The Adamas Blueprint

by Boyd Morrison

  Standing next to the central pillar, a security guard surveyed the lobby in slow glances. Kevin avoided his eyes and walked past. He clasped the fake ID in his pocket tightly.

  He approached one of the dozen desks situated near the vault. Seated behind it was a young brunette with a name tag that said “Martha Warsett” and then below it “Management Trainee.” She looked up at Kevin and smile broadly.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  “Yes,” Kevin said as he sat. “I would like to get into my safe deposit box.”

  She turned toward the terminal on her desk. “Your name.”

  This was it. “Michael Ward.” He bounced his foot, praying that she didn’t recognize the name.

  She typed the name into the computer. After a second, she turned back to him. “Yes, Mr. Ward. Box 645.”

  Kevin stifled a sigh of relief. She didn’t know who Ward really was.

  As she opened a drawer to her left to retrieve some papers, she said, “I’ll just need to see two forms of ID and we’ll get you signed in.”

  Kevin felt as if he’d been punched in the kidneys.

  “I…I only brought my driver’s license.” He pulled the license out of his pocket and showed her.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Ward. We require two IDs. Several incidents of fraud have forced us to make that change. It’s for our customers’ safety. I hope you understand.”

  Kevin didn’t want to chance going back to Daryl Grotman and getting another ID made. He’d risk coming back and getting the person who had opened the account for Ward. “I really need to get into my box. My tuition is due today, and I have a bond in my box that I need to cash. Is there any way you can make an exception?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. Any form of ID will be acceptable. Credit card, student ID….”

  “I’ll have to go all the way back to my apartment, and by that time it’ll be too late…”

  Kevin felt a hand grab his left shoulder. “What are you doing here?” a female voice said.

  He spun and was stunned to see a short blonde with her hair pinned up, wearing glasses and a dark gray business jacket and skirt. He was speechless, primarily because he didn’t recall ever seeing her before.

  “Don’t tell me you forgot me already. We met at Nigel’s party Friday. The jazz band was great, by the way. Sorry you missed it.”

  The recollection of the tight black leather dress hit Kevin. He never would have recognized her if she hadn’t spoken to him. Then he remembered her mentioning that she worked in a local bank.

  He nodded. “I’m glad.” he said, trying to regain his composure. He glanced at her name tag, which said “Heather Whitcomb” and underneath “Loan Officer.” He hadn’t remembered her name from the party. He hoped her memory was just as bad.

  “I mean, I’m sorry too. Of course, I remember you, Heather.”

  “Is it Kenneth?” she said.

  “No,” Kevin said, smiling. “Mike. Michael Ward.”

  “Oops. I think I met about twenty people that night.”

  “That’s okay. I cheated.” He pointed to the name tag.

  Heather looked down and chuckled. “I didn’t know this was your bank. I’ve never seen you here before.”

  “I, uh, just have a safe deposit box here. I opened it a couple of months ago and haven’t been here since.”

  Martha spoke. “Mr. Ward was trying to get into it, but he only had his driver’s license. I was explaining our policy…”

  “I think one ID will be enough for Mike.”

  “Maybe I should check with Mr. Halmin,” Martha said, still unsure if she was doing the right thing.

  “No, he’ll just say the same thing. You don’t have to be a stickler for the rules if you know the customer.” Heather winked at Kevin.

  “Thanks,” he said. “You just saved my life.”

  “Can you remember my name now?” Heather said.

  “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”

  “Then maybe I’ll see you around.”

  She started across the lobby, glancing back as she did.

  Kevin’s knees stopped shaking now that he had passed inspection. Martha led him to the vault, where she looked through a box of cards, removed one, and handed it to Kevin. On line one, it had Michael Ward’s signature and the date the box was leased. Line two was blank, meaning Ward had never reopened the box.

  Kevin tried to nonchalantly sign and date the card. He had practiced the signature for two hours yesterday. As he returned the card to Martha, he thought the resemblance to the original was close enough. Martha replaced the card after a thorough inspection.

  Ward’s box was one of the larger ones, about 10 inches across and 4 inches high. Kevin gave Martha the key, and she used it to remove the long box from its sheath. By the way she handled it, it looked fairly light, which he confirmed when she gave it to him. It rattled a little as he took it along with the key.

  “Would you like a private booth?”

  “Please.”

  Once inside the booth, Kevin took a deep breath and lifted the lid.

  At the front of the box lay an 8mm camcorder videotape, the kind they used in the lab to record experiments. He took it out. It had been rewound to the beginning. The label on the tape said “NV117.” He slipped the tape into his pocket.

  Kevin tilted the box toward him, and a laboratory notebook slid to the front. He reached into the covered area at the back of the box, but nothing else was in it.

  He carefully lifted the notebook out and turned it over. Three words were handwritten on the front cover. In all capital letters were the words “THE ADAMAS BLUEPRINT.” It was an odd title for a lab book.

  He opened it. The front page looked as if it had been torn out. A date in June was printed at the top of the second page. The first line started with “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…”

  Kevin quickly read the next few paragraphs, stopping to reread every sentence to make sure he had understood it correctly, not wanting to believe it. He skipped to the pages detailing the technical aspects of the process. As he read the setup and methodology section, the only words running through his mind were “Holy shit!” Then he saw the data. After five minutes, he was almost convinced. Adamas probably worked.

  Now he fully understood the danger they were in. The people that were after them would stop at nothing to get this notebook and kill them both for even knowing of its existence.

  He shut the notebook, tucked it under his arm, and left the booth.

  He passed Martha, who said, “Is that all, Mr. Ward?”

  Kevin didn’t stop, but mumbled his thanks as he strode by her and out the bank exit.

  He yanked the Honda’s door open. As he jumped into the car, Erica said, “There you are. I was beginning to get worried.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” was the only thing he said.

  As Erica drove, Kevin remained silent, turning over their next move in his mind.

  “Okay. I can’t stand it anymore,” she said. “What did you find? You were in there for a long time. I thought they had spotted the fake license.”

  “No. I had a little problem, but I got into the box.” He showed her the notebook, and she glanced at the cover.

  “What’s Adamas?”

  “You may not believe it. I’m not sure I believe it myself yet.”

  “What is it? The formula for Coke?”

  “No,” Kevin said, staring at the notebook. “But it’s probably worth just as much. It’s a blueprint, just like the title says. It has schematics, experimental data, methodology, everything.”

  “A blueprint? For what?”

  “For making diamonds.”

  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 fo
r 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.

  “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?”

  “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.”

  “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 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 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 woul
dn’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…”

  “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.”

  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.”