Admission, when it came, was sudden and effortless. The electric lock snapped, the heavy iron bar scraped against concrete, then the reinforced steel door opened into the garage where a station had been set up for the guards in the right bay—a desk with an office chair and a high stool that could be pulled up to the peephole. “Mrs. Rosmer said you should wait in the garden,” Jake Cooper explained as he let Jacques in. “She says there’s no reason you should stand on the street.”
A straw chair waited for him. He unbuttoned his jacket and sat down, lighting a cigarette, crossing his legs in the style of American men, his right ankle resting above his left knee. A flagstone path ran parallel below the front wall, leading to the open doors of the library, the clatter of typewriters; bougainvillea cascaded over the roof of the little porch to make a bower above the door. A narrow strip of brilliantly green grass separated the path from the wing of the house that extended into the garden, three rooms each with a romantic little balcony a foot above the ground, a curved ornamental railing with French doors.
After a moment, a high-ranking Mexican officer in jodhpurs, tunic, and riding boots emerged from the bougainvillea to stride down the path to the gate. Beneath a visor cap, his face was soft and somehow feminine, a dark mole just beneath the left corner of his mouth. He glanced at Ramón and nodded briskly. As he was going out, Sheldon Harte waved from the machine-gun turret on the front wall above the library door. “You’re here for Marguerite?” he called.
Jacques nodded affirmatively and smiled. “I’m taking her to see Alfred.”
He finished his cigarette, then, realizing that Jake Cooper was speaking to someone on the street through the peephole, Jacques got up, pretending to stretch his legs. Hands in pockets, he strolled over to inspect the beds of daisies and ferns beneath the little balconies. The first of the three rooms was Trotsky’s office; part of his desk was visible through the French doors. The next room was filled with shadow, a bed covered with an Indian blanket, sunlight coming from high windows on the opposite wall. The third set of French doors looked into the boy’s room, a single bed, a child’s desk, model airplanes suspended by wires from the ceiling.
Checking to make sure he was unobserved, Jacques moved to the end of the wing, rounding the corner of the house with the intention of locating an exterior entrance and the rooms for the guards at the back of the compound. A breeze moved through the boughs of the eucalyptus tree above, rippling the raft of sunlight and shadows floating upon the ground. There was the scent of eucalyptus and wood smoke, the diffuse and distant sounds of the village. Sheltered by walls and the tree, the garden felt like a little corner of paradise.
For a moment Jacques didn’t notice the man standing with his back to the house, facing some sort of wire cage. But then, sensing another presence, he turned. Heart skipping, Jacques recognized the distinctive face that, with the goatee, round gasses, and high forehead, looked like that of Mephistopheles. Satan. That Trotsky wore a blue peasant’s smock and held a white rabbit he had pulled from a raised hutch made him that much more sinister. The men looked at each other, arrested in a moment of stillness, then Jacques—wishing he had no knowledge of what lay ahead—bowed ever so slightly and retreated from the shade of the eucalyptus to the strip of lawn and his chair.
By now, Marguerite Rosmer’s procession through the library could be heard, her fluty voice bidding the secretaries farewell, collecting good wishes for her husband. She emerged wearing her one good dress, the navy blue, carrying her handbag and a straw basket covered with a dish towel. “Ah! Mon cher, there you are!” she piped in French, letting Jacques rescue her from the burden of the basket. “I made Alfred some of my chicken soup with none of those chiles he detests. I see Jake let you in. So much nicer than sitting on the street like a peon.”
She spoke to Jake Cooper in English, asking the whereabouts of Natalia Sedova—as everyone referred to Madame Trotsky. Once more on the street, Jacques held the door of the Buick for Marguerite, then put the basket in the back of the car, making sure the jar of soup stood upright.
“And Alfred?” Jacques asked, sliding behind the steering wheel.
“Much better, thank you.”
As he started the car, she opened her black leather purse, which exhaled a history of face powders, hand creams, mints, and medicines. He sensed she was about to bring out a letter from Sylvia, but it was an embroidered handkerchief he’d given her on an outing to the Indian market in Toluca. She and Alfred had to pinch their pennies so tightly, and she had been delighted with the knots of silk violets that ran along the border.
By some unspoken agreement, neither she nor Jacques mentioned Sylvia, who had been gone less than two weeks. He was sure Sylvia had extracted some sort of promise from Marguerite to keep him away from the house. But with Alfred in the hospital, it was too great a sacrifice for Marguerite to forgo Jacques’s assistance, not to mention the pleasure of his company. So many in the house needed rides to one place or another, and so often Trotsky’s cars weren’t available, or the Ford was being repaired.
