Jacson-Mercader was invited inside. He followed Trotsky, walking from the patio toward the library at the top right of the T-shaped house. Ramón Mercader was five feet ten inches tall and wiry in build, his broad shoulders slightly stooped. The day before, Sylvia had written her sister that “he’s lost so much weight his clothes flop on him like a scarecrow.” Trotsky, walking ahead of him, was six feet in his shoes, broad-chested, and despite his recent bouts of fatigue and an aching back, physically powerful.
The two men made their way through the library into the dining room and then into the study. It was the first time they had been alone in the house. Trotsky sat down at his desk, strewn with books, newspapers, and manuscripts, and began reading Jacson’s article. As he did so, Jacson walked over to the left side of the desk and sat on its edge, keeping his hat on and his raincoat over his arm. This was shockingly rude behavior, but Trotsky, even though he was very territorial about his desk, was too polite to say anything. Jacson sat beside the push-button switch to the alarm system. Nearby on the desk lay Trotsky’s .25-caliber automatic pistol, with six cartridges in the magazine. It had been oiled and reloaded only days before. Beside it were souvenir slugs from the Siqueiros raid.
It took Trotsky only a few paragraphs to recognize that Jacson’s article was unoriginal and incoherent. He suggested a few changes, and invited Jacson to bring back the article after he had revised it. Trotsky rose and escorted Jacson out to the patio. The entire visit took only eleven minutes.
The encounter left Trotsky feeling out of sorts. “I don’t like him,” he said to Natalia. Jacson’s typewritten banalities were one thing, but it was his outrageously bad manners that unsettled Trotsky. “Yesterday he did not resemble a Frenchman at all,” Trotsky brooded. “Suddenly he sat down on my desk and kept his hat on the entire time.” Natalia remembered that Jacson never wore a hat, and in fact he boasted about going around without a hat or a coat, even in rainy weather. “This time he wore a hat,” Trotsky stressed.
Whatever the August 17 visit was supposed to accomplish—and a failure of nerve might explain why Ramón Mercader did not attempt to carry out his deadly assignment that day—in one way it had served its purpose. With his hat, which functioned merely as a prop, Mercader had succeeded in drawing attention away from his raincoat, which concealed the tools of his trade.
THE MORNING OF August 20 was bathed in bright sunshine, although dark clouds gathered in clusters at the edges of the twin volcanic peaks to the southeast, threatening a downpour. Trotsky came outside to feed the rabbits and chickens at 7:15 a.m. as usual, then had breakfast at 9:00 a.m. He told Natalia he felt well, and they talked once again about summoning the barber because he needed a haircut.
With the morning mail came a telegram from Al Goldman in New York with important news: “HARVARD INFORMS MATERIAL ARRIVED.” This came as quite a relief. Only three days earlier Trotsky had let his paranoia about his archives get the better of him, writing to Goldman of his suspicion that the FBI had intercepted the shipment and was going through his files. “If, under these conditions they really found it necessary to check the documents without my authorization, it would signify a terrible abuse of power,” Trotsky complained, vowing to deliver a sharp public protest. “Disloyalty is always bad, but disloyalty of a state power toward a private person is especially despicable.” These, the words of the man who helped create the first totalitarian state, which even now he championed as the world’s most advanced country.
All along, Trotsky had argued that there was no fundamental distinction between Nazi Germany and the bourgeois democracies. They differed only in the way that “there is a difference in comfort between various cars in a railway train. But when the whole train is plunging into an abyss, the distinction between decaying democracy and murderous fascism disappears in the face of the collapse of the entire capitalist system.” He wrote those lines in May 1940. By August, after fascism had overrun most of Europe and Hitler appeared poised to conquer Britain, Trotsky’s focus had shifted. He became increasingly critical of the pacifism that was prevalent on the American left. The best way to defend “civil liberties and other good things in America,” he maintained, was to aid Britain and crush Hitler.
