Olguin Best Enemy

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-916725-11-9
Verlag: Bitter Lemon Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 400 Seiten

A former editor of Nuestro Tiempo magazine has been murdered, apparently during the course of a burglary gone wrong, but investigative reporter Verónica Rosenthal has her doubts. She becomes increasingly convinced that her old boss's death was connected to his investigation of a high-level corruption scandal, a complex web of deceit and power.

Sergio Olguín was born in Buenos Aires in 1967 and was a journalist before turning to fiction. Olguín has won a number of awards and his books have been translated into German, French and Italian. This is his fourth in the crime series featuring the fearless Buenos Aires journalist Veronica Rosenthal.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Olguin, Sergio

Weitere Mitwirkende

France, Miranda

Leseproben

Prologue

the dead mature

I

In the duty-free shop of the Parisian airport of Charles de Gaulle, Peter Khoury bought M&M’s in a range of packages, along with some miniature Mars bars, a bag of Kinder Bueno and two more of Toblerone. He wasn’t a lover of sweets (he’d bought some tins of Planters peanuts and Blue Diamond almonds for himself), but he reckoned it wouldn’t be a bad idea to stock up for the children he was going to be treating in the next few years – not that the chocolates would last long. Like any good paediatric doctor – recently graduated, with honours, from Imperial College London – he knew the promise of a treat helped sweeten the consultation. Some children would arrive crying and leave happily clutching a Mars bar. Sweets like these had extra appeal because they weren’t usually available to the children he would be treating at Al-Shifa Hospital on the Gaza Strip.

At the age of twenty-six, Peter Khoury had decided to make a change in his life. The kind of change that marks you forever. In his family there had always been talk of returning to Palestine. His four grandparents and father had left Haifa when the Israeli troops entered the city in 1948. They’d had no choice but to go, with only the clothes on their backs. They had locked up their houses and taken the keys with them, in hopes of returning one day. Peter’s father was a baby when they arrived in England. His mother, like Peter, had been born in London. And yet all of them (including his siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins) had grown up with a nostalgia for the country lost after the Nakba.

While still a student, Peter had taken a course in emergency medicine at the University Hospital of North Norway. The course was led by Mads Gilbert, a renowned doctor known also for his activism; he regularly travelled to Gaza to give medical training. Gilbert was a very good teacher and Peter an outstanding student. Not surprisingly, an affection sprang up between them. At the end of one class, Gilbert asked him: “Khoury, your family are Maronite Christians from Lebanon, right? I’m guessing from your surname.”

“We’re orthodox Christians from Palestine. On my mother’s and father’s sides.”

“From which cities?”

“Haifa, both sides.”

Gilbert nodded. “Let’s go for a beer sometime, Khoury, and I’ll tell you about my own experience in Palestine. I think you’ll be interested.”

Peter was interested, of course, in whatever the Norwegian had to tell him, for example about the challenge of treating so many people with insufficient staff, supplies or medication. Or the fear that a person cured of pneumonia one day might die the next in a bombing. Gilbert knew Khoury was specializing in paediatrics.

“We really need paediatricians in Al-Shifa.”

“When the time’s right…”

Peter thought it would be years before that time came. He finished the course, returned to London, got his degree and began specialist training at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.

He planned to take a break in the summer: a trip through the Netherlands, Germany, northern Italy and France. Forty days alone with his backpack. As he was preparing for the trip he received a text from Mads Gilbert, his old Norwegian teacher. It wasn’t a private message but one that had obviously been sent to lots of people. It read: On behalf of Doctor Mads Gilbert in Gaza, thanks for all your support. Two hours ago the central fruit and vegetable market in the city of Gaza was bombed. 80 wounded, 20 dead. All of them were brought here to Al-Shifa. It’s hell! We’re deep in death, in blood and amputations. Lots of children. Pregnant mothers. I’ve never experienced anything so horrible. Even now we can hear the tanks. TELL people, pass it on, shout it out. Whatever it takes. Do something! Do more!

Peter decided that he must go to Palestine, the land his father had imagined, the one his grandparents yearned for. He thought of abandoning his trip and setting off for Gaza straight away, but his parents and grandparents persuaded him to do his European tour first. He wouldn’t have much time later on, and this would be a good way to bid farewell to his youth before entering the adult world once and for all.

After Europe, Peter would go straight to Palestine without returning to London. His grandparents gave him the keys to their houses in Haifa, although he wouldn’t be going to that city, which was now part of Israel.

“Many Palestinians have a key, but I have two. I’m a millionaire,” he told his paternal grandfather.

“We Palestinians are millionaires every time we dream.”

II

There was a lot of turbulence on the flight from Paris to Tel Aviv, so much that Peter Khoury found himself praying, something he hadn’t done since he was twelve. He hated turbulence; it terrified him. The last few minutes of the flight, over Israeli territory, were reassuringly smooth, not that Peter ever felt reassured on a plane. When they finally touched down in Tel Aviv, he offered up thanks to the three versions of God he knew.

He had enjoyed his trip through continental Europe, visiting museums, bars and parks. He had met people from far-flung places and in every city he visited he had fallen in love and then tried to fall quickly out of it again. Those German, French and Italian girls had conquered his heart, but his soul was in the Middle East, in Palestine.

Now, in Ben Gurion airport, the events of a few weeks ago seemed distant, as though they had happened to a Peter who no longer existed, or who existed in another dimension, one in which he was still drinking beer, smoking weed and kissing blondes and brunettes who spoke a hesitant English.

His grandparents’ keys were in the backpack that had gone in the hold. As a precaution he had put some old keys with no value next to the other two on his key ring. Just as well, because at Customs the agents had decided to open his bag. The key ring caught their eye. “They’re for a cottage I have outside London,” Peter explained with an easy smile, one he had practised in the mirror.

The Immigration guy looked at him and saw a British man loaded down with duty-free, doubtless hoping to have some fun with Israeli girls. Peter carefully repacked the shirts and jeans and put the keys in his jacket. From then onwards he wanted to feel them close to his body.

There were no problems at passport control. A tourist arriving from London didn’t attract much attention. Peter was asked where he planned to stay and for how long. He had deliberately booked a return ticket for ten days later, one he had no intention of using. He lied about his lodgings and length of stay, as he had been advised to do.

Outside the controlled area, he found himself in a hubbub of travellers reunited with their families, taxi drivers touting for work and tourists who already seemed lost. Peter looked around him, but it was Mads Gilbert who spotted him first and came bounding over to give his friend a warm embrace. He looked a little older, but preserved that youthful spirit Peter associated with Nordic men. Gilbert offered to carry his backpack. Peter handed over some of the duty-free bags instead. They walked towards the parking lot.

They must have looked like two Europeans without a care in the world. Gilbert asked him about the Champions League games and complained bitterly because there had been power outages the last few days and he had missed the round of sixteen away games. Despite being Norwegian (or maybe because of it, since Norwegian teams never went far in the Champions League), he supported Manchester United, whereas Peter was an Arsenal fan. Man U had drawn away to Milan, and Arsenal had won, at home, against Rome. Peter told Gilbert he had watched that match in a Roman bar, surrounded by the local tifosi as they hurled insults at their rivals. “When van Persie scored I clutched my head so as to look distraught, but inside I was shouting ‘gooooaaal!’ I was weeping tears of joy.”

They arrived at Gilbert’s Hyundai Tucson. The car, which must have been at least five years...