Footprints

By Michael S. Mast

Footprints, an electrifying international thriller, takes readers on a heart-wrenching journey through South America, Europe, and the Middle East. This gripping novel weaves together the destinies of Alona Cohen, a tenacious Peruvian intelligence officer; Dar Shevchenco, a troubled young Mossad agent; and Emilio Martinez, a ruthless drug lord with a thirst for vengeance. Their lives intersect in unexpected ways when Alona's son, a young and inexperienced journalist, uncovers a dangerous lie that could plunge the world into chaos.

Footprints is not just a tale of action and intrigue, but also a profound exploration of the human spirit, showcasing the remarkable strength of those who dare to break free from the haunting influence of their pasts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Segedy
• Release date: Mar 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224899692

Book preview

Chapter 1: Alona

Sarah Cohen was only eighteen when she decided to spend a year in Israel in a kibbutz just outside of Tel Aviv. Her parents, although conservative Jews and ardent supporters of Israel, were adamantly opposed to their only child spending a year away from home among fanatic Arabs infamous for setting off bombs in marketplaces, restaurants, and buses. But strong-willed Sarah would not listen, and in the end she convinced her parents to allow her to make her aliyah to the Holy Land, promising them she’d return in a year and begin her college career.

Since the kibbutz where she stayed was a short distance from Jaffa, she was able to make several visits there during her first year in Israel. Each time she traveled to Jaffa, she fell in love with the ancient walled city, its diverse architecture, its outdoor restaurants, its old plazas, and its quiet peaceful evenings when the air cooled and the sky became purple tinted.

Whenever she’d return to the kibbutz, she’d have this desperate longing to go back. Her heart would not settle as thoughts of Jaffa raced through her head. Unable to sleep, she’d lie on her bed dreaming of the ancient port city, tasting its sweet baklava as she listened to its call to prayer wind its way through the narrow stone streets. And in each dream she would always see, hanging over its harbor and bathing its mosques and temples in luminous splendor, this enormous moon so large it appeared to be painted there by the hand of God.

The old city had made such an impression on her young soul that, to her parents’ chagrin, she decided to extend her stay in Israel another year. She left the kibbutz and moved to Jaffa, promising her parents that she would return home the following year in time to enroll for the fall semester. They protested, but she was adamant. They told her that delaying college was a bad idea, that she would be losing a whole year

of school. She countered by arguing that Israeli girls postponed college for two years to fulfill their military duty to serve their nation, so spending one more year in Israel would hardly be a sacrifice. To bolster her argument, she professed her absolute, unequivocal love for Israel, hoping to play on their Zionism.

It worked. They eventually caved in, interpreting their daughter’s zeal as an unselfish act of patriotism, when it was far from that. In fact, she had begun to see the State of Israel in an unfavorable light, not as a victim, but as an aggressor. She believed that if peace were ever to happen, what she saw in Jaffa was the real answer. The only answer. The peaceful coexistence of Jews and Arabs living side by side in peace and harmony. Not the apartheid that was being practiced.

One breezy summer evening in early June, as she was returning home from a classical guitar lesson, she heard the melodic strains of Spanish music emanating from a small plaza nearby. She stopped to listen and thought that it sounded like the Gipsy Kings. As she approached, she saw a large group of people standing around four musicians who were performing within a circular wall less than a meter high. She leaned her guitar against the limestone wall and turned to the young man standing next to her and asked him if he knew the name of the group. When he said the Gipsy Kings, her jaw dropped in amazement.

You’re kidding, she said, absolutely stunned. She loved their music. She’d listen to it back in Peru on the radio, though she knew nothing about the band members, other than they were from somewhere in France but played Spanish music. Mostly flamenco and salsa.

When the initial shock wore off, she thought maybe the person she’d asked had been just pulling her leg. She wondered why the Gipsy Kings, known worldwide, would be performing in front of such a small group. But they really did sound like the Gipsy Kings. There was only one way to know for sure.

When they paused after two songs, she asked the musician nearest, Cuál es el nombre de su grupo? When he answered back, Gipsy Kings, the young man leaning on the wall next to her just raised his thick black eyebrows and smiled and said in Spanish, "Ves. Te dije." His warm, radiant smile and large dark eyes instantly charmed her. At the same time, she felt terribly embarrassed for making it so obvious that she’d doubted him. She went on to explain in Spanish that it wasn’t that she’d questioned his honesty. She’d thought that maybe he’d made an innocent mistake. It just seemed too incredible that the group playing in front of so few people would actually be the Gipsy Kings. He just laughed and said he too would have been surprised, had he not seen a poster a few streets away advertising the group.