Yet Trotsky continued to believe that fascism represented the final stage of capitalism, and he predicted that the entry of the United States into the war would give birth to an American brand of militarism that would far surpass that of Hitler’s Germany. This left him open to criticism of the kind leveled at him by Dwight Macdonald in the July-August issue of Partisan Review, where Macdonald argued that the standard Marxist categories no longer applied. Exhibit A was Trotsky’s insistence that fascism was merely a revival of Bonapartism, clear evidence that he failed to appreciate the threat. After breakfast on the morning of August 20, Trotsky began to dictate a response to the “traitor” Macdonald, which he began by calling his article “very pretentious, very muddled, and stupid.”
At one o’clock, Trotsky’s Mexican attorney came by to inform him that he had been accused of defamation at a banquet sponsored by El Popular. The charge could not go unchallenged, they decided. Another head of the hydra would have to be lopped off.
Following the afternoon meal and a brief siesta, Trotsky went back to his desk. He dictated more of his rejoinder to Macdonald and began his response to El Popular—all of this spoken in Russian into the Dictaphone. Through the open window of his study, his voice could be heard punctuating the end of each sentence: “Tochka!” He also dictated to his typist, Evelyn, two congratulatory letters to comrades in Minneapolis who had been jailed for strike activity and were to be released on August 23.
The last letter of the day was addressed to Hank Schultz. Trotsky thanked him once again for all his help, and indicated that there was still some work to be done before the fortress was finally secure. He said he was delighted with the “excellent gift” sent to him by another Minneapolis comrade: a dictionary of American slang. Now, finally, he could make headway in understanding his guards. “There is only one difficulty: at meal-times I must permanently keep this book in my hands in order to be able to understand the conversation.” He continued in a humorous vein: “In the part I have already studied, which is devoted to college slang, I had hoped to find some abbreviations for the various sciences, philosophical theories, etc. but instead I found merely about 25 expressions for an attractive girl. Nothing at all about dialectics or materialism. I see that the official ‘Science’ is a bit unilateral.” He signed off, “Fraternally yours, Old Man.”
At five o’clock, Trotsky and Natalia had their usual tea. Then Trotsky went out to feed the animals. Hansen was on the roof near the blockhouse at the southeast corner with Charley Cornell and handyman Melquiades Benitez. They were connecting the powerful siren sent from Los Angeles. Robins was in the patio. The other guards were either running errands or had the time off. At about 5:20 p.m., Hansen looked down onto Avenida Viena and saw Jacson drive up in his car. He usually parked it facing the wall near the garage, but this time he made a full turn in the street and parked parallel to the wall, with the vehicle facing in the direction of Coyoacán.
Jacson emerged from the car, waved to the guards and shouted, “Has Sylvia arrived yet?” She had not, nor was she expected, so Hansen and Cornell assumed that Trotsky had arranged to meet the couple but had forgotten to tell them. “No,” Hansen called down, “wait a moment.” Cornell then operated the electronic controls on the doors to the garage, and Robins received the visitor in the patio.
Jacson wore a hat and carried a raincoat over his left arm. Hansen, Cornell, and Melquiades continued with their tasks. Jacson walked over to Trotsky, who was feeding his rabbits. He told him he had expected Sylvia to be there and that they were leaving for New York the next day. He had brought his revised article for Trotsky to have a last look. Trotsky continued to feed the rabbits, as he explained to Jacson that wet grass made their bellies swell and could be fatal.
Natalia stepped out onto the porch at the en
trance to the dining room, just to the left of the stem of the T, and saw her husband standing near an open rabbit hutch. Standing next to him was an unfamiliar figure. Only when he removed his hat and began to walk toward the porch did she recognize Jacson. “J’ai grand soif”—“I’m very thirsty”—he said to Natalia upon greeting her. “May I have a glass of water?” “Perhaps you would like a cup of tea?” she offered. “No, no. I dined too late and feel that the food is up here,” he replied, pointing at his throat. “It’s choking me.”
Jacson had not shaved in several days and he looked ill and seemed nervous. His face was gray-green. Natalia asked him about his hat and raincoat. “It’s so sunny today,” she said. “Yes,” he agreed, “but you know it won’t last long, it might rain.” Mercader had rehearsed this response many times in his head, but Natalia’s mild challenge appears to have unnerved him, so that at first he did not hear her query about Sylvia’s health. “Sylvia? Sylvia?” He pulled himself together, then remarked casually: “She’s fine, as always.”
