They Eat Puppies, Don't They?

by Christopher Buckley

  “Dumbo,” Chick mused. “What a beautiful weapons platform. Want to talk about lives? How many lives would Dumbo have saved?”

  “Don’t go there, Chick. Don’t. We did what we could. There wasn’t one thing more we could’ve done. Short of getting up from that table and strangling a few key senators.”

  Chick leaned forward across the glass coffee table. “You know, it’s too bad they weren’t in charge of Union army appropriations during the War of Northern Aggression. We’d have won.”

  “Chick,” Bird said, “you grew up in Pennsylvania. You went to MIT. You’re not Southern any more than I am. You explained to me some time ago why you do the Southern-patois thing, to get along down here and all that. But is it really necessary to call it the ‘War of Northern Aggression’ when you’re talking to me?”

  Chick shrugged. “Habit, I guess. Sort of seeps into the wetware. Marcia’s always getting on me about it.”

  “Whatever. Long as you don’t start telling me what a great actor John Wilkes Booth was.” Meanwhile, Bird thought, please get to the point? Am I being fired?

  “At the rate we’re going, we’ll be fighting our enemies with slingshots. Rocks. Clubs. God almighty.”

  “I know,” Bird said sympathetically. “Makes you want to curl up in the fetal position.”

  Chick said, “Got something for you, Birdman.”

  Bird’s buttock muscles unclenched. Had the moment of danger passed? “I’m right here.”

  “It’s big.”

  “I love big.”

  “Can’t tell you a whole hell of a lot about it.”

  Bird made a face. “Don’t tell me that, Chick. Don’t tell me that.”

  “No, listen to me, now. This thing’s more sensitive than a stripper’s nipple. As of right now, there aren’t more than a half dozen people on the planet know about it. Including you-know-who.” You-know-who was Chick-speak for the president of the United States.

  “What am I going to do?” Bird said. “Post it on Facebook? Tweet? How long have I been working for you?”

  The answer was six years, ever since Bird got Chick’s attention with his campaign for Groepping’s HX-72 stealth helicopter: “Under the Radar but on Top of the Situation.”

  “I can tell you this much,” Chick said. “Once this baby’s up and running and online, the American people are going to sleep a lot more soundly.”

  Bird waited for more.

  “Really?” he said finally. “A new sleeping pill. I had no idea Groepping was in the pharmaceutical business. Why didn’t I get that memo?”

  Chick sighed. “All right.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “It’s about China.”

  Bird stared.

  “That’s all you’re going to get out of me,” Chick said. “Water-board me. Go ahead. You won’t get any more out of me.”

  “China,” Bird said. “Americans will sleep better. Well, that narrows it. Okay. So, what exactly is it you want me to do with this cornucopia of information? Want me to get cranking on a press release? ‘Groepping-Sprunt Announces Top Secret Initiative to Help Americans Sleep Better. Has Something to Do with China’ ”?

  “Damn it, Bird. Okay, but this is all you’re going to get out of me. Don’t you dare ask me for more. The project’s code name is Taurus.”

  “Taurus. Taurus as in bull?”

  Chick looked at him earnestly. “This is the real deal, Birdman. I’m talking Manhattan Project stuff. Twenty-second century. This thing’d give the Lord himself a case of the shits.”

  Bird was impressed by Chick’s intensity. “Guess I’ll have to take it on faith. But could you give me some guidance here?”

  “I was getting to that. We’ve got to loosen things up with Appropriations. But if you so much as say the word China on Capitol Hill, they start running for cover. They’re more nervous about China than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”

  “Well,” Bird said, “China is more or less financing our economy. Not that I don’t hate them much as the next person. Commie swine.”

  “I’m thinking,” Chick said, “that maybe it’s time to put the ‘Red’ back in Red China.”

  “Red China,” Bird mused aloud. “It’s been a while since we called it that, hasn’t it?”

  “Last time I checked, their flag was flaming Communist red. Yes, I believe the time has come to educate the great big dumb American public—God love them—to educate them about the . . .”—Chick paused, as if searching for just the right word—“the peril we as a nation face from a nation of one point three billion foreigners.”

