The Thirteenth Page is a mystery short story by Isaac Asimov.
Part of the Union Club series, it was first published in the August 1981 issue of "Gallery" magazine. Later collected in The Union Club Mysteries.
Summary[]
At the Union Club, Griswold recounts an intelligence failure that contributed to the surprise of the 1968 Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. A highly reliable Vietnamese agent operating in Hue sent a crucial encoded warning. The decoding system used a keyword derived from a specific page and line in a pre-arranged British paperback thriller. The key sent by the agent was "13 THP/2NDL," which was interpreted by Saigon headquarters as "thirteenth page, second line."
Using the first ten letters from the second line of page 13, the message decoded into meaningless garble. A request for confirmation went unanswered, as the agent had been captured and disappeared. For weeks, the message was considered an unsolvable failure until Griswold was consulted.
Griswold, learning of the agent's pride in his English and his habit of pointing out linguistic ambiguities, re-examined the key. He realized that in paperbacks, the pagination includes preliminary material (title page, dedication, etc.). Therefore, the "thirteenth page" of the novel itself is not necessarily page 13 of the book. The agent had used "13th page" to mean the thirteenth page of the story text, which in this case fell on page 21. Using the keyword from the second line of page 21, the message decoded perfectly, revealing the details of the imminent Tet Offensive. However, by the time this was discovered, the offensive had already begun.
Characters[]
- Griswold
- Club Member (the narrator)
- Baranov
- Jennings
- The Hue Agent
- The Vietnamese operative Messenger
Historical Figures mentioned[]
- President Lyndon B. Johnson
- Joseph Stalin
- Adolf Hitler
- The Shah of Iran
Organizations / Factions[]
- The Vietcong
- The Nazis