It was 5 o'clock in the afternoon of Aug. 20, 1940. Leon Trotsky finished his tea and strolled through a door of his house into a grass-grown, flower-strewn patio. He wandered about, pausing now & then to enjoy that most bourgeois of bourgeois things: a garden, not for food, but for pleasure. Geraniums were sprouting from pots, roses bursting in bloom, chickens cackling in coops, rabbits copulating in warrens, birds twittering with sunset nervousness in trees that overhung the 20-foot garden wall. The trees cast flickering shadows across the patio. The sky over Mexico City was sharp, clear blue,...
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