The Adamas Blueprint (13 page)

CHAPTER 16

Clayton Tarnwell burst through the left door of the laboratory, almost knocking over a technician carrying samples the other direction. The technician first cursed at him for using the wrong door, and then when he saw who it was, began to apologize profusely. Tarnwell kept walking as if the man weren’t even there.

Following him was his mousy, balding chief financial officer, Milton Senders, still garbed in a plaid shirt and hiking boots, dabbing the top of his perspiring head with a handkerchief. The plane had been late in arriving, and he had raced over to the office without changing when he’d gotten his messages at home. He too didn’t give a second glance at the sputtering technician. He was too busy doing his own sputtering.

“I...I’m sorry, Clay. There’s no excuse. This should never have happened. ZurBank should have called...”

“It’s too late for that, Senders. You’re not going to weasel your way out of this. You gave me your word that Ward had no way of getting the money out.” Tarnwell crashed through another door.

MORRISON/THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT

138

“But he couldn’t have if those assholes at ZurBank hadn’t been so stupid. The bank had specific instructions to notify us before making any transactions over $10,000 involving the account. That would give us time to find out what he was up to. If he withdrew less than that, he’d have some spending money to play with, and he wouldn’t get suspicious. It should have been foolproof.”

“Then what happened? Ten million dollars didn’t just evaporate.” Tarnwell already had a headache, and this fool was just making it worse. Normally, four hours of sleep was enough for him, but he’d been up since Saturday following the operation to capture the Hamilton kid and getting ready to secure the loan to buy Forrestal Chemical. The loan talks with First Texas had gone smoothly, and the buyout was practically a done deal. The Forrestal board had the contract in front of them, and Tarnwell expected them to sign it any minute. He had no doubt they would; they’d never get a better deal than $20 a share for a company that was currently trading at $12 a share.

“I talked to Hermann Schultz at ZurBank after I finished the work on the Forrestal contract,”

Senders said. “He faxed the detailed statements. The account isn’t empty. There’s about $100,000 left, probably so we wouldn’t know he closed the account. Apparently on Friday he tried to make a withdrawal of $15,000. When the bank told him it would take several hours to complete the transaction, Ward changed his mind and withdrew $9000 instead. ZurBank didn’t notify us since it was below the $10,000 limit.”

Tarnwell stopped at a third door, simply marked ‘Research’.

“What the hell are you getting at, Senders?”

MORRISON/THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT

139

“Beginning at 6:00 Friday morning Zurich time, Ward made 1100 withdrawals of $9000

each.”

“What! How?”

“Electronically. He must have called the bank for the information on how to do it. It’s fairly simple to do over the computer when you have a password.”

“1100 withdrawals in one morning?”

“The computer registered one withdrawal every thirty seconds. It took about nine hours. He must have written a special program to do it.”

“Are you telling me that there was no cap on the amount that could be withdrawn?”

“We saw no need for it. You said you’d be willing to give up a few minor withdrawals to give Ward the illusion of a real account. And we had a helluva time getting ZurBank to help us as much as they did. There was no way we were going to get them to limit the total amount Ward could withdraw...”

“I don’t want to hear any more about how you screwed up, Senders. I want you to get the money back.”

The sweat on Senders’ balding pate grew even more profuse. “I can’t. It was transferred to an account in the Bahamas and then out of that account. That’s all we know. The money could be anywhere by now.”

“Fly to the Bahamas and talk to the bank...”

“It’s no good. We may have had some influence in ZurBank because of our holdings, but we’ll never get any help from the Bahamas. They’d laugh in our face. Unless we can find some information from Ward’s files, the money is gone.”

MORRISON/THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT

140

“You’d better damn well hope Mitch finds something in the files Lobec downloaded from Ward’s computer. I’m stretched thin as it is with this Forrestal deal. You know the balance sheet.” Tarnwell had already signed the contract and given it to the lawyers to finalize the deal.

He had more important matters to tend to. He’d wine and dine the Forrestal board later.

Senders risked a tentative smile. “Now that we have the loan, the deal with Forrestal won’t be a problem, even without the ten million. And once we announce the patent on the Adamas process, our stock will triple. We’ll be able to pay off the loan the next day.”

