The Fourth Protocol use his own spy network and plant the suspicion that Berenson was in fact a double agent, so that his information will be considered suspect. The Fourth Protocol The Fourth Protocol is a novel written by Frederick Forsyth and published in August 1984. The title refers to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which (at least in the world of the novel) contained four secret protocols. The fourth of the protocols was meant to prohibit non-conventional deliveries of nuclear weapons, i.e. by means other than being dropped from aircraft or carried on ballistic missiles. This included postal delivery or being assembled
The Fourth Protocol who have smuggled them into the country either hidden, or disguised as seemingly harmless artifacts. One of the couriers, masquerading as a sailor, is assaulted by 'Neds' in Glasgow and hospitalised, where he commits suicide rather than submit to interrogation. Preston investigates and finds three out-of-place looking metal discs in a tobacco tin in his gunny sack. He shows the discs to a metallurgist who identifies the outer two as aluminium but the third as polonium, a key element in the initiator of an atomic bomb. Preston reports his findings to his antagonistic MI5 superior, who ignores them, has Preston