The Adamas Blueprint

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.

“‘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?”

“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 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.”

“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 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.

“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?”

“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 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.”

“Go to Dallas and find his father. Use the detective spiel. Find out if he knows where the kid is. But remember, now we need Hamilton alive. His girlfriend must have found the notebook in that library. We’ve got to get it before they do something that will ruin me. Like give it to the police. I swear to you, if they bankrupt me because of this, you won’t have to do the dirty work this time. I’ll kill them myself.”