Natalia and Jacson walked back toward Trotsky at the rabbit hutches. As they approached, Trotsky addressed Natalia in Russian: “You know, he is expecting Sylvia to call on us. They are leaving tomorrow.” Natalia took this as a hint that she should invite them to tea, perhaps even supper. Natalia told Jacson she had no idea they were leaving so soon and that Sylvia was coming to the house that day. “Yes, yes,” said Jacson, “I forgot to mention it to you.” Had she known, Natalia said, she would have prepared some things to send with them to New York. Jacson said he could return the following afternoon, but Natalia declined the offer.
Turning to Trotsky, she said that she had already offered Jacson some tea, but he said he was not feeling well and asked for water instead. Trotsky looked Jacson over and said to him in a tone of mild reproach, as though admonishing a comrade, “You don’t look well. That’s not good.”
In the momentary lull that ensued, Natalia sensed that her husband did not wish to leave his rabbits, but he managed to sound sincere nonetheless: “Well, what do you say, shall we go over your article?” He closed the doors to the hutches, brushed off his blue denim jacket, and began to walk toward the house. Natalia accompanied them to the door of the study, which Trotsky closed behind him.
Up on the roof, inside the blockhouse, Hansen was labeling the switches connecting the alarm system to the rooms of the individual guards. The wiring of this system had turned out to be extremely complicated, and after Schultz’s departure the electrical work had slowed considerably. But the worst was over—although the New York comrades had recently resurrected the idea of installing a photoelectric alarm system to detect intruders.
Suddenly a terrible cry pierced the afternoon quiet—“prolonged and agonized” is how Hansen registered it, “half scream, half sob. It dragged me to my feet, chilled to the bone.” He scrambled out of the blockhouse and onto the roof, searching for its source. Melquiades was aiming his rifle at the window to the study, where there were sounds of violent struggle. For a brief moment Trotsky’s blue jacket became visible as he grappled with someone. “Don’t shoot!” Hansen shouted to Melquiades. “You might hit the Old Man!”
Hansen switched on the general alarm and slid down the steel ladder to the library, while Melquiades and Cornell stayed on the roof, covering the exits from the house. As Hansen entered the dining room, Trotsky stumbled out of his study, blood streaming down his face. “See what they have done to me!” he moaned. Robins entered through the far door of the dining room, with Natalia close behind.
Natalia rushed over to her husband, his face now covered with blood. He had lost his glasses. His arms were hanging limp. “What happened? What happened?” she asked, flinging her arms frantically about him and walking him out onto the porch. He did not answer right away, and she thought something might have fallen on his head. “Jacson,” he uttered quietly.
Hansen and Robins entered the study, which was a shambles. Chairs were overturned and broken, papers and books were scattered all about, the Dictaphone had been smashed. There were large pools of blood on the floor and blood splattered on the desk, the books, the papers. Jacson stood in the middle of the room, gasping, his face contorted, his arms hanging limp, a pistol dangling in his hand. “You take care of him,” Hansen told Robins, “I’ll see what’s happened to the Old Man.” Robins struck Jacson on the head with the butt of his revolver, sending him to the floor. Under Robins’s repeated blows, Jacson kept yelling, “They made me do it!”
Natalia had brought Trotsky back inside the house, where he slumped to the floor on a small carpet by the dining table. “Natasha, I love you,” she heard him say in a grave voice. This took her completely by surprise because she assumed that his wound was not serious. She wiped the blood from his face, found a pillow for his head, and held a piece of ice on the wound. “Oh, oh,” he strained to speak the Russian words, “no one, no one must be allowed to see you without being searched.”
Hansen returned to Trotsky’s side. The wound, which appeared to be superficial, was on the top of his head, on the right side toward the back. Trotsky said he had been shot. Hansen told him this was not possible, that they had heard no noise, and that Jacson must have hit him. Trotsky looked doubtful. He brought Natalia’s hand repeatedly to his lips.
As Hansen raced up to the roof to alert the police, Trotsky spoke to Natalia slowly, forming the Russian syllables with increasing difficulty. But he was thinking clearly and urged that Seva be kept away from the house. “You know, in there,” he said, gesturing toward the room with his eyes, “I sensed…understood what he wanted to do…He wanted to strike me…once more…but I didn’t let him.”
