Catching a Spy - With the Girls of Beis Chai

CATCHING A SPY

 WITH

THE GIRLS OF BEIS CHAI

               

The way it starts……              

           

Pedro went over to his fax machine.  The information had to be transferred over quickly.  What a stroke of luck that he had found it out!  The results would be devastating, truly devastating.  Four pages - that wasn't much, really.  But these four pages held the key to destruction.

He put a page into the machine, lifted the handset, dialed the overseas code, and then dialed the number.

The first page went quickly, the second, and the third. His heart was pounding, his breath coming fast.  This was the greatest 'find' he had ever made.  The Big Man would be happy; very happy.

He fed in the fourth page, perhaps the most vital.  He hadn't really held it straight but the machine had grasped it and he allowed it to go ahead. Halfway through, it stopped.  Obviously there was a 'jam up' in the

machine.  He pressed the stop button and lifted the top, releasing the document.

He was immediately issued with confirmation of successful transmission of the three pages at a good speed. Nothing was printed out in reference to the fourth page. 

He put page four back into the machine, watched the green light switch on and dialled again.  He pressed the start button.

The page began to move slowly, incredibly slowly, cautiously, almost as if the machine was copying a photograph.  For some reason it was using a slower speed like the old G2 machines.  That meant it would cost a great

deal more.

But that was hardly a problem, not with information like this!  It was only his own impatience and a strange uneasiness about the way the machine was behaving.

He waited for the information and it emerged.  The transmission had been O.K. and the time, several minutes. One page had been transmitted.  The number it had been sent to, however, had been omitted.  That was hardly a

problem.  That had happened occasionally before.

He waited, perspiration pouring down his face.  He waited for the praise that would surely be given him.  Maybe he would be given a higher position in the Organization?  Maybe he would get a reward.

He began to daydream and awoke from his reverie.

There had been no answer....  strange!  Was the Big Man not there?  He looked at his watch.  That was unlikely.

Puzzled, he stared at the machine.  Was it broken?

There was a tinkling sound and a light flashed.  A message was coming through!  Here was his reward!

"Three pages received clearly.  Thank you.  Excellent work.  There must be a fourth page.  Please transmit immediately."

That was strange.  He had transmitted it.  There really must have been something wrong with the machine. He locked in the fourth page and again dialled the number, watching it transmit quickly, smoothly as the other pages had done. Good. That made his communication complete.

The machine tinkled, the green light flashed and a message came out, congratulating him on his work.  This would put the organisation in an unexpected position of strength.

He looked fondly at the paper.  This was something he would really like to keep.  But there were instructions to be followed.  All these fax papers had to be destroyed; so had the original documents.

But  the Big Man had congratulated him and he would receive a reward.  He would take off the rest of the day, go to the bar, and get absolutely and totally drunk - smashed!

He would have to celebrate!

                       ............................

Rivkie Saroson sat in front of the fax machine staring at the five pages of history notes which had been sent to her by her friend, Rochel

Shuster.  It was really far more convenient and quicker to work with Rochel in this way.  In the past they had spent hours on the phone

together doing homework.

Rochel's father, Rabbi Yisroel Shuster, had been the first to acquire a fax machine.  A congregant of his, a businessman, had replaced his fax machine with a newer, more efficient model, and had asked the Rabbi if he

would have any use for the old one. Rabbi Shuster had jumped at the chance.  Even though the machine was slower than the new machines, having a fax machine opened up a whole new world of communication.

Rivkie's father, Dr Saroson, had brought home their machine from his consulting rooms.  He, too, had found his slower machine becoming out of date and had replaced it.

It had taken Rochel and Rivkie only a few minutes to realise the homework potential of the two machines and the hours on the phone were replaced by pages of mathematical calculations, Biology illustrations, Jewish History essays, Chumash vocabulary, etc.  It had been a great success, and telephone time had been cut down to a minimum.

Rivkie had been ill for a few days with some kind of flu which had made her feel totally incapable of doing anything constructive.  Tomorrow would be her first day back at school.

Rochel had been organizing the notes she would have to catch up on.  The History notes had been the most important. She would arrive back at school just before an important history test, focusing on Contemporary politics. She looked at the pages of notes.  It meant a lot of work, but she was feeling stronger and more able to cope with it.  She would actually begin right away.

At that moment there was a tinkle from the machine and slowly, (her machine always worked slowly) another page emerged...  More history... and Rochel must have been very tired when she wrote the notes.  Her handwriting always changed when she was tired.  She would write backwards, front wards, below the lines. But this seemed even worse than usual.  However, it was legible at least. 

She glanced at the page and put it with her other notes.  She would spend  half the night learning.

……and so it continues

A fax containing top secret information gets picked up by a fax machine belonging to a Grade 11 schoolgirl who assumes it is part of her history homework.

At a mayoral tea party her teacher mentions some of the odd information that students write in their history tests. At least one of the guests realizes the significance and here begins a mystery and an adventure story that has the reader engrossed until the very end.

A Jewish Mystery and Adventure Story for Girls

Although several publishers said that they really liked this book, it never fitted in with their publishing schedule. Therefore it has only been published now, on an Independent Publishing Platform.

Copyright: Dr. Ruth  Benjamin  

(PhD Psychology) 2014

Available as an e-Book on Amazon Kindle

Published by Create Space, Independent Publishing Platform. www.createspace.com

Available on all Amazon websites