They Eat Puppies, Don't They?

by Christopher Buckley

Genres: Humor & Satire

Synopsis

In an attempt to gain congressional approval for a top-secret weapons system, Washington lobbyist "Bird" McIntyre teams up with sexy, outspoken neocon Angel Templeton to pit the American public against the Chinese. When Bird fails to uncover an authentic reason to slander the nation, he and Angel put the Washington media machine to work, spreading a rumor that the Chinese secret service is working to assassinate the Dalai Lama.

Meanwhile in China, mild-mannered President Fa Mengyao and his devoted aide Gang are maneuvering desperately against sinister party hard-liners Minister Lo and General Han. Now Fa and Gang must convince the world that the People's Republic is not out to kill the Dalai Lama, while maintaining Fa's small margin of power in the increasingly militaristic environment of the party.

On the home front, Bird must contend with a high-strung wife who entertains Olympic equestrian ambition, and the qualifying competition happens to be taking place in China. As things unravel abroad, Bird and Angel's lie comes dangerously close to reality. And as their relationship rises to a new level, so do mounting tensions between the United States and China.

A Hachette Audio production.

Release date: May 8, 2012

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 352

Sample

“A funny, funny book… Buckley is that rare combination—a brilliant satirist of the first order and a laugh-out-loud funny writer. THEY EAT PUPPIES, DON’T THEY? is one of his best.”

—Houston Chronicle

“A hilarious and page-turning story of political absurdity worthy of Dr. Strangelove himself.”

—DailyBeast.com

“Sharply hilarious, outrageously fun… Outrageous does not mean implausible, however, and Buckley commands the material so convincingly that the reader stops to ponder if some comic invention wasn’t something read in the newspaper last week… THEY EAT PUPPIES is smart entertainment, too. And seriously funny.”

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“A superbly paced novel whose hilarity is often in the details.”

—Bloomberg.com

“Waggishly amusing… It requires a certain measure of audacity to reward that most whacked of political piñatas, the Washington lobbyist, with his day in the sun. But lobbyists and spin doctors have been good to Buckley (see Thank You for Smoking and Boomsday), who reciprocally accords them a mordant admiration akin to that which David Mamet has lavished upon real estate sharks and card sharps.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“Political satire at its best.”

—ShelfAwareness.com

“Entertaining… insight into the way the world’s largest superpower works.”

—Financial Times Online

“Funny and refreshing.”

—Gail Collins, TIME

“A well-built addition to Buckley’s oeuvre.”

—Publishers Weekly

“World powers get little respect from Christopher Buckley in his latest novel… And as the title might suggest, there is a lot of humor to be digested… Hilarious… The usual disclaimer describes the book as a ‘work of fiction,’ and one can only hope there are no exceptions to that.”

—Oklahoman

“Bulls-eye political satire.”

—Booklist

“The title refers to the supposed culinary propensities of the Chinese, but as this novel makes clear, it’s said with more than a twist of irony… A lively and politically spirited read.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“You won’t really be fond of any of the characters in Christopher Buckley’s satire THEY EAT PUPPIES, DON’T THEY? But you will have a ball reading about their shenanigans.”

—Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star

“Christopher Buckley, amuser-in-chief… Buckley’s latest foray into international affairs is entertaining and topical. It cuts close to the bone, funny and otherwise.”

—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“A rollicking satire with cloak-and-dagger plot that spoofs Washington politics, while making some serious points about American foreign policy.”

—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“The satire is, as always, witty… It’s a great companion for a long weekend.”

—Ogden Standard-Examiner (UT)

“Buckley’s performance throughout the book is razor-sharp. Each chapter is a crystalline dialogue-driven episode in its own right.”

—American Conservative Review

“In his latest novel of bull’s-eye satire, Buckley skewers our adversarial yet symbiotic relationship with China.”

—Denver Post

“A unique book and wonderful political satire by a master of the craft.”

—Manhattan Mercury

“I found myself laughing out loud throughout this book. While the jokes themselves are often psychologically perceptive and culturally telling, Buckley’s great novelistic gift is that the jokes advance a briskly compelling story and serve to develop memorable characters.”

