All things considered, Jan was just relieved it hadn’t been worse.
The entire point of ordering the bugging was to placate Richard Walker so that he wouldn’t reveal that Blitz had, once upon a time, bugged and otherwise harassed him. Jan was highly reluctant to illegally target Dan, then an XPR client, for a related reason: XPR’s founder, Jack Neal, had been the one who first uncovered Blitz Media’s wide use of such tactics.
Jan ultimately opted to satisfy Richard’s demands for a reason best conveyed in his own words: “If you’re worried that XPR might put you in the shit if you do this, let me make it clear that I will put you in the shit if you don’t.”
But now that the bugging story was out and already old news, Jan realised she had been worrying over nothing. The world didn’t just know about Blitz Media’s shady information-gathering techniques; the world had seen them. And yet, no one seemed particularly interested. Even more fortuitously for Jan, Emma Ford’s unceremonious departure from XPR meant that the powerful firm no longer had a professional interest in Dan McCarthy.
Having seen the damning footage of Kloster handing Richard the letter just seconds before Richard’s press conference began, Jan had watched in anticipation of a public breakdown. Instead, Richard stood defiant and shifted the focus as only he could.
His slipperiness frustrated Jan, but this was nothing compared to the fury she felt over his opening remarks. Richard’s decision to “publicly dissociate” himself from Blitz Media and to lambast their “underhand and indefensible tactics” was too much for Jan.
She refused to let it slide.
As soon as Richard left the podium after his aimless rant about China’s unchecked rise to superpower status, Jan opened an instant messaging window on her computer and sent a simple message to Paula Dunne, her successor as Head of Content at Blitz News. As usual, both were working late.
“Room for an exclusive tonight?” Jan wrote.
“Always…” Paula replied.
Jan dragged an audio file onto the conversation window, sending it to Paula. She twiddled her thumbs, waiting for Paula to listen. At a few points the window told her that Paula was typing a reply, but after two minutes Jan was still staring a white space.
It irritated Jan greatly to think of Paula working on a higher floor, sitting in the chair that used to be hers.
The move was originally sold to Jan as a promotion; The Daily Chat was in serious trouble and needed a maverick editor to revive its sales, the executives told her. Jan turned the offer down, only to be told in the gentlest possible terms that she had already been replaced.
A professional rivalry now existed between Jan and Laura, who Jan’s former underlings loyally told her was nothing more than a younger but inferior version of herself.
Paula had proven herself capable enough but frequently complained that Jan was stepping on her toes by running ever-increasing amounts of video in the online version of The Daily Chat. The executives didn’t pay much attention to such complaints, blinded by Jan’s unequivocal success in boosting circulation in a post-smartphone era when another historic newspaper seemed to go out of business every few weeks.
Eventually, Paula’s reply appeared. “You know we can’t run this,” it said. “But I appreciate you bringing it to me.”
“If you don’t run it tonight, I’ll lead with it in Monday’s Chat,” Jan typed. She hit send before she had time to reconsider.
“Jan, I’m only thinking of you. This implicates you, not me…”
“I was a victim of blackmail! No one care’s what we do, anyway. We’re the money-hungry bad guys, McCarthy is the good guy, and Walker is Walker. He’s not throwing us under the bus and getting away with it.”
Paula Dunne is typing a reply
“Are you running it or not?” Jan typed, impatiently hitting send again.
“I’ll have to run it by the board.”
Jan Gellar leaned back in her chair and exhaled. The board only spoke in numbers — dollars and ratings — and this audio footage would cost none of the former and deliver plenty of the latter. Convincing Paula had been the only potential stumbling block.
It was controversial footage, for sure, but Jan knew that all the heat would be on Richard Walker. He was the one being exposed as a hypocrite; he was the one whose last few shreds of credibility were about to be incinerated; he was the one whose career was about to die by its own sword.
