An adventure-thriller screenplay set in the most dangerous places on Earth, the high, frozen aeries of Tibet and the air-conditioned offices of the CIA.

Logline	The One-Line Summary	The Synopsis
Availability of the Script	Background Notes	Other Works

Logline

What if it is the terrorists who save the world from nuclear war?

The Requisite One-Line Summary

Battling both the Chinese military and the CIA, a modern Lawrence-of-Arabia, Prester John, leads a band of Tibetan guerrillas on a desparate odyssey across the "Roof of the World" (Tibet) to stop an imminent nuclear war between Russia and China .

Synopsis

Sometimes terrorists (think Boston, 1774; think Israel, 1949) may be in the right. In the year 2008, a long-exiled Vietnam War deserter nicknamed Prester John leads Tibetan guerrillas across the most dangerous land in the world to prevent a nuclear war between China and Russia. Prester John takes a Chinese-American woman spyplane pilot and a traitor Chinese general, the one person who can prevent the war, across Tibet into Nepal. The general knows a secret People's Liberation Army plan to invade eastern Siberia, once the domain of the Mongolian warlords. The general believes that Russia, with its long-ignored, weakened military, will have no choice but to retaliate with nuclear weapons against China's larger and better fed, paid, and prepared forces. But members of Prester John's band want to kill the general for his past deeds against their people.

It is also election year in the United States, and the Chinese have threatened to close its rapidly growing markets if Prester John is not captured. To keep Chinese markets open and ensure that his party wins the election, the US President orders the CIA have its agent in the guerrilla band kill Prester John. Prester John's epic journey includes overcoming avalanches, attacks by the Chinese army and air force, attacks by bandits, an assassination attempt by the CIA mole, and much more.

Availability of the Screenplay

Synopsis, outline, and complete 120-page screenplay are available. I am also rewriting it as a novel and as a proposal for a computer game. The screenplay is copyrighted.

Background Information

The realism in the story is predicated on:

• The CIA supported Tibetan guerrillas to the late 1960s, maybe early 1970s, and may be doing so again. There are "terrorist," "liberation," and freedom-seeking groups all across central Asia, and the CIA has often found it better to, particularly since 911, align with such operations in order to keep track of them
• Russia and China could come to blows in the future due to the still tenuous stability and central control of Russia's military and crowded China's desire to expand into sparsely populated Siberian lands once part of the Mongol Empire.

The name "Prester John" comes from a legend of a medieval Christian king that supposedly ruled a kingdom in Central Asia, Northern China, or, maybe, Central Africa.

Other Works Available

• A Silicon Valley mystery novel, What We Lose, What We Mourn, which includes elements of terrorism and horror (it was represented previously by Anthony Schneider when he was with Peter Miller's agency). I am rewriting it as a screenplay.
• A one-act play, Bloodline, which observes the social divide between a successful African-American businessman and an old friend that he would rather leave in his past.

   

For the fun of it:

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