The Immortal

Sylvia, Ben's one-time fiancee, is engaged to marry another man. She has taken the step not because she loves the man -- she is still helplessly in love with Ben -- but because she thinks her marriage will get Fletcher out of her life once and for all. Fletcher, positive that Ben will not be able to allow Sylvia to marry without seeing her one last time, stakes out the reception in hopes of catching Ben.

A salvage dealer offers Ben a hiding place in the back of his disabled truck while Fletcher is in pursuit. After Fletcher leaves Ben helps the man repair the truck and deliver the salvage cargo -- World War I surplus gas canisters that are leaking and could explode at any moment. The salvage company, however, is owned by Arthur Maitland, and Fletcher is at the plant, waiting for Ben to arrive.

Dr. Walter Koster has spent 20 years researching his theory about the connection between hemoglobin and the aging process. Ben sees him on TV and gets a job at the clinic where Dr. Koster and his daughter, also a doctor, work. Ben believes that if Dr. Koster is successful Arthur Maitland will no longer hunt him, so he confides in the doctor about his blood. Dr. Koster attempts to synthetically reproduce the unique qualities in Ben's blood but the experiment fails. Frustrated and tempted by Maitland's offer of a multimillion dollar grant, Koster turns Ben over to Maitland. Koster's daughter, who has become romantically interested in Ben, seeks to help Ben escape from Maitlaind's men, who have Ben in a straight jacket and guarded in a locked office while Maitland prepares for his coveted transfusion.

A teacher gives Ben a ride to escape from Maitland's hounds. Her star pupil is a Chicano boy who lives with his grandfather in an illegal mining camp. Ben and the teacher take the boy home to find his grandfather dying from typhoid fever. The mine foreman, who is only interested in money, refuses to send for medical help for those exposed to the disease. Maitland's men trace Ben to the camp and show up just as the boy begins to show symptoms of typhoid.

A dishonest sheriff jails Ben on trumped-up traffic charges. In order to work off the $50 fine imposed on him, Ben will have to spend 25 days on a work detail building a lodge for the sheriff. A woman befriends Ben after he fixes her car (on the sheriff's orders), and she offers to help him escape if he will retrieve a file the sheriff has on her. Ben gets the file, but the woman backs out of her end of the deal after Ben witnesses an inmate's murder at the hands of the sheriff. When Ben refuses to leave the town forgetting what he saw, the sheriff decides to make Ben the next ""accidental death"" victim at the work site.

Two engaged computer technicians serve as Fletcher's newest weapon in hunting Ben. They have developed a program that can analyze information about Ben and predict his next move -- with alarming accuracy. To the man Ben is nothing but statistics to feed into his computer so he can earn $1000 a day from Maitland Industries for his services. His finacee, however, leaves the project to help Ben escape from Fletcher. Her daughter is critically ill, so she offers to destroy the computer records on Ben and his brother in exchange for a transfusion to save her daughter's life. Fletcher searches her apartment and discovers this information. With the hospital surrounded, Ben has to trust the woman, the doctor whom Fletcher strong-armed for information, and the computer technician who feels his fiancee jilted him in order to escape from Fletcher and erase the database on Jason Richards.

Ben, one of a number of hired laborers on a farm, witnesses a sheriff accidentally shot by a couple of workers who are upset over withheld wages. The farm owner organizes an ""Honor Posse"" to hunt down the men. Ben runs, not because he had part in the shooting but because he got word that Fletcher is nearby. The posse captures Ben and the man who shot the sheriff. The farm owner, a friend of the sheriff, implicates Ben in the crime because Ben worked on the getaway motorcycles just before the incident. When the sheriff dies Ben is charged with the murder, which temporarily keeps him out of Fletcher's hands. Ben's options are to allow Fletcher to take him from the posse and into Maitland's custody, or to face the angry posse leader who is more than happy to kill to ensure the dead sheriff receives ""justice"".

A woman's car breaks down near Ben as he stands hitchhiking. He fixes her car, then uses it to escape when he spots the ubiquitous black car nearby. The woman whose car he repaired is friendly, offering Ben a place to stay and a job. Too friendly, in fact, but Ben only realizes that after he is shot with a tranquilizer and whisked away to a remote country. The woman, he discovers, works for his captor. The younger but equally ruthless billionaire holding Ben (who is thought dead thanks to a staged car accident that Fletcher witnesses) wants to tap the immortality in Ben's veins. Ben tries to bribe one of the guards, but the guard turns up dead. Ben has only two people to turn to in hope for escape: the hematologist who performed the blood transfusion, and the woman who led him into the trap initially, but she admits to Ben that she has lied to him from the beginning.