Senders’ cellular phone rang.

“It’s probably Harris. I told him to call when the Forrestal board signed the contract.”

Senders clicked the phone on.

Select people within the company like Senders knew about Adamas, but besides Lobec and Bern, no one knew the true origin of the process. Senders and the lawyers thought the research staff had come up with it, and the research staff thought it had been bought from an individual inventor. That’s why Tarnwell discouraged Senders from venturing into the research labs.

Tarnwell inserted an ID card into a wall reader. A light next to it turned from red to green, and the door swung inward.

Tarnwell said to Senders, “Wait here for me,” and went through. Just before the door shut, a hand shot through.

“I thought I told you to wait...” Tarnwell stopped when he saw Lobec open the door.

“Oh good, David, come in. Good news I hope.”

“No, the news is rather disturbing,” Lobec said without inflection, and then quieted as a short, pudgy man wearing a white lab coat approached them. His name was Dr. Bruno Lefler, the chief MORRISON/THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT

141

scientist in charge of the Adamas project. Since they had obtained Michael Ward’s notes the previous week, the staff had worked around the clock to set up the proper equipment and validate the process. They had to make sure it worked before the patent submission was complete.

Tarnwell knew it was only a formality.

He was annoyed to the see Dr. Lefler frowning and carrying a three ring binder.

“Mr. Tarnwell,” Lefler said, pushing one of his sleeves up, “I didn’t know you were coming here. I was just about to call you. We have a problem.”

“Lefler, this is top priority. If you don’t have some equipment you need, get it. Don’t worry about the cost this time.”

“No, Mr. Tarnwell, we have everything we need to validate the process. It works exactly as it is described in this notebook you gave me.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Lefler looked uneasily at Lobec, whom he’d never met. Tarnwell noticed his hesitation.

“Lefler, this is David Lobec, my chief of security. He knows all about Adamas. Now go ahead.”

“As I was saying, the process works exactly as it is described. But we have produced only graphite, no diamond whatsoever, industrial-grade or gem quality.”

Tarnwell turned to Lobec. “Is he joking? Did I hear him right? He has to be joking.”

“Dr. Lefler appears to be serious, Mr. Tarnwell,” Lobec said.

“Fuck!” Tarnwell glowered at Lefler. “Explain.”

“I don’t know if I can. I do know that key elements of the process have been left out. On the surface, I understand the direction that has been taken to alter the structure of the carbon-60 to MORRISON/THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT

142

produce diamond, but after a certain point, these notes revert to a description of graphite synthesis that has been published in the literature for several years now and already has a patent pending. It almost looks as if someone plagiarized a journal article from that point on.”

“But I saw the process myself,” said Tarnwell. “I didn’t learn all of the details, but I remember enough from my chemistry degree to know that the overall idea was sound. I inspected the chamber before and after the experiment. It did produce diamond. The Adamas process worked.”

Tarnwell had even perused the copy of the notebook when Lobec recovered it to make sure it was the right one. Everything Ward had showed him was described in the notebook. There was no reason to think it wouldn’t work.

“Perhaps it did work when you saw it. But this,” Lefler said, waving the binder, “is not that process. You were duped.”

“That son of a bitch!” Tarnwell stared at Lobec. “Ward planted a fake notebook. That means he was telling the truth about hiding it. Maybe about the videotape too.”

Lefler looked at Tarnwell with a puzzled expression.

“Is this notebook worthless?” Tarnwell said to Lefler.

“No, not at all. It provides great insight into the general nature of the research. With a few years of experimentation, we might be able to develop the process ourselves.”

“A few years!”

“Perhaps two if we are very lucky and focus all of our resources...”

MORRISON/THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT

143

“Doctor,” Tarnwell said, “we don’t have even one month. We have a huge buyout that is dependent on Adamas being submitted for patent protection next week. If we don’t get it, this company’s credit won’t be worth squat.”

“Then I suggest you don’t make the buyout.”

Lefler was right. The entire pitch to First Texas was based on Adamas. If he made the buyout and Adamas was a failure or delayed, he’d have no way to make the payments on the loan.

