WASHINGTON: The ice axe that was plunged into Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky’s skull during his gruesome murder in Mexico on August 20, 1940 is today among the prized exhibits at Washington’s International Spy Museum.

It took Keith Melton, an espionage historian for the CIA, nearly four decades to find it — as well as to figure out why the assassin sent by Joseph Stalin, Ramon Mercader, used the axe to kill Trotsky.

Melton, who combed the world to amass the collection of ingenious and macabre tools of the black arts of spying that fill the museum, had his eye on finding the weapon since the 1970s.

It had disappeared shortly after the assassination. Following clues from Mexico to Moscow and countries in between, Melton repeatedly came up empty-handed.

“I like detective hunts. This really is one that challenged me,” he said.

As he searched, he also focused on a mystery: why choose an ice axe? An experienced mountaineer, Mercader was handy with the tool, also known as a piolet.

But just shooting the 61-year-old revolutionary would have been easier, after several failed attempts crafted by the Russian NKVD, or secret police.

Trotsky never left his small compound in the Mexican capital where he went into exile, protected by a handful of armed guards.

But Mercader gained entry to the revolutionary’s small entourage as the lover of a New York Trotskyite, who believed he was a left-leaning son of a wealthy Belgian diplomat — a cover designed by the NKVD.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2020