His Spanish wasn’t perfect. She would learn later that his parents had immigrated to what was once Palestine from Tangiers, where almost everyone spoke a little Spanish. His accent was thick, but he had no problem finding the right words. His Spanish was at least as good as her Hebrew. As they talked, she couldn’t deny feeling this immediate attraction to him. It was like fate had conspired to bring them together. Part of the feeling could be contributed to the lovely atmosphere: the beautiful weather, the music, and the sheer joy of speaking Spanish, her own language. At the kibbutz most of the people were from Russia or Ethiopia, so she had to patch together Hebrew sentences in order to communicate.

After a few minutes of conversation, they exchanged names. She told him her name was Sarah and explained that she was a Peruvian living in the Kfar Rhashan kibbutz. When he introduced himself as Tamin, she assumed that he was an Israeli Arab or Palestinian. She’d also detected an Arabic accent in his Spanish. The only Arabs she’d spoken to while in Israel had been in the markets and shops, so she relished the opportunity of actually getting to know one.

They spent nearly an hour together chatting on and off while listening to the music, and when the group finished and were packing up their equipment, Tamin pointed to a café across from them and asked her if he could treat her to a coffee and pastry.

That evening was the first of many they spent together. Sarah’s initial attraction to Tamin grew, and before she even realized it, she’d given her heart to him, thus saving him the effort of having to steal it. Although, truthfully, it would have been an easy theft. She adored everything about Tamin, but, perhaps more than anything, the way he looked at her. His tender brown eyes showed her a love that was pure, simple, and totally unfamiliar. Like nothing her heart had ever felt before.

That fall during Yom Kippur her parents would discover that Sarah was pregnant by Tamin Chouf, a young Arab electronics merchant and the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. She wrote a long letter to them, explaining that the wedding was set for the week before Hanukkah. She closed by asking for their blessing and informing them they were welcome to attend, that she hoped they would, and was sorry if they found the news shocking. She knew they’d never appear at the wedding, and that the idea that their only daughter was marrying an Arab would possibly alienate her forever from them. But she loved Tamin, and if that was the cost of love, then so be it.

And Sarah was right. She never heard back from her parents about the wedding or about anything else. She passed the next ten years in Jaffa, never once receiving a letter or telephone call from them.

So, the years passed and Tamin’s electronics business grew, so well that they managed to save a little money. At the same time his suppliers were telling him that Gaza City was booming. So, one day in the late summer of 2,000, he and Sarah decided to pack up and with their ten-year-old daughter relocate to Gaza City. In preparation for the move, Tamin had made several trips there and had found a decent shop to rent at what he considered a bargain price. He’d also located a small apartment for the three of them. The future looked bright. Just like any calm, quiet, cloudless day before the autumn storms begin to gather.

Three weeks after they arrived in Gaza City, the wind picked up, the clouds opened, the sky darkened, and all hell broke loose.

The First Intifada, also known as the First Palestinian Intifada, began on December 9, 1987, in the Jabalia refugee camp after an Israeli Defense Forces' truck collided with a civilian car, killing four Palestinian workers, three of whom were from the Jabalia refugee camp. The four workers were killed instantly. The Palestinian reaction to the collision was swift and violent. Within hours, large riots had broken out in the Jabalia refugee camp and other parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. By the end of the week, dozens of Palestinians had been killed or wounded.

Immediately there was talk of shutting down the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel. Some of the merchants in Gaza City even closed up shop. For Tamin and Sarah, business actually picked up, but the tension in the air was palpable.

Those were the old times and what Alona recalled of Jaffa were mostly her mother’s stories. Sarah loved to tell them over and over again to her young daughter. They lifted her mother’s spirits and helped her get through her darker days in Gaza City. For Alona, they were good memories, and would eventually become a salon in her memory museum filled with her best paintings. Golden Age stuff.

The memories of Alona’s childhood in Gaza City, not told to her by her mother, but lived memories, resided elsewhere in the farthest reaches of her museum. The deeper she entered the darker it became, until she found herself in a place where nearly all the light had been extinguished. She fought hard not to enter that part of her museum, the salons with the dark paintings, especially at night when she lay down to sleep. But it was not like she was a guest who could accept or reject the invitation. She was more like an abductee.

