The Adamas Blueprint (29 page)

EPILOGUE

A light breeze played through the lush foliage of the South Texas University campus, enhancing the unusually cool September evening. The sun was just setting over the chemistry building, and Kevin turned to look at it as he walked toward the agreed-to meeting place. He stopped and removed his sunglasses to see the dazzling pink and orange sky, the result of a volcano that had erupted in the Philippines three months earlier. After a moment, he continued walking, reminding himself to get out every night at this time from now on.

He reached the bench in the middle of the quad but decided to stand. He’d been sitting at the computer all day and his glutes ached. Maybe he’d go to the gym after dinner to work the kinks out.

To his left, Campbell Library was undergoing renovations. It was almost exactly a year ago that Erica had found the safe deposit box key that Michael Ward had hidden in its basement.

Kevin wondered where he’d be right now if Erica hadn’t found it. Probably dead. Probably both of them. It was amazing how close it had been. He still had trouble believing it.

“Hey stranger!” a voice said from behind.

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Kevin turned to see a weary-looking Erica. She’d been on-call for 36 hours. Kevin hadn’t seen her for almost a week, and despite the circles under her eyes, she was still beautiful.

After a long hug and kiss, they sat on the bench.

“That feels good,” said Erica. “I’ve been standing for the last 12 hours.”

“How are you handling it?” She’d been a emergency medicine resident for two months.

Since she’d graduated in the top five of her med school class, she’d gotten to pick her residency.

She chose the trauma room at Hermann Hospital, one of the best in the country. It also let her stay in Houston with Kevin.

“I’ve never worked this hard in my life. Right before I came over, I was stitching up a guy who walked through a plate glass window. Nothing serious, but he had about forty places where he needed stitches. Then there was the burn victim...”

Kevin put up his hand. “Okay, thanks for the update. But if I’m going to eat dinner, I’ll need to talk about something else. Check these out.” He handed her his sunglasses.

She inspected them. “Are these the first ones?”

He didn’t answer her. Instead, he took his keys out. He picked the longest one, the one to his new Mustang convertible, and ran the point of it along the lens. The surface was unmarred.

“Try it,” he said, handing her the keys.

She rubbed the key on the lens. Any other sunglasses would have been severely scratched by now, but these still looked brand new.

“You could drive a tank over them,” he said, “and the lenses wouldn’t have a mark.”

“How thick is the coating?” Erica asked.

“That’s the great thing. There is no coating.”

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“You mean the whole lens is diamond?”

“Yes. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The university got two more licensing contracts today. One from a stove manufacturer who wants to make clear stove tops out of diamond, the other from a chain saw company to make diamond-coated teeth for their saws. Now if we can just get the lawsuits with DeBeers resolved, we can run with it in the gem market.”

When the university learned of the magnitude of the discovery and the role Kevin played in retrieving it, they decided to give him a percentage of the licensing grosses. It was only a fraction of a percent, but it still would be worth millions over the next few years. So far, all he’d done with the money was buy his new car to replace the destroyed Mustang and rent a bigger apartment for the two of them. He was so busy finishing his degree and overseeing further research with the Adamas process that he didn’t have time to spend the rest of it.

“Did you hear the latest on the trial?” Kevin said.

“No. I tried to catch a little of it on CNN when I had a break last night, but I was so tired, I fell asleep before the story came on.”

“It should be over soon. Tarnwell brought in some character witnesses, but I don’t think they did much good. Not after Bern’s testimony.”

Tarnwell’s trial for conspiracy to commit murder, among other charges, was the hottest news topic in Houston. Kevin and Erica testified a month ago, after months of delaying tactics by Tarnwell’s lawyers. Kevin hadn’t understood that, since Tarnwell was jailed without bail because he was a possible menace and a flight risk. Leave it to the lawyers. Luckily, Tarnwell was spending what was left of his money on his defense. None was available for his private security force, meaning Kevin and Erica had little to fear.

