The Cullinan Foible

With a time setting of 1904-1906 Presidential Security Agent David Ballard finds himself misdirected to South America on a luxury cruise liner rather than to the Panama Canal where he had been ordered to set up a security itinerary for President Theodore ( Teddy) Roosevelt's upcoming trip there to initiate its construction after taking it over from the French. While on the cruise liner David meets and falls in love with the lovely Miranda Page, a passenger recently widowed and looking for an adventure and a new friend in her life. The two become separated in an attempt to warn President Roosevelt of a discovered assassination plot to be carried out against him in Panama. David becomes hijacked aboard a freighter headed for South Africa and he and fellow passenger Carlos Ortega get washed overboard in a hurricane force storm. After surviving the sea adventure and a trek thru the jungle as well as being captured by a headhunter tribe they ultimately wind up incarcerated as slave labor in the Cullinan diamond mines in Kimberly, South Africa. David serendipitously discoverers what turns out to be the largest and most valuable diamond ever discovered in mining history, and he and Carlos ultimately become questionable heroes.