While hiding out in a Mexican border town Ben is shot in an alley altercation. Fletcher shows up in the alley moments after a fellow American gets Ben off the street. The two return to America as part of a group of illegal workers. They are put to work on a tomato farm run by a cruel foreman. Ben recovers quickly from his gunshot, but the foreman has already had a visit from Fletcher and he assures Ben that he will call Fletcher if Ben causes any trouble. The foreman stands to gain half the farm from the widowed owner if a good crop of tomatoes gets to market on time. He will stop at nothing to accomplish this, including endangering the workers by exposing them to an illegal pesticide.

Hitchhiking Ben had been viewing wallet photos of a driver's family when the driver runs off the road and crashes down an embankment into a fast-moving river. Ben, thrown free and only slightly injured, uses the wallet to assume the dead man's identity when he hears Fletcher is inquiring about the accident. This poses a problem: the man was a Philadelphia policeman who journeyed to the small California town to take a fugitive back to Pennsylvania. The prisoner has assumed an identity of his own, that of a physician, which is what is he facing charges for. Fletcher is unwilling to accept that Ben perished in the crash. He keeps vigil at the crash site and scours the town with photos of Ben. With the only road in and out of town closed for repairs, Ben has to avoid Fletcher and an angry resident who thinks nothing of resorting to violence to keep the doctor from being arrested. He also must hope that the prisoner will not reveal Ben's true identity and that the real policeman's b

""Keep out -- this means YOU!"" reads the sign on a chain blocking the coastal road to the town of Paradise Bay. Ben drives around the barricade because he has a lead on his brother, Jason. The sheriff gives Ben an unfriendly welcome. After prompting from the manager of the company that owns the property, the sheriff shows Ben a tombstone with Jason Richards' name on it and claims Jason died in a scuba diving accident. The town has been sold to a developer to be turned into a resort, and most of the town's 900 residents have left. The few that remain stand to make a lot of money from the resort project, and they don't appreciate a stranger like Ben asking questions about Jason's death. Ben is not satisfied with the answers -- more precisely, the lack of answers and downright lies -- that he gets when he mentions Jason's name. He is worked over and driven off the property, but he returns. Even though he discovers Jason is not his brother, Ben is determined to find out the truth ab

The search for Jason leads Ben east to Ohio to look up the man who gave the two boys shelter when they ran away from the orphanage. Ben is set to leave town but he hears his friend's name on the radio news. The man has been arrested for an assault, a charge that could escalate to murder if the injured college student dies. Ben knows that his blood will save the young man's life. He suspects Dr. Pierce's phone is tapped, but he phones anyway to prove what he has said about his blood to the doctor treating the comatose man. Fletcher is indeed listening, and soon Ben is cornered in a phone booth. Ben has one request of Fletcher: he wants to warn his friend that the comatose student's father is en route with a gun. Fletcher's refuses, shooting Ben with a tranquilizer dart and whisking him away.

Fletcher has Ben. Trapped in a cabin during a snowstorm, Ben and his captor have nothing to do but talk. Ben is curious about Fletcher's desire to work for people like Maitland, which leads the two to recollect about Jordan Braddock, Fletcher's previous employer. Braddock's last encounter with Ben was in Florida, where a ""friend"" of Ben's notified Fletcher of Ben's whereabouts in exchange for money. Ben manages to escape in the limousine with the critically ill Braddock. Ben offers only to get Braddock to a doctor, a task that proves difficult because of the country locale with lack of phones.

Ben's latest escape from Fletcher takes him onto an Indian reservation. His transportation is not very reliable -- a dune buggy he almost finished repairing before fleeing in it. Three young Indians on horseback offer to help Ben -- for money. Ben falls down an embankment and is thought dead by the youths, but the tribal elder thinks otherwise and orders them to bring Ben back. Ben recovers and sets about trying to repair the dune buggy, having to improvise because there are no mechanic tools. Fletcher's men spot the dune buggy's tracks and move in. Firing tear gas into the compound, they grab Ben and head away from the reservation with the youths in pursuit on horseback.

Ben has located a man named Jason Richards who once lived in an orphanage. Ben may have found his brother, but before he can introduce himself Fletcher shows up. Because he has researched Jason and knows about his money problems, the first thing Fletcher offers is $20,000 in exchange for a six-month stint at the National Research Institute. Jason, concerned about Ben's actions (forcing his way into his house, taking his car to escape from Fletcher), quickly agrees. He has a change of heart when he gets a taste of life at the National Research Institute: locked doors, no outgoing phone calls, and men who strong-arm him if he persists in his requests. Ben helps Jason and his wife escape. Ben and Jason seek refuge at a remote fishing camp where they can talk about a past that Jason cannot remember because of a head injury, and about the prospects of the blood that they might both share. When Fletcher shows up holding Jason's wife captive, Ben must try to talk Jason out of surrender