  Bird stared.

  Chick said, “Wasn’t it Charles de Gaulle who said, ‘China is a big country, full of Chinese’?”

  “If he didn’t, he should have,” Bird said, not entirely sure where this was going.

  “Bird, we need to educate the American people as to the true nature of the threat we face. If we can do that, then those limp dicks and fainting hearts and imbeciles in the United States Congress—God love them—will follow.”

  Bird nodded thoughtfully. What the hell was Chick talking about? He said, “Is there a particular threat that you had in mind? Or is it more just . . . the principle of the thing?”

  Chick shrugged. “That’s where you come in, Bird. You’ve always had a genius for putting your finger on the nub of a situation. What about world domination? I don’t suppose I want to live in a world dominated by the heirs of Mao Zedong.”

  “World domination,” Bird said. “Yes, that is sort of a grim prospect, isn’t it?”

  Chick patted Bird on the knee. “There. We’re on the same page.”

  “Chick,” Bird said. “Just so’s I’m clear here—are you wanting me to go rustle you up some anti-China sentiment?”

  Chick smiled. “You have a way with words, my friend. Guess that’s why we pay you so damn much.” He rose. “I like you, Bird-man. With you I never feel like I have to dance around a thing. The way I do with so many of you Washington types.”

  You Washington types. Bird thought, What a compliment.

  “That’s nice of you to say, Chick. Nice of you to say.”

  “A practical matter,” Chick said. “I’m thinking it might look better if you weren’t on our payroll.”

  Bird said, “Not sure if I’m still with you there, General.”

  “Once you start spraying ‘China Sucks!’ graffiti on that Great Wall of theirs, it might look funny if we’re still your client. Helen Keller could connect those dots.”

  “Not that I don’t love our military-industrial complex on its merits,” Bird said, “but are you proposing that I whip up all this anti-Chinese fervor for you pro bono? Because those are the saddest two words in the English language.”

  “Pro bono is Latin.” Chick smiled.

  “So is ‘Et tu, Brute.’ ”

  “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. You know what that means? ‘How sweet it is to die for one’s country.’ ”

  “A fine sentiment,” Bird said. “Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my country. I love Groepping-Sprunt. I love you—in a heterosexual way. If I were of the gay persuasion, I have no doubt that I would be attracted to you physically. I would want you to be my civil partner and for us to adopt an African orphan. But I have a roof that leaks, a barn that leaks, and mouths to feed. Oh, and did I mention the new horse that my wife informs me she cannot live without? Do you know anything about tendons? Has Groepping considered getting into that market? Because never mind drones—there is a real killing waiting to be made in horse tendons.”

  “Bird. Re-lax. Wasn’t suggesting that you work without compensation. I know how it is. I know you’ve got your own antebellum Tara out there in horse country. How is that fine-looking wife of yours? She is a stunner. She ought to be on the cover of one of those magazines like Town & Country. She really going for the gold? That is impressive, truly.”

  “She’s going for my gold,” Bird said. “What’s left of it.”

  “You b
e sure to give her my best. That brother of yours—he still dressing up like Stonewall Jackson?”

  “It’s more of a modified Custer. But yes, Bewks is still doing his living history. And helping out with Mother. That would be the Mother with Alzheimer’s? You’re catching my subtle drift, here, Chief?”

  “Loud and clear.” Chick chuckled. “I read you five by five. Don’t you worry. We will make you whole. More than whole.”

  “I was an English major,” Bird said. “You being the science guy, tell me, is it mathematically possible to make someone more than whole? Isn’t whole a hundred percent?”

  Chick gave a dismissive wave. “We’ll set up some foundation. That way you’ll be technically working for it.” He smiled. “Instead of the old military-industrial complex, God bless it.”

  “So long as it’s kosher, legally,” Bird said. “They’re sending my type off to jail about every fifteen minutes now. ‘Lobbyist Gets Five Years’ doesn’t even make the front page anymore. It’s back there with the crossword puzzle and the certified-preowned-car ads.”

