knew how the intellectuals and queers he despised are persecuted were privy to his most closest held secrets ! What was it that dear chap Turing had told him 3 years ago ? "Machines are 'deterministic'. This means any machine cypher can be broken by another machine. It's only a matter of how much time and money you are prepared to spend". Well it had cost him at least a Battleship - or at least that's what the cost had been booked to - and the RAF was short of half a dozen Bomber squadrons - but it was well worth it. Currently they were reading the massages of every foreign Embassy in London - except the Soviets - and every encoded telegram that was sent across the transatlantic cable from Europe. They could also read the German military radio traffic (of which there was quite a lot) and the French (of which there was very little - the French apparently still relied on telephone lines). The only thing they couldn't read was the Soviet traffic - they where still using manual "one-time pads" - not, he had been reassured, because the Soviets suspected that machine cyphers could be broken but because their economy was too primitive to build machines with the required level of complexity ! Still, they had one unexpected success last year - the Soviets sent couriers to each Embassy every month with new 'one time pads' - and on one occasion the London courier had been lost overboard from the Soviet passenger ship out of St Petersburg. As usual, when something went wrong, Soviets officials pretended otherwise - so for one whole month the London Embassy had reused the previous months pad ! Comparing that months messages with the previous allowed much of the plain text of both to be extracted - so now all Soviet traffic was saved and 'samples' compared with the previous 'just in case'. He wondered how much progress the 'British Cypher Team' was making - Turing was providing useful advise but they still hadn't come up with what was needed - the last he heard they they were working on some sort of 'hybrid' between a one time pad (for 'per message' machine settings) and a '5 wheel' machine generating teleprinter code. He also wondered what the Americans were doing - he had advised then over a year ago that their Cypher Machines were not secure ... and time was running out ... The last report from his 'War Team' was predicting a 90% chance of a war in Europe in 1940, which was only two years away. The only good news was that the rest of the War Team's 90% prediction was of the war being between Hitler and Stalin .. they also predicted 90% chance of war between Japan and USA on 1942, however when he told Roosevelt he burst out laughing .. fanned by and the press September 1931 . and now things were in a knife edge again. Ever since September 1931 This led more or less directly to the Invergordon Mutiny, perhaps the closest UK has ever come to a communist revolution. Three years of sleepless night, hard work and minor miracles - but for how much longer ? Thank God It had all started when MacDonald went and Baldwin made him 'First Minister of the Navy' - well it just served him right for stirring things up over the 35/100 Treaty. What a pain the British Press was - didn't they know Berlin read the Times from cover to cover every day ??? - and many more to come. they are still coming. Thank God everything was still Chamberlain had managed to talk He could relax for a while - A rare chance to relax, although not for long.