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Although at the time of his shooting, Bern’s wound seemed mortal, Tarnwell’s meaty employee proved to have a strong constitution and survived. Kevin had apparently altered Van Dyke’s aim when he had struck him, and the bullet just missed Bern’s heart.

When Bern recovered, he believed Tarnwell had set him up. The bullet recovered from Herbert Stein’s body matched Bern’s gun perfectly, so given the overwhelming number of crimes he was charged with, Bern decided to turn state’s evidence against Tarnwell. Together with Kevin and Erica’s testimony and the videotape, the prosecution’s case was practically open and shut.

“Do you think the death penalty will be given?” said Erica.

“I don’t see why it wouldn’t.” He saw her disturbed expression. “I know what you think, but if anyone deserves it, he does. Besides, it’ll be years before it happens.”

He looked at the library. “You want to go see the renovations we paid for?”

“We didn’t exactly pay for them.”

“You want to put Tarnwell’s name on the donation?”

“No, Anonymous was the right name to use.”

As they got up and strolled toward the library, Kevin could see the sign at the front with the list of donors. At the top was the word “Anonymous,” and next to it written “$2,500,000.”

Similar signs were on buildings being renovated or built at the STU med school, Texas A&M, and Erica’s undergraduate college, the University of Kansas.

When Kevin found out how much Ward had taken from Tarnwell, he realized that the money had to be stashed somewhere. Then he’d remembered the page ripped out of the Adamas Blueprint and the impression of a number and some letters on the next page. It was an account MORRISON/THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT

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number and the name of a bank in the Cayman Islands. He’d tried to transfer the funds electronically, but the account specifically stated that the transaction had to be made in person.

That wasn’t a problem. Daryl Grotman was happy to make a phony passport for him.

Kevin and Erica had toyed with the idea of keeping the $10 million, but only for a few minutes. Financially, they were set for life. Besides, it would be fairly difficult to explain to the IRS how they suddenly got $10 million. Since Tarnwell thought the money was lost, there was no sense returning it to him. He’d just spend it on more lawyers. The idea of anonymous donations was the best they could come up with. They had both wanted to donate the money in their parents’ names, but that would only have raised more questions.

Kevin and Erica took a short walk through the construction. The renovations seemed to be coming along nicely. Most of the linoleum was being replaced with carpeting to deaden the sound of footsteps, and new, comfortable cubicles took the place of the torn and battered ones. The rest of the money was spent on restoring or replacing worn-out books.

As they left the building, Erica said, “It’s amazing that all this was made possible because of a process that makes shiny little stones.” She looked down at the one-carat diamond on her finger.

Kevin had tried to tell her that diamonds weren’t going to be worth much as gems much longer, but she had insisted on a traditional engagement ring. A simple gold wedding band was next to it.

“I like to think that we had something to do with it, too.” He took her hand and smiled.

“Now, Mrs. Hamilton, where would you like to eat dinner. The sky’s the limit: Wendy’s, Taco Bell, you name it.”

“I was thinking about a nice quiet dinner at Cenn’tani’s and then back to the apartment for a bit of R and R.”

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“Rest and relaxation?”

She winked at him. “Rum and romance. You didn’t have more interesting plans, did you?”

The idea of going to the gym after dinner fluttered out of his mind like a moth escaping a suddenly opened trunk.

“Didn’t you know?” Kevin said, leading her by the hand toward his car. “Nothing interesting ever happens to me.”

THE END

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AFTERWORD

When I completed this novel in 1995, the technology at the heart of this story did not yet exist. Diamonds had been made in a laboratory, but the process was difficult, expensive, and didn’t produce gem quality stones in large quantities. Then in September 2003, Wired magazine unveiled a cover story about the invention of revolutionary new chemical processes for making diamonds, processes very similar to Adamas.

Now chemically-perfect diamonds can be produced artificially at reasonable prices and great quantities. It is such a huge threat to DeBeers that they have spent millions of dollars convincing consumers that mined diamonds are better than laboratory diamonds, even though the two are identical in structure. A diamond is a diamond, no matter whether its natural or artificial.

However, I still don’t have diamond-coated sunglasses yet.

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