The Viking Deception Read online

  THE VIKING DECEPTION

  A JAMES ACTON THRILLER

  J. ROBERT KENNEDY

  About the James Acton Thrillers

  "James Acton: A little bit of Jack Bauer and Indiana Jones!"

  Though this book is part of the James Acton Thrillers series, it is written as a standalone novel and can be enjoyed without reading the other installments.

  What readers are saying about the James Acton Thrillers Series:

  “A great blend of history and current headlines.”

  “You stop breathing from the first page.”

  “If you like Indiana Jones then you will love these stories.”

  “The Acton series is one of the most entertaining and enjoyable series I have read.”

  “Non-stop action that is impossible to put down.”

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  BOOKS BY J. ROBERT KENNEDY

  The Templar Detective Thrillers

  The Templar Detective

  The Templar Detective and the Parisian Adulteress

  The Templar Detective and the Sergeant's Secret

  The Templar Detective and the Unholy Exorcist

  The James Acton Thrillers

  The Protocol

  Brass Monkey

  Broken Dove

  The Templar’s Relic

  Flags of Sin

  The Arab Fall

  The Circle of Eight

  The Venice Code

  Pompeii’s Ghosts

  Amazon Burning

  The Riddle

  Blood Relics

  Sins of the Titanic

  Saint Peter’s Soldiers

  The Thirteenth Legion

  Raging Sun

  Wages of Sin

  Wrath of the Gods

  The Templar’s Revenge

  The Nazi’s Engineer

  Atlantis Lost

  The Cylon Curse

  The Viking Deception

  The Special Agent Dylan Kane Thrillers

  Rogue Operator

  Containment Failure

  Cold Warriors

  Death to America

  Black Widow

  The Agenda

  Retribution

  The Delta Force Unleashed Thrillers

  Payback

  Infidels

  The Lazarus Moment

  Kill Chain

  Forgotten

  The Detective Shakespeare Mysteries

  Depraved Difference

  Tick Tock

  The Redeemer

  Zander Varga, Vampire Detective Series

  The Turned

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

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  Table of Contents

  Beginning

  Author's Note

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Acknowledgments

  Don't Miss Out!

  Thank You!

  About the Author

  Also by the Author

  For Jamal Khashoggi.

  Murdered for daring to have a voice.

  “I assure you that the reports that suggest that Jamal Khashoggi went missing in the Consulate in Istanbul or that the Kingdom’s authorities have detained him or killed him are absolutely false, and baseless.”

  Prince Khaled bin Salman on the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi October 9, 2018

  “The individuals who did this did this outside the scope of their authority. There obviously was a tremendous mistake made, and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up. That is unacceptable in any government.”

  Saudi Arabia Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir October 22, 2018

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  The tragic murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of the Saudi regime is referred to herein. No disrespect is intended. Instead, these references are meant to prove the plausibility that such actions could be undertaken by those involved.

  PREFACE

  On the afternoon of October 2, 2018, Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. He never left alive. Earlier, a team of fifteen hitmen, described by the Saudi regime at first as tourists, landed in Istanbul, at least one with a bone saw.

  Typical tourist gear, for certain.

  He was brutally murdered, his body dissolved with chemicals, and the coverup, however inept, began.

  Was Khashoggi scared when he entered the sovereign territory of the country he criticized? We assume so from statements made by his fiancée. And she was the reason he was there. This isn’t a statement of blame, but merely fact. He loved her. He wanted to marry her. He needed paperwork from the Saudi government to make it happen.

  And he died for it.

  And now, one must ask who in their right mind would set foot in a Saudi Arabian facility, anywhere in the world?

  But what if you had no choice?

  What if the consequences of choosing not to, were worse?

  1 |

  Stockholm University Stockholm, Sweden One day from now

  Elsa Andersson scratched the back of her neck, all four fingers raking against the skin as she wondered what was going on. The text message she received had been from Professor Karlsson’s phone. She had double-checked the number, something that had proven entirely unnecessary as he was in her contacts list, with more messages exchanged than with anyone else including her boyfriend.

  She frowned at the thought of him.

  There’s no future there.

