After the death of his wife, Richard never remarried as he knew it would be far too much of a risk to share his life and intimate secrets with a partner. He lived with his ten-year-old son, John, who had inherited the enviable combination of his father’s unyielding confidence and ambition, along with his mother’s stunning good looks. His sky-blue eyes and slightly unruly mop of strawberry blonde hair created a striking combination. He was also a model pupil: academically gifted with outstanding sporting prowess.

Richard’s personal life was complicated. He kept three full-time girlfriends in fully funded luxury apartments in different areas of the city. Although they didn’t know each other’s identities, he made it very clear that none of them could claim an exclusive relationship with him. In addition to his three mistresses, he enjoyed numerous casual relationships with random women who crossed his path in the upper echelons of society life. Like his uncle, he also had a predilection for young actresses and regularly attended shows at the Golden Gate Theatre on the hunt for young rising talent who might be in need of a rich, influential man to help develop their careers.

Martin Bormann was now eighty-one, and, although his mind was still sharp as a razor, his ailing body was fighting a losing battle against prostate cancer. He lived alone, other than a couple of staff, in a gated mansion that overlooked Nob Hill, one of the city’s most exclusive districts. He hadn’t been well enough to go to the office for over a year but Richard visited his home twice a week to keep him in the loop. He was a great sounding board and Richard constantly marvelled at the old man’s astute brain and business acumen, which invariably helped him with major strategic decisions.

In the first twenty years of building the business, Bormann had laundered huge sums of money from secret numbered accounts in Switzerland and South America. He didn’t need to refer to records, as his computer-like brain knew the location and numbers of all these dirty accounts. Most of them had been opened in the last few months of the war and, thirty-five years on, they still contained the best part of a billion dollars. Then there were the stolen artworks, hidden in various bank vaults around the world, many of which were priceless. Bormann knew the precise location of all of them.