The Adamas Blueprint

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.

“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 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…”

“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.”