  “Legal is good.” Chick slapped Bird on the shoulder. “I’m for legal. All right now, Birdman, you get yourself back to Gomorrah-on-the-Potomac and open me up a can of whoop-ass on Beijing. I want to see angry crowds outside their embassy. Flags burning. Signs. ‘No more Tiananmens! Hands Off Taiwan!’ ‘Tibet for the Tibetans!’ I want . . .” Chick’s voice trailed off. His face had taken on a strange, dreamy look.

  “Nice speech,” Bird said. “Reminds me of that Leni Riefenstahl movie about the Nuremberg rally. Good old fashioned patriotism.”

  “Okay. So I get a little carried away when it comes to our national security.”

  “Have you tried Xanax?”

  “Your country is depending on you, Birdman.”

  A FEW DAYS LATER, back at his office in D.C., Bird sent out two press releases.

  The first announced that after many excellent and productive years together, McIntyre Strategies and Groepping-Sprunt had amicably decided to “pursue exciting new challenges.” The second said that Bird was forming a foundation called Pan-Pacific Solutions, “focusing on national security and Far Eastern issues.” It seemed a vague enough description.

  This done, Bird holed up in the Military-Industrial Duplex and immersed himself in a crash course on China. He bulldozed—and dozed—through books and periodicals, went online, read scholarly monographs by eminent Sinologists. Surely somewhere in all this he would find the key to the—what was the word Chick used?—threat. Yes. The unnerving specter that would cause America to snap-to out of its coma of complacency and tremble.

  Surely there was something. But . . . what?

  After days of eyeball-glazing study and Googling, the new Red Menace was proving elusive.

  Not that China wasn’t potentially scary. Or even already scary. The Communist Party controlled every aspect of life. It made Big Brother look like Beaver Cleaver. It was implacable, ruthless. The government lost no sleep driving tanks over students and Tibetan monks. It tortured and executed tens of thousands of “serious criminals” a year. It cozied up to and played patty-cake with some of the vilest regimes on earth—Zimbabwe, North Korea, Sudan, Iran, Venezuela; poured millions of tons of ozone-devouring chemicals into the atmosphere; guzzled oil by the billions of barrels, all while remaining serenely indifferent to world opinion. But apart from a few forlorn Falun Gong protesters outside Chinese embassies or self-immolating Tibetan monks, where was the outrage?

  As for world domination? Well, to be sure, China was clearly intent on becoming daguo (a new word in Bird’s vocabulary), a “great power.” But it was going about achieving this goal in a relatively quiet, deliberate, and businesslike way. It was hard, really, to put any kind of definite face on China. The old Soviet Union, with its squat, warty leaders banging their shoes on the UN podium and threatening thermonuclear extinction, all those vodka-swollen, porcine faces squinting from under sable hats atop Lenin’s Tomb as nuclear missiles rolled by like floats in a parade from hell—those Commies at least looked scary. But on the rare occasion when the nine members of China’s Politburo Standing Committee, the men who ruled 1.3 billion people—one-fifth of the world’s population—lined up for a group photo, they looked like a delegation of identical, overpaid dentists. This was no reflexive racist stereotyping. Bird actually read that they all dyed their pompadours the identical shade of black. (Individual grooming statements were, apparently, not the rage among the party elite.) They wanted all to look alike; in a way, a statement of ultimate egalitarianism. After days of studying photographs of the individual Politburo members, Bird still could barely tell one from another; though the one in charge of state security did at least look like a malevolent overpaid dentist.

  Further confounding Bird’s attempt to locate the envenomed needle in this immense haystack was the fact that America had gotten itself a serious China habit. It couldn’t buy enough Chinese goods, sell Chinese banks enough Treasury bills. Absent some really serious provocation, the U.S. government was in no position to tsk-tsk or wag its finger at Beijing over Taiwan or Tibet. As for human rights, forget it. A nonstarter.

  ONE NIGHT TOWARD THE END of Bird’s weeklong cram, eyes veinous with fatigue, central nervous system fizzing like a downed power line from caffeine and MSG (Chinese takeout—why not?), Bird laid down his books and decided—enough. He showered, went out and bought a juicy red New York steak and a seventy-five-dollar bottle of fat, fleshy burgundy, and took the night off.

