So, obviously, there would not be a hand off to Terry Smith in Washington tonight.
In his desire to contain the contagion of Genoa, Will McAvoy departed from the usual nightly patter and simply wished viewers a good night.
In as subdued a manner as he could manage.
There had been a funereal air about the whole broadcast, in fact. The retraction came at the top of the show, the only place honorable journalists would place it. And he even offered a recap mea culpa near the end of the broadcast, too, in case any viewer had missed it.
Atonement for Genoa seemed to require baring one's breast. Anything to make plain ACN's acknowledgement of its own hubris.
During the commercial break after the C block, Jim's voice over the interruptible feedback unit relayed the snippets of media and social media reaction Neal had culled from the internet. As could have been predicted, there had been righteous indignation from veterans groups, open derision from conservative news outlets, and a lot of smug tsk-tsk-ing from every media critic who weighed in.
As they all inevitably would.
There would be no sympathy for ACN.
Will sought to maintain a poker face throughout the telecast, because, whatever his feelings of regret and mortification, he couldn't be sure that looking too contrite might backfire.
Mercifully, the red light on the camera finally doused, signaling the end of the show.
As technicians quietly backed away and Will yanked the IFB from his ear, Charlie Skinner entered the studio with the necessary anesthetic for such a singular night: a bottle of bourbon and two ACN mugs.
"You handled that well." Then, Charlie dropped his head to one side and shook it slightly with some thought he didn't seem to want to commit to words. "Not the kind of thing you ever think you'll have to—" His voice trailed off and he shrugged in lieu of additional words.
Then, he poured and pushed a cup toward Will.
Will took the mug and swirled the liquor around. "Was it—you know, enough?"
"How the hell do I know?" Charlie tossed back his own drink. "Alleging the U.S. military used nerve gas on civilians, and then having to retract it—even Westmoreland in Vietnam didn't go that far. We're charting entirely new ground, fuck-up-wise. " He stopped at Will's wince.
Will let several beats pass. "How's Leona taking it?"
Charlie shrugged and tugged at his ear, "She can be a scrappy old bird. I expect we'll get some painful lecture about public trust and 'for the good of the network'—that sort of thing. She will vent but ultimately see the wisdom in allowing us to resign in shame. Reese already let me know he has a shortlist of potential successors. I imagine he's calling some of them tonight." He glanced up at the clock.
As Will picked up the mug again, his eyes drifted around Charlie to the window into the bullpen. All appeared to be normal post-show wrap-up, the staffers subdued but functioning within usual parameters: Sampat riveted to his screen, a pen stuck in his mouth; Gary with a phone clamped to one ear; Tamara calling some unheard information to Kendra three desks over, who considered it briefly before speaking to Martin; Jenna weaving between desks while balancing a raft of Starbucks cups.
Will's eyes were drawn to a mute but plainly urgent conversation between Jim and Maggie. Jim made some gestures over his shoulder and Maggie bent over her desk, evidently searching for whatever it was that Jim had told her he needed.
Charlie cleared his throat, interrupting the reverie.
"So, I'm thinking—this can be a positive thing. I just need to approach it with the proper spirit. Retirement. I mean, I'll only be leaving a few years earlier than I probably would've anyway. And now I can take Nancy on that trip she's been hinting about—" At Will's raised eyebrows, he added in explanation, "Chichen Itza—some Aztec temple in Mexico where they used to sacrifice people by cutting out their beating hearts—not altogether an unfitting end for me by this point, all things considered." He straightened and returned to his original thought. "Plus, I'll have time to write that book now. Wartime exploits and all that bullshit nostalgia. You?"
Will took another swallow of liquor and shrugged. "Plastic surgery and a change of name?"
Charlie huffed. "Nah. Your Q factor makes you like Teflon. None of the Genoa stuff will stick to you. We'll work on Leona, make her relent about that non-compete clause. And in the meantime—well, you can always count your stock options."