Some of her earliest memories of Gaza City were of the private school where her parents had enrolled her, just a few minutes away from their electronics shop. She hated her new school, but not for the same reason that most kids hate attending a new school. Her mother was a Jew, and it didn’t take long for the word to spread. Once it had, the kids wasted no time ostracizing her, pretty much every kid, except Ahmed, this chubby boy everyone made fun of. The two outcasts would eat lunch together under the cold stares and taunts of their schoolmates.

She was one lonely child. And the discrimination didn’t end at school. Although none of the children in her apartment building or neighborhood attended her school, they knew her mother was a Jew. Even the kids close to her father’s shop knew. Whenever she looked at them, they turned away, making it a point to ignore her.

There was one bright event in her life that made her less lonely, and that was when her cousin Alim Chouf came to visit with her family. He was five years older and almost immediately assumed the role of her big brother. Once a neighborhood kid called her a Kafir and he grabbed him, threw him down on the ground, and made him apologize. Alim was fearless. Probably because he felt he had nothing to lose. His father and mother had been killed when an Israeli tank fired at their house. When it happened, Alim had been several blocks away at a friend’s.

In the afternoons after school, she would grow anxious if her parents were a little late arriving to pick her up. On a couple of rare occasions she had to walk home. Although the school was less than a mile from her father’s shop, to return home she had to trudge through an unsavory neighborhood inhabited by dozens of homeless beggars and at least one or two perverts. Hamas also had a headquarters near the school and sometimes violence broke out between them and the PLO. At least once a week her parents would lecture her not to wander far from the school’s front gates.

Apart from hating her school, she never felt comfortable in Gaza City, not even in her own neighborhood where the people knew her and her family. It seemed wherever she went with her mother, she felt eyes on them. Downtown in the market area, the old women at the fruit and vegetable stands would whisper to each other and nod in their direction. Somehow they knew her mother was a Jew. A Kafir married to an Arab. Although her mother spoke fluent Arabic, the market vendors refused to engage in a conversation with her. Whenever she would make a favorable comment about their produce, they’d just nod and look down, or the bolder ones would look straight at her with disdain, pretty much the same way they looked at beggars and mangy dogs sniffing around their stands.

Often at the end of the school day, when her teacher was writing the next day’s homework on the blackboard, her thoughts would carry her back to Jaffa. Life was different there. Nothing like this dreadful place. In Jaffa, Arabs and Jews lived in peace, and marriages between the two, though uncommon, didn’t draw ugly stares and grimaces.

For a young girl who had grown up near Tel Aviv, there was nothing attractive about Gaza City. The atmosphere struck her as dingy, although the sun shone brightly pretty much every day on the colorless buildings. The unvarnished doors and windows frames, paled and blistering from the scorching sun, added to the general squalor. That and all the litter in the streets. People tossed their refuse everywhere. Old flyers, cans, cartons, candy wrappers, cigarette butts, orange peels, pages of old newspapers, and even chicken bones. There wasn’t a trash can in sight. Also there were mangy cats everywhere. And sometimes a dog. But usually just stray cats. And the ubiquitous smell of cat piss. How she longed to return to the clean streets of Jaffa and the smell of coffee and saffron.

But that never happened. Something else did. Which replaced her sweet dreams of Jaffa with dreadful nightmares that would remain with her forever.

For years, in the middle of the night, she would hear a shrill whistle split the sky. It would appear out of nowhere, followed by a deafening explosion. Then her nightmare would begin.

Standing in the middle of her classroom, quaking in terror, she sees the large window near the front of the room blow out of the wall, showering the classroom with glass and wood. A shard pierces her shoulder and blood trickles down her arm to her elbow. At the same time she hears the hysterical voice of her teacher screaming to everyone to get under their desks as cement dust drifts down from the high ceiling.

Instantly she does as she is told. She crouches under her desk, puts her hands together, and covers her head with her trembling arms. Her lips quiver and her heart races madly as the air raid sirens echo through the neighborhood. Then she hears a second shrill whistle slice through the sky, followed by another explosion, but this time more distant.

Suddenly her blood freezes and an icy chill shoots up her spine as she realizes that the first explosion must have occurred right in front of the school. Right where her parents pick her up!

Panicking, she shoots out from underneath her desk, striking her back against its underside and causing it to fall over and crash against the floor. As she rushes for the door to the hallway, her teacher shouts out to her to get down on the floor. But she’s too fast. She has already grabbed the handle of the door and is pulling it open. A split second later she’s racing wildly down the empty hall towards the entrance of the school, her heart thumping in her ears.

Papi! Mami! she screams as she bursts out of the school’s front door. She hasn’t traveled more than a few meters when her feet come to an abrupt stop as her eyes fix on what remains of a white Peugeot engulfed in flames.

