Peterson started to understand what Valera was describing. A secure, global communications network. Something like that really could change the world. Every spy agency on the planet would want to get their hands on it, and every major corporation as well. He could sell it to all of them, and finally escape his life spent serving two masters.

Like every branch of the civil service, MI5 offered its mid-ranking members job security and a reasonable salary. There was also excitement, power, and some discretionary riches to be had if you became a field agent or eventually rose to the very top of the Service. Peterson had wanted all three, but it had been made clear to him early on in his career that they weren’t in his cards. He’d become tethered to Manning almost as soon as he’d joined MI5, and it was his lot to help Manning rise through the ranks, clinging to his coat-tails as he did.

Peterson might have let his resentment at the unsatisfying destiny he’d been handed lead him away from the Service, if a member of the MGB hadn’t approached him in Brighton one day ten years ago.

Peterson had decided to spend a rare weekend off outside London, and had taken the train down to the south coast. He was sitting in a deckchair on the bluff of the pebble beach near the Palace Pier, struggling to eat an ice cream before the sun melted it or the wind off the Channel splattered it across his front, when a man pulled a chair over to his, sat down, and introduced himself.

It was a bold, blunt approach, but it worked. The MGB had guessed that Peterson would respond to being flattered and having his ego stroked, and they were right. They offered him the excitement, power, and money he wanted in exchange for becoming their asset inside MI5. And he leaped at the chance.

For almost as long as he’d served as Manning’s sycophantic minion he’d also provided his Russian handlers with any information they’d requested from him. He’d even taken on the occasional mission for them, making or collecting the odd dead drop in and around London.

However, when he’d made the point that as he was becoming privy to more valuable information as Manning continued his unending ascent—and his risk of being caught was increasing—he should be paid more for what he was passing to Moscow, he was rebuffed. He pressed the point until he was told in very clear terms that it wasn’t only MI5 that he needed to worry about exposing him. He stopped asking for more money. But he also began putting plans in place that would let him escape both Russian and British intelligence.