—Washington Independent Review of Books

“Christopher Buckley is back at his funny best.”

—Charleston Post and Courier (SC)

“The pace is fast, and there are many funny one-liners… [This] is an enjoyable work. And it’s hard to dislike a novel that features a Navy communications ship called the Rumsfeld.”

—BookReporter.com

“Racy and witty. It’s fun holiday reading.”

—Duluth News Tribune

“Entertaining… definitely defines party lines.”

—FictionAddict.com

“Guffaw along… laugh-out-loud satire.”

—Kent County Daily Times

The senator from the great state of New York had been droning on for over five minutes; droning about drones.

Bird McIntyre sat in the first row behind his boss, the recipient of the senatorial cataract of words. He scribbled a note on a piece of paper and passed it forward.

Chick Devlin glanced at the note. He let the senator continue for several more mind-numbing minutes so as not to appear prompted by Bird’s note. Finally, seizing on an ellipsis, he leaned forward into the microphone across the green-baize-covered table and said, “Senator, pardon my French, but isn’t the whole point to scare the shit out of them?”

The committee collectively stiffened. One senator laughed. Several smiled or suppressed smiles; some pretended not to be amused; some were actually not amused. Not that it mattered: This was a closed hearing, no cameras or media in attendance.

“If I may, Senator,” continued Devlin, chief executive officer of the aerospace giant Groepping-Sprunt, “the idea that a predator drone should be unobtrusive, some speck in the sky, so as not to alarm the general public…” He smiled and shook his head. “Forgive my asking, but who the heck wrote the specs for that paradigm? Look here, we’re talking about a part of the world where one-third of the so-called general public are in their kitchens making IEDs to kill American soldiers. Another third are on the Internet recruiting suicide bombers. And the last third are on cell phones planning the next 9/11. These are the people we don’t want to alarm?” He sat back in his chair, shaking his head in puzzlement. “Or am I missing something here?”

“Mr. Dev lin,” said the senator, straining a bit obviously for the satanic homonym, “we are talking about a predator drone the size of a commercial airliner. Of a jumbo jet. A drone, by the way, that may or may not”—she jabbed an accusatory finger in the direction of the neat, blue-uniformed air force general sitting beside Devlin—“be nuclear-capable. I say ‘may or may not’ because I can’t seem to get a straight answer from the air force.”

The general leaned into his microphone to protest but was waved away by the senator before he could achieve takeoff.

“So I’m asking you, Mr. Devlin: What kind of signal does this send to the world? That the United States would launch these huge, unpiloted—”

“Sentinels.”

“Sentinels? Sentinels? Come on, Mr. Devlin, these are killing machines. Not even H. G. Wells could have come up with something like this. Read your own specs. No, on second thought, allow me.”

The senator put on her bifocals and read aloud: “ ‘Hellfire missiles, Beelzebub Gatling gun. Seven thousand rounds per second. Depleted-uranium armor-piercing projectiles. CBUs.’ CBUs—that would be cluster bombs—”

“Senator,” Devlin cut in, “Groepping-Sprunt did not make the world we live in. Groepping-Sprunt—if I may, ma’am—does not make U.S. foreign policy. That we leave to such distinguished public servants as yourself. What we do make are systems to help America cope with the challenges of the world we inhabit.”

“Please don’t interrupt me, Mr. Devlin,” the senator shot back, returning to her reading material. “What about this so-called Adaptable Payload Package? ‘Adaptable Payload Package.’ There’s an ambiguous term if ever I heard one. No wonder it’s got General Wheary there talking out of both sides of his mouth.”

“Senator, if I might—” General Wheary tried again.

“No, General. You had your chance. Now I’m asking Mr. Devlin—for the last time—what kind of signal does it send to the world that we would deploy such an awful symbol, such a device—a device by the way you have the gall to designate ‘Dumbo.’ Dumbo!” she snorted. “Dumbo! This, sir, is a creature from hell.”

“Senator, with respect,” Devlin said, “the platform is designated MQ-9B. Dumbo is merely a…”

Bird McIntyre nodded thoughtfully, as if he were hearing the name Dumbo for the first time. In fact, the name was his suggestion. If the idea is to make a breathtakingly large and lethal killing machine (as the senator would say) sound less lethal, what better name than Disney’s cuddly pachyderm? Bird had considered “Cuddles,” but that seemed a bit much.

