Vargas flicked the left indicator as they entered the street where he lived. “Literally no one. My assistant, Juan Torres, who is a great detective, is highly suspicious but has cut me some slack for now. The problem is the media are all over the story. What started out as a high-profile robbery investigation has now become a murder case, with multiple killings. Until last night, I had no idea who was behind it, but now—”

Hembury cut in. “Now we know it’s the Third Reich.”

The two men sat across the breakfast bar in Vargas’s kitchen and devoured a takeaway from his local Italian deli. Hembury had seen all the photos on Vargas’s mobile and was now totally up to speed on the case.

“I did some research on the flight over and it turns out Bormann was a real piece of work. The guy was totally in control of the Nazi Party and its finances. Many conspiracy theories claim he squirrelled hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Nazi gold over to South America in the last two years of the war and that he made it out of Berlin and lived in hiding somewhere in Argentina. The official tale goes that he was shot trying to escape in 1945. German authorities claim that a skeleton found near Hitler’s bunker in 1972 contained matching DNA to one of his living relatives but, the fact is, no one really knows for sure what happened to him. This whole case is beyond mind-blowing. What are you thinking?”

Vargas downed a last spoonful of tiramisu before replying. “I’ve booked us on a direct flight tomorrow afternoon to El Calafate, which is where their farmhouse was based. That’s if it’s still standing. After Hitler and Braun died, it might well have been pulled down as part of a cover up. That’s over forty years ago now. Anyhow, it’s about a three-and-a-half-hour flight and, once we land, we’ll pick up a hire car and then, who knows?”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

24 January 2012

Buenos Aires

Bianchi had waited inside the cubicle for a torturous six hours and no one had entered for the last three. She opened the door, walked across to the nearest sink and began her work. Everything she needed was inside her large brown leather shoulder bag. She eased out of her blue cotton dress and slipped on a pair of black joggers along with a black T-shirt. Then she pulled on the black woollen balaclava Núñez had given her. Next, she took a single cigarette from the soft Camel pack and attached it with a rubber band to a book of fifty matches. She removed the top from a 35ml bottle of Chanel N°5 and carefully poured the contents onto a small white cloth. Earlier that day she had switched the perfume for pure gasoline. The entire operation took less than two minutes.