“No more guards,” said Paul. “We’ve seen to that. Now, please, don’t make it any more difficult than it is. Take the pill.”
“If you read my statement you know that....”
“You intend to take a pleasant trip around the world incognito with Iris. Yes, I know. As your friend, I wish you could do it. But, for one thing, sooner or later you’d be recognized and, for another, we must have proof ... we must have a body.”
“Iris will bring the body back,” said Cave. He was still quite calm. “I choose to do it this way and there’s nothing more to be said. You’ll have the Establishment all to yourself and I will be a most satisfactory figure upon which to build a world religion.” It was the only time in my experience with Cave that I ever heard him strike the ironic note.
“Leave us alone, Paul. You have what you want. Now let us go.” Iris begged but Paul had no eyes for anyone but Cave.
“Take it, John,” he repeated softly. “Take Cavesway.”
“Not for you.” Cave hurled the metal box at Paul’s head and Stokharin fired. There was one almost bland moment when we all stood, politely, in a circle and watched Cave, a look of wonder on his face, touch his shoulder where the blood had begun to flow through a hole in the jacket.
Then Iris turned fiercely on Paul, knocking him off balance, while Cave ran to the door. Stokharin, his hand shaking and his face silver with fear, fired three times, each time hitting Cave who quivered but did not fall; instead, he got through the door and into the study. As Stokharin hurried after him, I threw myself upon him, expecting death at any moment; but it did not come for Stokharin had collapsed. He dropped his gun and hid his face in his hands, rocking back and forth on the floor, sobbing. Paul, free of Iris’s fierce grip, got to Cave before I did. By then it was finished.
Cave lay in the corridor only a few feet from the elevator. He’d fallen on his face and lay now in his own blood, his hands working at the floor as though trying to dig himself a grave in the hard stone. I turned him on his back and he opened his eyes. “Iris?” he asked. His voice was ordinary though his breathing was harsh, uneven.
“Here I am.” She knelt down beside him, ignoring Paul who stood looking down at them, his pistol held at an absurd angle in his inexperienced hand.