“… a nickname,” Devlin continued, “like, say, ‘Dragon Lady’ for the U-2 spy plane or BUFF, ‘Big Ugly Fat Fellow,’ for the B-52 bomber. Military vehicles all have nicknames. But as to your question—what kind of signal does it send? I would say the answer is—a serious signal. A very serious signal. If I for one were a member of the Taliban or Al-Qaeda or some other sworn enemy of freedom and the American Way, and I looked up from the table in my IED lab and saw Dumbo—if you prefer, the MQ-9B—blotting out the sun and preparing to obliterate me and introduce me to Allah, I believe I might just consider taking up another line of work.”

A murmur went through the committee.

Bird nodded, well pleased by his ventriloquism. Devlin’s speech was almost word for word from Bird’s briefing book—Tab “R.”

Groepping-Sprunt was Bird McIntyre’s largest account. And the Dumbo contract was a biggie—$3.4 billion worth of appropriations. Bird had worked furiously on the public-awareness campaign. For the past several weeks, every TV watcher in the Greater Washington, D.C., Area, every newspaper or magazine reader, bus-stop passerby, Internet browser, sports spectator, and subway rider—all their eyeballs and ears had been assailed by messages showing Dumbo—MQ-9B—aloft, soaring through serene blue air high above the piney mountains of the California Sierra Nevada, looking for all the world like a great big friendly flying toy that might have dropped out of Santa’s sleigh. Bird had proposed painting the fuselage in a soothing shade of teal. Beneath the photo were these words:

DUMBO: CAN AMERICA AFFORD NOT TO DEPLOY HER?

The problem was money. The appropriations climate on Capitol Hill these days was brutal. The Pentagon was drowning in health-care costs, administration costs, war costs. Cutback time. They were even pensioning off admirals and generals. Not since the end of the Cold War had so many military been given the heave-ho: an aggregate of over three hundred stars so far.

Meanwhile, defense lobbyists were scrambling. In happier times, getting approval for a Dumbo-type program would have consisted of a couple of meetings, a few pro forma committee hearings, handshakes all round, and off to an early lunch. Now? Sisyphus had it easier.

On top of the “funding factor” (Washington-speak for “appalling cost overruns”), Bird and Groepping-Sprunt were up against a bit of a “perception problem” (Washington-speak for “reality”). Dumbo, MQ-9B, Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse—whatever—was stark evidence that somewhere along the line Uncle Sam had quietly morphed into Global Big Brother. With wings. The proud American eagle now clutched in one talon the traditional martial arrows, in the other a remote control.

Perhaps, Senator, you’d prefer that we conduct war the old-fashioned way—having our boys blown up by roadside bombs while trying to instill Jeffersonian democracy door-to-door. “Hello? Excuse us, sorry to bust in on you like this, but we’re the United States military, and we’re here to read you the Bill of Rights. You wouldn’t be harboring any terrorists in here, would you? You’re not? Fantastic! Would you care for some sugarless gum?”

Bird jerked himself out of the reverie. He was exhausted. He told himself sternly, Do not fall asleep in a Senate hearing!

Uh-oh. The senator from the great state of—damn— Wisconsin, where approximately zero Dumbo components were manufactured, was now preparing to fire his own Hellfire missiles at Chick.

“What has it come to…” he began.

Bird suppressed a groan. He’d begged—begged—Chick to buy some Wisconsin-made components—anything—for Dumbo. Tell him you’ll install an on-board Wisconsin dairy cow. Or dead cows. Why not? Didn’t they catapult diseased animals over the walls during sieges back in the Middle Ages?

“… that the United States should resort to such”—he was shaking his head—“dreadful weapons as these?”

Bird thought, What has it come to, Senator? You really want to know? I’ll tell you: This. It has come to— this. Our country is going broke. No, is already broke. And you know what? Everyone out there in this big, wide, nasty world is still trying to kill us. Or maybe word of this hasn’t yet reached Wisconsin? By the way, do you use oil in Wisconsin? You know, the kind we get from all those horrible countries in the Middle East? Or are you getting all your electricity from some other source? Wind? Solar? Methane from flatulent cows?

