滴答，滴答，崩溃

Then Mercader acted. Later he said that he was anxious “not to lose the brilliant opportunity that was offered me.” At the “exact moment” that Trotsky started to read, Mercader took a piolet from the pocket of his raincoat. At the end of its heavy, foot-long wooden shaft was a steel head that ran seven inches. One end had been sharpened to a vicious point; the other was a forked hammer claw. It was this broad end that Mercader bashed into Trotsky’s skull, leaving a gory two-and-a-half-inch wound. By Josh Ireland, from The Death of Trotsky: The True Story of the Plot to Kill Stalin’s Greatest Enemy, which was published last month by Dutton. …