Hefting one of the gold bars, Jed knew from his research that it was an unusual two kilo size. The size of a large candy bar, though many, many times heavier —4.4 pounds, or 63 troy ounces to be exact— this gold was worth just over $2,205, which meant the courier had been carrying a payment of 20 times that- $44,100. In a 1970 dollar, this didn't seem that much money. There was talk of the U.S. taking gold off the fixed standard of $35 per ounce, a price in effect since the 1930's. Some of the more fanciful financial writers were predicting an ounce of gold would soon be worth as much as $350. In 1941, however, $44,000 was a considerable sun of money when compared against a U.S. Army First Lieutenant's base pay of $1,500 per annum.

Jed carried it out into the sunlight for a closer look. The chrysanthemum stood out in beautiful bold relief! Just like the one he had tucked away at home, one end had been filed to remove what must have been stamped serial numbers.

"Jenny, Jenny, Jenny," he asked, sitting down heavily in the dust of the ages —pulverized rock that had been mined in the days of the Spanish conquistadors— "now what? We've seemed to have found all the pieces, but I still can't fit the puzzle together."

"Nothing seems to fit, does it? If Lieutenant Rosenbaum had been relaying information to the Japanese, why would they kill him? Seems they would want him to continue."

"But, if the Japanese man had been the one doing the spying, then what was the purpose of the gold?"

"Let's take it from the beginning," Jenny suggested.

"It started with a gold bar..."

"...and ended with other gold bars."

"Plus a key from a secret code machine, and now the machine itself."

They spent the next hour drawing a diagram in the dirt of people, places, and events. General Hendrickson, Rice, and Kearns, from Mt. Cascade, to Omaha, to Washington D.C., and now Panama, seemed to be the path of violence. Anthoney and Sawyer, though connecting Oregon and Alaska, were on a separate path.