Bird had anticipated this and had provided a primed hand grenade for Chick to toss back into the senator’s lap. It was in Tab “S,” highlighted in orange. Unlike some clients, Chick did his homework, bless him.

“Well, Senator,” Devlin said with just the right air of embarrassment, “frankly, when it comes to protecting our country, I for one would rather spend a dollar than an American life.”

Bird mentally high-fived. Yesss.

The committee voted 12–7 against funding the MQ-9B.

THAT NIGHT, AFTER AN epic number of drinks with Chick at the Bomb Bay Club, a favorite Washington haunt of defense contractors, Bird managed to crawl into a cab and make it back to his apartment across the river. Instead of collapsing into bed, he drunkenly banged out a highly misspelled, indignant statement on behalf of Groepping-Sprunt, wishing Wisconsin National Guard units serving in Iraq and Afghanistan “good luck over there—because your [sic] sure going to need it.”

Bird awoke the next morning with a Hiroshima-level hangover and the cold, prickly-sweat fear that he had hit Send before collapsing into the arms of Morpheus.

He dragged himself to his computer and with pounding heart checked the Sent folder.

Not there.

It was in the Drafts folder. Thank you, God.

He deleted it, swallowed a heroic quantity of ibupropfen—kidney damage was an acceptable risk—and, like a mortally wounded raccoon, crawled back to bed, where he lay with poached tongue and throbbing skull, staring at the ceiling.

Somewhere above in the empyrean, Dumbo, answer to America’s twenty-first-century security needs, flapped his wings one last time and tumbled, Icarus-like, from the sky.

An unearthly sound—clarions, shrieking—summoned Bird from the land of the undead.

Gummily, his eyes opened.

The hellish sound continued.

As his wounded brain clawed its way back to consciousness, it dawned on him that it was his cell phone. The ringtone—opening bars of “Ride of the Valkyries”—announced his wife.

“Unh.” Valkyrie hooves pounded on his cerebellum.

“Well, you sound good.”

Myndi’s voice was an unhappy fusion of Gidget and marine drill sergeant. He looked at his watch. Not yet 7:00 a.m.; she’d have been up since four-thirty, training.

“Went out with… Chick… after… the…” It emerged a croak, the words forming letter by letter, syllable by syllable, Morse tappings from the radio room of a sinking vessel. “… vote. We… lost.”

“I saw,” she said in a scoldy tone, as if to suggest that Bird obviously hadn’t put his all into it. She added, “I suppose this is going to have an effect on the stock price?”

He thought, Yes, darling. It will in all likelihood have an effect on the stock price.

“Walter,” she said—Myndi refused to call him “Bird,” hated the name—“we need to talk.” Surely the unhappiest words in any marriage. We need to talk.

“We are,” Bird observed.

“Why don’t you have some coffee, darling. I need you to process.”

Process. How she loved that word.

“I’m processing. What?”

“I’ll call you back in ten minutes. Make it fifteen. That’ll give you time for a nice hot shower.” She hung up, doubtless having activated her stopwatch.

Walter “Bird” McIntyre blinked his eyelids at the ceiling. It looked down on him with disdain.

He rose unsteadily and confronted the full, blazing glare of the morning sun through the floor-to-ceiling glass panels. He shrank like a vampire caught out past the dawn.

Bird called his condo the “Military-Industrial Duplex.” A flip-pant nickname, to be sure. It was in Rosslyn, Virginia, on the once-Confederate side of the Potomac River. The compensation for the unfashionable zip code was a truly spectacular view of the nation’s capital. This time of year, the sun rose directly behind the great dome of the Capitol Building, casting a long, patriotic shadow across the Mall—America’s front yard. Myndi, seeing the view for the first time, sniffed, “It’s nice, darling, but a bit of a cliché.”

Coffee. Must. Have.

At least, he reflected with what little self-congratulation he could muster in his debased state, he hadn’t yet reached the point where he needed a snort of booze to get himself going again in the morning.