He’d be insolvent almost immediately. Bankrupt. Which meant he had to stop the deal.

Senders! Maybe he could catch him before the contract was signed and tell him to withdraw it. Tarnwell raced back to the door and yanked it open.

Senders was replacing the cellular phone in his pocket. Tarnwell’s stomach sank when he saw Senders’ huge smile.

“Good news, Clay.”

MORRISON/THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT

144

CHAPTER 17

“Diamonds?” Erica said. She wanted to know exactly what Kevin was talking about before they went to the police. She pulled into a parking spot along University Drive five blocks from the bank. A Kinko’s copy center was in front of them. “As in ‘Diamonds are a girl’s best friend’

diamonds?”

“Yes, this notebook tells you how to make real, honest-to-god diamonds. It also tells you how to coat any object with a diamond film.”

Erica shook her head. “How could you run an experiment for your professor without knowing you were making diamonds?”

“Because I wasn’t,” Kevin said. “The experiment we were working on the day I was fired was an investigation into high-temperature superconductors. The diamonds were made by mistake.”

She must have look as confused as she felt.

“Here,” Kevin said. “Let me read this to you.”

He opened the notebook to the first page and began reading aloud.

MORRISON/THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT

145

“‘Adamas—Greek for an impenetrably hard stone. To whom it may concern: Adamas is also the name of the process I’ve described in this notebook. Since you are reading this notebook, I have abandoned hope of claiming the Adamas process for myself. The Adamas Blueprint is my insurance, if you will. My lawyer, Herbert Stein, has been instructed to publish these notes on the Internet in the event of my death.’”

“Stein!” Erica said. “The guy who was murdered? The one in Ward’s email?“

“I know. Wait. It gets better. ‘To be fair, I should give credit to another person who helped me unwittingly in this project. Kevin Hamilton, a graduate student who worked for me, was assisting me with research into the superconductive properties of carbon 60.”

“Carbon 60? What’s that?”

“Have you ever heard of Buckyballs?”

“I’ve heard the word.”

“In 1985, some astrophysicists and chemists came across it by accident while trying to simulate processes that produce interstellar dust. It’s only the third pure form of carbon after graphite and diamond. Since then, it’s been in the newspapers a lot because whole new classes of chemicals can be made with it. The discoverers won the Nobel prize.”

“Buckyball is a goofy name for a Nobel Prize-winning discovery.”

“The official name is Buckminsterfullerene, but nobody liked saying it. The molecule looks just like a soccer ball, so Buckyball stuck.”

“And what were you doing with the Buckyballs?”

MORRISON/THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT

146

“Trying to make high-temperature superconductors. As Ward explains it here, ‘Metal-doped fullerene crystals have been shown to be isotropically superconductive above 30 degrees Kelvin.’

That’s a high temperature for a superconductor—about 240 degrees Celsius below zero.”

Erica just shook her head and gave Kevin the look that told him he was not making sense.

“Okay, I’ll back up. Superconductors are materials that have no electrical resistance and therefore no heat loss. The applications for them are endless. We could make 300-mile-an-hour trains that levitate above magnetic rails. Electricity could be sent from one end of the country to another if there was no resistance in the power lines. The main limiting factor in the size and speed of computers is the ability of the microprocessors to shed heat. With superconductors, there would be no heat, so microprocessors could be made 1000 times smaller than they are now.”

“So what’s the catch?”

“Right now, all superconductors have to be cooled down to a temperature near absolute zero using liquid helium. The cooling process requires a room about the size of a bus, and the whole setup costs over a million dollars. But if we could find a way to make a high-temperature superconductor, we could use liquid nitrogen as a coolant, which is cheap and requires only a small amount of equipment. We were just doing basic research. We didn’t really expect to find anything besides directions for future research.”

“But you did find something,” Erica said.

Kevin nodded. “And I never knew it.” He went on reading. “‘On April 21, Kevin and I were in the lab trying to introduce a variety of elements into the molecular matrix of carbon 60 when MORRISON/THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT

147

the laser overloaded and almost destroyed the lab. Once we got the situation under control, Kevin had to leave for class and therefore never realized what had truly happened.

