Most people know about the tragic events that took place on October 2nd, 2018. Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and was murdered in cold blood, with a ridiculously unbelievable series of lies spun that dumbfounded the world in their idiocy.
While the idea for this book came to me several years ago with the announcement of the discovery of the very ring featured in this book, the challenging aspect was figuring out how to link the past to the present. What I was blocked by was how I could believably have someone today, a thousand years later, care that a ring had been found, beyond it being yet another example of Islamic fundamentalists behaving badly.
Enter the Saudi regime itself.
For them to do what they did in Istanbul, proved that pretty much anything was possible with these people. It suddenly became completely believable that they could act on behalf of someone, fabulously overreact to the situation, then think they could get away with it.
If the events of late 2018 had been a work of fiction, I doubt anyone would have believed it. And now, thanks to those sad events, this work of fiction becomes plausible.
The ring is real, and the kidnapping from the embassy has been proven plausible. I hope you enjoyed the tale woven in these pages tying them together.
And one more quick note. The couple having the conversation about the Cornish game hen? That would have been my wife and I. She won’t eat Cornish game hen or turkey for that matter. In her culture, if the chicken (because they’re all chickens) is too big or too small, there’s something wrong with it.
So, we eat ham for Christmas here.
And I’ll never say what was whispered in my ear.
As usual, there are people to thank. My dad for all the research, Ian Kennedy for some “blowin’ shit up” help, Susan “Miss Boss” Turnbull for a grammar save, Fred Newton for some NASCAR info, Brent Richards for some terminology help, Sue Bucksey (she was the first of several on Facebook to provide an answer!) for some Queen’s English help, Sue Bucksey again via Facebook for Sherrie’s spicy description of the Thunder from Downunder, and, as usual, my wife, daughter, and mother, as well as the proofing and launch teams.
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Thank you once again for reading.