His computer screen was on. He remembered the (thankfully) unsent e-mail with a shudder of relief and mechanically went about the rituals of caffeination, acting as his own combo barista/EMT.

The Valkyries shrieked anew. Apparently his fifteen minutes had elapsed. For God’s sake…

Myndi had been unamused to learn the ringtone he’d chosen to announce her calls. Really, darling. Passive-aggressive, are we?

He decided—manfully, mutinously—not to answer. He smiled defiantly. Whatever she had in store for him this morning, it could wait until his system had been injected with piping-hot Kenyan stimulant.

He wondered idly, what could it be this time? Another termite-rotted column? Peckfuss the caretaker drunk again?

He didn’t care. He would call back. Yes. Muahahaha! He would… pretend he’d been in the shower.

He poured his coffee and sat before the laptop, pressed the buttons to launch the cybergenies of news.

Post: SENATE KILLS DUMBO

Times: SUPERDRONE DIES IN SENATE COMMITTEE

Bird wondered how Chick’s hangover was coming along. Or whether he had even made it back to his hotel. Was he lying facedown in the Reflecting Pool across from the Lincoln Memorial, dead, another casualty of the appropriations process? It was a distinct possibility. Chick had defiantly switched to tequila at some point after 1:00 a.m. Always a smart move at the tail end of a long evening of drinking.

Bird maneuvered the cursor to the desktop folder marked ARM.EXFIL. He clicked open CHAP.17 and read a few paragraphs as the Valkyries shrieked anew.

“Brace for impact!” Turk shouted above the high-pitched scream of the failing engines.

Bird considered. He inserted through gritted teeth after shouted. Yes. Better. But then he wondered: can one in fact shout through gritted teeth? Bird gritted his teeth and tried to shout “Brace for impact!” but it came out sounding vaguely autistic.

The ARM.EXFIL folder contained the latest in the McIntyre oeuvre, his current novel in progress, titled The Armageddon Exfiltration. This was the third in his Armageddon trilogy. The first two novels—which had not succeeded in finding a publisher—were The Armageddon Infiltration and The Armageddon Immolation.

It was the literary output of nearly a decade now. He’d started when he went to work right out of college at a Washington public-relations firm specializing in the defense industry. During the day he wrote copy and press releases urging Congress to pony up for the latest and shiniest military hardware. But the nights belonged to him. He banged away on novels full of manly men with names like Turk and Rufus, of terrible yet really cool weapons, of beautiful but deadly women with names like Tatiana and Jade, who could be neither trusted nor resisted. Heady stuff.

He treated his girlfriends to readings over glasses of wine.

The mushroom cloud rose like an evil plume of mycological smoke over the Mall in Washington. The presidential helicopter, Marine One, yawed frantically as its pilot, Major Buck “Turk” McMaster, grappled furiously with the collective stick—

“ ‘Yawed frantically’?” the girlfriend interrupted. “What’s that?”

Bird would smile. Women just didn’t get the technology, did they? But then Bird had to admit that he didn’t get the women writers. Danielle Steel, Jane Austen, that sort.

“It’s when a plane does like this.” Bird demonstrated, rotating a flat palm around an imaginary vertical axis.

“Isn’t it a helicopter?”

“Same principle.”

“ ‘Yawed frantically.’ Okay, but it sounds weird.”

“It’s a technical term, Claire.”

“What’s ‘mycological smoke’?”

“A mushroom cloud. ‘Mycological’? Adjective from mushroom?”

Claire shrugged. “Okay.”

“What’s the matter with it?”

“No, it’s fine. It’s lovely.”

Bird put down the manuscript. “Claire. It’s not supposed to be ‘lovely.’ There’s nothing ‘lovely’ about a twenty-five-kiloton thermonuclear device that’s just detonated in the Jefferson Memorial.”

“No, I guess not.”

“They have to get the president to the airborne command center. Every second is—”

Claire yawned, frantically. “I could go for sushi.”

Again the Valkyries shrieked.

“Hello, Myn.”

“Walter. I’ve been calling.”

“Sorry. Just vomiting up blood.”

“What?”

“I was in the shower. You said you needed my brain to work. So it can process. Okay. We are go for neuron function. On one. Three, two, one. Initiate neuron function. Whazzup?”

