“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 51
secret documents lying around here if I were you. At least not until I make my report.’
‘I don’t get any top-secret documents,’ said Major Major.
‘That’s the kind I mean. Lock them in your cabinet where Sergeant Towser can’t get
his hands on them.’
‘Sergeant Towser has the only key to the cabinet.’
‘I’m afraid we’re wasting time,’ said the second C.I.D. man rather stiffly. He was a
brisk, pudgy, high-strung person whose movements were swift and certain. He took a
number of photostats out of a large red expansion envelope he had been hiding
conspicuously beneath a leather flight jacket painted garishly with pictures of airplanes
flying through orange bursts of flak and with orderly rows of little bombs signifying fiftyfive
combat missions flown. ‘Have you ever seen any of these?’ Major Major looked with
a blank expression at copies of personal correspondence from the hospital on which the
censoring officer had written ‘Washington Irving’ or ‘Irving Washington.’
‘No.’
‘How about these?’ Major Major gazed next at copies of official documents addressed
to him to which he had been signing the same signatures.
‘No.’
‘Is the man who signed these names in your squadron?’
‘Which one? There are two names here.’
‘Either one. We figure that Washington Irving and Irving Washington are one man and
that he’s using two names just to throw us off the track. That’s done very often you
know.’
‘I don’t think there’s a man with either of those names in my squadron.’ A look of
disappointment crossed the second C.I.D. man’s face. ‘He’s a lot cleverer than we
thought,’ he observed. ‘He’s using a third name and posing as someone else. And I
think… yes, I think I know what that third name is.’ With excitement and inspiration, he
held another photostat out for Major Major to study. ‘How about this?’ Major Major bent
forward slightly and saw a copy of the piece of V mail from which Yossarian had blacked
out everything but the name Mary and on which he had written, ‘I yearn for you
tragically. R. O. Shipman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.’ Major Major shook his head.
‘I’ve never seen it before.’
‘Do you know who R. O. Shipman is?’
‘He’s the group chaplain.’
‘That locks it up,’ said the second C.I.D. man. ‘Washington Irving is the group
chaplain.’ Major Major felt a twinge of alarm. ‘R. O. Shipman is the group chaplain,’ he
corrected.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why should the group chaplain write this on a letter?’
‘Perhaps somebody else wrote it and forged his name.’
‘Why should somebody want to forge the group chaplain’s name?’
‘To escape detection.’
‘You may be right,’ the second C.I.D. man decided after an instant’s hesitation, and
smacked his lips crisply. ‘Maybe we’re confronted with a gang, with two men working
together who just happen to have opposite names. Yes, I’m sure that’s it. One of them
here in the squadron, one of them up at the hospital and one of them with the chaplain.
That makes three men, doesn’t it? Are you absolutely sure you never saw any of these
official documents before?’
‘I would have signed them if I had.’
‘With whose name?’ asked the second C.I.D. man cunningly. ‘Yours or Washington
Irving’s?’
‘With my own name,’ Major Major told him. ‘I don’t even know Washington Irving’s
name.’ The second C.I.D. man broke into a smile.
‘Major, I’m glad you’re in the clear. It means we’ll be able to work together, and I’m
going to need every man I can get. Somewhere in the European theater of operations is