A few people have gathered in the street near the burning car and scattered debris. They make no attempt to move closer. There is no reason to. They just stand staring at the orange and blue flames licking up at the sky and the thick black smoke rolling out of the scorched interior.

Mami! Papi! she screams again. This time even louder, and then springs towards her parents’ car. A bearded man in a dark suit and a checkered headscarf steps in front of her and catches her by the arm. She struggles to break free, screaming for her parents while tears stream down her cheeks. The man pulls her into him and holds her tightly, stroking her hair and trying to calm her. Eventually she gives in and presses her face against his chest.

Moments later a fire truck arrives and begins hosing down the smoking car.

Still shivering in the arms of the stranger crouched down and holding her close to him, she begins to gently push away. When she feels the stranger finally loosen his grip, she breaks free and bolts towards the car and up to the side window. Her body stiffens as her eyes fall on what remains of the two carbonized figures inside. A large piece of jagged metal lies embedded in the side of her father’s charred head. The front of his face has been crushed and the upper half of his entire torso seared. And reclining against his side is the black torso of her mother.

Her scream rips a hole in the sky as she drops to her knees shaking uncontrollably. Her sobs tear at her small chest while her entire frame shudders like she has been struck by an epileptic seizure. The man who had been holding her moments before takes a feeble step forward and then stops dead in his tracks. He places his hands over his ears and begins shaking his head from side-to-side uttering, Rahmat Allah, Rahmat Allah, after which he bows his head and suddenly breaks down and begins to whimper like an old war veteran who has seen more of life’s calamities than his tired soul can possibly bear.

Chapter 2: Dar

Dar Shevchenko tucked his arms under the pillow and stared up at the dark hole where the overhead fan had once been anchored and tried hard not to think too much about the man he’d just killed. Tonight, was hotter than the summer nights he remembered as kid growing up in Harashim. As a teenager the heat didn’t bother him much, even on the hottest summer nights. After dinner, he and his friends Roni and Eliot would set off in search of adventure. Not finding any, they usually ended up sitting on the curb in front of Benny's hardware, telling stupid adolescent jokes and watching the lazy sun bury itself behind the purple hills. As he thought about Roni and Eliot, and their last day together, a great emptiness filled him. He clenched his teeth and forced the memory from his mind.

He rolled on his side and faced the window. Although still dark outside, it had to be nearly sunrise. He touched his wristwatch and its luminescent dial lit up showing that it was 5:00 a.m. He hadn’t slept more than an hour. How could he. Not after today, cramped up in that damn toilet stall waiting for the man whose life he was to terminate. It should have been simple. Routine. Get in, do the job, and get out. Just like he’d been instructed. To make things go smoothly, his commander had provided him with all of the necessary details. His target would arrive at around 2:00 p.m. He’d swim laps for about an hour and then head to the locker room to take a shower. Dar had used a fake name, Ahmed Mourad, when he arrived at the club. The idea was to proceed to the locker room and wait. He’d rehearsed the plan over and over in his head. The method of termination would be two quick shots in the head. After it was done, he’d slip out of the locker room and leave through the front door like nothing had happened. A piece of cake. Except it wasn’t exactly.

Once he arrived at the club and was installed in the locker room, nothing felt like he imagined. When he heard the door swing open and his target enter, he couldn’t stop his heart from racing. Between the thin crack in the door and doorframe, he watched the tall thin figure enter a shower stall at the far end of the room. He listened and waited as his forehead beaded with sweat. When the shower came on, he bent over and unstrapped the pistol holstered at his calf. Then he slipped on the silencer he’d tucked away in his jacket pocket. As he stole quietly from the toilet stall, he felt like he was in some bizarre dream. It was like everything was happening a second before it happened. He seemed to be following his own footsteps as he crept over to where the man was showering and shoved the door open.

Before the target could turn towards him, he pressed the gun against his head and pulled the trigger twice. Above the sound of water jetting from the shower head, all he remembered hearing was a low, barely audible chug, chug as two bullets entered the man’s skull, splattering the white tile wall with blood and gray matter. He stared as the limp body slid slowly down the shower wall like an oversized ragdoll, the two dark holes in the side of his head staring up at him like eyeless sockets.

The bed springs creaked as he twisted over on his other side. He just couldn’t get comfortable. He told himself that it was the damn heat. The tepid air from the small rotating fan next to his bed felt like the stale breath of a panting dog. The room seemed hotter than the Judean desert training camp. The small fan barely helped at all. It was certainly no replacement for the ceiling fan he’d had in the room as