Walker was a cockroach; the greatest survivor in American politics. But this? This was one self-inflicted mess that Jan couldn’t imagine even Walker finding a way out of.
“I have something else, too,” Jan typed. “A video. I’ve been considering running stills in Monday’s Chat and putting the footage online, but trust me: this deserves to be on TV. I know you’ve been having budget issues, so you can have it on me.”
Paula Dunne is typing a reply.
Jan imagined Paula weighing it up; a big scoop for Blitz News versus a big boost for Jan’s ego.
“Is it anti-Walker?” Paula’s reply read, shorter and more straightforward than Jan expected.
Jan took a few seconds to think of the best way to word it without giving too much away. “Not really… more pro-McCarthy than anti-Walker. I acquired some private footage on Monday. Not cheap. I bought it to kill it — it didn’t fit our editorial stance — but obviously the tide has turned since then. I’ve had the Kloster footage since Sunday, too, but there’s no way ACN are getting this. No one has seen it, not even Ford.”
“Do you want me to run it tonight?” Paula asked.
“Yes, but I need it in writing that this new video won’t go out within two hours of the Walker audio. I want the Walker story to be the only story for a little while, at least.”
“It won’t go out within two hours,” Paula promised.
“Good,” Jan typed. She smiled and dragged a video file onto the conversation window. “Go nuclear.”
D minus 26
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
By 6pm in Colorado, Dan was back home with Emma and Clark. He felt more optimistic than he had before seeing the footage of Kloster handing an envelope to Richard but less so than immediately before Richard surprised everyone by denying that the envelope in the video had contained the recently published letter, which he continued to dismiss as a malicious concoction.
The mood at the drive-in after Richard’s press conference ended had been oddly flat, and Dan was glad to be home. He was eating with Emma in the kitchen when her phone rang.
“Someone on your whitelist?” Dan asked. He knew it had to be.
Emma looked at the screen, both surprised and confused. “Jan Gellar.”
“Who’s she again?”
“She edits The Chat,” Emma said, bringing a finger to her lips.
Dan was sitting close enough to Emma’s phone to hear both sides of the conversation.
“Good evening, Ms Ford,” Jan said, sounding a lot more formal than Emma remembered.
“What do you want?” Emma asked, more obliviously than accusingly.
“Are you watching Blitz News?”
“Why would I be doing that?”
Jan laughed slightly. “It’s gone downhill since I left, I’ll give you that. But anyway, I think you’ll like what’s coming up on the hour.”
Emma looked at Dan and shrugged.
“Oh, I’m not being cruel,” Jan sought to clarify. “You really will like it.”
“What is it?”
“An audio recording of Walker blackmailing me into having someone bug McCarthy’s house,” Jan said, leaving nothing to surprise.
Dan lifted his plate off the table and ran through to the couch with it.
Emma walked towards the back door and lowered her voice. “What do you want?” she asked again, this time full of suspicion.
“From you? Nothing. This is Walker’s receipt. No one throws me under the bus in front of the whole world and gets away with it. Not even him.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Emma said. She had dealt with Jan and others like her too many times to easily believe there was no angle.
“I know how highly Jack Neal thinks of you,” Jan said. “And more importantly I know how much he’s told you about certain incidents. I don’t know why you didn’t escalate things when XPR let you go, but you didn’t. Walker did, though. As soon as his back was against the wall, he broke the rules. He fired the first nuke.”
Though she didn’t hear an answer in any of that, Emma was reluctant to push for one. She let Jan talk.
“Oh, and there’s going to be something else in a few hours. I’ve had it under wraps since Sunday, but now that the game’s over we’re going to run it. Walker’s not in it, but he won’t like it.”
“What is it?” Emma asked impatiently. She hated being so out of the loop, and particularly when she knew how much Jan would be enjoying holding this power over her.
“It’s pretty much on a par with the letter footage from Bonn.”