“‘While I was assessing the damage, I noticed something strange about the experimental chamber. A fine glaze had formed over the exterior surface of the test stand. At first I had no idea what it was, although I was curious. When I attempted to remove the target material from the test stand, I couldn’t budge it. I thought perhaps it was fused in place by heat, but on further inspection I could see no signs of melting. I unscrewed the entire test stand and examined it with an infrared spectrometer. Only then did the implications of the glaze become apparent.

“‘A unique combination of events during the accident, the details of which are described in the body of this document, resulted in a new and relatively inexpensive method for producing diamond. In refining the process over the course of the next several months, I was able to confirm that not only could a diamond film be produced to coat any object, but also that this new process, which I call Adamas, could produce significant quantities of gem-quality stones.

“‘I will not go into the details of why I didn’t tell Kevin of the discovery.’”—Kevin muttered

“Because you were an asshole” after reading the line—“‘Suffice it to say that he was not involved in any way with hiding it from the university.’” Kevin looked up from the book. “Typical of Ward. He takes responsibility only when it can’t hurt him any more.”

“You were a part of it from the beginning,” Erica said. “You’re a coinventor.”

“Which would have been cool if people weren’t trying to kill us.”

“Are you sure this isn’t about a diamond substitute?” Erica said. “Maybe this is all a mistake.

Maybe Adamas is like cubic zirconia. It just looks like diamond.”

MORRISON/THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT

148

“No, Ward may have been a jerk,” Kevin said, leafing through the notebook, “but he was a damn good researcher. Look here. Ward talks about molecular fragmentation of C60 through a microwave discharge resulting in chemical vapor deposition of carbon. I thought about it only peripherally back in April, but I realize now that the method we were using to insert metallic ions into C60 molecules also forms the basis for chemical vapor deposition.”

Erica was completely lost. “What the hell did you just say?”

“Sorry.” Kevin flipped to another section. “I looked at this in the bank.” He pointed to a graph in the notebook. “See? Here’s what I mean. The infrared spectrometer data clearly shows a pure carbon matrix in the sample. Pure carbon. There’s no evidence of any other type of element, including zircon.”

“Which is in cubic zirconia?”

Kevin nodded. “Cubic zirconia only looks like diamond. It might be a good substitute for diamond in someone’s ring, but it doesn’t have the properties that make diamonds special.”

“Like its hardness?”

Kevin looked off in the distance, as if he were an awestruck farmer who was seeing a city skyline for the first time. “Right, but that’s only the start. Diamond is also transparent, it’s an almost perfect heat conductor, and it performs as a semiconductor at much higher temperatures than silicon. No other material in the world has that combination of properties.”

“So?”

He looked back at her, but the excitement was still there. “People have been trying to find a cheap way to synthesize diamond for the past fifty years. In the fifties, General Electric found a way of making artificial diamonds, but it’s still so expensive, it’s only used for things like special MORRISON/THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT

149

industrial drills. And it’s not pure enough for gems. The diamonds they can make now look like dirty glass. But imagine if someone came up with a new method for making diamonds, one that cost tens of dollars per carat rather than thousands of dollars. You could put a diamond film on almost anything you wanted. You could even make things out of diamond. The patent for something like that is worth millions.”

“Or billions.” She paused to let the enormity of the discovery sink in. “We have to take this to the police. Whoever’s after us won’t stop until they have that notebook.”

“If I showed this to you, and you didn’t know me from Adam, would you believe that this was a radical new discovery and not a bunch of hoohaw?”

He held up the notebook so she could see one of the pages with technical specifications on it.

She noticed that the edge was jagged in between this page and the previous one.

“It looks like a page was ripped out,” she said.

“I saw that, but I don’t why he would do that.” Kevin said, turning the notebook for a closer look. “The correct procedure is to cross out incorrect results.”

Erica traced her index finger across the top of the page. “I think I can make out indentations of what he wrote.”

“We’ll find out what it says later. Look at the specifications.”

