Barrett nodded and began to cry again. “I know. I know. You’re a good man. I trust you. If they hurt her, I want the entire world set on fire.”

“And it will be,” Keller said.

Barrett gritted his teeth. “And this media. My God, Lawrence! Can’t we stop them? My daughter, my beautiful daughter, is under threat of death, and all these bastards can focus on is my military record. They’re making me into a damn laughingstock. I hate them so much. I would bomb them, too.”

Keller shook his head. There was nothing anyone could do about the media, or about David Barrett’s military record. The man found it convenient to take five straight draft deferments during the height of the Vietnam War. At one point, during a period when his draft status was unresolved—meaning the Army felt he should report for duty, and his father and grandfather were frantically pulling strings to make the Army change its mind—David had spent four months in the French Riviera.

Keller himself felt no sympathy about this, or about the skewering a few of the newspapers were giving him. Keller had done two tours of Vietnam as a United States Marine, had been wounded on three occasions, and had seen many, many people die. He had fought street to street during the Battle of Hue. Afterward, his reward—his downtime, as it were—was to spend a year patrolling the DMZ between North and South Korea.

No. He didn’t feel much sympathy for David and his military record.

The loss of his daughter was profound, and terrible. Keller would resolve that, if he could. But David being teased by a handful of resentful reporters? So be it.

“David, you should go upstairs to bed. Okay?”

“The things they’re saying about me, Lawrence… it isn’t fair.”

“David!” Keller said, sternly now. “As your friend, not as your Chief of Staff, I’m telling you. I’m commanding you. Okay? Go to bed. Yes, Elizabeth has been taken. Yes, it is terrible, terrible news. But thousands of people are working around the clock, the best people on Earth, to save her life. Meanwhile, Caitlynn hasn’t been taken, and she’s still with you. And Marilynn is up there in bed, crying herself to sleep over the loss of her daughter. Be a man. Be her husband. Be strong for her, go upstairs and comfort her, and tell her that everything is going to be all right.”

Barrett was shaking his head.

“But what if it’s not going to be all right?”

Keller shrugged. “If that’s what you believe, then lie to her.”

Barrett stared at him.

“That’s right,” Keller said. “It’s a time for comforting lies.”

Finally, Barrett nodded his head. “Okay. I can do that. I lie all the time. I have to. It’s part of the job.”

Keller nodded, but didn’t answer directly.