Before he’d died, Bormann had explained it was essential for the success of their master plan that Franklin base himself full-time in San Francisco, from where he could drive the business forward and guide his son on his political journey. The implication of that strategy meant he needed to find a third party, based in South America, whom he could trust implicitly to carry out his requests in a discreet and efficient manner. Franklin sat at the desk in the apartment, reading through the notes he had put together on Paz Securities. He glanced down at his watch, noting his meeting with Matias Paz was due in the next hour.

Paz was only twenty-seven years old but had led an intense and colourful life. At sixteen, he’d left school and joined the Argentine Navy as a cadet, serving on the destroyer, Hércules. He’d quickly progressed to the rank of junior officer and, two years later, was recruited to the Amphibious Commandos, the special operations group of the Marine Corps. Operatives were trained in the arts of demolition, weapons and close-quarter combat and their skills were called upon to perform assault raids at short notice. Paz excelled in this role and was involved in a number of covert operations, some of which included hand-to-hand combat and the taking of life.

After two years, he took his highly specialised skills to the freelance market and was recruited by a private British-based agency. He joined a group of mercenaries, stationed in Angola, who were participating in the civil war. Paz fought for the US-backed National Liberation Front against the Popular Movement for Liberation, financed by Russia and Cuba. The payments he received for six months’ work were enough to allow him to return to Buenos Aires, set up his own security company and recruit three former commandos as his first employees. He worked tirelessly to build the company, and by the summer of 1981 Paz Securities employed eight full-time operatives, working out of the Recoleta office, and reported an annual turnover of more than a million dollars.

Paz was obsessive when it came to client research and, when he received the enquiry from Richard Franklin’s office for a potential meeting, he set about discovering as much about the owner of the Franklin Corporation as he possibly could. One thing was clear, the man he was about to meet with was a big fish: a veritable whale shark, and by far the most important potential client ever to set foot in his office. Following the recent death of his uncle, Franklin had become Chairman, in addition to his role as CEO, of one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world and, although he was based at the head office in San Francisco, both he and the corporation had been born in Argentina in 1946.