Up on the roof, Hansen shouted down to the police, “Get an ambulance!” He looked at his watch: it was ten minutes to six. Caridad Mercader and Leonid Eitingon, stationed in separate cars a few blocks away, heard the alarm and the commotion and realized that things had not gone according to plan. Ramón had not managed to do the job quietly and then slip away—or even to execute the fall-back plan and shoot his way out. They had been waiting for him to drive around the corner and transfer to his mother’s car for the getaway. Now, with the police about to descend on Trotsky’s house, they fled the scene.
Again Hansen was at Trotsky’s side. Rather than wait for the ambulance to arrive from the city, they decided that Cornell should go for Dr. Dutren, who lived in the neighborhood and had been to the house before. Both cars were locked up in the garage, so in order to save time Cornell decided to take Mercader’s car. As Cornell departed, sounds of renewed struggle came from the study where Robins was holding Mercader.
“What about that one?” Natalia asked her husband. “They will kill him.” “No,” he struggled to say the words. “He must not…be killed…he must…talk.” Hansen entered the study, where Mercader was trying desperately to escape from Robins. “Don’t kill him,” he repeated Trotsky’s order, although Robins was trying to beat a confession out of him. “It’s the GPU who sent you! Admit it!” he threatened Mercader, who kept insisting it was not the GPU but some mystery man that made him do it. “They are keeping my mother a prisoner!”
Hansen saw Mercader’s automatic pistol on Trotsky’s desk. Trotsky’s glasses lay there, too—one of the lenses was broken and out of the frame. On the floor Hansen’s eyes took in something he had earlier missed, a blood-soaked instrument that resembled a prospector’s pick: one end was pointed, like an ice pick, the other was flat and wide; the handle, about a foot long, had been cut down for concealment.
Hansen began punching Mercader, hitting him on the mouth and on the jaw below the ear until the pain in his hand forced him to stop. The urge to kill was overwhelming, and Mercader sensed this. “Kill me! Kill me!” he pleaded. “I don’t deserve to live. Kill me. I did not do it on the order of the GPU, but kill me.” As they were beating him, he went in and out of consciousness, moaning several times, “They have imprisoned my mother.”
Suddenly Cornell burst into the roo
m. “The keys aren’t in his car.” He searched Mercader’s clothing for them while Hansen raced out to open the garage doors. Moments later, Cornell was driving out of the garage.
While they waited for Cornell to return with the doctor, Natalia and Hansen kneeled at Trotsky’s side, holding his hands. “He hit you with a pick,” Hansen told him. “He did not shoot you. I am sure it is only a surface wound,” he said, this time without conviction. “No,” Trotsky responded, “I feel here”—pointing to his heart—“that this time they have succeeded.” Hansen again sought to reassure him, but Trotsky understood what was happening. “Take care of Natalia. She has been with me many, many years,” he said, as his eyes filled with tears. Natalia began to cry over her husband, kissing his hand.
Cornell arrived with Dr. Dutren. He examined the wound and said it was not serious, although his manner said otherwise. A few moments later the ambulance arrived, and the police entered to take away the assailant, who was bloodied and bruised. As they dragged him out of the study, he cried, “Ma mère! Ma mère!”
The ambulance men brought in the stretcher. Natalia did not want her husband to be taken to a hospital: the risk of another attack was too great. Tense moments followed, as everyone waited for Trotsky to decide what to do. Hansen, Cornell, and Robins were kneeling beside him now. “We will go with you,” Hansen told him. “I leave it to your decision,” Trotsky said in a whisper. As they were about to place him on the stretcher, he again whispered, “I want everything I own to go to Natalia.” And finally, in a voice that wrenched the hearts of the men leaning over him, he said, “You will take care of her…”
Natalia and Hansen rode with Trotsky in the ambulance, which jolted over the potholes and plowed through the mud of Coyoacán’s near-impassable streets. The siren wailed incessantly en route to the city, accompanied by the shrill whistles of the squadron of police motorcycles leading the way.
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