The Obedient Assassin: A Novel (30 page)

I would like to thank the Museo Casa de Leon Trotsky in Mexico City and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University for access to their Trotsky archives. In Mexico City, one of the great urban mazes layered with history, I remain grateful to Pedro de Aguinaga and Víctor Nava for their hospitality and guidance.

Many friends and former colleagues read drafts of this novel. In Austin, Laura Furman deserves special thanks. A remarkable writer and editor, she became so familiar with the story and characters that she was able to put her finger on just the right title. Generous with time, encouragement, and wisdom, she always helped me see the next step.

The late Wendy Weil, faithful and unswerving, proved to be the perfect agent. I was lucky to have Wendy take on the novel and that Emma Patterson has seen the project to completion.

At Delphinium, I'm grateful to both Carl Lennertz and Joseph Olshan for their support and enthusiasm. I could not have asked for a better editor than Joseph Olshan, who at every turn challenged and inspired me.

Immediately following Trotsky's assassination, the Fourth International asked everyone who had observed Ramón Mercader and Sylvia Ageloff to jot down what they knew and remembered. The result was a thin file of documents written by friends in Paris, Sylvia's sisters, Alfred and Marguerite Rosmer, and the guards at Trotsky's house that suggested a narrative path through a complex historical event.

One of the first and most compelling published accounts was
Murder in Mexico
(Secker & Warburg, 1950), by Leandro A. Sanchez Salazar, the head of the secret police in Mexico when Trotsky was killed. Sanchez focuses on his investigation of the crime.

Isaac Deutscher covered the assassination in
The Prophet Outcast
(Oxford University Press, 1963), the third volume of his magisterial Trotsky biography, as did Hayden Herrera in
Frida
(Harper & Row, 1983).

Other books that I found helpful:
Homage to Catalonia
(Mariner Books, 1979), by George Orwell;
Dreaming with His Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera
(Knopf, 1998), by Patrick Marnham;
With Trotsky in Exile: From Prinkipo to Coyoacán
(Harvard University Press, 1978), by Jean van Heijenoort;
El Grito de Trotsky
(Random House Mondadori, 2006), by José Ramón Garmabella;
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
(Vintage Books, 2003), by Simon Sebag Montefiore; and
A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924
(Penguin Books, 1998), by Orlando Figes

John P. Davidson was born and raised in Fredericksburg, a small ranching community in the Texas Hill Country. He studied economics and history at the University of Texas at Austin, then joined the Peace Corps, serving as a volunteer in Peru where he worked with agricultural co-ops in the desert south of Lima. Following the Peace Corps, he earned a master's degree at the University of Texas while teaching in a community literacy program.

He began writing at
Texas Monthly
magazine, where one of his early assignments was to follow Mexican workers crossing the Rio Grande to find jobs in Texas. He made the trip twice with two brothers and in 1980 published
The Long Road North
(Doubleday). He has held senior editorial positions at
Texas Monthly,
the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
and
Vanity Fair
. As a freelance writer, he has contributed to
GQ, Fortune, Rolling Stone, Harper's, Elle, Preservation,
and
Mirabella
. He received a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the Dobie Paisano Fellowship, and the Penney-Missouri Prize for Excellence in Journalism. He taught English at the Universidad Católica de Puerto Rico, and has been a guest lecturer at the University of the Americas in Cholula, Mexico. He travels frequently in Latin America and lives in Austin, Texas.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by John P. Davidson

Cover design by Greg Mortimer

978-1-4804-6519-0

Published in 2013 by Delphinium Books, Inc.
P. O. Box 703
Harrison, NY 10528
www.delphiniumbooks.com

Distributed by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com

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