Emma looked at the flashing time on Dan’s rarely used oven. “If you’re not going to tell me, I should get going before I miss the audio release.”
“Okay. And you’re welcome, Ms Ford.”
“Whatever,” Emma said, ending the call. She joined Dan in the living room and sat on the couch, trying to get comfortable.
Only Clark didn’t know why they were watching Blitz News or what to expect from the 6pm bulletin. Emma was amused by his surprised reaction, having thought Dan had told him.
“Walker planted the bugs?!” Clark yelled excitedly, looking between Dan and Emma and wondering why they weren’t as ecstatic as he was at this concrete evidence of Richard Walker’s wrongdoing.
Emma quickly explained that they had found out a few minutes earlier. She then listened to what came next. A huge headline reading “Underhand And Indefensible” filled the screen as the audio played, turning Richard’s own words against him.
After a minute or so, Dan suggested switching to ACN to watch the news break there, too. ACN played the full audio, safely assuming that Jan Gellar wouldn’t enforce her ownership rights over audio footage about illegal surveillance that had itself been recorded without one participant’s knowledge.
“Walker will twist it and come out clean,” Dan said, dampening the mood with his sudden pessimism. “He’ll just say something ridiculous about me working with China and it being his duty as an American to monitor my communications. He’ll make a bullshit non-apology for taking the law into his own hands and that will be it. Rinse and repeat.”
Emma and Clark looked at each other.
“Dan, this is pretty big,” Emma said.
“So was the letter, though. So was the footage of Walker getting the letter. So was the other letter Kloster sent to NASA. So was the Australian letter, and that was last week! Walker’s the Teflon Don. Nothing sticks.”
“I know it’s been an insane week for you,” Emma said. “I’ve been here, too. But this thing is like a marathon, and right now you’re hitting the wall. It happens. The good thing is, the wall comes right before the end. You just have to keep going.”
“Except you don’t even have to keep running,” Clark said. “You’ve done everything. It’s a game of patience, man. We’ll go to Italy and chill for a few days then take it from there.”
“I want to go back to work,” Dan decided.
Emma was so used to prima donna clients with “do you know who I am?” attitudes that Dan’s apparent obliviousness as to how famous he had quickly become, not to mention how irreversibly his life had changed, was as refreshing as it was surprising. “We’ll see what happens,” she said, sharing a look with Clark that suggested they both knew there was nothing to see about.
“Yeah,” Clark said. “Let’s just not think about Walker or any of that for a while.”
Emma tried to shift the focus. “So what do you losers do for fun around here, anyway?”, she asked, faking an ’80s movie mean-girl accent.
Clark pointed to the TV.
“Basically,” Dan said.
Emma half-laughed-half-sighed and sat back down.
“No news, though,” Clark said.
“No news,” Emma agreed. She and Clark looked at Dan.
“Uh, no news,” he said, belatedly catching on.
Emma already knew that they didn’t get any premium channels, so she was pleased to see Clark slide open a piece of the TV unit she had always thought was a solid panel. The previously hidden section housed around fifty films and games in neatly arranged boxes. She walked over to see what there was.
“Get something about aliens,” Dan said from the couch.
“No aliens,” Emma and Clark both replied, pulling off the “same answer at the same time” trick that was usually reserved for the brothers.
Clark found something and pushed Emma away. He held the box behind his back. “What’s the opposite of aliens?”
“Humans?” Emma guessed.
“Zombies,” Dan said, more authoritatively.
“No.” Clark put the box down, out of sight, and held his left hand horizontally. “This is land, right? This is the sky,” he said, pointing above his left hand with his right, “which is where the aliens are, and this part underneath is the…”
“Core,” Emma said.
“Is it The Core?” Dan guessed. He knew Henry had that movie.
“This part is the sea,” Clark said, shaking his head at their guesses like a disappointed charades player.
“The sea is underneath the land?” Emma asked, laughing.
Dan joined in. “It’s Jaws, though, right?”