“It’s Lucky Strike.”

Oh, God…

Myndi launched into what Bird estimated would be a three-, maybe four-minute disquisition. He didn’t want to listen to any of it, but he understood that to interrupt an equine medical diagnosis would open him to a charge of indifference in the first degree. He let his head tilt back at a stoical angle.

“So Dr. Dickerson said I absolutely have to stay off her until the tendon is fully healed. Walter? Walter, are you listening to any of this?”

Tendon. That word. How Bird hated that word. It had cost him tens—perhaps even hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years. There were other equine anatomical terms that made him shudder: scapulohumeral joint, fetlock joint, coffin bone— but he reserved a special odium for tendon.

“Really, it comes down to a moral issue.”

Bird had been fantasizing about dog-food factories and the excellent work they do.

“Whoa, Myn. Did you say ‘moral issue’?”

“Yes. If I keep riding her instead of giving the tendon time to heal… Walter, am I not getting through to you? If the tendon goes…” Was that a gasp he heard? “… I don’t even want to think about that.”

“Myn.” Bird sighed. “This is not a good time.”

“Do you want me to call you back?”

“No, sweetheart. I’m talking about… You saw the news this morning?”

“Walter. The speed competitions are six weeks away.” Pause. “All right—so what do you think I should do?”

Bird massaged his left temple. “I take it you’ve already priced a… replacement… animal?”

“It’s a horse, Walter. Sam”—another word that always induced a shudder: her trainer; or rather enabler—“says there’s a superb nine-year-old filly over at Dollarsmith.”

“Don’t tell me. Is this one related to Seabiscuit, too?”

“If she were, Walter, she certainly wouldn’t be going for such a bargain price. The bloodlines are stunning. The House of Windsor doesn’t have bloodlines like this.”

Bloodlines. Noun, plural: 1. qualities likely to bankrupt. 2. hideously expensive genetic tendencies.

“Myn.”

“Yes, darling?”

“How much is this nag going to cost me?”

“Well, as I say, with those bloodlines—”

“Myn.”

“Two twenty-five?”

A new pain presented—as doctors would say—behind Bird’s eyeballs.

“But we’ll need to move fast,” Myn added. “Sam says the Kuwaiti ambassador was over there the other day sniffing around.”

Despite his pain, Bird found the image of a Kuwaiti ambassador “sniffing around stables” grimly amusing.

“Baby. Mercy. Please.”

“Walter,” she said sternly, “I assure you I’m not any happier than you about this.”

“But surely it’s possible I’m more unhappy about it than you.”

“What? Oh, never mind. Look—we agreed when I decided to try out for the team that we were going to do this together.”

This, it occurred to him, was Myn’s concept of ‘together’: She’d compete for a place on the U.S. Equestrian Team and he would write checks.

“I know we did, darling. But what we didn’t know when we embarked, together, on our quest for equestrian excellence was that the stock market would dive like a submarine, taking the economy with it, and defense spending. Defense spending? You remember, the thing that makes our standard of living possible? I am looking out the window. I see defense lobbyists all over town, leaping from buildings. Myn? Oh, Myn-di?”

Silence. He knew it well. Betokening The Gathering Storm.

Finally, “So your answer is no?”

He could see her now: pacing back and forth across the tack room in jodhpurs, mice and other small animals scurrying in terror, sawdust flying. In the distance a whinny of tendinitis-related pain coming from the stricken Lucky Strike. “Lucky”? Ha. Myndi would have unbunned her honey-colored hair, causing it to tumble over her shoulders. She was beautiful. A figure unruined by parturition. Didn’t want children—“not just yet, darling,” a demurral now in its, what, eighth year? Pregnancy would mean months out of the saddle. Bird was okay with the arrangement. He had to grant: the sex was pretty great. One day in the dentist’s office, browsing the latest unnecessary bulletin about Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles, Bird read that the Duchess of Cornwall—“like many women who love to ride”—was great in the sack. Who knew?

What point was there in struggling?

“Have Sam call me,” Bird said. The left side of his brain immediately signaled, Dude. You’re already broke. . .