“Did I tell you I moved from my hotel to the Shirley Courts?” Jacques asked.
“The what?”
“It’s very modern, an American motel.”
“Motel?”
“Motor hotel. A hotel for cars.”
“Wouldn’t that be a garage?”
“It’s most convenient with a car. You can pull right up to your door without going in and out of a lobby.”
“I think I’ve heard of that kind of establishment, a place married men take their mistresses.”
“But this is very wholesome, a family place. Mr. and Mrs. Shirley have a son who’s interested in mountain climbing.”
“Well, a motel! I would like to see it.”
“I’m not sure that would be wise. Mr. Shirley might not like my bringing a beautiful married woman.”
He pressed the cigarette lighter and rolled down his window. “Who was that at the house just now? A Mexican army officer. A colonel, I would think.”
“That must have been Colonel Sanchez, head of the secret police in Mexico. To look at him you wouldn’t think it, but Mexicans tremble when they hear his name. He’s very powerful.”
“What was he doing there?”
“He comes to the house on a regular basis.”
“Really?”
“Yes, President Cárdenas made Colonel Sanchez personally responsible for Trotsky’s safety when he first arrived in Mexico. By now, the Colonel drops by as if he were an old friend of the family.”
They were halfway into town when she said, “Regarde l’éclair!” as a bolt of lighting flashed in the dark clouds clustered against the volcanoes. “The rainy season is about to start. Last year, we arrived just at the end of the season—so charming, quite exotic. Every evening there’s a dramatic storm—like in an opera. Lightning and thunder crashing. You think it’s the end of the world, then—poof!—it’s over.”
The French hospital was in the Condesa, an enclave of wealthy European Jews where four- and five-story Art Deco apartment buildings sprouted up around a bare, almost treeless park. The exterior of the hospital was white as was the interior, halls white and clean, smelling of ether and disinfectant. Alfred was growing restless in the second week of his convalescence. Jacques took the older man’s hand in his, kissing him on the cheek. At Marguerite’s bidding, he procured bowl, spoon, and napkin for the soup, then left the Rosmers to themselves. He wanted a moment alone to go over what he had seen at the house in Coyoacán, but instead found himself thinking about Sylvia.
It had been easy to comfort her, to take her in his arms, to dream with her about the life they would have in New York. But beneath her hysteria, at some level she understood what was happening. He worried that some day she would feel betrayed, but there was nothing he could do, and never had been, to alter the course of events. Whether or not Ramón provided the floor plan, Siqueiros would storm the house.
He smoked his cigarette in front of the hospital, thinking that the park and the buildings looked raw and ugly, that it was a mistake trying to re-create Europe in Mexico.
He had finished the cigarette and was holding the car door for Marguerite when Sheldon pulled up in Trotsky’s big black Dodge. “Look!” said Marguerite. “There’s Natalia Sedova. She’s come to see Alfred.”
Trotsky’s wife sat in the back of the Dodge with her grandson Seva. The boy got out first, looking pale and vulnerable in his school uniform, a white shirt, black shorts, and long black socks. “Marguerite!” he called. “Mr. Jacson!”
Natalia Sedova followed, a thin woman with gray hair and a sad, long face, holding a coffee can filled with daisies, ferns, and a frond of bougainvillea from the garden. Ramón wanted to turn away, to protect himself from the sight of this woman, but Marguerite was hugging the boy. “We almost missed you,” she said to Natalia Sedova. “I didn’t know you were coming. Alfred will be so glad to see you.”
“He isn’t too tired for another visit?”
“Not at all. He’ll be delighted.”
“I don’t believe you’ve met Sylvia’s husband, Frank Jacson,” said Marguerite, turning to include Jacques.
Natalia Sedova offered her hand, her thoughtful gray eyes studying his face. “I’ve heard a great deal about you from the Rosmers. And from Seva. You’ve been very kind to include my grandson in your outings with Marguerite and Alfred.”
Jacques felt a stab of remorse. Unable to speak, he could only smile, then looked down, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “We’ve had some fun, haven’t we, Esteban?”
“Yes, sir,” the boy said, turning to smile up at Jacques.
“And do you know Mr. Harte?” Natalia Sedova asked. “Sheldon is here from New York, helping us for a while.”
Jacques smiled, and the two men shook hands as if they’d never spoken.
The encounter pleased Marguerite. “Such a good person,” she remarked, settling into the Buick.
Jacques stepped on the ignition. “Her eyes are so sad,” he said in an involuntary, wondering voice. “I’ve never seen such sad eyes.”
“Yes, but it’s only natural when someone kills your children.”