title: The President's Cut
author: Gray, Peter
description: The global arms race has shifted from satellites and drones to cyber warfare, and everything with a hard-wired internet connection is vulnerable. The only fail-safe defence is to be hidden away from the ever-searching eyes from the sky and to be always moving deep under the ocean.The US Navy has laid vast arrays of listening sondes on the ocean floor from the northern tip of Scotland all the way to Greenland to track the movements of the Russian nuclear submarine fleet leaving their northern port of Severomorsk on the Barents Sea two degrees north of the Arctic Circle. In response, the Russians have developed top secret multi-frequency listening technology that can accurately locate the American listening sondes, and the Russians plan to use it in a series of hunter-killer submarine drones to destroy the American system. This Russian listening technology is based on large, flawless crystals of carbon which have a constant oscillation frequency, even in the freezing conditions of the Norwegian Sea. The best carbon crystals to use are ones with a slight pinkish colouration… pink diamonds.The hunt to secure the world’s best pink diamonds becomes a high priority of the Russian External Intelligence Service or SVR. They devise an elaborate plan to force Charlie Robertson to sell his diamond empire to Russian businessman, Nikolai Kasimov, by kidnapping Charlie’s daughter, while at the same time kidnapping the daughter of the President of the United States to distract him from a naval problem in the Norwegian Sea…