Deep Waters / Dyfroedd Dyfnion - Ep 1

Bethan Williams and her twin sister Angharad inherit their late father’s business (Dragon Jewellery) in South Wales, just as China steps up its threats against Taiwan. Bethan takes over as MD while Angharad focuses on her TV journalism career. In her efforts to turn the struggling business around, Bethan encounters Santiago, an Argentinian industrialist with Welsh roots, who eventually offers to buy the Red Dragon gold mine, a tourist attraction offshoot of Dragon Jewellery in Carmarthenshire. Although the business would benefit from the cash, Bethan reluctantly turns Santiago’s offer down, not realising that the Chinese government, using Santiago, will stop at nothing to gain control of the mine. In a last-ditch effort to save the business, Bethan enters into a Joint Venture with Santiago’s company and the cashflow is stabilised. Family friend and mine manager, Gethin, is secretly recruited by MI5 to watch the mine, and he soon establishes that the new mine owners are fraudulently planting foreign gold ore and passing it off as expensive Welsh gold. After he is discovered and badly beaten, Gethin steps back, as Bethan and Angharad, their suspicions raised, investigate Chinese government connections that go way beyond simple gold-laundering. In the final episode Angharad is harassed by Chinese heavies while Bethan and Gethin discover what is really going on in the mine, and are trapped in its lower passages by Santiago’s henchman Matias. Poppy follows her mother into the mine and narrowly evades capture by Matias. He reveals that the mine is a secret supply of neodymium, a valuable rare-earth metal used by the defence industry around the world. China’s objective is to control or destroy rare-earth resources worldwide thereby exerting coercive control over the West, opening the way to retakeTaiwan unopposed and without all the messy business of war. As Matias prepares to complete his mission, with potentially fatal consequences, armed police intervene and Matias is captured. Sadly, in all the commotion, Gethin suffers a heart attack and dies in hospital. China, its plan now public, embarrassed and risking loss of face, backs off and the world order is restored – for now.