'Oh, no, Colonel. I don't buy that.' Colonel Korn was unrufed. 'Neither do I, frankly, but everyone else will. So there you are.'
'You're a disgrace to your uniform!' Colonel Cathcart declared with blustering
wrath, whirling to confront Yossarian for the first time. 'I'd like to know how you ever got to be a captain, anyway.'
'You promoted him,' Colonel Korn reminded sweetly, stifling a snicker. 'Don't you remember?'
'Well, I never should have done it.'
'I told you not to do it,' Colonel Korn said. 'But you just wouldn't listen to me.'
'Gee whiz, will you stop rubbing it in?' Colonel Cathcart cried. He furrowed his brow and glowered at Colonel Korn through eyes narrow with suspicion, his fists clenched on his hips. 'Say, whose side are you on, anyway?'
'Your side, Colonel. What other side could I be on?'
'Then stop picking on me, will you? Get off my back, will you?'
'I'm on your side, Colonel. I'm just loaded with patriotism.'
'Well, just make sure you don't forget that.' Colonel Cathcart turned away grudgingly after another moment, incompletely reassured, and began striding the floor, his hands kneading his long cigarette holder. He jerked a thumb toward Yossarian. 'Let's settle with him. I know what I'd like to do with him. I'd like to take him outside and shoot him. That's what I'd like to do with him. That's what General Dreedle would do with him.'
'But General Dreedle isn't with us any more,' said Colonel Korn, 'so we can't take him outside and shoot him.' Now that his moment of tension with Colonel Cathcart had passed, Colonel Korn relaxed again and resumed kicking softly against Colonel Cathcart's desk. He returned to Yossarian. 'So we're going to send you home instead. It took a bit of thinking, but we finally worked out this horrible little plan for sending you home without causing too much dissatisfaction among the friends you'll leave behind. Doesn't that make you happy?'
'What kind of plan? I'm not sure I'm going to like it.'
'I know you're not going to like it.' Colonel Korn laughed, locking his hands contentedly on top of his head again. 'You're going to loathe it. It really is odious and certainly will offend your conscience. But you'll agree to it quickly enough. You'll agree to it because it will send you home safe and sound in two weeks, and because you have no choice. It's that or a court-martial. Take it or leave it.' Yossarian snorted. 'Stop bluffing, Colonel. You can't court-martial me for desertion in the face of the enemy. It would make you look bad and you probably couldn't get a conviction.'
'But we can court-martial you now for desertion from duty, since you went to Rome without a pass. And we could make it stick. If you think about it a minute, you'll see that you'd leave us no alternative. We can't simply let you keep walking around in open insubordination without punishing you. All the other men would stop flying missions, too. No, you have my word for it. We will court-martial you if you turn our deal down, even though it would raise a lot of questions and be a terrible black eye for Colonel Cathcart.' Colonel Cathcart winced at the words 'black eye' and, without any apparent premeditation, hurled his slender onyx-and-ivory cigarette holder down viciously on the wooden surface on his desk. 'Jesus Christ!' he shouted unexpectedly. 'I hate this goddam cigarette holder!' The cigarette holder bounced off the desk to the wall, ricocheted across the window sill to the floor and came to a stop almost where he was standing. Colonel Cathcart stared down at it with an irascible scowl. 'I wonder if it's really doing me any good.'
'It's a feather in your cap with General Peckem, but a black eye for you with General Scheisskopf,' Colonel Korn informed him with a mischievous look of innocence.
'Well, which one am I supposed to please?'
'Both.'
'How can I please them both? They hate each other. How am I ever going to get a feather in my cap from General Scheisskopf without getting a black eye from General Peckem?'
'March.'
'Yeah, march. That's the only way to please him. March. March.' Colonel Cathcart grimaced sullenly. 'Some generals! They're a disgrace to their uniforms. If people like those two can make general, I don't see how I can miss.'
'You're going to go far.' Colonel Korn assured him with a flat lack of conviction, and turned back chuckling to Yossarian, his disdainful merriment increasing at the sight of Yossarian's unyielding expression of antagonism and distrust. 'And there you have the crux of the situation. Colonel Cathcart wants to be a general and I want to be a colonel, and that's why we have to send you home.'
'Why does he want to be a general?'
'Why? For the same reason that I want to be a colonel. What else have we got to do? Everyone teaches us to aspire to higher things. A general is higher than a colonel, and a colonel is higher than a lieutenant colonel. So we're both aspiring. And you know, Yossarian, it's a lucky thing for you that we are. Your timing on this is absolutely perfect, but I suppose you took that factor into account in your calculations.'
'I haven't been doing any calculating,' Yossarian retorted.
'Yes, I really do enjoy the way you lie,' Colonel Korn answered. 'Won't it make you proud to have your commanding officer promoted to general--to know you served in an outfit that averaged more combat missions per person than any other? Don't you want to earn more unit citations and more oak leaf clusters for your Air Medal? Where's your esprit de corps? Don't you want to contribute further to this great record by flying more combat missions? It's your last chance to answer yes.'
'No.'
'In that case, you have us over a barrel--' said Colonel Korn without rancor.
'He ought to be ashamed of himself!'
'--and we have to send you home. Just do a few little things for us, and--'