Josh Ireland

He seems to have had the ice axe for quite a long time.

And then at some point they shorten it so that it can be easily hidden underneath his big coat.

And the other thing that has happened during this time is that Ramon disappears to America for a bit, effectively, he says, to deal with some problems that have arisen in this mysterious import-export business.

And when he returns, something significant has changed about him.

One thing is that this person who hadn't been interested at all in politics is suddenly a passionate Trotskyist who's sort of throwing himself into these, all the sort of strange arcane arguments that the Trotskyists have.

And the second is that his personality seems to be changed so that before he was this confident, sunny, helpful person, and now he seems quite withdrawn.

His skin seems to have acquired this sort of greenish pallor.

He's nervous.

He sort of trembles.

He will sometimes, you know, he won't notice when someone else is talking to him.

And people, again, have registered this change.

They notice that something is a bit different about it, but they don't understand what it means.

And, you know, their business is persuading people.

So Trotsky knows that he's a bit unreliable.

He's a bit strange.

But Trotsky...

His whole thing is that I'm one of the great communicators of the 20th century.

I can take people with me.

I don't care if he might be an NKVD spy.

I reckon I can persuade him.