  He grilled his steak and drank his wine and turned on the TV. Boring In was on—Washington’s thoughtful weekly show about policy and policy makers, perfect to watch with one eye. On any given Friday, its guests consisted of a former member of the Council of Economic Advisers and a current assistant deputy undersecretary of something, mumbling knowledgeably at each other about Argentine wheat-import quotas. The show could just as well be called Boring, but Bird had a soft spot for it. He had been invited on once, and it had considerably raised his public profile. The guest opposite him that night was a formerly famous movie actor who had become virulently antimilitary after playing the role of a morally demented submarine captain who uses pods of innocent whales as targets for torpedo practice.

  The actor, a voluble sort of the type who refers to distinguished U.S. officials as “mass murderers” or “serial killers,” became so enraged by Bird’s well-reasoned defense of the defense industry that he called him “an evil pig” and expressed the hope that Bird would die from a “morphine-resistant form of cancer.” Bird merely smiled and replied, “I guess we’ll have to put you down as ‘Undecided, leaning against.’ ” This drove the actor into a spittle-flecked frenzy of four-letter invective. Lively stuff by the standards of Boring In, certainly. Washingtonian magazine included Bird that year in its annual list of “Washington’s Ten Least Despicable Lobbyists.”

  He forked another lovely morsel of steak into his mouth.

  So who was on Boring tonight? Angel Templeton. Well, now. She was worth watching with both eyes.

  CHAPTER 3

  ANGEL

  Tall, blond, buff, leggy, miniskirted: Angel Templeton was hardly your typical Washington think-tank policy wonk.

  For the cover of her most recent book, The Case for Preemptive War: Taking the “Re-” Out of Retaliation, she posed in a red, white, and blue latex dominatrix outfit. With riding crop. But if readers purchased the book for this reason alone, then the joke was on them, for it itself was a thoughtfully-argued, well-researched, and extravagantly footnoted argument for vigorous, indeed, continuous, U.S. military intervention throughout the world.

  Ms. Templeton held a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, had worked on the staff of the National Security Council, and had served as deputy director of policy planning at the Pentagon. A lustrous résumé, to be sure. She was currently chair of the prestigious, if controversial, Institute for Continuing Conflict. If her flair for publicity raised eyebrows a
t the Council on Foreign Relations or among the Nobel laureates sipping bouillon at the Cosmos Club, it brought her regular appearances on TV, considerable sales, and five-figure speaking fees.

  Tonight on Boring In, Angel’s opposite number was a Princeton professor famous for having written a book comparing America to Rome (as in “Decline and Fall”). He was not enjoying himself, for Angel was playfully tromping all over his elegant references to Livy and Tacitus with her Jimmy Choo shoes.

  “You know,” she said with a coy, embarrassed smile, as if to suggest she was only being polite in not mentioning that the professor had been caught engaging in unnatural sex acts with manatees, “it’s nice you’ve found yourself a cushy penthouse apartment up there in the old ivory tower, where you can grind out books about what a crummy, second-rate nation our country is.”

  The professor glared at Angel with owlish contempt. “That’s not what my book says. Not at all what my—”

  “I see,” she interrupted, “that you decided to save money on a fact-checker.”

  “What are you implying?”

  “Not implying anything.” Angel smiled. “I’m stating for a fact—oops, the F-word again!—that the only thing you managed to get correct in the entire book was the semicolon on page four seventy-three.”

  “This is—”

  “But it doesn’t really matter. It’s not like anyone’s actually going to read it. It’s really a pseudointellectual coffee-table ornament. A way of telling your guests, ‘I hate America, too.’ ”

  “I didn’t come on this show to listen to insults.”

  “Oh, come on, Professor,” she said kittenishly. “I’m not insulting you. I’m simply pointing out that the central message of your book is that America can no longer afford to defend itself against its enemies. So we might as well just throw in the towel.”

  “That is a complete perversion of my argument.”

  “Some would say that the real perversion is your idea that America is finito as a world power. Look, I’m sure it may play with the dewy-eyed freshmen in the cushy groves of academe but here in the real world—and I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you—great nations don’t just roll over and play dead. They fight.”