Present day: Sterling Morris reaches across the aisle to select Kaki Smithson as his Presidential running mate, uniting a polarized nation. But when an assassin's bullet leaves the new President critically wounded in New Orleans' Charity Hospital, tenacious journalist Ronnie Tamlin set her sights on a conspiracy and gives it a name: The BENEFACTORS - an organization that may have orchestrated Kaki's rise to power and Sterling's fall - and the consequences may prove fatal. Flashback to 1945: WWII is coming to a close. The Nazis and the Japanese have looted their empires and are secreting vast treasure. Leading the ranks of the OSS, three brazen agents, Herbert Mannington, Anthony Laperose, and Charles Constantine aid the U.S. to victory and in doing so, commandeer unimaginable wealth. As the world rebuilds, these well-intentioned renegades remain determined to establish a new world order while the pull of unfettered power begins to erode their sense of direction. The Gold Factor, the first in the series and based on real events, is a twisting tale of intrigue that follows the rise of The BENEFACTORS, the legacy of a man who would see them stopped dead in their tracks, and the lives of four women entangled in a plot to assassinate a modern-day President.