The consummation of these deals represented an important victory for private enterprise, he pointed out, since the armies of both countries were socialized institutions.
Once the contracts were signed, there seemed to be no point in using the resources of the syndicate to bomb and defend the bridge, inasmuch as both governments had ample men and material right there to do so and were perfectly happy to contribute them, and in the end Milo realized a fantastic profit from both halves of his project for doing nothing more than signing his name twice.
The arrangements were fair to both sides.
Since Milo did have freedom of passage everywhere, his planes were able to steal over in a sneak attack without alerting the German antiaircraft gunners; and since Milo knew about the attack, he was able to alert the German antiaircraft gunners in sufficient time for them to begin firing accurately the moment the planes came into range.
It was an ideal arrangement for everyone but the dead man in Yossarian’s tent, who was killed over the target the day he arrived.
‘I didn’t kill him!’ Milo kept replying passionately to Yossarian’s angry protest.
‘I wasn’t even there that day, I tell you.
Do you think I was down there on the ground firing an antiaircraft gun when the planes came over?’
‘But you organized the whole thing, didn’t you?’ Yossarian shouted back at him in the velvet darkness cloaking the path leading past the still vehicles of the motor pool to the open-air movie theater.
‘And I didn’t organize anything,’ Milo answered indignantly, drawing great agitated sniffs of air in through his hissing, pale, twitching nose.
‘The Germans have the bridge, and we were going to bomb it, whether I stepped into the picture or not.
I just saw a wonderful opportunity to make some profit out of the mission, and I took it.
What’s so terrible about that?’
‘What’s so terrible about it?
Milo, a man in my tent was killed on that mission before he could even unpack his bags.’
‘But I didn’t kill him.’
‘You got a thousand dollars extra for it.’
‘But I didn’t kill him.
I wasn’t even there, I tell you.
I was in Barcelona buying olive oil and skinless and boneless sardines, and I’ve got the purchase orders to prove it. And I didn’t get the thousand dollars.
That thousand dollars went to the syndicate, and everybody got a share, even you.’
Milo was appealing to Yossarian from the bottom of his soul.
‘Look, I didn’t start this war, Yossarian, no matter what that lousy Wintergreen is saying.
I’m just trying to put it on a businesslike basis.
Is anything wrong with that?
You know, a thousand dollars ain’t such a bad price for a medium bomber and a crew.
If I can persuade the Germans to pay me a thousand dollars for every plane they shoot down, why shouldn’t I take it?’
‘Because you’re dealing with the enemy, that’s why.
Can’t you understand that we’re fighting a war?
People are dying.
Look around you, for Christ’s sake!’
Milo shook his head with weary forbearance.
‘And the Germans are not our enemies,’ he declared.
‘Oh I know what you’re going to say.
Sure, we’re at war with them.
But the Germans are also members in good standing of the syndicate, and it’s my job to protect their rights as shareholders.
Maybe they did start the war, and maybe they are killing millions of people, but they pay their bills a lot more promptly than some allies of ours I could name. Don’t you understand that I have to respect the sanctity of my contract with Germany?
Can’t you see it from my point of view?’
‘No,’ Yossarian rebuffed him harshly.
Milo was stung and made no effort to disguise his wounded feelings.
It was a muggy, moonlit night filled with gnats, moths, and mosquitoes.
Milo lifted his arm suddenly and pointed toward the open-air theater, where the milky, dust-filled beam bursting horizontally from the projector slashed a conelike swath in the blackness and draped in a fluorescent membrane of light the audience tilted on the seats there in hypnotic sags, their faces focused upward toward the aluminized movie screen.
Milo’s eyes were liquid with integrity, and his artless and uncorrupted face was lustrous with a shining mixture of sweat and insect repellent.
‘Look at them,’ he exclaimed in a voice choked with emotion. ‘They’re my friends, my countrymen, my comrades in arms.
A fellow never had a better bunch of buddies. Do you think I’d do a single thing to harm them if I didn’t have to?
Haven’t I got enough on my mind?
Can’t you see how upset I am already about all that cotton piling up on those piers in Egypt?’
Milo’s voice splintered into fragments, and he clutched at Yossarian’s shirt front as though drowning.
His eyes were throbbing visibly like brown caterpillars.
‘Yossarian, what am I going to do with so much cotton?