  She was tired of wasting her time with boys. She wanted a man. Professor Karlsson was definitely a man, and if he wasn’t married, and perhaps twenty years younger, she’d consider making a play for him.

 
; She loved brilliant minds.

  Though sleeping with a man old enough to be her grandfather wasn’t exactly appealing to her.

  And neither was the infantile moron she now bedded.

  She sighed as the elevators opened, her scratch turning into a massage, though a rather ineffectual one. She was worried about the professor. She hadn’t reached him all day, thus his message had been a tremendous relief. He had somehow guessed where she was, which now that she thought of it, was a bit of a leap.

  Why would he think I’d be at the university at this hour?

  The only reason she was here was that he hadn’t shown up all day, and the remains delivered earlier had to be processed. Normally, they would have worked on it together at a more reasonable hour, but with his lack of communication all day, she had decided action had to be taken, regardless of the consequences.

  Yet he had known she was here. That much was certain from his message.

  Meet me in the lobby right away.

  But he wasn’t there. A quick check with security confirmed he hadn’t been and left. He had never been.

  Could he have been referring to a different lobby?

  Her eyebrows rose at the thought as she slowly made her way to the lab at the end of the hallway. It was a possibility, though she couldn’t fathom what lobby he might have been referring to, nor why he would think she was somewhere that had one.

  None of it made sense, and it had her even more concerned than she already had been. Calls and messages had gone unanswered all day, even to his home, though if he wasn’t there, that wasn’t unusual. Mrs. Karlsson never answered when she called for some reason. He was to have met with an old friend of his, Professor James Acton, an archaeology professor from the United States, along with the man’s wife, Laura Palmer, also a professor of archaeology.

  If that’s not a recipe for boredom, I don’t know what is.

  The two professors were to meet with Karlsson this morning then tour the dig site, but they never showed. None of them did, and all day she had worked under the hypothesis they had found something better to do. After all, they were all academics, and that type was notorious for losing track of time when a good discussion was underway.

  She frowned at the thought.

  You’re an academic.

  She paused, staring into nothing.

  Am I going to become like them?

  She shuddered at the thought, resuming her tired trek to the lab. She hoped she would remain the vital, vivacious, exciting person she now was, then again, at this moment, she could think of nothing more exciting than the remains she was now about to process.

  She reached the door and fished under her hoodie for her pass, her mind returning to the task at hand, Professor Karlsson’s idiosyncrasies put on hold.

  He can text me again if he actually shows up.

  She swiped her pass then entered her personal code for the lab, something she still remembered to this day being issued. It had been one of the prouder moments of her life. The trust the professor had shown in her had been an emotional revelation. She was one of the few he allowed into his lab unaccompanied. In fact, there were less than a handful of students with the access she had.

  The door clicked, the sound always sending goosebumps through her body, and she pushed against the door, a slight hiss sounding, the room pressurized to keep foreign contaminants out should there be something truly delicate inside. The door swung open and she gasped at the sight that greeted her.

  “What’s going on here?”

  A man was standing over the body of another, staring at her, shocked at having been caught. She froze, the door swinging shut behind her as her jaw dropped with the recognition of who the murderer standing before her was.

  It was the same man whom she had Googled just yesterday.

  “Professor Acton?” She stared at the body, recognizing one of the security guards. “Oh my God! Is he dead?”

  Something behind her caused her to flinch and as she turned, she caught a glimpse of a woman she recognized as Professor Acton’s wife. She pressed something into her back.

  “Move and you die.”

  2 |

  Al Lixbuna, Islamic Iberia Caliphate of Córdoba (Modern Day Lisbon, Portugal) 989 AD

  Fatima Halabi’s heart raced as her lips pressed against his, his thick beard and mustache tickling her face, the shocking blond hair just one of a myriad of things that attracted her to his forbidden embrace. For it was forbidden. Her love was not hers to give, nor were her favors. Those all belonged to her father. He alone could barter her future, her feminine assets, to the eventual betterment of their family’s position in the Caliphate.

  And she had resigned herself, willingly, to that fate.

  Until a month ago.

  She had seen the Vikings before. Fierce, proud men, their striking hair, so different, the first thing one noticed when they mixed with the locals. And their clothing, so distinctly different from the flowing robes she was so accustomed to seeing, fascinated her. It immediately had her wondering what Viking women wore.