He made a sour look in response.
They sat silent for a long moment. Then, finally, Charlie declared in obvious response to what they were both thinking, "Mac'll be okay, too."
Who were they kidding?
The preordained resignations of Will and Charlie were pro forma and would be widely recognized as such. The expected response of senior management to a colossal fuck-up on their watch. And, despite any humiliation the resignations might entail, both Charlie and Will would emerge mostly unscathed. As president of the news division, it would be understood that Charlie was merely accepting rightful responsibility; as anchor, it would be widely inferred that Will had been hitched to a bad story prepared by an underling (managing editor, be damned).
Eventually, their peers and media-observers would exonerate them.
No, the lasting guilt for the Genoa debacle would rest exclusively with MacKenzie McHale. She led the newsroom—she Okayed the story—her people researched and prepared the story. Her culpability was manifest and her career was now radioactive.
She was through. And both Will and Charlie knew it.
"Yeah. Mac'll be fine," Will nonetheless returned. "Unsurpassed professional reputation. Gruesomely ethical. She'll probably—" He stopped. "Jesus, fuck, Charlie. How did it get to this?"
"Dunno." Charlie sighed and closed his fist around the neck of the bourbon bottle. "After I've met with Leona—once we have a timeline for what happens next—I'll need to say something to them," inclining his head to indicate the newsroom staff. "I told Mac not to blame herself. She has a rather, um, overdeveloped sense of responsibility, you know. You might want to say something to her yourself."
Through the glass, behind Charlie, Will could see Maggie with her pixie red haircut pick up the phone on her desk, her eyes dart around the bullpen, finally focus on the glass of the studio. Her eyes met his.
"Yeah. I have to pass her office anyway."
Charlie grunted and brought up his chin, as he often did when confronted with something with which he was uncertain. "Well. Just tell her—make sure she knows she still has your confidence." His voice took on a scolding tone. "And don't—"
Will's expression became an exaggerated protest of innocence.
"You know what I mean."
But Mac wasn't in her office, so Will snagged Maggie as she slunk toward the elevator landing.
"Check Control. Jim cleared it after the show—he said he didn't want people bothering her. Though, as it turned out, that wasn't a problem, because no one wanted to talk about Genoa and God help Jerry if he ever darkens this newsroom again. Tonight, everyone just wanted to get out of here as quickly as they could."
Maggie shrugged and stepped into the lift as the door slid back. "But if you see her—well, maybe you ought to, I don't know—reinforce that it was Jerry and there wasn't anything she could've—because, you know, she's gonna believe she could have prevented—well, you know."
Allowing the elevator doors to close, Will turned and headed back across the emptying bullpen.
He knew all about Mac's propensity for shouldering guilt. It was what allowed him to goad her so easily, torment her, put one hundred percent of the retributive responsibility for the rubble of them on her shoulders and know she would carry the load.
From the moment she'd interrupted the staff meeting in Will's office with the thunderbolt they'd have to retract Genoa, he had known how deeply and personally it would cut her. She had looked savagely shocked, practically trembling with anxiety. Tears had shone in her eyes and she'd forced that tragic half-smile, which, in retrospect, seemed like a rictus of mortification. From the very moment she'd entered his office, it was obvious MacKenzie was barely holding it together, and only the staff's decency in averting their eyes had prevented her spilling her own open tears of frustration, rage, and disbelief.
Retraction. Was there anything worse for a journalist?
No one will ever believe us now.
And there had never been anyone to whom credibility mattered more than Mac.
When Will pushed through the door to Control, the only source of light was the brilliant over-saturated colors on the bank of eight screens. Two of the screens showed Capitol Report, two showed adverts; the other four displayed only color bars. Everything immediately before the screens was garishly illuminated, the remainder of the room awash in deep shadows.
Of course, calling anything at ACN Control on this night seemed an affront. There was nothing of control in the Genoa aftermath; it reeked of having been out of control. How could anyone miss the paradox?
