The Fourth Protocol (film) The Fourth Protocol (film) The Fourth Protocol is a 1987 British Cold War spy film featuring Michael Caine and Pierce Brosnan, based on the novel "The Fourth Protocol" by Frederick Forsyth. In 1968, an East-West agreement is established to halt nuclear proliferation. One of its clauses, the Fourth Protocol, forbids the non-conventional delivery of a nuclear weapon to a target. MI5 officer John Preston (Michael Caine) breaks into the residence of British government official George Berenson (Anton Rodgers) on New Year's Eve and finds a number of top secret NATO files that should not have been there. He reports his
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