“Why haven’t I read about any of this in the papers?”
“We’ve been able to keep things fairly quiet. Paul is marvelous with the editors ... several have even joined us, by the way ... secretly, of course.”
“What’s the membership now?”
Iris gestured. “No one knows. We have thirty Centers in the United States and each day they receive hundreds of new Cavites. I suspect there are at least four million by now.”
I gasped, beginning to recover at last from the heat, from my unexpected crisis of love. “I had no idea things were going so fast.”
“Too fast. We haven’t enough trained people to look after the Centers and on top of that we’ve got to set up new Centers. Paul has broken the country up into districts, all very methodical: so many Centers per district each with a Resident in charge. Stokharin is taking care of the clinical work.”
“Where’s the money coming from?”
“In bushels from heaven,” Iris smiled. “We leave all that up to Paul. I shouldn’t be surprised if he counterfeits it. One thing I know, though, I must get back to New York soon, to the school. I shouldn’t really have gone off in the middle of everything but I was tired and John wanted company so I came.”
“How is he?”
“As you see: calm. I don’t believe he ever thinks of any of our problems. He never talks about them; never reads the reports Paul sends him. He seldom reads the attacks from the churches and we get several a day, not to mention threatening mail. It’s got so bad that we now have full-time bodyguards.”