Mac was in the back of the small room, off to one side, and she turned her head slightly at his entry.
"I told Jim not to—"
"Haven't seen him. Anyway, I was going to come find you." He let the door close silently behind him.
"Fire me."
"Why don't you come to the point?" he returned, flippantly.
"You're the only one who can. You can stop this ritualistic hari-kari—"
"Mac, this isn't your fault. I know Charlie's told you that, too. To fuck up on the scale this big—well, it really takes a village." One side of his mouth hitched up in a laconic smile that he hoped would ratchet down the emotional tenor somewhat. "Leona's meeting with Charlie, and they're going to figure a path forward. A timeline for the inevitable, in a manner of speaking. We'd like to hang on long enough to call the election, if anyone's still watching by then. Then—if the numbers aren't there, if we can't make the bounce—strategic resignation. But," he emphasized, "together. You, me, and Charlie—all three of us are in this together.
She shook her head impatiently. "We didn't misspell someone's name in the crawler, Will—we accused the military and the administration of a reprehensible war crime—"
"We reported what we had, Mac, and we retracted it the moment we learned of our error. There was no malicious intent—we just stopped being good—"
"We don't get a pass for being negligent," she insisted. "And it is foolish to ignore the fact that I was the nexus—"
"There you go again, taking credit for every little—"
"Will!" The break in her voice warned him against further irreverence. "I was the one who should have checked—should've followed up, especially because Jim wasn't here and Jerry—the Stomtonovich interview, I should have been there myself—of course, Maggie wasn't ready yet, and I can't let myself off the hook for that, either—I was complacent—allowed myself to become distracted—" She shook her head. "I haven't any excuse, not really. Survival depends upon vigilance and I-"
His perplexity was unfeigned. "You wanna unpack that last for me?"
"Valenzuela—I missed the clues that he was simply parroting what he thought I wanted him to say—"
"Wait. Go back to what you said before—"
"Stop with the Freudian crap." Plainly incensed now, she slipped off the headset that had dangled around her neck since the end of the broadcast. "But if you want to do psychological excavations, then let me say that I don't get why you won't fire me. It would solve all your problems, really. It would publicly fix the blame for Genoa, pave the way for the rehabilitation of the show, allow the Lansings to make me the litigative lightning rod—"
"Mac, stop—"
"No, I'm serious. Firing me fixes everything and I don't understand why you—"
"Mac—" He moved into her space now, on the verge of grabbing her just to make her stop.
"You and Charlie can go on—they can go on—" she gestured to the now darkened and deserted bullpen. "Firing me puts Genoa in the rear view mirror faster than any court room victory—"
"Whoa, just stop. Stop whatever it is you're—I'm not going to fire you."
"Is possible there's some element of torture here that I've missed? Is that it? You want to keep me around because you know how complete the professional humiliation, and you want to prolong it? You want me to dangle at the end of the rope, professionally and personally, and you want to hurt me badly enough that you're willing to—"
"Jesus Christ, Mac." This whole conversation, begun with the intent to offer some comfort, had now spun out of control. "I'm not your enemy."
"You'll understand if I say that most of the last three years hasn't felt that way," she lobbed back.
Touché.
"And you'll understand—" His retort was cut off by a whoosh that indicated a door had been opened behind him.
"Everything okay, Mac?"
Jim hung in the door, his expression leaving no doubt that he'd heard more than either of them would have wished.
She gave a tight nod. "I'm fine, Jim. Why don't you go on home?"
"I can wait for you, if you want."
"Not necessary. Go on, and I'll see you in the morning."
He dipped his head and, with a parting glare at Will, Jim withdrew.
"Good timing." She began to gather folders and papers.
"Yeah." He was privately shamed at how readily his anger could still flare at her. Of course, she knew which buttons to push, how to goad him into a rage.
"I'm not going to fire you, Mac." It needed to be said again.
"Then I'll work on getting you to change your mind."