Erica read starting from the first paragraph on the page.
To maintain a uniform face for
vaporization, the metal-graphite composite target was supported over a water-cooled copper
collector in a UHV chamber evacuated to 10 mTorr. The target was attached to a homemade
liquid nitrogen cryostat, and a magnetic suspended turbo molecular pump...

The words were meaningless to Erica. She gave him the look again.

MORRISON/THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT

150

“See what I mean?” he said. “Only a chemist would understand it.”

“So let’s take it to a chemist.”

“Who? I can’t go back to South Texas. You already found that out. And no professor’s going to believe some student who walks in off the street with this wacko story. Even if he looked at the notebook, he’d have to study it to get an idea of whether it would work or not.”

“Will it?” Erica said.

“I’m not sure. I think so.”

“Then what chemist do we call?”

“We can’t do that,” Kevin said. “The first thing a chemist would do is call someone else, probably someone at South Texas. Then we’re as good as caught. We need help from the police or the FBI or somebody like that. In case you don’t remember, people have been trying to kill us since Saturday morning.”

“What about making a copy of the notebook?” Erica said, pointing at the Kinko’s in front of them. “It could be
our
insurance.”

“We’d have to give it to someone else. Look where that got Stein. I don’t think I want that hanging over my head. Besides, it’s possible they don’t have Adamas yet. Remember, Ward said that they want it.”

“If they didn’t have it yet, then why would they try to kill us? Wouldn’t they kidnap us to tell them where it is?”

“You have a point.”

Erica shook her head, not knowing what to do next. “Nothing else was in the safe deposit box?”

MORRISON/THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT

151

“Shit!” Kevin said, reaching into his pocket. “I forgot about this.” He handed an 8mm videotape to her.

“This must be important if he put it in the box,” Erica said.

“I know. I guess I got so excited about the notebook, it slipped my mind.”

“Do you know what’s on it?” she said, flipping it in her hands.

“I have no idea. The notebook doesn’t say anything about it.”

She put the tape in her purse and started the Honda. “Then let’s find out.”

* * *

David Lobec closed the door behind him as he followed Tarnwell into the extravagant penthouse office. He knew Tarnwell meant to impress everyone who entered with its marble floors, teak woodwork, and bear and elk hunting trophies lining the walls, but Lobec found it overbearing, heavy-handed, and tasteless. It was a total contrast to the undecorated office Lobec maintained on the floor below.

“So how could these two kids be anywhere?” Tarnwell said, sitting at his desk. He clipped the end off a Cuban cigar and lit it. Instead of taking one of the chairs across from Tarnwell, Lobec sat on the sofa, away from the pungent smoke. “Last time I heard, you said they were buying gas in Florida.”

Lobec suppressed a substantial urge to roll his eyes. He had little patience for Tarnwell’s inadequacies. “As I was explaining, Mr. Tarnwell, they were only charging the cost of the gas to a Visa card. It seems that they had worked out exactly how long it would take to drive from one city to another and then billed the credit card accordingly. They could have led us on for a good MORRISON/THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT

152

while longer, but they happened to choose an Exxon station in Tennessee that was undergoing repairs and had no working gas pumps.”

Tarnwell rolled the cigar in his forefingers. “We have got to find these kids, David. You heard what Lefler said.”

“As I said, the news is discouraging. We continue to survey all likely places they would turn up: the university, the medical school, known friends. We’ve also paid key people in each of those places to notify us if anything indicating the location of Mr. Hamilton and Ms. Jensen arises.

But for all we know, they could still be in Houston.”

Tarnwell pounded with the cigar in hand, spraying ashes across the desk. “For Christ’s sake, David, don’t you have any good news for me?”

“One rather strange item we are looking into concerns Mr. Hamilton’s family. His South Texas University records show that his parents died while he was at Texas A&M and that he has no siblings. But during a routine cross check, Mitch could find no death certificate for Murray Hamilton, his father. In fact, his Texas construction license was renewed six months ago.”

“He’s alive?”

“That would be the obvious conclusion.”

“Do you think Kevin would try to contact him?”

“It seems unlikely since his own son listed him deceased on official school records. However, I cannot rule out the possibility. The license lists an address in Dallas.”