  And that was the question that had started this entire affair, an affair that had to stop, yet an affair she couldn’t resist continuing.

  “What do Viking women wear?”

  It had been an innocent enough question, though asked out of turn. It wasn’t her place to speak to male guests, and her father had admonished her, apologizing to their honored visitor, Prince Magnus Hamundarson, for her breach of protocol.

  Yet Magnus hadn’t minded. In fact, he had brushed off the apology as unnecessary, and eagerly answered the question, addressing her directly, rather than the others gathered in the room.

  He had treated her as an equal, something no man had ever done.

  And it had empowered her, if only for those few, precious moments.

  It was a feeling she began to crave, and she had done something foolish. Dangerous. Rebellious.

  She had sent him a message.

  An innocent message.

  If she weren’t Muslim and female.

  If sent to a Muslim man, she would fully expect him to reveal her transgression to her father immediately upon receipt.

  Yet she hadn’t feared that from this man.

  He was different.

  He respected her without knowing her.

  The response had been swift, and discrete, Magnus thankfully recognizing the risk she was taking. It made sense. He had been here many times, from what she had been told, and he even spoke and wrote Arabic, though not with the proficiency of a native.

  He understood her culture.

  Messages continued to be exchanged, her infatuation with the man growing with each one, then a treacherous escalation had been proposed.

  A meeting, in person, just the two of them.

  It had been the most exciting, erotic, passionate night of her life, and she had fallen madly in love with the man whose arms now enveloped her tightly, infusing a sense of safety and serenity like she had never felt before.

  She pushed away, staring up into his vivid blue eyes. “I’ve missed you.”

  He smiled at her. “And I you.”

  “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

  Magnus pushed several stray hairs back under her hijab. “Nor I.”

  Fatima rested her cheek against his chest, the pounding of his heart comforting. “I can’t stand being apart from you. Every moment is torture.”

  His chest expanded as he took a deep breath. “I’m afraid I have bad news.”

  She pushed away, just enough to stare up at him, her entire body tensing as she prepared for something tragic to be revealed. “What is it? Please tell me you’re not leaving.”

  He frowned. “I am. In two days.”

  A single cry escaped, tears flowing down her cheeks as she imagined her life without him. “Will you be back?”

  He sighed. “I will try, but it would be at least a year, perhaps longer.”

  Her shoulders slumped, her cheek returni
ng to his chest. “By then it will be too late.”

  “What do you mean?”

  A lump formed in the back of her throat, painful, restricting, and she had to gasp out the words. “A messenger arrived this morning. That’s why I had to see you.”

  Magnus took her by the shoulders, holding her out so he could see her tear-streaked face. “A messenger?”

  She nodded. “My future husband will arrive tomorrow.”

  Magnus drew a quick breath, his jaw dropping, genuinely hurt by the news. “Husband?”

  Her shoulders sagged in his arms, her strength abandoning her. “My father has arranged my marriage to Sheik Al-Musawi. The wedding is to occur the day after he arrives.”

  Magnus’ arms dropped to his side, the break in his embrace crushing her. “Do you love him?”

  Her eyes widened and she reached out for his hands. “Love him? I’ve never even met him! I know nothing of him beyond that he is twenty years my senior and extremely powerful.” Shame washed over her at her next words, her head sagging toward her chest as her eyes burned. “I am to be his fourth wife.”

  “Disgusting!”

  A brief ember of anger flared at his words. “It’s my culture!”

  He lowered his voice, his outrage pushed aside. “I know, I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget how different we are.” He pinched her chin, raising her gaze to his. “Can you say no?”

  Fatima’s eyes widened. “Are you mad? To refuse one’s father in these circumstances is unheard of. I will have to marry him. I have no choice. The decision has already been made.”

  Magnus’ eyes bored into hers. “But I thought you loved me?”

  Her shoulders shook as her tears flowed once more. “Oh, I do. Never doubt that, my love. You are the only man I have ever loved, and you will be the only man I ever love. This man I am being forced to take as my husband will never have my heart as you have mine.” She reached up and squeezed the back of his neck. “I love you more than any woman has ever loved a man, and that will never change.”