Some years back, the quest to make limitless energy from the concept of cold fusion seemed like the answer to our energy ills; it was propounded as the next frontier in research - unfortunately, the entire research imploded in a drama of falsehood and accusations. The Saint, use the theme of cold fusion as the central scientific thread running through the movie. However, the movie is more than that. It gives the 2 main characters of Val Kilmer and Elizabeth Shue a good platform to display their acting abilities, and I liked Val Kilmer in this role.
The Saint is not a new concept, being based on the main characters of Simon Templar in the series of books (created in 1928) by Leslie Charteris; these books were published under the series ‘The Saint’. These series finally ended in 1983, and also found their way into multiple movies, a radio series of the 1940’s, a British television series starring Roger Moore, and others.

In a slight deviation from the original, this movie does not have the hero claiming to be the character from the book, but the name is instead combined from 2 names, Simon from Simon Magus, and Templar from the Knights Templar, a medieval sect of warriors. The movie also had an interesting twist; in the original version, the female lead, Dr. Emma Russell is killed and Simon Templar goes back to do battle, to avenge her, leading to a final climatic battle with guns, tanks, exploding oil, and so on. However, test audiences did not like this ending, and the movie ending had to be changed drastically, ending in the current form.
The movie has a fair amount of adventure and action, with some amount of unbelievability. To be able to get into the Russian President’s bedroom, bypassing his entire security, and that too without much external support seems somewhat difficult, but the Saint managed it without too much effort.
The movie is essentially about the scientific efforts of Dr. Emma Russell, who is developing the formula for cold fusion, and has achieved some success in it. On the other hand, there is Simon, who has been tormenting the British police with his various heists, committed under different names (each name being that of a different saint). He has one final heist left so that he can reach the $50 million mark. This comes to him in the form of a Russian oligarch, Ivan Tretiak, who wants to get the Presidency of the Russian Federation, and wants to hire The Saint to steal it. After some hesitation, when threatened with the death of Dr. Emma, Simon agrees to do it.
He woos Dr. Emma, steals it and then turns it overs to Ivan. It is however incomplete. In the meantime, Dr. Emma comes to Moscow after him; and Tretiak is now after both of them.
The action gets more heated up, and leads to the Russian President’s bedroom where Simon bursts in, and then Tretiak and his son comes in to capture both of them. Tretiak plans to expose the President’s wasteful expenditure in buying such a formula in a show trial. However, during this process, the missing part of the formula is released, and the experiment is shown to be a grand success. The President quickly resumes power. There is a final tease scene where The Saint shows himself to British police, and then meets Dr. Emma.

This Immortal was the first novel by Roger Zelazny (published in 1966), and was of a level good enough that it shared the Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year with Frank Herbert’s “Dune”. When I first read the novel many years back, it seemed very ordinary at first reading (in fact, I struggled to understand the meaning of many of the words and people in the novel - maybe if I had been born in the Greek Isles, I would have understood it better); however for the next few days, I kept on thinking about the novel, and read it again within a week. On second reading, it appealed much much more. Now, once every 1-2 years, I dust out the copy of the novel that I have and read it again (and I do not get bored by it at all).

I was reading a review of the novel in another place, and somebody pointed out something very pertinent about reading the novel - “the best way to understand “This Immortal” is to read Lawrence Durrell’s chronicles of the Greek Isles, most especially “Prospero’s Cell” and “Reflections on a Marine Venus”—or better yet, read Percy Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound,” which is referred to more than once in this novel.” Seemed very pertinent. But no matter, this is a fascinating novel and I can understand why this book remains very popular (with a new print coming out in 2007) and a number of authors have claimed to be inspired by the author.
The book is set in an earth sometime in the future, where a nuclear war between human and human condemned vast sections of the earth to be uninhabitable; vast sections of humanity were saved by moving them through space to other worlds. All this was done by an alien blue race called Vegans. They also helped the small number of Earth’s population who remained to survive, but all the remaining places on earth were now owned be Vegans.
In the midst of all this, This Immortal refers to the character of the hero of this novel, a huge man who is also very ugly, with one leg shorter than the other. He was there from the nuclear war, but does not want to advertise his immortal nature by changing names. He is Conrad Nomikos, a Greek, born on Christmas Eve. In an earlier time soon after the nuclear war, he prevented the Vegans from converting the remaining portions of earth into resorts. He is otherwise not a person given to many displays, preferring to keep things quiet. He is just currently a caretaker and is also giving security to a rich visiting Vegan, Cort Myshtigo, who is traveling all over for reasons that are not very clear. There are many who want Cort dead, and it is upto Nomikos to keep Cort alive, and to figure out what the purpose of his visit is.
Earlier, Nomikos was heading an organization called the Returnist’s - getting people to return so that earthlings can recover their planet from the Vegans. He is now somewhat removed from that mission, and is ambivalent about the Vegans now. During the course of showing Cort around the various ruins, he also protests him from various attempts. Some of those attempts seem very complex, and some very simple, many of them placing Conrad in severe danger.
Amusingly, his wife Cassandra calls him a kallikanzaros’, which a Greek term for a little cloven-hooved satyr, who causes mischief of every kind. Conrad has already tricked the people around him about his origins and the death of the character who had his previous name. Now, he has to keep Cort alive till the end, when the surprising end is revealed.

Imagine the times; there was a widespread protest movement in Europe against the deployment of nuclear-armed missiles and against American bases having nuclear arms on them. In addition, there is still a great amount of tension between the Soviet Union and the US, and a new unknown Secretary-General (Gorbachev, but mostly unknown) has taken office. He is supposed to be young, and given the fact that he was able to move into the Secretary-General’s office in such a rapid manner, extremely clever and cunning.
What Frederick Forsyth did in ‘The Fourth Protocol’ was to spin up these concepts along with spy-work and some believable nuclear terrorism into a thriller that was gripping till the end. You know that the good guys will prevail in the end, but till that time, things could go either way. The further positive was the inclusion of some real characters including Neil Kinnock, and Kim Philby.

There are many positives about this novel; it has a believable cast of events, the technology talked about seems possible, every treaty could have secret protocols (and the fourth protocol seems very logical) believable enough to be cast as the background of the novel. The novel was also made into a movie of the same name starring Michael Caine and Pierce Brosnan.
The novel is made on the concept of a new Soviet Secretary-General being ambitious enough to try to explore British popular disaffection with the placement of nuclear missiles on their country. The plan, called Operation Aurora calls for the smuggling of parts of a nuclear bomb onto British territory and then exploding this very near an American base. Such a move could push British dis-satisfaction away from the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher and towards a left party. And then the most amazing thing would happen. The hard left of the Labour party, consisting of Marxist-Leninists would take over the leadership of the Labour party and set in force a series of measures that would move Britain away from friendship with the Americans.
Why call the novel ‘The Fourth Protocol’ ? Well, because supposedly the 1968 Non-proliferation Treaty had a set of secret protocols, out of which the number 4 was about no nation secretly transporting a nuclear device onto the territory of another nation.
The novel starts with a robbery in which the thief also finds some secrets (defense secrets) and knows that here is some treason; and sends these onto the defense ministry. And thus starts a secret enquiry into the source of this espionage. Eventually the spy is found out and turned over. At the same time, there is a Soviet plan to explode a nuclear device near an American base so as to get Labour to win the elections and then to get the hard left to take over. As this plan starts to take effect, one of the bomb parts is found and an investigation is launched. And thus starts the thriller, with the match between the MI5 officer John Preston and the illegal Soviet agent Valeri Petrofsky (a spesnatz officer); the MI5 officer a step behind but fighting to find out what the plan is and to stop it. A great thriller.