Clark applauded sarcastically and produced a Jaws box-set from the unit behind him. “Any objections?”
“We’re gonna need a bigger screen,” Emma said.
“Forty inches is fine,” Clark said, “it might not be what you’re used to, but—”
“Clark,” Dan interrupted. “It was a joke.”
This made it all the funnier for Emma. She excused herself to the kitchen while Clark inserted the first disc, taking the opportunity to send a message to Jan Gellar: “Text me when the other thing is about to air. I’m busy right now.”
* * *
Dan and Emma teased Clark mercilessly when the movie came to the “we’re gonna need a bigger boat” line, taking turns to act out the parts and argue that forty feet was fine, even if wasn’t what the other was used to. Clark took it in good humour.
Around thirty minutes after the film ended, by which point Clark was preparing to drive to the coffee place where Emma got his muffins the night before, Emma received a one-word text from Jan Gellar: “Now.”
“I know I said no news…” Emma said.
Clark groaned. “Dan, want anything when I’m out?”
“Nope.”
“Emma?”
“Something is going to happen on Blitz,” she said. “I don’t know what, but the same person who told me the Walker thing was going to air at six just told me that something else is coming up now.”
“The guy from The Daily Chat?”
“She’s a woman, but yeah. She said she bought this new footage to bury it, but obviously the Blitz agenda has flipped since the letter came out.”
Intrigued, Clark took his shoes off and sat back down in his armchair.
The Blitz News anchor on-air to reveal the footage for the first time was Sarah Curtis, perhaps the one individual who epitomised the great Blitz flip-flop more than any other having gone from openly ridiculing Billy Kendrick on the day of the leak to delivering the station’s first pro-McCarthy statement six days later.
“News coming in from Colorado,” Sarah read from the autocue, her eyes widening sufficiently to convince Emma that this really was the first she was hearing of it. “News of footage, I believe, given to Blitz by a citizen of Colorado Springs. I think we can roll that now…”
“No way,” Dan said. He jumped to his feet. “That’s me! That’s Friday! That�
�s the folder!”
Unlike Dan, Emma and Clark didn’t recognise the scene. They both watched as Dan cycled into view of the parked car’s dash-cam. Seconds later, a man dressed all in black ran straight into the side of Dan’s bike, knocking both men and the thief’s loot to the ground.
Clark watched the ensuing stand-off nervously, as though he didn’t know how it ended. When the robber flashed his weapon at Dan, which came across very clearly, Clark’s expression stiffened. “If that guy ever gets caught and I ever see him,” he said, pausing to think through his options, “I’m going to be the last guy he sees.”
Emma was too engrossed in the footage to hear any of what Clark was saying. It completely vindicated Dan’s story; he did exactly what he said he did, right down to hesitating before picking up the folder. She felt bad for ever doubting him but too happy with the footage to be bitter at Jan Gellar for withholding it for so long.
After a brief moment of joy, Emma’s mind went back into focus mode, searching for holes. She knew that Richard Walker’s instinctive reaction would be to claim the footage was staged, but the length of Dan’s hair in the video confirmed that it had been recorded before Saturday. Everyone knew that the area around Winchester Street had been closed off immediately after the robbery, meaning that the footage had to have been recorded before Friday morning. And, of course, no one knew that the IDA was going to be robbed.
Emma smiled again. Unless Richard was going to completely change his story and claim that Dan not only faked every piece of evidence but also organised the robbery, there was quite simply no way he could come out of this clean. Not even him.
“See,” Dan said as the footage ended with him putting the Kerguelen folder safely in his backpack. “I told you.”
“Fuck yeah you did,” Clark said, taking a shortcut over the coffee table to give Dan an excited brotherly hug.
Dan looked at Emma, as though waiting for her approval or a sign that everything was alright.
“Dan McCarthy,” she chirped, smiling broadly and joining the hug.
Not Alone Page 35