Six months later, Alicia gave birth to a healthy baby boy and was the happiest she’d ever been. Richard and Ronald seemed ecstatic, and Alicia’s parents were invited to fly over from Sweden to meet their first grandchild. Richard had booked Alicia into a small, exclusive maternity hospital on the outskirts of the city. He’d insisted on total privacy and her two-thousand-dollar-a-night suite was situated on its own floor, accessed only via a private lift. Richard had been present at the birth and, two hours later, he, Alicia and their newly born son were visited by Bormann, in his guise as Richard’s uncle.

At first, everything seemed normal and all three were in a state of euphoria. However, Alicia was physically exhausted after a fourteen-hour labour and was struggling to keep awake. Richard kept encouraging her to go to sleep. She finally closed her eyes but hadn’t quite slipped into unconsciousness when she felt the sudden touch and pressure of a cotton pillow held firmly against her face. She was far too weak to resist and her last momentary thought was wondering which of the two men was holding it down. After five minutes, Bormann removed the duck-feather pillow and stared at her beautiful blue eyes, which were now blank.

Two hours later, Bormann’s private physician signed a death certificate, recording the cause of Alicia’s demise as severe haemorrhage, caused by excess bleeding taking place immediately after giving birth. He normally charged a hundred dollars an hour for call-outs but, on this occasion, his reward was a cash payment of ten thousand.

A week later, Richard Franklin brought his new son home, where a live-in nurse and nanny were waiting in the newly created nursery to greet them. He may have lost his mother but baby John wasn’t short of care and attention. Bormann arrived at the penthouse later that day and the two men shared a celebratory drink in Richard’s study. They clinked glasses and Bormann began to speak.

“Richard, you’ve done well. Let’s toast your newborn son – the Führer’s grandson.”

Both men emptied their champagne flutes. John George Franklin had only just entered the world and had already lost his mother. Everything was going according to plan.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

24 January 2012

Buenos Aires

Olivia Bianchi, the deputy head of HR for the Buenos Aires Police Department, sat at her desk, organising her schedule for the day. She had worked for the police for almost twenty years, having joined straight from university as a trainee graduate in personnel. As one of the most qualified figures in the human resources department, she was often called upon to arbitrate on extremely delicate internal matters and the nature of her work meant she had direct access to high-level confidential files on most of the twenty-five thousand police department workforce.