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Back The Counterfeit Candidate
Chapters (61)
  1. Prologue
  2. Chapter One
  3. Chapter Two
  4. Chapter Three
  5. Chapter Four
  6. Chapter Five
  7. Chapter Six
  8. Chapter Seven
  9. Chapter Eight
  10. Chapter Nine
  11. Chapter Ten
  12. Chapter Eleven
  13. Chapter Twelve
  14. Chapter Thirteen
  15. Chapter Fourteen
  16. Chapter Fifteen
  17. Chapter Sixteen
  18. Chapter Seventeen
  19. Chapter Eighteen
  20. Chapter Nineteen
  21. Chapter Twenty
  22. Chapter Twenty-One
  23. Chapter Twenty-Two
  24. Chapter Twenty-Three
  25. Chapter Twenty-Four
  26. Chapter Twenty-Five
  27. Chapter Twenty-Six
  28. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  29. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  30. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  31. Chapter Thirty
  32. Chapter Thirty-One
  33. Chapter Thirty-Two
  34. Chapter Thirty-Three
  35. Chapter Thirty-Four
  36. Chapter Thirty-Five
  37. Chapter Thirty-Six
  38. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  39. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  40. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  41. Chapter Forty
  42. Chapter Forty-One
  43. Chapter Forty-Two
  44. Chapter Forty-Three
  45. Chapter Forty-Four
  46. Chapter Forty-Five
  47. Chapter Forty-Six
  48. Chapter Forty-Seven
  49. Chapter Forty-Eight
  50. Chapter Forty-Nine
  51. Chapter Fifty
  52. Chapter Fifty-One
  53. Chapter Fifty-Two
  54. Chapter Fifty-Three
  55. Chapter Fifty-Four
  56. Chapter Fifty-Five
  57. Chapter Fifty-Six
  58. Epilogue
  59. Author’s Note
  60. Acknowledgements
  61. About the Author

Other fake documents confirmed that Gerald and Ronald were brothers, and that Emilia was married to Gerald. The file also contained dozens of photographs, the majority of which featured Gerald in the company of various groups of well-dressed businessmen. One of them was so horrifying it stopped Vargas dead in his tracks. It featured Hitler and Bormann standing alongside a group of three other elderly men. Vargas didn’t recognise any of them, but that didn’t matter. What he did recognise was the chilling Nazi salute that all of them directed towards the Führer.

Vargas leaned back, took a long slurp of his chocolate milkshake and reached for the Big Mac lying in an open carton next to it. He took a huge bite and spat it out a second later. It was stone cold, having sat on his desk for a considerable time. It was already two in the morning and he had been ploughing through the files for just under four hours. The only interruption had taken place just before midnight when a junior officer had arrived to set up an 8mm projector. He had no idea how Torres had managed to locate one and, not for the first time, he marvelled at the ingenuity of his loyal assistant.

Vargas moved onto the third file, the thinnest of the three but, in many ways, the most revealing. It contained dozens of bank statements detailing transfers of hundreds of millions of Reichsmarks moving between accounts located in Germany and Argentina. Other paperwork listed hundreds of artworks, together with their estimated values. At the back of the file was a thin brown envelope containing two original documents and one photocopy. The two originals were the death certificates of Gerald and Emilia Franklin. The third was a photocopy of the birth certificate of Richard Franklin. Vargas took a sharp breath and did a double take as he absorbed the full implications of the document in his hands. He shook his head in disbelief and dropped the photocopy as if it had suddenly caught fire. It fell onto the desk but his eyes remained transfixed on the birth name. Incredibly, the document revealed that Richard Franklin was the son of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. No doubt the original was somewhere in San Francisco, in the hands of the CEO of the Franklin Pharmaceutical Corporation.