She had endured many forms of torture over the years, but had never been read to by a pompous blowhard while being held prisoner. For a moment, Caitlin thought she was about to log another unique personal experience in her long and varied career, until Blackstone merely smiled and closed the book up again. As though he had needed to remind himself of something.

‘This is an excellent book,’ he said. ‘Have you read it? Band of Brothers.’

‘No, but I think we have the video somewhere at home.’

‘Of course you do. The thing I like about Ambrose is the facility he has with both the big things and the little. Nowadays, I imagine we would say something like “the macro and micro”. Which is part of our problem. Brothers is a particularly fine piece of work because of the effort Ambrose took to follow those men from their first moments as soldiers through to the end of the war. It’s at the end of the war that he tells us a profound truth.’

Caitlin watched McCutcheon in her peripheral vision as he circled around to stand over by the French doors. She couldn’t keep an eye on him while Blackstone expected to have her full attention.

‘These men, from Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, had jumped into Normandy, toughed out the siege of Bastogne and muscled their way into Adolf Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. They had been tested. They had been scourged. They had reason to respect the Germans’ fighting abilities, but no reason to admire them as a people. They had suffered too much for admiration. And yet, when they found themselves in Germany at last, they also found themselves admiring the spirit and tenacity of the German volk.’

The Governor was warming to his topic now, reminding her of an eccentric professor rather than an ego-driven homicidal maniac. Caitlin had the impression that this was a lecture he had delivered many times before. She would’ve liked to have checked whether McCutcheon’s eyes were glazing over.

‘Their army defeated,’ continued Blackstone, really beginning to sound as though he was quoting himself, ‘their Reich in ruins, their most treasured myth of the Aryan superman torn apart by a mongrel alliance, the Germans nevertheless wasted no time in applying themselves to the mission of rebuilding and recovery. It was in such stark contrast to the French civilians the paratroopers had encountered earlier in the war that, in some ways, the men of Easy Company found the Germans to be more like them than the people they were fighting for.’

‘So, you’d like to be a good German?’ she asked.